Lived It

Fear Month: Fear Street Part 2 and why summer camps are the scariest horror locations

Episode Summary

We’re doing the time warp this episode, all the way back to the 70s with Fear Street Part 2: 1978. Find out what Fear Street and Back to the Future have in common, hear our scariest childhood ghost stories, and keep unravelling the witchy mystery of the R. L. Stine adaptation with us.

Episode Notes

Episode Transcription

Gen Fricker:

The ones who have sex in the movie always die. That's how it's always worked.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Tragically they live a moment of beautiful sin, get taken away by a killer with the machete at some point.

Gen Fricker:

Oh, my God.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Hello and welcome to the Big Film Buffet. I'm Alexei Toliopoulos, and with me, as always, is-

Gen Fricker:

Oh, it's me, Gen Fricker.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I was going to surprise you there.

Gen Fricker:

Oh, my God. This is not the only startles and sprigs we're getting this month because this month on the Big Film Buffet, it's fear month. And, Alexei, what does fear month mean to you?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Fear month means the absolute world to me because in celebration of the brand new Fear Street trilogy of slasher films based on the book series from horror legend, R.L. Stine, the Fear Street films will be coming out on Netflix each Friday over the next couple of weeks. And the really cool thing about these films that I'm very into, is each entry takes place during a different spooky era full of horror.

Gen Fricker:

Yes, you may have caught the first episode of the month last week when we were talking about Fear Street part one, 1994. This week it's the second of the three films, Fear Street, part two, 1978.

Speaker 3:

A witch, the town curse. I thought there was a way to end it, but now I know there is no end. This is July 12th, summer of 1978, the first day of camp. A week later, my sister was dead.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

So if you haven't seen the first in the Fear Street franchise that came out last week set in 1994, give it a watch before diving into this podcast or listen to last week's episode because we are going to be talking about some details that might be better off as a surprise for you.

Gen Fricker:

Yes, exactly. But, as anticipated, part two of the Fear Street trilogy picks up where part one left off. The kids have survived the Shadyville mall massacre, they've tracked down Ziggy Berman, the adult version of her, because they want some answers. She managed to survive one of the original Shadyville massacres at a little spooky camp called Camp Nightwing back in the '70s, and they have gone to her to figure out how they can break this curse. So in order to break the curse, we go back to Camp Nightwing, back to the '70s, to find out exactly what happened.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I love that as a premise that we've got Gillian Jacobs, an actor I really adore, recounting her stor, slowly dripping us back in time to the 1970s. There really is nothing else like it. I'm such a sucker for this stuff. As you can tell, I'm glowing just talking about this and I've got another entry into my summer camp massacre of slasher film canon. I actually even prefer this to the first film.

Gen Fricker:

Same.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I really liked the direction this takes. It gets a little bit sillier, a little bit spookier even and, honestly, one of the coolest things about it, a lot more bloodier and even sexier than the first one too.

Gen Fricker:

I know, a lot more sex in this one. I feel this one, where the first one was a pretty straight up '90s horror film, this one's almost a supernatural adventure.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah. And that's something I like about this too. The curse has become a little bit more apparent. There's something even scary about setting it a little bit further in the past. It's a little bit more looking back, feels a lot more like legend being told as well, which I think adds something to the grandness of it all, the mystique of it being this trilogy set over different time periods. That foreboding energy of going further back and seeing how long a curse has been permeating the world of Shadyville, just feels more intense. Yet, I've got to say the charm of this film, it's completely delightful as well.

Gen Fricker:

It's so fun. I mean, anything set in the '70s, the costumes are going to be really fun. The soundtrack is incredible, and just the squeaky cleanness of American youth, of the idea of American youth, in the '70s, means that turn into horror and gore and violence makes that heat so much deeper.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh, you're spot on. And I think one of the other things that is so satisfying about watching a movie like this, because it is fresh ... I've never seen a trilogy of films come so close together like this and feel each connected, but each one feels like a unique entry as well. But what really satisfies me about this coming so close together is you do see that connective tissue. There are those things that bring these movies together, whether they be locations or settings or certain props, but there are those little motifs that carry on. And when you see them pay off, especially going back in time, there's something about that that just is incredibly satisfying as an audience member to just be, "Oh, I'm seeing something quite holistic come together in an almost, dare I say, to talk about one of the great trilogies of all time, in a Back to the Future way.

Gen Fricker:

How so? What do you mean by the Back to the Future way?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Well, in Back to the Future, how, when Marty goes back, he goes back in the car park of the Twin Pines mall, and then he goes back and it's a farm house back in the day. And when he's leaving, he destroys one of the Twin Pines. He gets back to the future, and so Lone Pine mall now. There's lots of stuff like this in that, without playing with timelines and stuff, but when you see things pay off in that way. I don't want to get into spoilers too much because I found it incredibly satisfying when we're, in a location, and by the end of the film, we realise that location has completely transformed by the year 1994 and it's a completely different setting, but it is still the same geographical pin point on the map.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. I also think there's something really interesting about telling a horror story back to front in a way. You know what is going to happen, right?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Gen Fricker:

Because they reference it in the first movie, a bunch of kids get killed. So then it puts more importance on the relationships between some of the survivors and also getting to know more about Sarah Fier, the witch, the curse that she's put on Shadyville. Why? Where that came from?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I think it really hits something on the head here of what works to me about this movie, because there is a freshness to the unconventionality of a story like this being told this way. With a horror slasher film, you do have the expectation that there is going to be one survivor and often you can pick who it is. But, in this one, you know who the survivor is, it's Ziggy, the character played by Gillian Jacobs in the future and played by Sadie Sink from Stranger Things in the past in 1978.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

So all of the tension is not around who survives, but more about what exactly happens. What do I need to remember when I get back into the future to figure out the curse of Sarah Fier and all of that? It's about building the context, which then builds a tension, which I was really thrilled by is what had me at the edge of my seat was going, "Okay, what do I need to learn about? What do I need to remember here? And who are the characters and what are their relationships to each other?"

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. It's why it's good to watch this on Netflix because you can just binge it like I did. I got to the end of 1994 and I was, "Oh, okay. I need these answers right now." And it just takes you straight into the next one. Gives you a little recap if you need.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And also just that's that one week of tension waiting for it to drop. I've never had that for a movie before. And that's what's got me on edge, is that little bit of waiting time between the films coming out.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Let's talk about the cast a little bit here because I really love Gillian Jacobs. I think that she is such a cool actor. We know her from the Netflix show, Love, which is a great play on the romantic comedies. And then we've seen her in stuff like Community, and she's got this real rebellious spunk about her. And I think that's such a good energy to bring into a movie like this because it gives you an expectation of who this character is.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And seeing her starting off the film trapped in this home surrounded by clocks in this almost Desmond from Lost, paranoid, OCD way of having to do all these things to keep her mind at ease, to keep her survival skills in check. And I think it's interesting to have an act like that who's this interesting rebellious person feel so trapped. And that's why I think it's such clever costing to have Sadie Sink playing that character with the energy we know Gillian Jacobs to really have and possess back in the 1970s.

Gen Fricker:

Mm. Yeah, absolutely. It's really fun. And it really is a movie about Sadie Sink as a child and her relationship with her sister. And it's interesting. You don't necessarily watch a horror film for these family bonding type of themes, but I think Sadie Sink really sells it and really sells feeling like an outsider and feeling she's out of control in the world around her. It is just another layer added to this and another investment in this character and another investment in the trilogy where you are just, "Oh, I really care about this person. I really want to know why and how they survived and how this young kid gets to be that Gillian Jacobs portrayal later on who is so traumatised and who is so locked in by these fears."

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And I think it's a testament to both the cast, the director, and also even to the writing of these films as well, that going from one film where we've developed these bonds with these characters as an audience, where we've loved the teenagers in that first film and want to see them survive, to then completely change setting and be introduced to a whole new slate of actors and characters, and then immediately begin to feel that investment in them. And I think that's just a testament to how this film plays with those genre expectations and how it gives us a little bit of that space and time to just feel a bond with those characters and see them grow a little bit before the gruesome killings start.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I think it works really well and it ties into one of the things I really do love about this movie and why I connect with it, is I just love the way this film looks. It's got that '70s sepia tone of burnt gold giving us that nostalgic summer like looking back at old photos, when you look back at those hazy old photos from the '70s, and it feels like it's in such contrast that '90s setting of the first film. It gives you those moments that slow down and it feels almost like you've dazed and confused was a horror film. And I would say that works especially well when that mixed tape soundtrack kicks in once again with this, and we're treated to the eight track of 1970s classic hits.

Gen Fricker:

The music budget on this movie must be insane because, I mean, you've got a main character called Ziggy. So, of course, you're going to get some David Bowie in there, a few different tracks of David Bowie, but obviously one that really underlines a character development in one of the main characters is The Man Who Sold the World. And, Alexei, you notice a bridge between this movie and the '90s movie.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah, that's what I really liked about it. I think it's such a clever pick because that song's a David Bowie original, it's one that we all love, but in the '90s it had that big cover by Nirvana from those MTV unplugged sessions. So it's that perfect bridging song because it has this installation of popular culture back in the '90s and then it takes us back into the '70s with the Bowie original. I thought that was just so clever to me because it just feels like that perfect song that lives in two eras.

Gen Fricker:

Mm. Yeah, for sure. I just love Don't Fear the Reaper playing through this whole movie by Blue Oyster Cult. It's such an on the nose pick for a movie about kids getting murdered that I loved it. I was, "This is fun." This knows that it's not a serious movie. I don't know. It made me really smile.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh, I think that's part of it. The soundtrack to this movie really makes me smile. And I think you're hitting the nail on the head with that proper needle droppy, sometimes it's the most obvious song for the scene, that works well in these, especially when we go back to the '70s because it's just a little bit more time removed where songs could be considered corny back then and even have a nostalgic corniness about them. But now when we look back, they just bring a smile to your face because there's joy in them. But there's a moment where Love Will Keep Us Together by Captain & Tennille, which I love, but it's such a corny song, is played so well to create who the character is, that this is the silly pop music that they like.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

But even more, just after that, there's one of the first slayings of the movie that is played to First Cut Is The Deepest. And I was just, "Come on, dude.

Gen Fricker:

It's so funny.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

That is so fun."

Gen Fricker:

Oh, my God. And then I just feel the other music kind of in it, there's some scenes where they're exploring some ruins and it's more of cinematic strings, which I don't think we really got in the '90s when it was a more eerie sense and stuff like that. And it is really playing to genre conventions, which I really love. I really love that each of these films is a different distillation of the horror genre. The first one was this self-knowing '90s, teen horror, slasher, bit more cynical, I think, in its approach to things. And then part two is this silly, in a way, summer camp horror movie that you obviously are so about. But then also does turn into this supernatural adventure film as well.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Totally. I think that's what's interesting to me about it and why it's a trip down memory lane watching all of these movies together, because I think that the first film, it captures that idea of those meta horrors of the '90s, your Screams and your Facultys and, I guess, stuff like Urban Legend as well. And that was the revitalization of that genre that had slowly fallen out of love with the horror audience by just being a samey over and over again, and refreshed it. But here we're going back to the origins of the slasher movies. The slasher movies really kick off in, guess what year, Gen? What year do you think the slasher movies really kicked off?

Gen Fricker:

I'm going to take a flyer and say 1978?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

They do indeed.

Gen Fricker:

Oh.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Correct Da Goon-Go. 10 points to Gen.

Gen Fricker:

I was wondering why they picked 1978 out of all of the '70s.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Well, I would have to say it's because the movie by John Carpenter, Halloween, came out in that year. There's arguments around it, but I would say it's the first big slasher film that really hits big and establishes a lot of the tropes of the genre with the idea of the final girl being pure and a lot of her friends being killed because they are maybe a little bit less pure.

Gen Fricker:

The ones who have sex in the movie always die. That's how it's always worked.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I was trying to be generous with the way I described it but, yes, the ones that have sex, tragically, they live a moment of beautiful sin to be taken away by a killer with the machete at some point.

Gen Fricker:

Oh, my God.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And then as well in the '70s and '80s, especially when we really hit big with that genre becoming an all encompassing thing for horror, we get this little sub-genre of a sub-genre of summer camp horror slashers. Really, the biggest one, of course, is Friday The 13th, set at Camp Crystal. Then you've got stuff like Sleepaway Camp, which is a very weird movie that I love. The Burning is another one. All of these movies also have big people that become famous from them as well. Friday the 13th, you've got Kevin Bacon, future heart throb. But The Burning, there's someone very interesting in it who becomes a major heart throb star, star of TV, Seinfeld, George Costanza himself, Jason Alexander [crosstalk 00:16:48]. That's one of those cool things where you go back and watch all these old slasher movies you see so many actors getting their start and you just can't believe it.

Gen Fricker:

So there's a video game that's like that, that I'm obsessed with. And it's not summer camp, but it's a bunch of sexy young people who go to a cabin in the woods, called Until Dawn, which features Oscar winner, Rami Malik.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I'd love to see a digital Rami Malik.

Gen Fricker:

Oh, my God.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Free Oscar win. Free Oscar win. We should make that clear. He did it before he got the Oscar.

Gen Fricker:

And Hayden Panettiere is doing the work as always.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh, we love Hayden. Hayden Panettiere and [inaudible 00:17:22]. Okay? We love her. But I just love that summer camp setting because, to me, summer camp is maybe top three horror settings of all time. Might be number one. It's probably up there tied with spaceship Lost In Space for me-

Gen Fricker:

Oh.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

... as far as horror settings go, because there's something about it, where there is majority kids who are helpless, teens and kids that are helpless. There's a few counsellors, there's a few camp leaders but, for the most part, there's older kids that are the authority figures and then a couple of ancient crones and stuff wandering around-

Gen Fricker:

30 year olds.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

... who live at the camp.

Gen Fricker:

It's got to be ancient 30 year olds.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

But there's that element of danger because they've all been sent away from their parents. Their parents can't help them. They just feel abandoned out there in the woods. And I think that having this set in a summer camp setting, man, oh man, I'm all smiles thinking about that. I love that.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. Scary as hell. Because you go on school camp and you're, "This is going to get crazy." We're talking spin the bottle, we're talking snacks in the middle of the night. You're, "This is ... It's a Bacchanal," you know what I mean?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

[crosstalk 00:18:36].

Gen Fricker:

[crosstalk 00:18:36] on school camp?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

You just reminded me of one of my school camps. A guy called Ross. I'm not going to use his last name, but a big boy called Ross. He brought a 24 box of Krispy Kreme donuts, refused to share them and spent the first night of camp whining in pain in our cabin.

Gen Fricker:

Because he ate them all?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

He ate them all. He gave one to another friend and then ate 23 by himself, just whinnying in pain all night long.

Gen Fricker:

That's what I mean, right?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Gen Fricker:

It's like camp as a kid. There's so much promise, but then also something really terrifying about being a kid and being, "Oh, my parents cannot help me. I'm going to be naughty and rude. But also if something goes wrong, my parents can't help me." Reminded me of when I was a kid, one of my friends, Conan. Shout out to Conan.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Shout out to Conan.

Gen Fricker:

His mom was a caretaker at the quarantine station in Sydney. So-

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh my God, I just got a chill.

Gen Fricker:

... it's one of the most haunted places in Sydney. If you don't know it, during settlement of Sydney, it was, basically, for treating people who they suspected had the plague. So often people get dragged from their homes and then put in the quarantine station. And it was used throughout the ages. There's a mass grave there.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And it's in such a scary place. It overlooks the most foreboding cliff into the ocean, right?

Gen Fricker:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's a whole series of books written about it called Ghost Boy.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh, oh.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah, yeah, it's spooky. It's on Sydney Harbour. But, anyway, so my friend Conan's mum was the caretaker there. So anytime you wanted to go hang out with Conan, you had to go to the quarantine station,-

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh.

Gen Fricker:

... which, as a 10 year old, who is terrified. And he'd have his birthday parties there. And it would just be us getting locked in dark chambers where they used to hose down people with diseases and things.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh, my word.

Gen Fricker:

Or we'd go for little walks through the old nurses' buildings and you just ... Oh, I'm getting chills. Oh.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I went to a wedding once when I was a kid at the quarantine station and I just remember walking out at night go, "Why did you have your happiest day here? This is crazy."

Gen Fricker:

I just [inaudible 00:20:48]. And Conan's mom was, "Oh, yeah, definitely ghosts" here. Yeah, definitely seen some stuff." And I was, "Cool. Well, I'm 10. I don't know how to deal with that. Great. Thanks for having me."

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I Also think there's something about that ratty energy that kids have when they're all together where the kids take control almost like a Lord of the Flies type thing. I remember my most prominent memory ever from a camp, Gen, there was this little camp that we went to in school. Not all the kids, just a few of them. And there were only two teachers there supervising us. We had these couple of lodges, or a few lodges: one for the teachers, one for the boys, one for the girls. And underneath the boys cabin, we just were looking out there one night with a torch and we had the torch go underneath and we saw this little reflection, this mirrored reflection, come back and shine light at us and it freaked us out. But then I realised, I go, "I know what that light is. That's a reflection of my most beloved possessions, DVDs."

Gen Fricker:

Oh.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And so, "There's a disc underneath there. We should go get it." Because me being the film nerd that I've been my entire life, I did bring a portable DVD, [crosstalk 00:21:56] camp-

Gen Fricker:

Oh, my God.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

... so we could watch movies whenever we want to. I could watch them on the bus. I cannot be away from movies for very long. So we're, "We can watch that. Let's go do it." And, basically, the entire camp, the teachers, everyone, all the students, gather around as we send our smallest kid to go underneath and grab it, because we're 16, but there's some younger kids at the camp too, student politics camp.

Gen Fricker:

Sure.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yes, I'm a nerd, okay guys. I did student politics, okay?

Gen Fricker:

You didn't stick your head up from watching DVDs long enough to figure out why you were there.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Exactly. So I send this little mini kid out to get it. And everyone's waiting with bated breath. We're, "What's going to happen? What's going to be there?" The teachers are all enthralled, everyone's enthralled. And we just hear the kid pick up the DVD and start cackling. "Is he screaming? What's going on? Is he okay?" He comes out and shows us the disc. It says, The Gay Team on it and has the most explicit image on it, and it sticks in my mind to this day.

Gen Fricker:

Oh, I'd say that's almost the safest place to stash this, is under this building housing a bunch of children.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Some kid just Frisbee getting, "No, I can find this."

Gen Fricker:

"I'm going to go home tomorrow."

Gen Fricker:

Just thinking about what you're saying about the rat bag energy of a bunch of kids together. Or I can ghost look at the bunch of kids and they're, "This is delicious. We're going to really ruin some lives here."

Alexei Toliopoulos:

This is it. This is our big time.

Gen Fricker:

I think they go, " [inaudible 00:23:26] it's too hard."

Alexei Toliopoulos:

We've got to rack up those easy scares over the weekend.

Gen Fricker:

Exactly.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

We've got the kids here.

Gen Fricker:

But they see the bus roll in and they're, "This is a busy week for us. This is our stock tech sale."

Alexei Toliopoulos:

It's the end of financial year. We got to get those scares in over the line.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I mean, it's pretty obvious, but I was absolutely delighted by this film. And I can't wait to see the directions head into in part three with 1666, because I have got no idea. But I am really excited to see that setting come to life.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah, we did get a little teaser taste at the end of part two of what's to come. And like we're saying, it looks like it's taking us to a completely different aesthetic vibe, and I'm really excited. I don't know. It's going to be a good fear month.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I think it will. And I can't wait to find more about the original witch herself, Sarah Fier. There's so much more mystery to unpack and there's so much more mystery around the concept of witches themselves. So next week on the snack edition we're also going to be talking to a bit of a witch expert of our own, horror author, film curator and film critic, Maria Lewis, who's also one of our very best friends, will be joining us to divulge the secrets of all things witchiness.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. All our snack episodes this month are going to be little companions to the film. So we've got Fear on the mind, basically. You can't escape it. If you don't like spooks and thrills, then, I'm sorry, honey, but this month isn't for you.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And you will be freaked out.

Gen Fricker:

And you will be spooked. And if your ghost's listening, I'll never forgive you for what you did at the quarantine station.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

If you like what you're hearing on the Big Film Buffet give us a five-star review. It helps us get out there in the ears of more listeners.

Gen Fricker:

This episode was hosted by Alexei Toliopoulos and me, Gen Fricker.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Produced by Michael Sun and Anu Hasbolt.

Gen Fricker:

Edited by Jeffrey O'Connor.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And executive produced by Tony Broderick and Melanie Mahony.