Hauntedween (1991)

Episode 463, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd. And I’m Craig. Happy Halloween. Craig. Happy Halloween. Yeah, we’ve been gearing up for it, right? We’ve had, uh, three interesting movies before this, Eddie. Here we are on the big day now. We had gone back and forth. I think we originally we’re talking about doing finally WNUF, Halloween Special, which has been on our list forever and looks very intriguing.

But it just so happened that I found this movie that has just kind of been released on Vinegar by Vinegar syndrome that, you know, vinegar Syndrome’s been putting out a lot of really obscure movies lately and giving them the really great cleanup treatment with extras and all kinds of stuff. And it just became available on Tubi as well.

And this looked like the kind of movie that we like to talk about because it is so obscure, kind of forgotten, reminded me a little bit of, um, scary Movie. You remember that one? I don’t know, put together as a labor of love by some well-meaning people and a whole bunch of people who’ve never acted before or acted since, or directed before, directed since, but it has a lot of heart to it, and at least that’s what I took out of this.

This is 1990 one’s haunted Ween.

Oh my gosh. No, I haven’t seen this movie before. Never even heard of it until a couple weeks ago when I cajoled Craig into letting us do this instead of WNUF. 

Craig: How do you feel about it? Well, I feel like that title is Titillating Haunted Ween.

Oh boy. Ooh. I think I may have seen this movie before. 

Todd: It has a mind of its own. Oh boy. Watch it rise from the, okay, nevermind. 

Craig: Yeah, no, of course. I, uh, I had never seen it, nor had I heard of it, and I didn’t even look at it or anything about it until, oh, like minutes before I watched it. Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s definitely that’s fun and exciting that I’ve never heard of it.

I, it’s, it’s brand new, but it’s kinda rough. 

Todd: You remember Scary movie? The one about the kid who was freaking out all about, about the haunted house, and he goes in and then it turns out that I do not, no, I do not remember that at all. It, it was that movie that was just kind of put together. Eddie Munster was in it, an older Eddie Munster.

I believe you. I have no recollection of it. Oh my God. Okay. It was like a local haunted, no, I really want you to remember this. It was a local, haunted, haunted house. All right, fine. I’ll look it up. The kid is standing in line. Everything absolutely freaks him out. He goes through the haunted house. It appears that people are dying and somebody is going around killing them, and this kid meanwhile is just like flipping out over everything is scary for him.

Craig: Oh, okay. All right. Yes. Yeah, that when you were saying, yeah, when you were saying kid, I was thinking little kid. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Young adult, I guess. Yeah. I vaguely remember 

Todd: when I read the description of this and how it was made, it just reminded me of that this was something that was shot in Bowling Green, Kentucky, the director, writer, producer, all the same guy, Doug Robertson, never did anything after this or before it, but just wanted to put a movie together and basically had some rich parents and his parents friends were rich.

His father was a lawyer, his grandfather was a doctor. They used his family’s network to gather some money together and got his vision realized, and you know, the budget was low, but there are a ton of people in this and it’s clear that most of them. Are not professionals, but a lot of them were from the local university, university of Kentucky.

Right. Probably theater people. Quite a mix. Do you know there’s a whole documentary about the making of this on YouTube? No, it’s 45 minutes long. It’s just basically a whole bunch of behind the scenes footage interspersed with. At that time, interviews with the cast, there’s nothing modern, it’s all in the moment while they’re shooting the movie.

They pulled people aside to interview them, cast the crew, the director and all that stuff. And it’s kind of neat to see all the behind the scenes setup and stuff that went, that went on here. It was filmed in 1989, but it wasn’t released until 1991, so it just missed all the slasher craze before, you know, scream came in 96 to, to revitalize it.

So it sadly, I think the delay of the release probably didn’t get it. What it was hoping for as far as exposure goes. Obviously though this is a very amateurish movie, but I found it charming for that. 

Craig: If you’re gonna like the movie, it’s gonna be a so bad it’s good kind of thing, like Yeah, yeah. You’re gonna laugh at how bad it is, and I get it.

I, I just, uh, gosh, I don’t know. 

Todd: It was fine. This is like the Halloween movie equivalent of your local haunted house. You know, it’s not the big professional haunted house that you’ll drive to the big city for and pay a bunch of money that’s got, you know, millions of dollars invested in it. This is your local Kiwanis club that took the high school gym and made a haunted house out of it, and is is charging you five bucks to get in.

This is like the movie equivalent of that. I, I just see it as like a, a local labor of love from some very well-meaning people. It has some interesting. Things in it, and they’re copying a whole bunch of horror movies. Like there’s so many references and, and shots and stuff stolen from other movies in here, and it’s just kind of charming to see it happen.

Fun to watch. But you’re right. I mean, if you’re, if you’re watching this to see like a big professional production, that’s gonna be super scary and be twisty and you know, that’s not what this is. But I thought for Halloween, this is great. 

Craig: Yeah. Oh yeah. And there are definitely things I like about it. And there’s one part in particular that I really enjoyed and it w