Shocker (1989)

Episode 450, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello, and welcome to the 450th episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: 450 episodes. Man, can you believe it? Absolutely not. Like it just seems unfathomable. 

Craig: It’s crazy. 

Todd: I feel like, I feel like not long ago we were celebrating our 400th, so it feels like the last 50 have just flown by.

That in itself sounds hilarious to say. It seems like it. 

Craig: We were just talking about 365, like that was a big milestone for us. It seemed like that just happened. I, I can’t believe it. I remember when we first started this. I don’t remember how the conversation happened, but when we got to like the first 50 and I told my parents, my mom was like, are there 50 horror movies?

And I thought that was really funny at the time. But gosh, at some point I guess we never will run out. But I mean, you never will. 4, 4 50. Dang. It’s a lot. It’s a lot of movies. I bet I couldn’t list 

Todd: 50 of ’em. Right? Oh God. Well it feels really good. And as we did when we started out, Wes Craven had recently died.

So our very first episode was people Under the Stairs. We decided for our 50th and then for our hundredth and most of our milestones along that way, that we were like, why don’t we just go back to West Craven? And so we tend to save our West Craven movies for these milestones. Yeah. And it’s been a long time.

I think it has been. And you know, it’s funny that we still have a decent little pile of movies to do now we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel. Yeah, we’re far past the hills have eyes. And last house on the left was the last one we did. And God, it does not seem like 50 episodes ago. But uh, there you have it.

This one, uh, we had our choice between if a couple eighties ones and we settled on Shocker from 1989, which I had never seen before. Had you seen it? 

Craig: Yeah, I definitely had. I didn’t remember a whole lot about it. I vaguely remembered liking it. And I, I knew what the general premise was, but I hadn’t seen it in a long time.

And I’m glad that we picked this one because one of the other ones that we were thinking of was Chiller, which I have never seen. And because I’d never seen it, I just had time. I kind of popped it on and it didn’t look as much fun at all. I didn’t watch it for very long. It was made for tv and the quality’s pretty low, and I don’t know, it didn’t look great.

So I still haven’t seen it. If we get around to 500 or five 50, we’ll get to it eventually. I, I have a feeling if we, if we make it to 500 our next bet, we’ll probably be the serpent in the rainbow would be my guess. Oh, for sure. But, but no, I’m actually really glad that we went with this one because. I remembered liking it, and I did like it.

It was fun and I’m really kind of surprised that it didn’t do well, especially coming off the heels of a nightmare on Elm Street, which was so wildly popular. The only thing that I can think is that people just wanted more Freddie. They didn’t want Offbrand Freddie, they wanted specifically Freddie Krueger and I, I think maybe that’s why this one didn’t take off.

But it’s fun. It’s, it’s, it’s a lot like the Nightmare movies. Frankly, maybe too much. Really? 

Todd: I, I was just gonna say, it’s real ironic, you know, that you say that because that’s sort of what Wes Craven was trying to do with this movie. He was trying to create a Freddie competitor. He had been a little sad that the series kind of went on without him.

He was originally very uninterested in doing a sequel to the first movie. Yeah. But then after the second movie, got a little bit in, more involved with the third movie. It’s, it’s so weird. His career, it’s just been fits and starts. He started off real strong with certain movie, well, well, with the last house on the left doing really well.

And then the Hills have Eyes and the Sequel Hills have eyes and do so great. And he kind of found himself right back where he started, and then he did Nightmare on Elm Street after a while. And, and that was huge. And then went on to Deadly Friend and that kind of flopped. And then he couldn’t find himself getting any work anymore.

It, it’s just so weird. You know, he had these moments where he had these movies that were just really, really well received. And then in between just. Parts where he was kind of down in the doldrums and I think between the, his last big success in this movie, he was doing a lot of television just to pay the bills.

You know, he is directing episodes of TV shows and things like that and wasn’t enjoying it. He did not enjoy television. He was just scrapping, trying to get back into film and back into film. He thought Freddie has become this icon. It’s also been ki become kind of jokey. He wanted to create a Freddie competitor, somebody who is more gruesome and more serious than than Freddie.

And this was his. Attempt at that. It really wasn’t well received, but you could definitely see what he was going for because it very much has a lot of nightmare, Elm Street, Freddie ish stuff about it a lot. This villain is more brutal and just kind of like a crazy homicidal maniac who also, I guess is sort of a devil worshiper and whatnot.

And so you can see that he’s created a more intense villain here, but I’m afraid, for me, the movie’s just kind of a mess. It’s a fun mess. But I’ve read reviews where people are like, it feels like three different movies. And I totally agree. I mean, there’s a lot going on. There’s so much happening. 

Craig: He, like you said, he was setting this up to be a series of movies, so I kind of think in some ways he was throwing the kitchen’s.

Sink in and thinking, yeah, we can explain all of this lore later. Yeah, let’s just have fun and we’ll explain it later. And you know, Cisco and Ebert, I don’t, they were split on it. I don’t rememb