Congo

I'm Jesse, and with me as always is my collector in crime, Josh.

Hey, thanks for joining us for our 19th episode, where we are joined by Kev and Anna Ghoul, the co-host of the "Lori Strode Trap House" podcast, to discuss two of their blind buy picks, "Congo" and "Masked Mutilator," [chuckles] which is an insane double feature, and, uh, cannot wait to get to the discussion on this.

But, uh, hello Kev and Anna.

Welcome.

Hello.

Happy to be here.

And we should say for those unfamiliar, "Lori Strode Trap House," a podcast devoted to horror movies from the 21st century, so this is sort of these two things, even though "Congo" kinda predates the, the era in question, this is-- These are both well within the wheelhouse for what y'all cover over on your show, and kind of a wonderful place setting for the sort of weird and psychotronic season that we're entering into, uh, now that it's the f- as, as of the recording, it's the first day of fall.

So settle into the tropics, into the, uh, wherever the hell "Masked Mutilator" was set.

...

Congo.

Oh, okay.

Now Maze-

... is it the movie?

Mm-hmm.

Congo.

Congo.

This is based off a book also written by Michael Crichton, like Jurassic Park.

It's called Congo.

I mentioned it on that podcast as a movie that when I first watched, I felt was very bad.

And I rewatched it again and it's not good, but it's also not awful.

brain this week and I watched that and it is more fun than I more fun than bad I think is how I would say it and uh it's not it's it's almost interestingly bad and uh

yeah

it kind of has a similar vibe of uh people going to a place where they shouldn't and being ignorant about their surroundings so there is a loose connection there too thematically and uh if you want to watch a good bad movie check out Congo by Frank Marshall from 1995

I still need to get around to watching this because I keep hearing more and more about it.

Mm-hmm.

Congo.

Michael Crichton.

We, we remember we had a Michael Crichton thing back in the early '90s? But the big thing is he did a lot of voice work that really kind of made him really relevant, not only to our generation and the Boomer generation, but Millennials, and, you know, Gen Y or Gen, Gen Z, actually.

It wants to be Jurassic Park.

But Jurassic Park is Crichton, right? It's Michael Crichton who, as we've discussed when we did the Congo episode, is like the...

Michael Crichton's thing is thinking too much about the boring bit of a sci-fi story.

You know, like-

It's like it's d- it's, it's DNA from, uh, from a bug or whatever, and we put frogs in it to fill in the gaps.

Got it.

Yeah, this is why the Congo, the Congo novel, uh, has got about six chapters about how you could make a satellite phone call from the jungle using-

Yeah

But now it's dumb, and it's...

We did Congo last week, and it's Congo-

Oh

...

but, but dumber.

[laughs]

Oh, Congo.

Basically.

to rent it at the local video store.

And then I was thinking my grandmother owned the Congo VHS.

I used to see that movie all the fucking time.

My sister had that shit.

I don't.

ever like are you kidding me like if there's a movie to phone

in it's the Congo and that movie did not phone in the Congo how dare you come on like you know that's a movie to phone in but this guy gave it all like it's iconic character in a in a smaller role isn't

Russian

I watched the movie that we're covering today at the Trilon.

I watched Congo for the first time, which I didn't actually know the plot of Congo.

I really thought it was kind of like maybe Contagion for... gorillas or something i thought it was all about like super intelligent uh gorillas that could talk like taking over the world or something it's not at all uh there's really only one talking gorilla um and she already knew asl like coco uh and they just basically make a device that makes it so that her asl can um be like heard like basically anybody who uses sign language could be using this device and everyone's like the gorilla can now talk But people could use this too, right? Yeah, that's not as impressive as

it maybe sounded at first.