Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey transcript
Season 1 · Episode 6. Generated automatically, so expect the odd misheard word.
And I'm Aaron and this is a podcast where we're going to watch some really bad movies and hopefully find something good.
Movies, bad acting, bad accents. We've got it all.
Paul Thomas Anderson call me. Hope you enjoy.
That was unexpected.
Glad I can surprise you.
So today we are kicking off October and this month's theme is, you guessed it, horrible horror. We're going to talk about Winnie the Pooh, Blood and Honey, directed by Reese Frake Waterfield in his first theatrical film starring nobody that you've heard of. Probably nobody that's going to break out anytime soon.
I dare to say and this is streaming on Peacock and you can watch that in the sequel Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey 2 if you're so inclined. why don't you give a quick synopsis of this movie.
after Christopher Robin abandons them for college, Pooh and Piglet embark on a bloody rampage as they search for a new source of food. This is also on Prime, by the way.
we'll post the trailer in the show notes. ⁓ so you can, you can get a quick peek at what the movie's like. this movie has 3 % on Rotten Tomatoes and a 1.3 average rating on Letterboxx. This is our lowest rated movie yet. had a budget of less than a hundred thousand dollars.
but made 7.7 million at the box office. And we can talk about that a little bit later, but this movie made headlines because Winnie the Pooh, the original book, entered the public domain in January 1st, 2022. And shortly afterwards, it was announced that this IP would be turned into a horror movie. And the creators got a lot of...
hate, negative feedback, even before the movie came out. there's a whole genre that I didn't really think about before of public domain, IP, horror movie spinoffs, kind of like bad porn movie parodies, but horror movies. what did you know about this movie going into it, Aaron?
I'd heard of it. That was it. ⁓ I heard when it was announced that Pooh was going to be in a horror movie, but that was it. after looking it up, it's part of a whole Poohniverse is what they call it, ⁓ which is they're going to make another Pooh movie. They're making a Bambi and a Peter Pan and Pinocchio all within this horror Pooniverse.
That doesn't make
sense because those characters are not part of the Winnie the Pooh universe,
Yeah.
I mean, I don't think so.
What was your relationship to Winnie the Pooh growing up? Is this a beloved character or beloved franchise for you?
Not really for we had some Pooh stuff, I remember it was really big merchandise wise when I was a kid. But I wasn't really into. The Pooh stuff, I was into Peter Cottontail and Clifford and. Curious George, so who was not really beloved What about you?
loved Winnie the Pooh growing up. I remember reading books all the time, watched the I don't remember any specific stories about it. I just know that was a big part of the content that I consumed as a child and loved. So I guess I feel some sort of a special relationship to it.
How do you feel about the horror genre in general? I know before we started this, it was hard to get you to watch horror movies. ⁓ it's kind of surprising.
Yeah. I'm not.
I'm not really a fan of horror movies. I don't enjoy the feeling of being scared. I don't know why people like that feeling. hate jump scares. I think that's the cheapest way to scare somebody. And I think that. Any movie that relies on jump scares is a weak movie, but luckily this movie does not have a lot of jump scares, so.
I'll give it that.
Yeah, would, I think it has no jump scares if I remember correctly. I was not scared once it seemed like there were some half ass attempts at jump scares, but you saw them coming miles away.
I don't think so.
Right.
And so there really wasn't an element of surprise or fear in this movie. It was very odd.
What do you think a movie needs to be good?
That's a good question. think it depends. I think there are sub genres of horror movies and there's kind of elevated horror that I like that has deeper meanings and allegories that make you think about different things in life, relationships, thoughts, feelings, trauma or anxieties. There's also just straightforward
horror, which I kind of disagree with you. think those jump scares are part of the genre. And so if you get a horror movie and you walk out and you're like, I wasn't scared at all, then the horror movie didn't do its job. That's like saying, don't like comedy where there's jokes. Like, why would you go see a comedy movie if nobody's making like silly jokes? I mean, you could say that the jump scares are cheap or that
They weren't done well, but I think some of the great horror movies you don't see the jump scares coming. They really frighten you. They, you know, they're thoughtful. I think there's one of the things that I like about the horror genre. I think is there's a there's a broad it's a broad genre. And so you can have gross out.
bloody horror, which I don't like that type of horror. But then you can also have horror where there's no blood. nobody gets murdered even, but it's still scary and tense and frightening. I like that there's a lot you can do with horror.
I guess I should clarify, it's not that I don't think horror movies should have jump scares. I think that horror movies that solely rely on jump scares is a cheap scare. It's easy to do,
Sure.
I still think it has to be believable. There has to be a plot. You should still understand the characters and feel something about the characters and their relationships and their motivations. What they do should make sense in the real world. And yeah, if it's just kind of cheap jump scares and characters that just walk into danger.
oblivious to what's happening around them, then that's not a great horror movie. Speaking of which, let's get into talking about this movie. I guess not to give away our analysis too much. I think I'll just say off the top, this was not a good horror movie.
Yeah, I really got to stop saying that each movie I've seen is the worst movie I've ever seen because there's always another one right behind it to surprise me.
This is the worst movie I've seen so far.
Yeah, I feel like this was barely a movie.
it really wasn't good at all.
Yeah. So you gave kind of the premise in the synopsis and I'll say the movie starts out with this cartoon short kind of about the story of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin. And then it's kind of this like BS premise of Christopher Robin goes to college and all the animals.
are so mad at this, I don't know. What did you think about that premise and just the way the movie was set up?
It didn't make sense. it seems like Christopher Robin left for college and then times got tough. I don't know what that means for for who. think they couldn't find food or something. So they ended up killing Eeyore and eating him. And then they abandoned their humanity, which doesn't make sense because they're not humans.
Ha
Yeah.
and then they decided, you know, they stopped talking and they just kind of gave in to their animal instincts. I did like the animation at the beginning. I thought that that was kind of cool in the narration. I wish there was more of it, but it was obviously done to do really cheap exposition at the beginning. I liked it. I liked that that opening, but it didn't make sense. Nothing about this really makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah, I was going to say, think the, short, that animated short at the beginning was probably the best part of the movie. I, I agree. I would have watched the whole movie. That was kind of this animated like twisted or a thing. If it, if it made a little bit more sense and kind of carried on that style, the animation style was cool. I think was the bottom line. And then it switches to live action and we get Christopher Robin and his new wife.
Yeah, I agree.
I think they were married, coming to the Hundred Acre Woods. And the setup is basically that Christopher Robin had been talking about all his adventures with Pooh and piglet and so on, and was going introduce them to his wife and they're going to the Hundred Acre Woods. what do think that conversation was like with Christopher Robin and his new wife?
They were, yeah.
She must have thought he was crazy.
Yeah.
He's been telling her stories about these animals that he was friends with as a kid that were kind of humanish, but not really. all these weird stories. And then he just takes her out to the middle of the woods to show her I wouldn't have gone if I were her. In fact, I maybe wouldn't have married him.
Yeah, I certainly would marry somebody who that was a big part of their life. And I would have been like, you are trying to kill me right now. Like that would have been a fun movie of Christopher Robin actually is insane. And he's imagined all these imaginary friends, I guess, and using this as pretext to murder his new wife. I don't know that that at least makes sense to me.
Yeah.
That's a much better movie, I think.
Well, this I
where all
of the Pooh characters are imaginary and he's the monster. I'd be I would be into that, that is not the case in this movie.
Yeah.
No, maybe we should make that movie since the IP is in the public domain, then it's, you know, it's fair game. Or is that based on how does that work? Is that too based on this movie? So that's a new IP that we've got to wait a hundred years for that to expire.
Yeah.
I don't know, we have to get a lawyer, I think.
so they come to the Hundred Acre Woods and there's a bunch of just really bad dialogue where all of a sudden his wife is just like, this is scary. And Christopher Robin is just like, what happened to you, Pooh? And just really, ⁓ I would say this five minutes, I was just like, okay, the acting was terrible. The dialogue was terrible.
Yeah
that the set didn't really make much sense. They're Gulfstream trailers and like.
which are not cheap.
No, I could. Did you understand what this what their layer was?
No, but I did think it was funny because Christopher says when they get back there, he's like, it's bigger than I remember. And I was thinking, does that ever happen? Like, do you ever go back to a place from your childhood and be like, it's actually bigger than I remember.
Yeah, it should be the opposite.
surely he as a child Gulfstream trailers and building clubhouses and stuff. So were they expanding while he was, while he was away, like how hard could times have really been at this compound that they basically built?
Yeah. Again, the setup doesn't really make much sense because the woods Look fine. It's not like these are barren woods or really, you know, it's, it's lush. There's vegetation, seemingly plenty of animals and things for poos to eat. There's honey everywhere. Poos seems to still be eating a bunch of honey.
Yeah, it looks like a place you'd rent on Airbnb for a great camping weekend. Like there's fire pits and like ⁓ like a deck with seating and the air streams and bedrooms. It's pretty nice, actually.
That's probably what they did. That's probably how they got the budget. So they just rented this Airbnb.
Yeah.
so Pooh shows up and starts strangling Mary from behind. did you see how Christopher tried to save her? He did nothing. He just sat there on the floor and held his arm out and was like, Pooh, no. He didn't try to save her at all.
No.
You
Yeah, he's just shouting things like, why are you doing this? I would have never left. Like, did he live there?
Hahahaha
I don't know. So I wasn't super into the the real Pooh story. Was this just the the woods behind his house or what was the hundred acre woods to Christopher Robin in the real Pooh stories?
Yeah, that's what I understand. I didn't go back and revisit those old stories, but my understanding was that it was the woods behind his house. So he would go out on a weekend or whatever and explore the woods.
So he would
have given up college and a future to live with Pooh and piglet?
I guess so. Seems well adjusted and normal to me.
Yeah.
and so this is all before the credits actually, before the credits, Chris Robin's wife gets murdered and he gets, kidnapped, guess. and tortured by Pooh and piglet. These Pooh and piglet are the only two characters. the only animal characters, I guess, from the story that, that remain. And then we cut to.
What did you think about their
costumes? Pooh and Piglet.
That was one of the things that baffled me the most about this movie. So Pooh just had this rubber mask, as well as Piglet. They both had this rubber mask and they were just really big men. And Pooh had like yellow rubber gloves, like kitchen gloves kind of on. And that was about the extent of their costume.
And it was really confusing because throughout they're referred to as like inhuman animal hybrids. And you're just watching and it's like, this is some dude in a rubber mask. And, their expressions don't change. think maybe sometimes they change, swapped out the masks, but you would never see like their face move. It would just be this rubber mask. ⁓ they're always lumbering.
There's no talking. There's just one line from Pooh at the end of the movie and a really cheesy scene. And yeah, it's really weird. Near the end, somebody, I have a few quotes down, somebody said, that did not look human when Pooh walks by.
⁓ It was clearly a human.
And yeah, exactly. It just looks like human.
then
Somebody else says towards the end, that ain't no human and that ain't no bear either.
what did you think?
Yeah, I thought the costumes were really bad. Clearly just guys in masks with shirts or something stuffed into their bellies. then there was this really funny scene where Pooh is eating honey and he's just shoving honey into his motionless rubber mouth. Yeah, and he cries honey, I think. Did you notice that?
Yeah, it's just dripping
I did see that. I didn't understand what that was.
I don't know. I don't know either. It just looked awful. It looked really cheap. yeah, if the movie was only a hundred thousand dollar budget, it makes sense. But I feel like they could have done a little better.
Yeah, it seemed like they didn't even really try.
And another movie that might have been interesting is just some creepy guy in a Winnie the Pooh mask that's going around murdering people. It just, it took me out of the movie so many times that I didn't understand what it was supposed to be.
Yeah, I think they were trying to make them like supernatural like Michael Myers or Freddy or Jason or something where they're not quite human, but they're, I don't know. It's a monster. It's a monster of some kind, but it just looks exactly like a dude in a mask with padding in his shirt.
So the bulk of the movie is oddly about another set of characters that isn't Christopher Robin as the victim. It's this girl's trip. So a bunch of girls go to this Airbnb, I guess, in the middle of the hundred acre woods to have a girl's weekend together. What did you think about that?
disconnect.
Yeah, it was weird. mean, the the premise is like it makes sense. It's a cheesy horror premise of the girls go out into the woods for a weekend or whatever. but it was so ham handed the way they set everything up with all the girls putting their phones away to disconnect from the real world for the weekend and everything. And then.
Did you catch there's this other girl that never really made it to the cabin? Was she with them?
Yeah,
I think so. It was just a scene where it seemed like she got lost on the way to the cabin. And she's the first murder we see after Christopher Robin's wife.
her name was Tina. I wrote all their names down because I felt bad the past few movies where we haven't known any of the characters names. So she was Tina and she pulls over and she calls ahead and is like, my directions are all weird. It wants me to do a U-turn. I'm lost. And I don't know if she's part of the group. I guess she is. And she kind of just wanders through the woods and sees Pooh.
Yes.
Ha
And Pooh starts chasing her and she runs into this shed immediately loses her shirt during the fight. That's the first thing that happened was he ripped her shirt off. And like it was clearly just nudity for shock value. And I don't think there was any other nudity in the movie, ⁓ but it was it was weird.
Ha
Yes.
There wasn't.
It was hilarious gratuitous nudity nudity. You're right. There's no other nudity and it was just it didn't even it seemed like he was intentionally taking her shirt off. It wasn't like he accidentally tried to like grab her and she ran away. He was just like I'm going to murder you first thing. I'm just going to take your shirt off so that we can get an R rating for this movie and show some boobs.
Mm-hmm.
Exactly, and she goes headfirst into a meat grinder and the meat coming out the other end is really bad CG
Yeah, my note from that scene too is she's saying I got lost and my GPS is telling me to take a U-turn. We'll take a U-turn. Don't wander into this creepy barn in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah. She was trying to get killed.
Yeah. So the rest of the movie is basically, it's not really, like I said earlier, it's barely a movie. It's just a bunch of scenes where Pooh and Piglet murder different people. And instead of us trying to like describe the movie to the audience, maybe we should just talk about our notes with each of the murders, because I think each one is hilarious in its own right. So the next.
The next murder is, Lara, Laura.
What?
Yeah.
She deserved to die. She The setting is a hot tub. She's hanging out in the hot tub at night by herself and She's got her phone with her. So I guess they didn't really give up their phones or she didn't give up hers but she has her phone with her and she's taking selfies in the hot tub and Then she's looking through her selfies and sees Pooh in the background looking at her
She gets freaked out and she jumps out and like turns the light on and calls out for him. And then she's just like, whatever, you're not going to scare me. And she gets back in the hot tub with her back to where Pooh was and just sits there with her eyes closed until he and Piglet come up and kill her. And Pooh and Piglet come walking up where there's this like blinking light coming on and off. And each time it comes on, they're a little bit closer, but you could still see them moving even when it was dark and
It wasn't tense or scary at all. It just looked stupid and cheap. I think that she deserved to die. She's out there and knows there's a strange man in a mask prowling. And she's just like, well, I'm going to close my eyes and turn my back, I guess.
Yeah, I gave her the dumbest horror victim ever award. There's a trope in horror movies where, you know, the one of the protagonists is about to walk into the basement where the audience knows that there's danger and we're all shouting at the screen like, don't go into the basement. And I think great horror movies create a situation where as the audience, you're like, maybe I would go into the basement.
I just watched Heretic somewhat recently and there's a scene where the, protagonists are given a choice by somebody to go into the basement and you're sitting there thinking, maybe I would go into the basement. That seems like a smart idea. There's also another horror movie recently watched weapons where the audience is telling people go into the basement, go into the basement. That's where you should go.
And Laura, the proverbial basement, she's like, I see the bad guy and her line. had to, I had to rewind this and watch this and write this down. Her line is whatever. You're not ruining my night. You fucking freak. That's what she says before she just sits with her back to this creepy guy in the middle of the woods and nowhere. There's even this.
Hahaha
Turns out he will
ruin her night.
Exactly. There's even this subplot that one of the girls has a stalker and she makes some line like, are you Maria stalker? So she even knows that there's a, there's a known threat. and she's, she's putting her back to that threat.
Yeah.
She wasn't killed in the hot tub though. Her actual death was even dumber than that. So she was tied up like hogtied, laying down and you see Piglet dragging this sledgehammer. Like it's too heavy for him to lift or something. He drags it everywhere. I don't know why, ⁓ but he drags it just for drama sake, I guess. And then.
Yes.
gets up next to her, but doesn't hit her with the sledgehammer. They run her head over with a BMW really slowly and her eyeball pops out and everything. It's just so dumb. It's so stupid looking. What was the sledgehammer for?
Yeah.
the next death seemed really silly to me. The pool scene, is that what comes next? There are so many notes I made about the set of scenes where Pooh is terrorizing the Airbnb, Pooh and Piglet. At one point, one of the characters says, call the cops. Do they ever call the cops?
Mm-hmm
Yeah.
No. As far as I know, they don't they don't call anybody. And also the group splits up at this point, which, of course, of course, they split up. That makes perfect sense. And they they decide to arm themselves. And so one of the girls is like, there's a gun upstairs. Why? Why did she bring the gun?
I thought it seemed like she brought the gun because she was scared of her stalker.
Okay, yeah, okay, that makes sense, but they didn't tell you she brought a gun until that point.
And was a serious gun. What kind of gun was that?
It was,
I have no idea. It was a big honkin revolver of some kind. Yeah. Um, and the
That was a dirty hairy gun. That was huge.
But
she doesn't try to shoot anybody. She stares down the sights at Pooh and doesn't pull the trigger.
Yeah.
That was my note is like, why didn't she try to shoot him when they had him clearly dead to rights? Because they're on like this balcony in the house and Pooh is walking all over the place on the first floor. He walks past him two or three times and they just sit there and talk really loudly to each other and don't use the gun at all. ⁓ This is like the anti-Chekhov's gun where you see the gun and it never gets used.
Heheheheh, yes.
Yeah, so and there was another part where they're up there with the gun watching Pooh, clearly Pooh walking back and forth and they're like, is that Zoe? Like, no, that's not a hundred and twenty pound girl. That's a six foot four man in a bear costume.
Ha ha ha ha.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's so cheesy.
Yeah. So the knife girls, which is Zoe and I think. Maria. Go to the pool, they go to the pool section, they have the knife and they go to the pool, which is where our next deaths happen. And. ⁓ Piglet knocks out, it's Alice, Zoe and Alice.
Go ahead.
Piglet knocks out Alice with the sledgehammer and so she's unconscious and Zoe falls into the pool. What did you think about this scene?
I'm trying to think about this with best way to describe it. The scene seemed so cheesy because he's walking slowly through this pool at the character that's just flailing like crazy in a way that doesn't make sense. Like she could have just jumped out of the pool or swam or escaped any number of ways easily. And
It was set up as this like dramatic moment where we're like, ooh, he's gaining on her, but he's just moving so slowly and she's just not doing something. Yeah. Not doing anything that a normal human would do that. Like it just, I couldn't feel any tension and anything other than just confusion and boredom.
uselessly flailing.
Yeah, like they know that trying to escape in water is kind of tense and scary. So they just did it in a pool, but it was the smallest pool. Like you could walk through it. You could walk and she could have just she was like a foot from the edge. She could have just climbed out the other side and ran, but she just keeps like flailing backwards while he slowly walks the whole length of the pool at her. He could have just walked around the side, too. He got in to chase her.
Yeah, they could both touch the bottom.
Yes.
Well, he swang he was swinging ⁓ a chain at her for a little while, which was stupid. ⁓
Yeah, I was like, you're not going to hit her.
It didn't make any sense.
Yeah. So he ends up hammering her in the face and killing Zoe in the pool. Pooh and Piglet Carrie Alice away. I don't know why they didn't kill her. Did you know, like, did they have a plan for Alice or?
I didn't understand at several points in the movie why they killed some characters and why they captured some characters.
maybe it's, we should talk a little bit about the characters. It didn't really matter who was who because we didn't really get much backstory on the characters or get to actually feel anything about them or know about them. Did you, did you feel like there was much character development here?
No, I think that they tried with, I think it was Maria who had the stalker. They tried to give her some backstory and make us connect to that somehow, but It wasn't much.
I thought
that would come back in the story in some way. Like maybe her stalker would save her or maybe like it would turn out the stalker was Pooh or something, but it was just kind of thrown away midway through the movie.
same.
I thought the stalker was the creepy gas station attendant at the beginning, but it turns out he was actually a good guy. Kind of.
Yeah.
I don't know. Yeah. It really any you could have watched this movie, cut up the scenes and watch the scenes in any order. It was, it was just a series of set pieces of a villain killing a character. Doesn't matter who or how or why.
I like that,
I like that Pooh, his attack was like a slap. It was just this really high slap.
I did write down there was a lot of slap fighting from Fu in this. I know that's popular now, but yeah, it seemed like he was a really good slap fighter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He just like tore off people's faces just by slapping them.
Yeah, he slapped a man's face off.
Ha
really strong. Honey does that.
Yeah.
Also, they said that Pooh and Piglet abandoned their humanity and no longer spoke. But when they found Charlene, she said that she talked to them in broken English. So I guess they and and Pooh says a line at the end, so I guess they do talk. But this Charlene character, even with subtitles, I could not understand what she said.
this probably isn't it, but I also had a note at some point. What are these accents? It seemed like there were all manners of English speaking accents in this. There was hillbilly, there was British, there was Australian, there was like high British, low British, well, you know, just all sorts of mix of accents.
Yeah,
the the gas station attendant was clearly an American redneck.
Yeah, or at least that's what he was going for for his character
yeah.
And I think his friends, I think some of them had American accents and some of them had English. And yeah, it was kind of all over the place. There was, you know, like the fancy English accents and then the like the country English accents that I don't know. was it was a little bit all over the place. So they free. Christopher and they free Charlene.
Yeah.
And so now they've got kind of a posse together. we also skipped a torture scene with Christopher, where Pooh is whipping him with what looks like Eeyore's tail.
Yeah.
⁓ I thought it was human hair. was like, but yes, that's probably, that probably makes sense.
But was like cutting him open. And it's just hair. I did not understand why it was doing so much damage to him.
Yeah.
And then after he whipped him, there was a above Christopher Robin and it was rigged to pump blood, I guess from his wife onto Christopher Robin. That was twisted.
Yeah, it was like this really bizarre blood shower where it pumped water out of this bucket full of her innards, I guess, and made him shower in it, which is, I don't know, kind of fucked up. And he and he hung her skeleton next to him while he did it. So. I guess just further further creepy factor.
Yeah, I mean...
Man.
Just never leave your pets, I guess.
Yeah
so Pooh kind of works through most of the girls and It's just Maria left. And then the, the rednecks, the gas station guy and his friends, I didn't really understand where they came from, but anyway, they run into her on the road and then they see Pooh and they all attack Pooh. I thought it was funny that
At the end of the day, sudden, Pooh can control bees.
Yeah, well there was a scene earlier too when he was walking around the house where he had a swarm of bees that were following him. So I guess that's his ability. Yeah, ⁓ I also liked Charlene took the gun from Maria and she was gonna she was trying to draw out Pooh and piglet. So she fires the gun.
Yeah.
his superpower.
one time to get their attention and then they come out and she doesn't shoot them. She just points it at them and trash talks while they walk around this fire pit and then her gun fails and they capture her and pour honey on her face and Piglet eats her face.
Yeah.
while the other girls kind of flee and split up.
Again, so cheesy. It's not, it's not scary. It's not, it doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, Alice gets a machete shoved through her mouth by Pooh. So that's how Alice dies. ⁓ also, Piglet dies.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alice hammers Piglet to death. She captures him somehow, chains him up and gives this like, this is for my friend's speech and kills Piglet. And then Pooh comes back and kills her with the machete. And that's how we end up with just Maria running through the woods.
And I don't know. I'm so I'm so lost on this movie.
Yeah, I think it, I mean, it ends with kind of a car chase and Christopher Robin saves the day. And there's this big standoff where Christopher Robin is trying to talk Pooh out of killing Maria and Pooh says his one line in the movie, which was something I didn't write it down, but something like you should, you should have never left as he slits her throat. And it's supposed to be this big dramatic.
Mm-hmm.
ending. It's kind of set up that way in terms of the shot and the music and all that, but it's just like, thank God it's over.
It took her a really long time to die from that throat slit too. She really...hammed it up.
so yeah, like I said, hardly a movie, just a bunch of series of scenes of people getting killed. how do you think you would do in a horror movie situation like this? Like you were, you were in the middle of the woods with a bunch of friends and Pooh and piglet come, come knocking at your door. You think you survive? Are you the first to die? Are you the last?
I know. I'm kind of on the fence about it. Part of me thinks I would be the first one to die and I would be okay with that. Since I don't really like to be scared, just go ahead and kill me first. And I'm also getting to be middle-aged, so the odds of me outrunning or outmuscling anybody is probably pretty slim. But I...
Also, maybe hope, secretly hope that I would be the last one to die or live. I think I have a pretty strong sense of self-preservation. I'm practical, I think. I wouldn't go into the basement if it didn't make sense. So, I don't know. It's hard to say. I think I probably would die early, though. You?
Ha
Yeah.
I have a hard time in the context of this movie thinking I would die early. First of all, think, I think any, any able-bodied person could easily outrun Pooh and piglet in this movie. They, they just lumber is probably is the best way to describe their, their gait. They are not fast at all. They're strong. So I don't think I would win in a fist fight or a.
sledgehammer fight against them, but
just calling the cops or pulling the trigger on the gun. Any of those simple things could let you escape.
Yeah, they were kind of like Michael Myers in their gate. Like they just walked really slow or dragged the sledgehammer with them. They would not be that difficult to escape from, I don't think. Although Pooh did run at the beginning. He chased Tina or whoever she was into that shed. But I think that's the only time we saw him run. So he could run. He just chose not to. Yeah, I don't know.
That's true.
I think that they could have just called the cops and been fine.
Yeah, or gotten into their car and drove away.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think I would, I would probably not do very well in a direct fight against any of these villains, but I would be the first person to just run away and chicken out or be, you know, be the, the narc and call the cops. I would just be like, why I'm not dealing with this situation. Let's just leave.
You
Yeah,
like I think if you if I am home and I hear any sound in my house that I'm not sure what it is, I'm probably already on the phone with the cops.
Yes.
Yeah. Much less in the middle of the woods in some unknown Airbnb situation with, with a known stock around the loose.
And you literally see him in the photos you're taking in the background and you just choose to close your eyes and turn your back and let it happen. Yeah.
Also,
we didn't mention the movie starts with this montage of newspaper headlines and stuff like that about killings in the hundred acre woods that we know is Pooh and piglet. And so there's a history there. There's some danger. So I would think that the locals would warn you at some point that, a lot of people go missing and murdered in these woods. So be careful if you see anything strange, call the authorities.
Yeah, I hope they got a good rate on that Airbnb considering all the murders.
Yeah, deep discounts. What else? What did we miss? Anything else that was funny or interesting about the movie?
were they supernatural? Do you know?
I do not think they were supernatural. I think it was just supposed to be animal-human hybrids.
Okay, what did you?
I think that was
how they, they rectify the fact that these characters can talk. They're, they're animals in the book and the cartoons. They're just animals. They're, they're never like human hybrids. It's not like they have hands or anything like that. They just can talk and act human like.
What'd you think about the direction of this movie?
Not great. There was a lot of like shaky cam, scenes that were meant to convey, you know, panic and fear or meant to instill that. And it just fell flat. A lot of angled shots, Sam Raimi style that I just felt I didn't really like. What did you think?
I thought it was confusing at times too, because it was for me hard to tell where each scene was taking place and when, because it would just jump to a new scene without an establishing shot or anything to kind of tell you where you are in area. and then I think that like the direction.
Right.
It must have been a direction thing for Christopher to just sit there and let Mary die. Otherwise, a real human being would get up and fight Pooh to save his wife. But he just sat there on the floor and cried with his arm out. So, yeah, there's I don't know if it's bad writing or directing on that part, but it was just confusing and didn't that didn't make sense, the things that they were doing.
Yeah, speaking of directing, there was one scene where it's this flashback of when Maria Stocker enters her apartment or whatever, and she's telling this story and she says one night at 3 a.m. but the shot, it's light outside. So they didn't even make it look like the middle of the night. there are just like things like that where it's pretty sloppy, obviously a low budget.
Yeah.
I can excuse some of the bad special effects and things like that, but I don't know. I think I read that this was shot over the course of a few days.
Sorry. The film was shot in 10 days in Ashdown Forest in England.
Wow.
Wow. This, as bad as the movie is, everything aside, a resounding success. It made 77 times its budget and they shot it in 10 days.
that's one of my big takeaways about the movie. Like it was a terrible movie, but like, wow, that's, mean, kudos. No wonder it got a sequel. When I saw that there was a sequel, I was like, how did the sequel get paid? But that's the answer. If you're able to, to, to make 7.7 million at the box office plus whatever the streaming rights and, or, you know, licensing.
Yeah.
you make off of that. So that's amazing. I want to make a movie now.
Yeah, I mean, it's clearly and like a B movie exploitation film. So I guess there's always been a market for that for some reason. You know, cheap monster movies. So I guess they're still making them.
Yeah.
Yeah. And I'm kind of as poor as the story was and some of the acting and all that stuff. I mean, the fact that for that budget, they were able to do what they did. I'm kind of impressed. Like I, I would, I would probably blow through a hundred grand, just one scene trying to figure out how to, you know, get, get just the basic stuff done. So that's pretty amazing.
Do you think that...
Like when this movie came out, it was kind of a novelty, right? It's an exploitation film. They're exploiting the fact that this is now public domain. And so everybody's like, my God, a Winnie the Pooh horror movie. That's hilarious. Let's go see it. Do you think after they've seen the first one that they're going to go back and spend their money again on the sequel?
I don't know. I thought about watching the sequel, but I didn't. But I did watch the trailer and read about it a little bit. It actually got pretty decent reviews.
So it got a 47 % on Rotten Tomatoes, which is way better than 3%. You know, it's still not good, but seemed to do better in terms of reception. The budget on the sequel was 500,000. And you could tell because now the Pooh costume looks way different. Like he has hair and or fur and...
Wow.
It seems more animalistic and it seemed, you know, like they, they spend a little bit more budget money trying to make the movie more realistic, but it's still made 7.6 million in the box office. So not quite the 70 X return, but you know, pretty 14 X return, 15 X return. That's pretty, pretty strong.
Still a success, yeah. Huh.
So we've already touched on this, but what's your overall verdict on this movie?
I didn't like it at all. I wasn't scared, which I don't know if I expected to be. I watched this with Amanda and she made me turn it off about like 20 minutes in because she hated it so much I had to watch it by myself. So yeah, I think it was just bad, bad writing, bad directing, bad acting.
Ha
Ha ha.
The nudity was weird at the beginning. It felt like they just wanted to get an R rating and some nudity in The extreme gore was kind of pulpy and cheap but didn't it wasn't shocking I was expecting people to die and they died in ridiculous ways This movie I could be convinced that they didn't have a at all. It seemed improv
Yeah.
mostly for the whole movie. The things that they are saying as they're dying are like really dumb. So yeah, it's a terrible movie, but it is a huge success, I guess. So I don't know if making money is the only measure of success. This was a successful B horror movie.
You
Yeah.
Do you think it's so bad it's good?
No, only because it wasn't scary at all. If it had been, if there had been some tension or cleverness so I think that like a good horror movie needs something to connect you with it, like the characters or the atmosphere or something, the concept. And this had none of that really. I think this movie would have actually
benefited from like the jaws treatment where you see less of the monster. Because that's way scarier. Your imagination is way scarier than the rubber Winnie the Pooh mask. So I think it was it could have benefited from that.
It also wasn't funny or like campy or the top, like humorous. It played it straight and like you said, I just, I wasn't scared at all. I didn't feel anything. I felt like this was barely a movie and ⁓ yeah, this was, I didn't like it at all. I could be convinced this is the worst movie we've watched so far.
Yeah.
many stars would you give it?
⁓ the, lowest one, ⁓ for sure.
Same. one
star for me.
Is there another public domain IP property you'd love to see get the horror movie treatment?
not public domain, but I think that Star Wars could do a pretty good R-rated horror movie. Like I think that a slasher Star Wars film could be pretty cool. They've already built in villains that are interesting and the setting and the atmosphere is already pretty gritty and kind of cool.
And I think that Andor has proved that people want mature themed Star Wars content. So I think Star Wars, if they made kind of a horror movie, would be kind of fun.
Yeah.
What about you?
Well, first all, I'd just like to see it get done. Well, I think it doesn't matter what the IP is, as long as you actually have a story that makes sense. some of the, the actual horror movie, horror movies based on public domain IP, I wrote down a few of them. The cult of Humpty Dumpty, the mousetrap, which is a Mickey Mouse. there's also a second one, Screamboat, which has a bunch of steamboat.
You ⁓
willy Mickey Mickey Mouse stuff in it.
You
Which I watched the trailer for each of these, the screenboat one, they make a lot of references, at least in the trailer to steamboat Willie and like veiled references to Disney and Mickey Mouse. It seemed like they were going for some humor. it didn't convince me to watch it, but it seemed like if I had to watch it, I might, maybe would enjoy some of the humor in it. Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare, which
Yeah.
I think Peter Pan is actually pretty ripe for some horror movie stuff. There's a whole Lost Boys and you know, there's, there's this undercurrent of, you know, what's happening here. who's, who's stealing these little boys and yeah, there's, there's a dark undercurrent that you could probably pull out of the Peter Pan mythology. And then Tooth Fairy dressed to kill. It's not quite the same thing, but you know, I guess the Tooth Fairy is.
You
ripe for some horror treatment, sneaking into little kids houses and stealing their teeth. Could be kind of cool.
Yeah, I could see that.
Yeah. So what, what would be your alternate pick for people to watch instead of Winnie the Pooh, blood and honey.
For me, think this is an easy pick. I would go with the Evil Dead from 1981, Sam Raimi. It's the same B-movie slasher vibes. It's just a lot more fun and better done.
Yeah.
You.
And Evil Dead, similar like low budget, you know, start, right? I don't remember what the budget was on that, but probably couldn't have been more than a few hundred thousand dollars, right?
Yeah, it feels exactly like this in terms of the low budget, single setting type horror movie.
Yeah. I have to shout out army of darkness, the third in that trilogy. That's one of my favorite movies. It's so campy over the top. love it. yeah, my alternate pick would be Tucker and Dale versus evil, which is a comedy horror movie about seen from the other side, basically seen from the would be villains. And it's about a group of people that
go on vacation in the woods and encounter Tucker and Dale. yeah, I shouldn't, I shouldn't spoil it, but if you haven't seen that, definitely go, go watch that.
It's one of my favorite just movies overall.
Yeah, it's hilarious.
Well, that's about all we can say about Winnie the Pooh and horror movies for now. Come back next week, we'll have another terrible horror movie to review and talk about. If you've enjoyed the podcast so far, please subscribe on Apple or Spotify. That helps us out. If you have any commentary or feedback, shoot us an email at theworstmoviepodcast.gmail.com.
or there's a link in the show notes where you can send us a text, send us a message. that's it for now, I'm Ade
And I'm Aaron, thanks for listening to the Worst Movie Podcast.