Premium Episode 229: The Ritual Killer (2023) Movie Night (Sample)
A murderous "witch doctor" from South Africa and the ritual killing of teenagers and children. Basically the perfect script for Italian Americans to write. Jake, Julian and Liv tackle a listener submission: 2023's The Ritual Killer. The film has an inexplicably stacked cast: Morgan Freeman, Cole Hauser, Vernon Davis, Peter Stormare... and guess what? It's a masterpiece. No idea why it bombed.
Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like Manclan, Trickle Down and The Spectral Voyager: www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous
Liv Agar: http://livagar.com / http://linktr.ee/livagar
Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.
http://qanonanonymous.com
Welcome, listener, to Premium Chapter 229 of the QAA podcast, the Ritual Killer Movie Night episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Julian Fields, and Liv Agar.
Hello, everybody.
This week, we've successfully scared Travis off with a movie.
So good, so quality that his tiny brain could not appreciate it.
We've got Liv and Jake.
How are you guys doing?
Uh, fantastic.
The funny thing about this whole Travis scenario is that he did watch the movie.
He watched the movie and then decided not to come on the show.
That's an amazing...
Achievement.
So here's a scenario where Travis fully planned on being in this episode.
He then watched the movie, imagined what an episode might look like, discussing the film and decided, you know what?
I'm not going to, I'm not going to do it.
Well, it was because essentially like what was going to happen was us jabbering, having fun, having our goofs, having our gaffs.
And then him at the end being like, um, you know, in, in university, the, uh, the bell doesn't actually go off.
Which he's right about, to give him credit.
He's always correct.
That university scene that this movie opens with, I also have to say at some point, at some point in films, and I know this because in my day job, let's say, uh, you know, where I work, uh, you know, with independent films.
Jake is employed full time by us.
It became okay to send ADR, to have actors record ADR on their phones and send it in to an audio technician who tries to make it sound good.
I think half of it, like the kid who's asking the questions, I think all of his dialogue is ADR and it sounds like it was recorded on a phone.
He always just cut in audio from outside the shot.
Yeah, I do think it's him, but it's it's him such bad delivery.
It's so funny.
Oh, yeah, it's it's you'd have to make an effort to I think honestly, and we'll get into this, you know, first of all, welcome to the episode.
I hope you're doing well listener.
Yeah, it's us.
Here we are, Liv's here.
So the movie, it's a 2023 movie, brand new, brand spankin' new.
It is produced by Redbox Media.
Now, these are the boxes that you see outside of your 7-Eleven, you know, they now produce movies.
But that's not the original money, by the way.
They are funding... I'm gonna get into the original funding.
Okay, I can't wait for that.
I think they just got that as the distributor, basically, because they couldn't get it to movies.
This is a Redbox movie.
Redbox, you know, this was supposed to revolutionize the home DVD industry, and now these machines, you know, they've been abandoned.
They look like you could put a couple dollars in and- You might as well be called Blockbuster.
Maybe get, you know, maybe get like a baggie of crack out of the little, you know, out of the little drawer at the bottom.
You can?
The film stars Morgan Freeman and Cole Hauser.
What debt is Morgan Freeman in?
Oh no, no, no, no.
It's not that.
I'm almost certain there's like money laundering stuff going on.
He's definitely been doing a series of movies, some of them with the same gang of Italians.
Let's just put it that way.
So yeah, let's get into it.
Okay, okay.
Go, go, go.
Go ahead.
I've got things to say, but... Yeah, of course you do, and we'll have plenty of time for that.
We've got, you know, lots of clips.
It's a masterpiece.
It's a real piece of shit, folks.
No, no, no.
It's very good.
This was sent in by Christopher Holly.
Congratulations, and thank you for what you did to all of us.
Congratulations.
Yeah, you're great.
So the movie was directed by George Gallo.
Now, he wrote Midnight Run, which is a 1988 film.
Hammonstein.
He came up with the story for Bad Boys 1995.
scene scene and but it says he came up with this story so clearly they took the script away from him and he did not direct which is why it ended up good probably he's a real premise guy yeah he's a story little gays one of two uh cops and they're black He's like, hey, yo, you think my friend's a screenwriter?
Not true.
He's a story by guy.
Yeah, he's definitely a story by guy of some sort.
He wrote and directed Middleman 2009 starring Luke Wilson.
I've not seen that.
I don't know if you have, Jake.
No, no.
I remember seeing like the posters in the preview.
Not my thing.
He also has some fantastic movies I've never heard of, like he directed and wrote 2008's My Mom's New Boyfriend.
In 2001 he was the writer on C-Spot Run, a children's book.
Well a children's book then adapted for the screen and turned into like a 30 Rock style comedy movie.
What's a Trildren?
A Trildren?
That's a trillion children!
And in 2007 he penned Codename the Cleaner starring Cedric the Entertainer which looks like an attempt at like a kind of spy spoof where he also like gets pussy I guess because it's just like him in front of like two stripper looking girls and he's like I gotta got it.
17 Updater's like a very funny person to try to build a movie around.
Anyways, so let's just say he has some sort of rapport with Morgan Freeman, including 2021's Vanquish, which I had not heard of before.
Me neither.
Has a 3.0 out of 10 on IMDb.
And Gallo seems to have just a very long history of very mediocre movies.
Like, that's his IMDb.
It's just like, at best, he's hitting like a 6.
You know, get movies made.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, Jake's a solid.
I'm like a 42.
42.
Yeah.
4.3.
420.
He's a solid 420.
I'm like a 45.
4.2, yeah.
4.2?
4.20?
He's a solid 4.20.
I'm like a 45.
I'm like a Trump presidency rated.
Whereas my art films would definitely hit 69.
All right, The Ritual Killer 2023.
Originally, they tried to name it Mooty, which is like, I'm sure that the studios were like, guys, it's already bad, okay?
Can you at least give it a name that the dumb people would be able to get their little brains around?
You're like, "Hey, we like mo- we see the movies with 'killer' in the title."
"Killer."
"Ritual."
"We could talk to the people, you know, that have gone crazy after January 6th.
We know there's a lot of them.
Maybe they think about the rituals all day and night.
Maybe we get them in on this."
The basic premise of this film is like, what if John Wick was a pedophile?
I think.
Like, what if he worshipped Moloch and sacrificed children?
Something like that.
Yeah, kind of.
Or, it's kind of like, and I know you sort of brought this up in the chat, Liv, but like, it's kind of like Seven, but if Morgan Freeman only showed up to the crime scenes in Seven and then was inexplicably...
It's seven if you asked Morgan Freeman today in his mental state today to tell you what the movie's plot is while eating french fries.
That's what it is.
It's a masterpiece, obviously.
It's garnered an unfair 4.2 on IMDb, which nice.
11% on Rotten Tomatoes with an audience score of 20%.
So not the critics nor the audience are into this.
No, but the critics are wrong.
The critics are wrong.
The audience is wrong too, Jake.
Critics, 10%.
Audience 20%.
They like it a little bit more.
There's only one thing dumber than the audience, Jake.
It's the critics.
They're disgusting.
They're stupid.
They're vermin.
I see a lot of green splats on the screen, okay?
I see a lot of ripe-looking tomatoes.
I don't see too many ripe-looking tomatoes, but I do see a lot of green splats, alright?
Nobody likes to get slimed when they're talking about the movie, okay?
Funnily enough, the, like, approach to color correction on this movie did result in greens and reds being out of control.
I've never seen such a Like, I saw a movie once, it was all in sepia.
much It looks like you shot it on digital, turned the fucking saturation up way too high, and the contrast up a little too high as well.
Inexplicable camera angles that start like below the ground or in the grass.
It's like a police car.
However, an hour and a half, Jake.
Let's give them some props.
I agree.
shot like super close in on somebody with somebody out of focus in the background.
The focus will then change which in normal movies would reveal something in the background
but nothing is there.
I mean the editing is unbelievable.
I mean- However, an hour and a half Jake.
Let's give them some props that- I agree.
The joy of such a good movie being so tight and perfectly woven into an hour and a half.
It's crazy how little happens in that hour and a half.
I was in like an hour and ten in, and I looked at the time and I was like, there's 20 minutes left.
It feels like it's barely started.
There's no plot development here.
Absolutely.
And when it does develop, it's a special kind of development.
Let's put it that way.
Yeah, this is basically what happens when a giant pile of Italian-Americans write a script about African black magic.
So you can really imagine what we're about to get into.
The original writers were... Joe Lemon.
With two M's.
Francesco Sicamani.
No, no, you're fucking it up.
You're fucking it up!
Francesco Cinque Mani!
No!
Francesco Cinque Mani!
Francesco Cinque Mani!
He's an actor, years ago he was, and he reinvented himself as a writer and has only written badly rated stuff.
And, Giorgia Limone!
No, Giorgia Iannone.
Giorgia Iannone!
Oh my god.
Who fucking let this Jew try to come in here and tell us our names?
Get him out of here!
American!
String a mob!
Ritual kill him!
Georgie Annone has no other credits.
King.
I believe she is somehow related to somebody involved in this project, potentially.
And she does, however, have someone with that name on Instagram.
And that person is probably not the same person, but has very big titties.
So you've been listening to another episode of This Is Not That.
This Is Not That.
But in this case, this has big titties.
Yeah.
She is not her.
And that is just has no IMDB credits to her name.
You know, some piece of shit.
Well, I guess you in this case was like, I really like this movie.
I want to go follow all the all the writers on their socials.
Georgia!
Hello!
Whoa, sweetie pie!
Whoa, this good a writer and that good a rack?
My, uh, myron!
Let's be clear, I'm being rude.
Obviously, that's, you know, it's wrong of me.
I atone in advance.
But, uh, she's like one of those, like, influencers who spends all her time on vacation.
Good for her.
Like, taking photos of her beautiful assets.
Okay, moving on!
Then, uh, a bunch more people came on to rewrite the script, or improve on it, including the original three.
I can't imagine the piece of shit they picked up.
We have Jennifer Lemon, so related to Joe and usually a set designer before this.
Luca Giliberto, which I don't, not much going on there.
I don't, like a couple of, I think there's like a couple of things, but all badly rated.
Ferdinando De Lomo, usually a production designer.
You'll notice Jake has given up on the names because he's just, I've never seen a man fuck up Italian names that bad.
Holy hell.
We're leaving it all in by the way.
Fine.
And then the only non-Italian who is 76 years old and called Robert T. Bowersox
"Hey, we need to we need to fucking get a mic."
We need to get a mic on this thing.
Hey, I know Robbie.
Robbie will come in.
At the premiere of this, when they do the, you know, sort of like panel afterwards, and they're like, can you tell us a little about the sort of hiring process?
You know, you have a lot of writers working on the film, and how did you go about selecting, you know, these people?
And they're like, well, I was minding my own business, and a van pulled up, the door slid open, three guys with masks jumped out, they threw me in, next thing I knew I was in a writer's room.
Yeah, no, it is unclear how this was done, and I tried to look into the money and try to understand, because at the beginning they like, open up with like, Yervalino and Lady Bacardi Productions, and I was like, okay, what the fuck is this?
So I looked into it, and- They're like, brought to you by camel cigarettes.
Hey, you know what?
We should have a movie bringing back Joe DeCampo.
Yeah, they took him out.
They fucking whacked him.
At least part of the money comes from Lady Monica Bacardi, the heir to a Cuban rum dynasty who has done a ton of plastic surgery.
And this younger guy who started a company with her, Andrea Iervolino, and he is some sort of investor Italian playboy with like a weird network of businesses and films he's produced in Italy and a lawsuit for sexual battery, which was dismissed.
Maybe an informal out of court settlement or maybe something more sinister.
We do not know.
And we got to move on.
We are so getting whacked for this episode.
No, absolutely.
You think there's a ton of podcasts out there that are discussing it?
You think these guys don't have Google Alerts set up for anybody mentioning the movie?
They're gonna be like, oh my god, a famous, you know, successful podcast did a full rundown of the movie.
I can't wait to listen.
You know what's gonna happen?
We're gonna get black bagged and whacked.
Well, they live in the neighborhood of, uh, ****, which is where you live, and his name is Jake ****.
So find him, and he- Un-fucking-believable.
His full name is Jake ****.
His address- Avenue I guess yeah, there you go the whole thing, but just
listen hey if you're in the mob hit me up I'll I got you. I'll give you the uncensored version
I'm happy after my previous episode of where I'm obviously gonna get whacked by like Wagner. Oh, yeah, you're good
well, that's the that's what you want is Wagner and like and the the mob they meet at the door and they can't get
through the They get stuck in the doorway together and they end up killing each other.
It's like your version of Home Alone, but the only traps you set up are intended to break their toes.
I like that that would make the... Who's the other guy?
I bet they'd be really sad and go home.
Pesci's the mob, but the other guy, he would be Wagner.
Daniel Stern?
We need Daniel Stern to be a Russian Merc.
He could do that.
He could probably.
He could definitely do that.
He could pull that off.
Okay, so the movie that seems to unite these people is The Poison Rose, which also sounds
like, all of these sound like the movie Christopher made in The Sopranos, Cleaver
or whatever.
I was gonna - you stole that joke from me.
I thought about that last night where I was like, "Oh, I'm gonna make a joke on the episode
where I say that this screenplay feels like Christopher Maltesanti wrote it."
But you've stolen this from me.
Apologies.
It's fine.
Listen.
Great minds think alike.
You're not one of our people.
I want to make it clear, okay?
That's another very badly rated film starring Travolta with an insane set of plugs and Freeman, again.
So this has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 20% Audience Score, so it may somehow be worse than this one, and you know what?
I mean beautiful movie.
I think they've got guns to the heads of the same 20% you know there it's like everyone's getting something here let me tell you yeah it's like it's like 20% for all our audience scores are all 20% I found one reviewer musing about the ritual killer what sort of nutty compromises were reached to get financing here there and everywhere and round up this cast did it start life as an Italian thriller or Mississippi tax incentive project or both which is a good question The cast is actually pretty stacked.
We've got Vernon Davis, former NFL star, as Rendoku, who's, you know, da bad guy.
Detective Lucas Boyd, played by Cole Hauser, who was in Yellowstone.
You also would, you also, I recognize him as the, he's the police officer who's escorting Riddick in Pitch Black, the first Riddick movie.
Copy that.
And Morgan Freeman, of course, as Dr. Mackles, which I believe Like, it's so crazy because it sounds often like the actors are doing a first pass at the script while they're acting.
So sometimes they'll fuck up a pronunciation and fix it later in the movie.
Like the same character will say the name wrong and then later right.
So yeah, this was definitely like a one take Jake type situation here.
And then we've got a few other people filling in.
We've got Muriel Iler as Detective Kirsch.
You know, there's talent here.
Giuseppe Zeno as Mario Lavazzi, which is very funny because you'd think Italians would come up with a better name than like a name that just sounds like one of the big coffee brands.
Mario Wappelini?
Hey, Frank Tortellini!
It's just pasta names for the last names.
Also, continuing on this Lemon family thing, the Lemon kid was cast as that little boy who's just sniffling and crying.
That poor boy.
That poor boy, what did they do to him?
I thought maybe they were going to save him, but he ended up getting murdered.
They cut his dick off, folks.
The movie's mostly set in Clinton, Mississippi, which is just labeled Mississippi, USA, when on screen.
I really think they think the viewer is dumb.
I looked up Clinton City and the Clinton City PD and the entire population of that town is 27,000 people, basically.
So, yeah, I don't know.
I guess it makes sense to not focus on that or something.
So we open on a parade going down the street.
Bunch of people in the red costumes.
Noisy.
We see a cop behind the wheel.
It's Boyd.
Hauser.
And Boyd is on his way somewhere.
We don't know yet.
And then we cut to this middle-aged Italian man kind of awkwardly making his way down a set of metal stairs.
Like every action scene you can see the physical awkwardness of the actors.
As if they're trying to do this for the first time.
Or just tired.
They're tired.
They're not cut out for this Then he's sort of like hunched over as he scans these big warehouse rooms And he eventually runs into a dead woman in a pool of blood and other cops coming in through another door Which seemed like he'd never he didn't need to do any of the climbing because they're just coming in like seconds after him And they're even closer to the woman so her neck has been slit And there's a bunch of like what I would describe as an Italian man as a voodoo looking stuff Around her.
We're talking skulls, we're talking pools of blood.
Candles.
In a circle.
Candles.
And all of this is in Rome, Italy.
So the movie is split between Rome, Italy and Clinton, Mississippi.
Like I said, the saturation is turned so high that you can see greens in skin tones.
You can see every burst blood vessel in poor Mr. Hauser.
Who, by the way, looks like Steven Seagal in this movie.
He does!
He looks like Seagal.
is heading towards Seagal because he spends a lot of the movie sitting down or getting
into cars and grunting while he does it. I don't know if they told them like you got
to be put upon but he's not even that old. He's not even 50.
No bro. I mean all I have to say is I hope to see you at the meetings brother. That's
all. That's all I have to say about the situation here with Hauser.
So, okay, yeah, like the Mississippi River looks just straight up green.
Like, once Freeman comes on screen, his liver spots on his face are green.
A lot of things are green.
The movie was graciously shot in 4K, which I was surprised was an option when I rented it.
Yeah, and you want to see all those details of, like, how badly they fucked up the color.
So yeah, so they did the fake gray in an insane saturation approach to try to get that 70s mob movie look.
So, okay.
So first scene where we see something actually happening is Morgan Freeman.
He is a college professor of African Studies at Millsap College, and his name is Dr. Mackles.
And here is the opener of his lecture, in which we are treated to this script.
There is an impossibly fine line between sanity and madness.
And it's not always possible to know which side of that line we're standing on.
The violence between disparate sides is not endemic to this culture.
It is endemic to all cultures.
We are, again, tribes.
But defining our tribe is not as simple as the black people born under the sun or the white people born under the moon.
Our division is wrong others against right self.
And this division does not rest simply on an unfamiliarity with a tribe other than our own.
Steeper than that.
This is, it is very funny to make a, first of all, a very ailing and frail looking, Morgan Freeman reads such amazing shit as, uh, white people born under the sun and black people, or the opposite, white people born on the moon.
It's so crazy.
And right as he says tribes, they cut to an African American student in the audience.
This is like what the people who cut humanities funding think goes on in humanities classes.
Is this what you guys are doing there?
If you think about war, it always happens and we always return back to our primitives.
It's almost like it's in our nature.
If you think about white people, we're a nighttime people born under the moon.
But the blacks, it's the sun that's what turns them that way.
It's so funny.
That is the opening line of the movie and it's so patently insane that anybody... This is a 2023 film.
I mean, amazing.
This is interrupted by a Zoomer question as, like, what if a 60-year-old wrote what, like, a Zoomer college student would be like in a class?
Delivered with such enthusiasm.
Let's just put it that way.
Here it is.
Sir.
Yes?
It's the 21st century, Dr. Michaels.
With my phone, I can learn about any culture on the planet.
I'm a Google search away from knowing everything about a belief system in 20 minutes.
You have been listening to a sample of a premium episode of QAnon Anonymous.
We don't run any advertising on the show, and we'd like to keep it that way.
For five bucks a month, you'll get access to this episode, a new one each week, and our entire library of premium episodes.
So head on over to patreon.com slash QAnon Anonymous and subscribe.
