[00:00:20] Speaker A: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the final Girl on 6th Avenue podcast. My name is Carolyn Smith Hillmer, and I'm 6th Avenue's very own final girl.
And sincerest apologies for being on vacation.
I'm back, and I'm very excited because there's nothing quite like a post vacation release of a film that you saw in the theater that you loved a lot and couldn't wait to watch again, but didn't really want to go back to the theater to see it again, so you waited until it came out on demand.
And that, my friends, happens to be long legs. So long legs is maybe one of the craziest horror films I've seen in a long time. I mean, I know that there's controversy around people calling it the horror film of the decade.
I don't know, maybe it is. To me, it's certainly kind of M. Night Shyamalan esque, only in the sense that I see something different every single time I watch it. So I can tell you that I'm on my, I've watched it four times, and, you know, do with that information what you will call me committed to the craft, call me a film fanatic, call me a freak, either. Any of those is fine. Like, I get it. Because I'm sure you're thinking, why would you want to watch this more than once? Well, there's a lot of reasons why you can watch this more than once.
So for those of you that haven't seen it and want to listen to this, I love you.
But if you are going to plan to watch this in the future, please wait.
Don't listen to this until after. Seriously, there's so many things in here, and I never say that. I never am one to be like, oh, pace, spoilers. Yeah, there's spoilers in all my episodes. But seriously, with this film in particular, I would love, for those of you listening to have seen the film before listening to this. If you have no intention of listening or, sorry, excuse me, if you have no intention of ever watching the film but you want to listen to this, then that's also fine. So what I want to avoid is the people who, like, are on the fence about watching it, but they kind of want to listen to this and then they go watch it later.
I don't want to ruin it for you. The surprise and the suspense and the thrill that you get from this film is indescribable.
Okay? Truly. So take my advice with a grain of salt, but no one can say that I didn't tell you.
I will say one quick thing about this before we start, which is that I dragged my husband to watch this with me at, like, an 1130 midnight showing. I mean, it was late, and we were both so afraid after we left the theater. There's a theater. It's an AMC, and it's over on Avenue a, I believe. Anyway, if you know which one I'm talking about, you know that it is, like, the weirdest, most surreal AMC theater. It's like a liminal space. Like, there's nothing in it. It's kind of empty, like, all the time.
It's just a strange theater. Like, every time I've been in there to see a film, it feels like it's the only film that they're gonna play that day and not the way that the IFC theater feels, you know, when you go there, and they sometimes do truly only play one film a day. This is like a theater where there's multiple screens, multiple theaters, multiple levels even, because we are in New York and there's never anyone fucking there.
Okay.
It feels like you're watching a film in a place that used to be a movie theater.
It's actually very sad.
I love theaters. I hate to see them as, like, a dying.
A dying thing or something that's going out of style. But, like, man, with that theater in particular, I'm just gonna say it like, that one either needs to close or it needs a big revamp, but something's gotta change. So anyway, we leave the theater, and we're walking out. We're gonna go to the bathroom, and then we're gonna go home, and now we're talking to each other. Like, how should we get home?
I haven't been frightened, like, from a movie in a theater like this, like, super bad in a long time. And I was kind of, like, that physical sensation that you get when you're really afraid from something, and you're kind of, like, shaky and disoriented. And I was like, I don't know. Like, maybe we should call an Uber.
My husband was like, well, I don't really want to know if I want to be trapped in a car right now. And I was like, okay, that's fair. Well, maybe we could take the subway. And so as we start walking towards the subway, I'm like, you know what? Actually, the last place I want to be is a subway station. It's 230 in the morning. I actually want to just walk all the way home. So I made my poor husband walk with me for, like, 30, 35 minutes all the way home in the dark. At 230 in the morning. But the good thing about New York is that no matter what time you leave anywhere, there's always people around and there's always lights. So it was actually a little bit better than being on a subway.
All that is to say that the hype around this film is real.
Anybody who tells you otherwise is on my shit list.
And I'm excited to talk to you today.
So let's go to our bible. Of course. IMDb.
In pursuit of a serial killer, an FBI agent uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree. This is written and directed by Osgoode Perkins.
Perkins. Does that last name sound familiar to you at all? Maybe you are familiar with Anthony Perkins.
Yeah, that's Osgoode Perkins dad. So he's kind of horror royalty when you think about it.
Starring Micah Munro, Nicolas Cage, Blair Underwood, Alicia Witt, Kiernan Shipkae. There's a lot of great, amazing actors, actresses in this film.
And for those of you out there who are thinking Nicolas Cage, mmm, I don't know about that.
I had the same immediate reaction. Okay.
I look, is he my favorite? No. Is he my least favorite? I. No, I don't really find anything particularly wrong or right with him other than I respect his hustle right. All the time.
But if you didn't know that Nicolas Cage was going to be in this movie and you turned it on, I will bet you $100 that you could not figure out who his character was. Like, there would be no point when you'd be watching the film and being like, is that really Nicolas Cage in this film? You would never know that.
That is how insane the special effects are.
So let's get into it. This film is divided into parts.
So first we have the introduction.
Film opens with a red box in the center of the screen showing the following T. Rex lyrics.
And unless you live under a rock and roll rock, you'll immediately know what this song is. So the lyrics are, while you're slim and you're weak, you've got the teeth of a hydra upon you. You're dirty sweet, and you're my girl.
Obviously. These are the lyrics from the 1971 song bang a gonge. Immediately, the red screen dissolves into a camera angle looking out of the front of a windshield of a car in the passenger seat. So it's like you're sitting in the passenger seat, and this is your view from your eyeballs.
And we're driving up to the house of a little girl, the little girl inside the house. Hears something outside. So she puts on her coat and she goes outside to see who it is or what it is.
She sees the car. She starts to walk near it where there looks like there's a person sitting in the passenger seat, but you can't really tell because it's one kind of grainy and two, intentionally vague.
Her gaze at the vehicle is interrupted, of course, by hearing someone near her say, cuckoo.
She walks back to the area closest to her house, where she looks around the yard, doesn't see anything or anyone, and immediately turns around to see a very pale, tall person.
Now, I did not remember there being this many jump scares when I saw it in the theaters. There's quite a few. So my suggestion is if you're going to watch this and you have a sound bar or surround system of any kind, just know that, you know, those jump scares are. They're coming in. They're coming in kind of hot.
He says, the man.
There she is. The almost birthday girl.
Oh, but it seems I wore my long legs today. What happens if I.
And then he drops down and he shows his face in the frame, and immediately it cuts back to the red screen that we had seen previously, showing the title screen and the credits while another t. Rex song plays. Show the fucking credits at the beginning, you cowards.
Okay. I love to see the credits at the beginning.
Part one, his letters.
Lee Harker is an FBI agent.
She is sitting in a briefing where each agent has been assigned a partner to go knock on doors to find information to locate a male suspect. So they're on the hunt, and they're gonna do what you see in the movies, where they're gonna go from door to door and they're gonna knock and they're gonna try to find this guy.
So Lee seems to have a touch of clairvoyance. Okay. She gets assigned to a partner.
They enter into a neighborhood, and it's seemingly quiet, unassuming.
Your basic suburb. All the houses look the same, blah, blah, blah.
And they're in Oregon, by the way. So it's just rainy all the time, but it rains pretty much the whole film. So her clairvoyance seems to showcase itself here early on because she takes a look around the neighborhood and sees house number 3525 and immediately tells her partner that that's the house. She's like, look, we need to call it in. And he's like, uh, sorry.
I can't just, like, call in something without confirming it. So, like, I don't know how to prove that you're right. So he goes and knocks on the door, as they had been instructed during their briefing, and Lee follows at a safe distance. But the inhabitant of the home answers the door, and her partner is shot point blank.
She then starts to freak the fuck out, because that's, like, the last thing you expect. You're just in, like, a suburb, right? And so she goes in the house.
She goes to the front door. The whole house looks like it's been under some weird, giant renovation project. There's, you know, cellophane and, like, hanging plastic and everything. And, like, it's just, like, insane. So. And there's very little furniture, so, like, I guess no one ever lived there in the first place, really. Or, like, this family is just diying all this shit. But anyway, she sweeps the house. She goes upstairs, and she sees a man sitting on his bed with his hands up in the air. And she's like, don't fucking move. And he says, I won't.
So back at the FBI, Lee goes through a series of intuition tests. So she's, like, shown an image, and she has to quickly state what comes to mind when she sees each flashing image. Like, it's super fast.
It's sort of like, you know, an inkblot drawing type thing, but it's actual, you know, things on a projector being shown to her. And it's not just inkblots. So she starts going through them, and she identifies an upside down triangle as father.
And a gradient image of, like, a color swatch going from white to pink to red. She says, piano.
Then they stop, and they say, there's a random number that I'm thinking of between zero and 100. What number am I thinking of?
At first she's like, I. Like, what? Who the fuck knows? Like, why would I know that?
She does a test. She leaves. She gets assigned to a case with her supervisor, William Carter, and Agent Browning.
So they're in the car together, and Carter asks her how she was able to beat the random number generator eight times. And she admits that she also got it wrong eight times.
But Carter says that, you know, half psychic is better than no psychic.
So they're in the car, and they're looking at a house that belonged to the horn family.
The Horne family had a tragic downfall. The father killed his wife, stabbing her 61 times, both of his children, and then committed suicide. There's no sign of forced entry, and they're still undecided as to how they want to classify the death of the father. They can't decide if they want to say that he killed himself or he was murdered.
The killer, whoever it is, left behind a note in a coded Alphabet.
The killer is not connected to the family. We know that.
So there's been ten houses, ten families over the last 30 years that have received these notes. And the only thing in common is that the letters are all written by the same person and are signed at the bottom. Long legs.
So back at their offices, Carter asks Lee how many times she received these types of intuitions that seemingly tap her on the shoulder and tell her where to look. And she says, you know, just every so often, she learns that all the families, the victims families, have daughters that have birthdays on the 14th of the month. So Carter gives her all the information she has. She gets to work.
There is a tape recording of a 911 call that we, as the audience, get to listen to.
It's sort of done as, like, a voiceover while Lee is doing her information gathering. And the call is obviously horrific. There's a man, a father, and he says, it's my daughter. She's not my daughter.
He tells the operator that he has to be quiet and that when she's sleeping, it would be the best time to do it. When her eyes are closed and then you hear screaming and grunting, there's an attack taking place. And we're shown to a montage of crime scene photos and death certificates.
You know, nothing happy here.
Lee had kind of locked herself in a room to do all this. And so Carter finds her, and she's asleep on the floor. And he wakes her up and insists that she accompany him for a drink. But she doesn't drink alcohol. And he says, that's right. You don't drink. I drink. And you tell me things.
So over drinks or over drink? I guess she reveals to Carter that there's no evidence at all of an outsider being inside the home, ever. So, like, obviously, no forced entry. All weapons used to execute the murders came from inside of the house.
Two times, a shotgun legally registered to the father. Eight times a knife from the family kitchen. One time, a hammer from the family toolbox. And if it weren't for the letters that are left behind, we would have no idea about any of this. We would have no idea that there's anybody else involved.
So Lee speculates that maybe long legs tells these fathers what to do, and they do it.
Which reminds Carter of Manson. And Lee says that Manson had accomplices who he called his family.
Remember that?
So Lee takes Carter home, and he basically forces her to come inside to meet his wife and daughter.
Even though she so doesn't want to. And this might be, like, one of the only light hearted parts of the film at all. It is quite funny.
So, Ruby Carter, small baby child, gorgeous, beautiful, love her. She's still awake. It's obviously past her bedtime, but she waited for her dad to come home, and she takes Lee to see her bedroom. And this scene, like I said, is funny because of how awkward Lee is with Ruby.
Ruby has a canopy type swing thing in her bedroom with a lot of stuffed animals. And Lee asks if she ever goes in it.
And Ruby says no, because it's too babyish for her now and that her dad wants her to keep some of her old stuff around so she doesn't grow up too fast, even though she's gonna grow up anywhere. So Ruby makes it a point to say that even veal, right, like meat, grow up a little bit. And they live in a box with their legs tied, so everybody's gonna grow up. It's inevitable.
And then Ruby asks Lee if she would come to her birthday party soon.
Lee is kind of like, eh, but she agrees. And then she goes home to her literal cabin in the woods. She actually has a gorgeous house. Okay, but, like, I can tell you that if I was in the FBI or if I was, like, a police officer, if I had to do any of this shit every day, the last fucking place you could catch me living is probably in the middle of nowhere.
So she sits down at her desk. She calls her mom. Her mom asks if it's Lee that's calling, even though Lee says mom as soon as the phone is picked up. And Lee is also her only daughter. So, like, weird seems their relationship is kind of strained a little bit. And she says she wanted to call because she can't sleep and she's dealing with some nasty stuff at work. Obviously, she can't tell her mom what she's working on.
Her mom, Ruth, says that she was a nurse for eight years and that Lee can tell her about whatever she wants. But Lee says she just wants to be quiet for a little bit. And Ruth reminds her that her birthday is coming up. But Lee hears some whispering and some. Something going on outside and tells her mom she's gonna call her back.
She hears violently loud knocking coming from the front door. And she goes to see who it is. But when she answers the door, there's nobody there. So she goes outside to see if anyone or anything is in the area around her home. And a motion activated floodlight turns on near her house. And we can see that behind Lee, in this shot, there's someone walking inside of her house.
So when she comes back, there's actually no one in there at all. But an envelope has been left on her desk with her full name on it. And at the bottom it says, do not open until January 14, part two. All of your things.
Obviously, Lee's gonna fucking open the damn card, like, whatever. So she puts on her gloves. Cause, you know, evidence. And she gets her letter opener. She opens the envelope to find a birthday card from none other than long legs himself. So Lee grabs her Bible, opens it up, and gets to work deciphering the code that longlegs had written in her card.
The card says, tell them how you got this, how it came into your head. I'll cut off her hanging milk tits and bleed your mommy dead.
I don't know about you, but I can't think of a better thing to write in a birthday card. Especially because the card has a number nine on it. So it's a fucking 9th birthday card, like, for a nine year old. So long legs certainly has a way with words.
Lee forgot to call her poor mother back. She was wrapped up and everything. But she does answer the phone from a call from the FBI that Carter requested her assistance at a crime scene. So Lee arrives with her notebook, and he throws her a letter, and she begins to translate it immediately. But Carter is not really focused on that. He's just kind of like, how the fuck did you figure that out? But then it's like, you know what? It looks like the family seemed to be planning a trip sometime soon. And, you know, we're kind of late on this. They were killed maybe, like, a month ago.
And the knife appeared to be used for self inflicted wounds, and it was found in the family kitchen. So again, father, family annihilator, kills everybody. Daughter, wife, himself.
The daughter was estimated to be nine or ten. Back at the office, Lee calls her mom back finally, and her mom asks if Lee is Lee. Like, it's weird. Every time Lee calls her, she's like, mom. And then she's like, oh, is this Lee?
Like, again, Ruth has one fucking daughter. So Lee tells her she's about to be very busy with work, and she may not be able to make it home for her birthday.
And Ruth asks if Lee is still saying her prayers. And Lee says yes. But her mom reminds her that those prayers are what protect us from the devil.
Lee hangs up with her mom. She goes through a bunch of newspapers on a library computer, and there's much discussion about the devil. And, like, a satanic panic situation. And so Lee begins to draw out each of the little girls that have been killed and referenced. She, like, makes a map. So, like, she would write the name of the month, basically, you know, January through December on one side of the paper. And then next to the month, she would write, you know, one through 30 or one through 31 or in February 1 through 28, and would, you know, color in the days on that, you know, type of annual calendar she's created for herself of when the murders took place. And so this leads to her referencing her mapping to something in the book, the nine circles of Hell, where she finds an upside down triangle. So when she examines the map that she made of the little girls and the dates of their murder, it is actually in the shape of a triangle. So she goes the next day to tell Carter that the murders are based on an algorithm.
And the first murder happened on July 14, 1966. The rest of the murders occurred within six days of the daughter's birthdays, either before or after, which, when mapped out, creates an inverted triangle.
They couldn't help but notice that January 13 would be the date that, like, intersects or is on the same plane line, that the would complete the triangle, and it's still empty, but that's in three days. So, you know, Lee also decoded all of Longleg's letters. And the only thing that he continually referenced in the letters is the fine time we had at the camera family farm, where x's mark the spot.
Lee tells Carter that a friendly priest came to visit, and the dad killed the priest, his wife, and himself. And Carrie Ann was at school that day, so she got to live.
All of the daughter's birthdays are on the 14th of each month. And, you know, because the 13 January is three days from the day that we're having this discussion, maybe he's gonna kill again.
But turns out that Carrie Ann is still alive in a psychiatric hospital, and the camera family farm is close, so we're gonna start there.
When Lee and Carter get to the farm, they start in the barn. And I'm just gonna tell you right now, there's no amount of money you could pay me to go into an abandoned barn in the middle of the night.
But once they get inside, they follow a pattern. You know, they see x's, because the note referenced that X's marked the spot and leads them to the second story of the barn, where they find a large crucifix on the floor. And I guess a crucifix is kind of like a large x. So that makes sense.
So they remove the crucifix. They remove the floorboards under it and they find a small box and a piece of paper with an inverted triangle drawn on it.
Inside the box is an incredibly lifelike doll of a small girl.
The doll's eyes are closed and suddenly they open. And we cut to the next scene. Scared the shit out of me. Where we find out that they decided to have an autopsy done on it.
Um, yeah, I don't know that, like, I could ever, in a straight face with a straight face be like, yeah, I found this doll.
You want to do an autopsy for me?
So they go talk to the doctor. And the doctor says that the doll is beautifully made by a highly skilled craftsman. Porcelain, the whole nine yards. The head even includes human hair. There's not much hair left, but what is left of it is human. And inside the head of the doll is a large metal ball.
And the doctor says that it's hollow, but he's been calling it the brain because again, he does autopsies for a living of people, usually not dolls.
And this cuts to a scene of long legs building the doll in question, where he refers to the doll as Carrie Ann and says he hopes that she's not afraid of the dark because she is the dark. And hence drapes like a black sheet over the doll.
The doctor says that he could have sworn he heard the metal ball saying his ex wife's name over and over again last night, but he's been working late and not sleeping enough. And of course the ball doesn't talk. It does make noise, though. He. He puts. I don't even know what tool it is next to it. And like, it's like a loud ringing type sound.
They ask if the quote unquote brain can be opened. And the doctor kindly suggests that yes, it can be, but there's likely not a solution to this case inside of it because it's empty. Like it's a fucking metal ball.
So then long legs is on his way in. The cardinal. He's driving to a hardware store and he's going to buy some items to continue making dolls. I assume.
He puts the items on the counter. He looks like shit, by the way.
Like he's, like not dressed at all. He's dressed in like a robe and some underwear and slippers. And so he puts himself on the counter and the girl working there asks if she can help with anything else. He begins to put his hands over his eyes and cuckoo at her.
So like a clock, she yells off to her dad, who I guess is also working within the store somewhere that the gross guy is back again.
So back in the car, long legs is screaming, daddy, mommy, make me and save me from the hell of living.
At the psych hospital, Carter and Lee meet with the admin, who tells them that Carrie Ann had been catatonic ever since she arrived. But yesterday, she had a visitor, and now she's awake and moving and bright eyed, and it's like, you know, something changed completely.
And they were like, oh, you know, did you see the visitor? And the admin is like, well, no, because I wasn't here yesterday.
But they signed in on the logbook. And so he passes them the logbook of visitors where they find that someone signed Lee Harker on the book.
They apparently do not check ids for visitors, but after Lee asks the question, they're like, oh, that's a pretty good idea.
So Carrie Anna is interesting.
When Lee sits down with her, Carrie Ann tells Lee that she's seen her before and that Lee has been to Carrie Ann's house, or someone that looks a lot like her anyway, has been there. And she says that she feels different today, like she was having a really long dream and it was really dark, like a world of dark.
So Carrie Ann tells Lee that her parents didn't know what to do with themselves because she was a handful as it was, and her mom had always hated her because she came out wrong when she was born and caused her mother to bleed way too much.
And we see a scene of Carrie Ann's mom stabbing the doll of Carrie Anna. And she says that her dad was a good man. That much she remembers. And then cue scene of her dad cutting off the heads of cows and killing a whole field of cattle that they had on their farm. So whatever.
The priest, though, comes to visit, and, yeah, Carrion's dad just takes an axe and kills him and then goes up to Carrie Anne's mom and kills her.
And that's it.
So Lee asks Carrie Ann about the visitor that she had the day before, and she tells Lee that she never wants to forget him. She says she's waiting on him to come and get her or to tell her to do something for him, or better yet, the man downstairs. She says that if he told her to jump out of the window, she would happily do so, and she would even kill Lee, happy as peaches, to do so.
Carrie Ann says she doesn't remember having a doll.
Lee is like, hey, do you remember having a doll? Like, a special doll that looked just like you?
She says no. And you don't remember either.
And she ends by calling Lee a dirty, flirtsy old angel bitch, which is a really interesting word choice. And the thing about Carrie Ann is that, like, she's clearly an adult, but, like, her language skills never developed. Really? Her vocabulary never developed.
She's still very much like a child in a way. She's like. She acts like a child.
She's interesting. So, back at the FBI, Lee and Carter go over how bizarre it is that Carrie Ann feels better somehow after her visitor and the day that they found the doll, which could be just a coincidence, Carter confirmed that there's nothing inside of the doll's metal ball brain. And Lee suggests magic. But Carter's just like, no.
So he asks how long legs knows Lee's name because he signed in as her at the hospital.
And Lee is like, I don't fucking know. Like, how would I know that? And so Carter gets suspicious. He thinks that Lee is keeping something from him, so he revisited her file and asked her when the last time was that she talked to her mom.
And Leah's like, I have no idea what that has to do with anything. And Carter says, well, in 1991, on January 13, the day before your 9th birthday, your mother called 911. She gave the description of a tall man, a trespasser. And he orders Lee to go home to see her mom and tell him what her mom says about the man referenced in the 911 call.
So, Lee arrives at her mom's house.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: And it's a fucking disaster.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: Like, it's a straight up hoarder house.
[00:36:26] Speaker B: Ruth, like, looks ill, but we don't really ever get confirmation if she is or isn't. I mean, she just looks bad. So, anyways, she asks Lee for the honest truth. Does Lee still say her prayers?
Lee admits to her mom that she never said her prayers, never once, because they scare her.
I understand that. So Ruth breaks out in laughter, and Lee kind of follows, but then is like, I'm confused.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: What's funny?
[00:37:00] Speaker B: And Ruth says that Lee is right because our prayers don't help us or do a goddamn thing at all.
So Lee offers to make her mom something to eat, and she goes in the kitchen. She gets a little bit nosy. FBI agent girl queen that she is. And she finds a bag of human teeth, some insulin type needles, and she finds herself staring at the basement door.
There's, like, a door to the basement in the kitchen. So she kind of approaches the door, and then we get a flashback of Lee as a little girl where Ruth tells her that she's gonna be able to stay home from work tomorrow for her birthday. And then she's seen in the bathroom washing blood out of a shirt. She hears someone outside and frantically tries to dial the police, but gets no dial tone when she picks up the phone and goes to grab her shotgun.
Back in the kitchen, though, Lee is trying to find a key to open the basement door because it's locked.
But her thought process around this gets interrupted when her mom calls out to her. And she goes back to her mom's room. And Ruth talks about how she can't believe it's almost Lee's birthday. And she remembers how she bled and bled and bled during childbirth.
So Lee asks if she remembers her 9th birthday. And Ruth, very carefully and very suspiciously, says, no, she doesn't remember anything.
And then she asks if Lee remembers anything.
So Lee is like, okay, what happened that day? And all Ruth says is, no.
It wasn't a yes or no question. So saying no is just, like, wild, but whatever. So Lee tells her that there's record that Ruth called the police. And Ruthenhouse says no one ever came to visit them. Like, no friends, no family, no strangers, no big, bad wolves. And she reminds Lee that these are things that little girls are not supposed to know.
Lee is a full fledged FBI agent, so she's not a little girl anymore. And reminds her mother of that. But Ruth says, yeah. Cause you were allowed to grow up.
I may have forgotten some things, but I never threw anything away, which is like, okay, what a weird argument, but, like, fine.
So she tells Lee that all the stuff from her childhood is in her bedroom. So, inside Lee's childhood room is a chest and a small red piano. She takes the chest back to her own house in the middle of nowhere and goes through it. And she finds some photos.
And as she's, like, flipping through the photos, she is sent back and frightened. And, you know, flashback to when long legs visited her as a kid. We find out that is her for sure.
Lee took a Polaroid photo of him, and Ruth came out and asked, you know, long legs, who are you? Why are you talking to my kid? And he starts to sing to her, let me in now. And it can be nice.
Make me go now. And I'll have to come back. Not once, not twice, but as many times as I like.
So Lee finds Carter early the next morning to show him a photo that she found in her chest of long legs. And he wants to bring in Ruth for questioning. And Leah's like, we can, but for now, we have this photo.
So long legs is standing in the cold because, again, it's Oregon at a bus stop with two suitcases. And he is swarmed straight up by FBI and police who arrest him. And, like, it doesn't help that he is the, like, maybe the singular, most unique looking person in the history of ever. So, like, it's not like he looked like everybody else and could just hide out.
He goes without a fight, and he goes into an interrogation room, and the interview in that room is recorded. So the FBI agents are gathered in a room to watch the footage of the recording. And he admits that his real name is Dale Cobble.
When asked if he calls himself long legs, he asks when he can see Lee Hark, the Herald angel sings.
He says he knows Lee from a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend and tells Lee happy birthday.
He says his friend wants him to stay and that he wants them all to know that you'll be there. And you'll be there and you'll be there. It's almost like he can see the people watching the video right now and he's talking directly to them.
He then sings happy birthday to Lee Harker.
Agent Browning stops the tape, and she says that it continues on for 24 minutes.
Browning says that Dale Cobble's luggage was stuffed with notebooks that very much match the writing of the notes that they found at the crime scenes. And all of the things that he wrote about, like, otherwise were heavily satanic. There's no evidence that he ever killed anyone himself. And in the USA, he's allowed to worship Satan.
So she's not concerned about any of that. She's the most concerned with how he knows Lee and who she is. So then Lee starts to quote the Bible.
And then I saw the sea, and I saw a beast rise up out of the sea with seven heads and ten horns. And on his horns he wore ten crowns, and on each head was written a blasphemous name.
She likes to reference the book of Revelation, but, like, not a lot.
[00:43:24] Speaker A: So Lee is still, you know, on this. Like, he has an accomplice.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: He has to have one. He can't be working alone. And that, you know, it has to be somebody that the families feel comfortable letting inside of their home. By the way, today is January 13. So Lee reminds everybody that the triangle is not complete and that this accomplice is going to kill one more family. It's gonna happen today.
So Lee goes downstairs to see cobbler herself. And before she enters the room, she has a flashback of long legs talking to her and her mom.
Her mom is asking, who is his friend? Like, the friend of a friend of a friend. And he says, my friend downstairs. You can even call him Mister downstairs.
Lee enters the room, long legs, lights up. He's like, there she is, the almost birthday girl. He's excited to see her. And he says, you know, it's funny. The day you decided to go into law enforcement, you were 20, and we had such a big laugh about it. It was not only me that laughed. So did she.
Leah's like, who the fuck is she?
[00:44:43] Speaker A: You know, I'm trying to figure out.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: The only reason I came down here is to find out who you're working with, who your accomplice is. Like, who the fuck is she? And he says that the she in reference is the 7th she. They're all given the same option, crimson or clover. They can accept the gift and destroy it or keep it and bow down all the way down and get down to the dirty work. The work that gets dirty as it cleans, like a mop or a towel.
[00:45:11] Speaker A: So she brings up explicitly, I know you have an accomplice.
[00:45:16] Speaker B: And then he sits up straight and he goes on a small rant, you know, demonstration maybe.
Knock, knock at the farmhouse door. It's a nice lady with a bible and a congratulations. You've been selected. You may now collect your gift from the church. Says so right here on the orders from the man downstairs.
He says that, you know, all these houses are white. But when I got to your house, Lee, it was even whiter. Whiter than tits, the whitest.
He said he knew then that the work that he had been doing was immaculate. And Lee reminds him that he's done. He's going to spend the rest of his life in prison. I'm. And he says that he is done, but he will not only be here, he'll be a little bit of everywhere.
She asks him again, who is helping you? And who is the man downstairs?
He suggests that Lee talk to her mommy.
He then says, hail Satan, and starts to smash his head into the table repeatedly until he dies.
Agents come in and remove Lee from the situation. And now Carter is pissed because the man that they caught is dead now. And they still don't know everything that they need to know. And he lets Lee know that while she was in that room talking to long legs, that Carrie Ann jumped off the roof of the hospital.
He says long legs must have told.
[00:46:54] Speaker A: Her to do it.
[00:46:55] Speaker B: He did it alone with no accomplices.
But Lee is like, you know what? Fuck this shit. Like, he said to ask my mom. I'm gonna go ask her. So Agent Browning actually drives Lee to her mom's house because she was like, look, I'm not gonna let you drive after what you saw today. Obviously, cuz I was kind of fucked. And so Agent Browning is like, hey, how do you wanna do this? And Leah's like, I'm just gonna tell her that I want to bring her in for questioning.
And she agrees to stay in the car while Lee goes inside. So she goes inside the house, but she can't seem to find her mom. But you see, Ruth is already busy at work on this January 13 morning.
Outside, we see Miss Ruth moving around the cardinal that Browning is inside of with a shotgun. And then she shoots agent Browning twice.
Lee sees it from a window, draws her gun, goes outside to find her mom. When she does, she sees her mom dressed as a nun, standing with a shotgun, pointing at a life size doll of Lee.
And Ruth says, you caught him. Now he's free.
It's quite the paradox. And Lee tells her that, you know, long legs is dead. This is all over.
And Ruth says, you're free now, too, baby girl. And she shoots the doll in the head. Now, this is the kind of a similar doll like the one that Carrie Ann had. So it has a metal ball inside. And when Ruth shoots the doll, this metal ball opens and a black smoke emits from it. And Lee's actual head also has black smoke coming out of it at the same time.
So Lee passes out.
[00:49:08] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:49:09] Speaker B: Flashback. And it is Ruth telling Lee a story.
And she's framing it as a fairy tale, but it's definitely not fairy tale. So she says that once upon a time, there was a little girl named Lee who lived in a tiny house with her mom. And that no one ever came to visit them. No friends, no family, no strangers, no big bad bulls, no whatever the fuck. No mailman, I don't know.
But one day, a man did come to visit, and he was a doll maker, dropping off an early birthday gift from the church. Obviously, this is long legs.
So long legs started working, making dolls. His sort of dark magic and work of the devil. And the dolls made the little girl. Lee, forget it, also made her. Or told her, like, where to look and what to see.
She says that the devil wanted Lee all to himself, but that she was never going to let that happen. And so then we see Ruth getting tied up in the living room by long legs. He's punishing her.
And this is all while the devil sits on the couch and watches it happen.
And so she begged for, you know, Lee's life to be spared. But in exchange, she had to do work for long legs. So she is his accomplice.
She was a woman who once was a nurse and now had to murder families.
She would, you know, knock on the doors of these houses dressed as a nun with a doll of, you know, the little girl who lived there, the daughter of the family. And the families would let her in with the gift. She would show up like a nun with a bible and a big box. And her. Basically, her only job was to make sure that, like, the doll got inside the house, over the threshold, and then also that, you know, everybody got murdered. Everybody died.
The hiding place of the devil was inside of the dolls. And as if she could get the doll inside the house, he would take care of the rest.
So Ruth basically had to just sit and watch the murders happen. And then she could leave.
And that was what she did to make sure that Lee could not die.
So Lee wakes up from this in long leg's room on the floor, the same room we've already seen him in previously. And there's a phone ringing, and it sounds like it's coming from upstairs. And when Lee steadies herself to walk up the stairs, we see that she ascends the stairs and is in her mom's kitchen. The fucking.
That motherfucker had been living in the basement of her mom's house ever since she was eight years old.
That's insane.
So when she answers the phone, it's a very deep voice. And I'm just gonna say it. It's the devil. I don't think there's any room for interpretation on this one. And he is telling Lee that she is late for Miss Ruby's birthday party.
So Lee unwraps a car. There was a tarp over it, had been parked on the property.
[00:52:39] Speaker A: And guess what?
[00:52:40] Speaker B: It was long leg's cardinal. So she drives it to Ruby's party and screams during her drive, just like we had seen long legs do before, after he left the hardware store. And when she arrives at the Carter home, her mom is already inside the house dressed as a nun. And the damn doll is on the couch next to Ruby.
[00:53:05] Speaker A: So Lee comes in, and she's like.
[00:53:07] Speaker B: Carter, this is my mom. She's. She's the accomplice. Like, this is bad. And Carter screams at her to shut up.
So, yeah, he's already pissed. And he's looking at the doll. And his wife says, you know, maybe it's time to cut the cake.
And he's being really mean about it, and he's like, why do I have to cut the cake? You know, this is your stupid fucking suggestion is to cut the cake? Blah, blah, blah. It's like, whatever.
[00:53:44] Speaker A: So anyways, they get up, Carter and.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: His wife, and they go in the kitchen, and she says, we'll be right back. And he says, no, I'll be right back. You'll still be in the kitchen.
And, yeah, I. He.
[00:54:00] Speaker A: He kills her.
[00:54:02] Speaker B: He kills his wife in the kitchen.
[00:54:05] Speaker A: And he comes back out, and his next target, of course, is Ruby. And all the while, Ruth is talking.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: To Lee like, you know, this is.
[00:54:17] Speaker A: This is already happening. This is the way it's supposed to go.
[00:54:21] Speaker B: It's going according to plan. They're all gonna die. If they don't die, then we're all going to burn and twist and burn and twist forever in hell.
[00:54:33] Speaker A: And so, you know, I have to do this.
So Carter comes back out of the kitchen.
[00:54:43] Speaker B: And Ruth is like, I'm doing this for you.
[00:54:48] Speaker A: I've always done it for you. This is what I do. I'm protecting you. Blah, blah, blah. More bullshit.
The little girl named Lee would be allowed to grow up because I was doing this and whatever the fuck.
[00:55:01] Speaker B: So, yep, that's it.
Carter comes back out. Lee is like, you know, don't fucking do this shit, right? Like, do not do it. And as Carter, like, approaches, she shoots him.
She shoots him dead. And then her mom, Ruth, has a gun, and she whips it out, and she, you know, tries to point it at Lee.
And Lee, I. Like. I don't want to say this, but Lee shoots her mom.
So her mom is dead. Carter's dead.
[00:55:47] Speaker A: Carter's wife is dead.
[00:55:48] Speaker B: Now, Ruby is the only one left, right? And she tries to then shoot the doll in the head because she knows what happened whenever her mom shot her doll in the head.
And I don't know what happened, but basically, she points a gun at the doll, she fires, and nothing comes out of.
[00:56:16] Speaker A: Nothing comes out.
[00:56:16] Speaker B: No more ammo.
Or maybe the ammo won't discharge. We may never know.
[00:56:24] Speaker A: And she invites Ruby to leave with her.
[00:56:26] Speaker B: And that is the end of long legs.
[00:56:30] Speaker A: So.
[00:56:32] Speaker B: Now we're at the point where we have to ask ourselves, what does it all mean? And I want to start that discussion off. I don't really think it matters what order I talk about these things in, but let's start with the cuckoo. What's up with the cuckoo? Everybody's cuckoo in this movie except for Lee.
It's no secret on this podcast. Anyway, if you've listened to my episode on vivarium, that cuckoos are complex, sneaky, and frankly, they're fucking smart.
And there's 140 species of bird in the same family, but only 40% of these birds are known as brood parasites. And since they are brood parasites, they do not build their own nests. Why? Because they don't need to.
You see, the cuckoo bird intentionally targets a bird nest from a vantage point, waits for said birdhouse to leave its nest, and the cuckoo quickly works to lay its own eggs in that bird's nest. That cuckoo never raises its own young, so there's no need for them to build a nest.
So then the bird of the other species is trusted to raise this young.
Cuckoos tend to select nests with eggs that look similar to their own eggs. So when the eggs hatch, the cuckoo baby chick will intentionally push the other hatched babies or unhatched eggs over the side of the nest to make sure that it receives all of the attention from its new mommy.
And so what the hell does that have to do with long legs? Well, doesn't that sound exactly the fucking same? We know that he was inhabiting the basement of Lee's mom's house.
He lives there. He feeds off of her energy and her willingness to help him with his bidding. And long legs does not have to go out and take the dolls to the houses of these gullible, you know, stupid families anymore. Ruth is doing it for him. He's creating the doll, the egg. He gives it to Ruth, and she plants it in somebody else. Well, somebody else's house, their life. She doesn't have to do any of it.
Not only that, but Ruth had to quit her job to spend her time delivering these dolls so that she could watch these murders be executed. Right? So long legs was taking up all of her attention.
He came into her nest, her house, took all of her attention away from Lee.
I mean, doesn't get much more in your face than that.
And that's why the sound cuckoo is so important in this film. And it almost gives the entire film away from the beginning, if you think about it.
I want to move on to the birthday murders and the red piano. Now, the marketing of this film was absolutely phenomenal. Phenomenal and reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock marketing Psycho, which, as I've already told you, starred Osgoode Perkins father.
And there was a website created prior to the public release of the film called the Birthday Murders. And there's details regarding the cases of the long legs murders from the movie. And files that you can even download that require you to decipher the code that Longlegs created in the film. Pretty cool. The files are password protected and can only be accessed after the code is deciphered. And it's a pretty fucking brilliant way to create hype for a film.
On the site, there is discussion regarding red pianos.
You may also recall that in the beginning of the film, when Leah is doing the intuition test and she's shown.
[01:00:39] Speaker A: A series of photos, she sees the.
[01:00:41] Speaker B: Color swatch of white to red, and.
[01:00:43] Speaker A: She says the word piano.
[01:00:45] Speaker B: In Lee's childhood bedroom, she had a red piano.
It's my understanding that there was more.
[01:00:54] Speaker A: Stuff about red pianos in the film.
[01:00:58] Speaker B: But it was removed on the editing floor.
[01:01:03] Speaker A: But there's also discussion about it on the birthday murders website. So for those of you that are.
[01:01:07] Speaker B: Not familiar with the red piano lore, I will break it down for you.
The red piano is a fable, a tale, or whatever created originating in Russia. And it says that basically there's a red acoustic piano. It's presented as a retail item for sale in a store environment.
The targets are self selecting, right? So they go into the store and they're the ones deciding whether or not to purchase the piano.
No one is delivering the piano to them under the guise of it being a gift from the church.
So victims purchase the piano and bring it home, where they plan, you know, to play the piano, obviously, and discover that their fingers hurt really badly every time they play. Like, worse than, you know, the type of soreness that you have whenever you learn to play an instrument because your hands are sore. It's like, worse than that. So the victims who are playing the piano also start to experience, you know, difficulty maintaining focus, having brain fog, exhaustion, loss of physical strength.
Well, why is that? Simply from playing the piano? I mean, that would be too simple. The keys of this piano have tiny needles in them that prick the fingers of the players.
And the blood sourced from that finger pricking is trickled down into, like, a holding container inside of the piano.
And then eventually the piano will require someone to service it.
Here comes the intruder. Right? A woman would then come in and claim to be there to service the piano, but really she was there to get inside of the piano, find the blood filled container, and consume it.
So what does this have to do with long legs? Well, the birthday murders claimed, obviously, that each of the homes targeted had a red piano in it. Because I have been on that website, and no, I did not download the files from that website, so don't ask.
But more than that, it appears that the dolls are acting in a similar vein to the pianos.
Long legs does, say, during his interrogation tape or, sorry, not in the tape, when he's being. When he's in the interrogation room with Lee. He says that they're all given the same choice.
They're given the choice of crimson or clover.
Kind of similar to the piano. Right. I can either buy it or not buy it.
Although not buying the piano doesn't have the same implications that not taking the doll that's gifted to me would be. But that's not the point.
I think it's just another way to add on to the lore with the dolls and everything else like that.
[01:04:17] Speaker A: Right.
[01:04:20] Speaker B: However, it is similar in nature to the brain fog and exhaustion. Right. Because those dolls trap your memory so that you don't remember anything.
So, you know, there's a lot of similarities. Anyways, check out the birthday murders website if you want to download the files. If you want to. I just don't want that kind of evil on my computer. That's me. You're your own person. Please do whatever you want. I do think that the birthday Murders website is pretty cool, though, because.
[01:04:56] Speaker A: The.
Just the amount of work that went.
[01:05:00] Speaker B: Into it, like, there's, like, more information about each of the crimes and the families.
[01:05:05] Speaker A: There's, like I said, files you can download. There's, like, question and answer where, like, you know, people.
[01:05:12] Speaker B: I don't think they're real people submitting these questions, but, like, you know, it makes it seem that way that, like, people submit questions, and then the author of the website, like, answers them back to collect evidence on the murders. Like, it's actually pretty cool.
All right, now, what about the white houses?
Did you notice that all of the familial homes are white, including Ruth and Lee's house.
The color white, as we may all know, is a symbol of purity and innocence and even holiness. And all of these homes have daughters. The father figure is targeted by the devil because of his instability. It's kind of funny, like, ironic funny that the devil wants a gruesome murder to occur in these suburban, idealistic homes.
He has a way with, you know, that type of irony.
And to me, it seems these families were not necessarily scared of the odd and violent actions of their fathers. Like, Carter's life didn't even react whenever Carter went to the kitchen to get the knife, knowing that a violent act would follow. Like, he told her he was rude to her all the way up until then. He has history of, like, clearly going out and drinking and coming home late because he made Lee come inside the house with him when he arrived home that one night. And, like, you would only do that if you were trying to minimize the impact of what you were going to walk into, which is that, you know, your. Your spouse may be mad at you or upset with you for being out so late.
It seems like with these families, if we're to use Carter, the Carter family, to extrapolate any type of meaning, that nobody really thought anything different once the doll arrived, because the fathers of these families were already fucking assholes. So it didn't even matter anyways. If this was not a common occurrence, she and Ruby would have been more frightened. But the father on the 911 recording played during the initial scene where Lee gets all the evidence for the case, says that he's going to wait until his daughter goes to sleep because that's the perfect time to do it.
If the father normally does things to the child when they're sleeping, then this act of violence will not come as a surprise. It's no secret that a common, you know, characteristic of a pedophile is that they appear to be trusting, family oriented men who don't outwardly appear to be an abuser. And that can go for all types of abusers.
And that's why they live in these pristine suburban white houses. They're unassuming.
The whiter the house, the dirtier what goes on inside of it.
It's fucking disgusting because your home should be a sanctuary.
We've discussed this many times on the show, like the fact that an act of violence and abuse can take place inside the one place that's supposed to keep you safe is the real horror.
But with that, I want to talk about what I think the film is truly about underneath the surface. Okay?
Yes, there's devil things at play. There's, you know, all kinds of things at play, right?
But the one thing that's not, like, explicitly said or shown is abuse, and more particularly, pedophilia.
If you tell me that this film is about anything other than child sex.
[01:09:14] Speaker A: Abuse, I'm gonna hear you out, but.
[01:09:19] Speaker B: I'm gonna have a really strong desire.
[01:09:20] Speaker A: To punch you in the face before.
[01:09:23] Speaker B: You turn this off in haste because you're almost done. So why would you turn it off anyway? But try to hear me out. Okay? At the beginning of the film, long legs makes reference to his actual legs, which are long. And even if they weren't that long, they're longer than Lee's because he's an adult and she's 8th.
He interacts with children. He targets children. He has a strong feeling or connection or association with children and childlike qualities.
So, I mean, I think it's pretty obvious that inside, he feels like he's a child rather than an adult, which would be why he refers to his own legs as long when comparing his height to Lee's, because he doesn't see himself as an adult.
And now here's where Lee's mom, Ruth, makes it hard for me to forgive in literally, anyway.
Carrie Ann camera and Lee Harker do not remember the dolls that they were given or the things that were done or happened to them as children after they got the doll.
They're also the only known survivors of a long leg targeting. Now, Carrie Ann was at school, so that's one thing.
Ruth openly invited, basically, long legs to come into their lives, you know, the lives of her and Lee.
Under the guise of saving and protecting Lee, all she did was in, you know, instead invite a predator into her home.
Predators, torment. That's their goal in life. Also, all of the families have daughters. Coincidence?
No fucking chance. Okay. And on top of that.
Right on top of that, what's really strange is that Lee's house doesn't have a father.
So who do we think was in charge?
Who was the male figure in Lee's house?
Could it be the devil?
I don't know.
Lee was kind of the chosen one.
Lee was the girl who got to live. Lee was the girl who got to grow up. Carrie Ann didn't get to grow up. Carrie Ann was stuck in a catatonic state and then jumped off of a building. So Carrie Ann didn't get to grow up. Lee got to grow up and live a life. She got to go to college. She got to be an FBI agent.
But all the rest of the families that were targeted had fathers, except for Miss Lee.
Her dad wasn't in the picture.
What. What are we left to think?
The devil is Lee's dad. That's why she also says. Or they also make reference to her. Right? Her last name is Harker, and long legs even says Lee Harker. Hark, the Herald angel sings. Right? She's the quote unquote angel. She is the chosen one.
It's also worth noting that Ruth is a biblical name, and Ruth biblical Ruth was known for her extraordinary kindness, and sometimes the kindest people get taken advantage of. I think letting a predator stay in my house with my young daughter meets the qualifications of being taken advantage of.
Definitely mistaking kindness for weakness here.
The metal balls that are placed in the head of each of the dolls is not merely a stylistic choice.
When Ruth takes Lee's doll out to the backyard and shoots it, she says that Lee will be free now. So she shoots the metal ball, and the cloud of black smoke comes out of the ball and out of Lee's head at the same time. And these are the memories of the childhood, of the child that receives the doll. It's only then that Lee remembers everything about her encounters with long legs and all of the things that her mother told her. She remembers all these things now. The trauma that had been stored inside of the metal ball had been protecting Lee from her own life experiences.
That's why her intuitions are so strong. Her brain experienced all of those things, whether or not her mind is consciously aware of it. But sometimes people store trauma by, you know, compartmentalizing it and putting it in, you know, a different place and then, like, not actively thinking about it.
There's also an enormous emphasis on age and getting older and birthdays and the way that parents view their daughters. Ruby telling Lee that her own dad fears her getting older and that's why he wants to keep all of her baby or small child stuff in her bedroom.
Yeah, he wants her to stay a child.
Right. And so, like, what do pedophiles target children?
Is he worried that he may not want to sexually abuse his daughter anymore or abuse her in any way anymore after she's no longer a child?
[01:15:05] Speaker A: Hmm.
[01:15:07] Speaker B: Maybe long legs or the fathers can find a way to keep their daughters young. Right. So there's no need to find another child sex abuse victim, because if I can just kill you and keep you in your childlike state, you know, you're never gonna get older. Cause you're fucking dead, then, you know. Yeah, that would be one way.
The most. The thing that, like, became the most apparent to me was whenever I saw the scene of Carter sitting in front of the tv that had been, you know, playing the tape of long legs from the interrogation room. They work in the FBI, right? And so, like, in all FBI offices.
[01:16:01] Speaker A: There'S going to be a photo of the president.
[01:16:04] Speaker B: The president at the time of this or the time period that this film took place in, was President Bill Clinton.
Every time we're in Carter's office and he's sitting at his desk, there's a photo of Bill Clinton behind him.
And when he's sitting in front of the tv that they had just been watching, the video has been paused on a still of long leg's face and Carter sitting in front of it almost like he sits in front of that Bill Clinton picture every single day.
So when you work for the FBI, you work for the president.
When you fuck with long legs, now you work for the devil.
And that was the hint that that same day was gonna be the day that there was Miss Ruby's birthday and that that's when shit was gonna hit the fan.
It's also very telling to me, though, that, again, it would have been very easy. Let's say that all of the families that get the doll, their fathers, are either a child sex abuse predator or just abusive. Right. Well, that makes targeting Lee's family kind of hard. Right, because Lee's family is just her and her mom.
So who's the dad that's going to enact all these things? Well, could be the devil, could also be long legs trying to fill in that role.
Probably in symbolism only.
[01:18:02] Speaker A: But given that all of the couples.
[01:18:06] Speaker B: The victims, you know, the families, it's.
[01:18:09] Speaker A: A heterosexual marriage between a husband and.
[01:18:11] Speaker B: A wife, and they have children that are daughters. I mean, I kind of symbolically makes sense because now in Lee's household, there's a mom and a dad. There's a male or a man and a woman, and then there's Lee, the daughter.
And I think that even though it wasn't explicitly shown on the screen that long legs was tormenting and abusing Lee throughout her life, I also think that I could be wrong, but I don't think I am.
And I also think that when Longlegs says that the work that they were doing was immaculate and that the work that they were doing was work that gets dirty as it cleansed, is kind of a way for him to say.
[01:19:12] Speaker A: Like.
[01:19:17] Speaker B: The families that he was targeting or that they were targeting were families that were playing, you know, they were.
[01:19:25] Speaker A: Outwardly pretending to be people that they.
[01:19:28] Speaker B: Weren'T, and on the inside of the house, we didn't know what was going on. And because you are not the same in and out of your home, like, you are living a false life. And so cleaning that up, you know, is dirty work. But, like, I can't say or argue with the concept, but I know this is getting long, so I want to finish with this one thing, and I want to talk about the ending.
So during that 24 minutes long video of long legs in the interrogation room, he says, hark, the Herald angel, which, like I've already said, is a direct reference to Lee Harker and her surname.
One user on Reddit, username Alpha Lemur. Alpha Lemur, argues that the reason that long legs was not able to kill Lee is because of the bargain made between Ruth and Long legs, which, like I said, makes Lee a sort of angelic figure or protected person. So, since Lee cannot be killed by long legs, he frames her for the murder of the Carter family by allowing himself to be caught by the authorities and putting Lee at the scene of the Carter family birthday party for Ruby.
Having Lee kill her own mom and Carter and trying to shoot the doll before she realizes that, you know, she's out of ammo or it's not going to work, and she saves Ruby. And this would make her directly responsible for the murders and frame her as the long legs accomplice. I like this theory.
Thank you, Alpha Lemur. And I want to expand on it. Long legs, make sure to tell Ruth and Lee that he's friends with the man downstairs. And before smashing his head into the table and killing himself, he notes that the devil is everywhere, right? He says, I'll be here, and I'll be a little bit of everywhere, which is something that he previously said about the devil. Right.
This implies that there will never be a time in which the devil himself is not around, even after Lee is dead. Right? Like, when Lee wakes up in her mom's basement, she goes upstairs to the kitchen, answer the phone, and the call is from Satan, letting her know that she's late to the birthday party for Ruby.
That. Like, that's. That's evidence right there. Like, he's not just gone. He's still fucking there.
If Lee is truly an angel, and we're to believe that she was born in God's image and she's therefore pure, then we can only reasonably connect this to the story of Lucifer. Lucifer was a fallen angel. And when Lee enacted those acts of violence on her mom and Carter, which were not, like, you know, predetermined or anything, she is exhibiting at that point the traits of being a type of fallen angel. Right? She, like, put herself in the situation.
She was good. Good. And now she doesn't look so good, right? She's. She's the only adult left at the scene of a crime with a fucking gun.
And I think her shock is at the end of the film is that she learns that she is the chosen one.
She is next in line to carry out violent acts on the world, and that the devil does not just disappear.
So that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Thank you all. If you made it this far. I know this is kind of a longer one, but you're welcome.
And I hope you guys out there take some time to watch long legs. It's phenomenal. I watched it on Amazon Prime. I actually bought it because I like it so much.
And of course, I have to remind you that the final girl on 6th Avenue is part of the incredibly morbidly beautiful network. Morbidly beautiful is your home for horror. If you love horror in any way, shape or form, you are welcome into our family at morbidly beautiful. You can find my podcast and many others like it, as well as film reviews and so much more. So head on over to morbidlybeautiful.com to check it all out and show us some love.
You can find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon music, and Pocket casts. If you enjoyed the show, it would mean the world to me if you left me a five star review and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. For any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions or requests, you can email
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Thank you so much for listening today. I hope that you enjoyed it. I will be back with you in two weeks. And until then, never forget that I'm 6th Avenue's very own final girl.
