We Talk Scary Pool Movies With Pool Pro, Rudy Stankowitz

Halloween is just around the corner and it's got us thinking about some of our all-time favorite scary movies that combine our enjoyment of a good horror flick with our love of swimming pools.  Recently, we caught up with our friend and fellow podcaster Rudy Stankowitz of the Talking Pools Podcast. He's a pool professional who is a true horror buff and aficionado of scary movies. In fact, he's even starring and associate producer in one. Listen in on our conversation where we discuss:

1. Some of our all-time favorite scary pool scenes in the movies.
2. Cleaning up after a pool party massacre.
3. When horror movies meet real life in the pool.
4. What to do if you find yourself living out a horror movie.

Want to take a deeper dive? Read our article on the subject: Scary Pool Scenes in The Movies

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Chapters

• 1:34 Acting & Associate Producer on Bunker Heights
• 5:32 Scary Pool Scenes In The Movies
• 7:51 When Horror Films Meet Reality
• 9:31 All Time Scary Pool Scene Picks
• 15:05 How Hollywood & Literature Use Pools in Horror
• 17:46 Cleaning Up After a Pool Party Massacre
• 19:54 Do's & Don'ts For Horror Movies

Transcript

[00:00:00.240] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Thanks for joining us on another episode of Pool Magazine Podcast. I'm your host, Joe Trusty, and with me today, I got my friend Rudy Stankowitz, CPO instructor, best-selling author, and a host of the Talking Pools podcast. It's a pleasure to have you back with us today on the show, Rudy.

[00:00:14.440] - Rudy Stankowitz

It is a pleasure to be here, Joe. It's been too long. We should do this more. The season gets in the way sometimes, but it's been a great year.

[00:00:21.680] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Yeah, I love catching up with you at the cool shows and just chatting with you online on social media and on your group a lot. I know that you are a huge horror film buff, same as I. You're always posting weird stuff on your social media, like shrunken heads of customers who put tablets in the skimmer. You got a carnivalent. Yes.

[00:00:43.730] - Rudy Stankowitz

I have voodoo dolls for stuff like that.

[00:00:47.680] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

You got a carnivorous plant that you feed pool techs that flunk your CPO course, too.

[00:00:52.380] - Rudy Stankowitz

I think I have a dozen carnivorous plants right now at the moment, to be honest.

[00:00:58.590] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

You're producing a horror film right now, right? People are calling you Hollywood now. Have you gone Hollywood on us? How did this whole thing come about?

[00:01:08.390] - Rudy Stankowitz

Years ago, I wrote a horror novel. It's called Blades of Glass, and it's a psychological thriller, and it did pretty well. When I put that out there, I went out on social media, Twitter, and all those different things with it as the author of that book, and started developing friendships with folks that were in independent films as well, and some major films, folks that would talk from time to time along that genre. So it's like a big family, actually. And that was my step in the door. And in that, one of the people that I was chatting with over the years, Hannah Fjermann. She's the director of the movie. She's been in a lot of independent horror movies. She's been in some major films. And this opportunity came about this year where I could step in as an associate producer. And I was like, Hell, yeah. I'm really excited about that. The film's written by Drew Fortier. He's of the band Lucid. He's a guitar player in that band. And then there's a lot of other names in there. If you watch independent films and some major flicks, we have Chaney Morrow from Wrong Turn, we have Paul Taylor from Hellraiser, Floyd Ewing from The Dead Next Door, Douglas Esper from Dwellers, James L. Edwards, we have Daniel Kearney, and a few other folks in there as well. Then even looking at the other producers among the bunch of us, there's David Ellefson. He's the ex-Megadeath bass player. Then we have Vincent Jay from Insane Clown Posse, Vinnie Dombroski from Splunge and Lucid. It's an eclectic group for sure. I'm excited about it.

[00:02:59.730] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

That's It's an awesome side project for you. It's called Bunker Heights. I mean, what's the premise of the movie about?

[00:03:05.670] - Rudy Stankowitz

It's a troubled city. There's a catastrophic event going on. Elements of crime, horror. There's a bunch of dark comedy in there. It's really just a narrative that follows the citizens as they navigate the looming threat that's jeopardizing their existence.

[00:03:24.790] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Yeah, I took a look at the teaser trailer that you guys came out with. It looks almost like a "Purge" scenario. I'm sure that's going to be a lot of fun. It's a pity that you guys couldn't work in a pool angle, though, there for Bunker Heights.

[00:03:37.020] - Rudy Stankowitz

I came in toward the end. I mean, not that there won't be a pool project coming up. I'm looking at this with my foot in the door to other opportunities as well. My Getting Started. I came in this one as an associate producer. I did come in at the tail end of it. I can't take a lot of credit for anything that's going on, but I do get to be a part of it. I'm excited about that. Joe, I got to tell you, if you were to go to, and this is a surprise, we're going to break this news right here. Imdb, if you go there, I do have the associate producer credit. I don't know where this pops up from, but I know IMDb all of a sudden has me on it, and it's like one of those gray heads without a face because there's not even anything there. But if you go there, you'll see that I have the associate producer credit, but I also, Joe, have an acting credit.

[00:04:25.500] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Oh, nice. You got some lines in this movie, huh?

[00:04:28.230] - Rudy Stankowitz

I didn't say I had any lines, Joe. I said I have an acting role. I have the smallest acting role in a movie possible. But my character does have a name, so it's not like third guy on the left. I do have a named character.

[00:04:46.350] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

All right, so you're not Dead Guy Number 3, something like that.

[00:04:49.360] - Rudy Stankowitz

I'm not Dead guy number 3, person mauled by street car, any of those things. I am Lyle, and that's all I'm telling you on that for right You're going to have to watch the flick. Well, speaking of horror movies, there's just a ton of great flicks that have featured swimming pools over the years.

[00:05:09.770] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

I mean, you're a horror film buff and an aficionado. What are some of the movies you'd recommend to folks who want to combine that love of swimming pools with a good, scary popcorn flick this season?

[00:05:21.830] - Rudy Stankowitz

Good movies? The big one right now that folks are still talking about has to be Night's Swim. I had mixed emotions on it. I took a look It came out, it starts with Wyatt Russell, Kurt Russell's kid. It's got some really decent parts in it. It's centered around a swimming pool that starts out seemingly normal, but then everything goes awry. It has some good solid moments. It has some good solid scares to it. The malevolent presence that resides in the water to the pool becomes increasingly haunting, affecting their lives, and the pool just It really transforms into a nightmare. The thing I didn't like about it is that, to me, if you follow, if you watch a lot of horror movies, you'll see a lot of the bits. They mirrored a lot of other films that I was already familiar with. But still, overall, a great film. The film quality is great, the acting is good, and there's some unbelievable things that a professional watching the film can easily point out as you go through if you want to nitpick at some of But I wouldn't be too harsh.

[00:06:32.140] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Yeah. I mean, people watch these movies so that they can suspend disbelief a little bit, and they just want to sit there and enjoy the movie.

[00:06:37.920] - Rudy Stankowitz

Exactly. We can nitpick all of them, but they've got some great points, parts to them. I would say, I would say, check out Night's Swim. That's a recent one. Some other ones that are a really good. Dayshift. We're not going to get away without mentioning Jamie Fox's film from last year, Dayshift. That really doesn't involve a pool, but it involves a pool guy. I have to say Final Destination 4. The Final Destination films, I think they're a fantastic premise. You can't escape death. That's what it's about. If you miss the point where you're supposed to die, somehow death will find you. That's the gist of these films, and there's been quite a few of them. But in Final Destination 4, there's a scene that involves a pool. It's a good movie, and it is a gruesome scene where one of the characters ends up in the pool, gets sucked to the main drain great, and is disemboweled, which can happen. Maybe not the way he fell in the pool, maybe not the way he was drawn to the bottom. But that's the whole reason behind the Virginia Graham Baker Act to prevent entrapment issues like the one depicted there.

[00:07:55.000] - Rudy Stankowitz

Now, of course, obviously, this goes a bit beyond because something Something happens at the pump, explodes, his intestines go everywhere, and everybody gets covered in blood. That part, not so real. But people have lost portions of their intestines due to main drains. It's a scary thing.

[00:08:16.300] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Yeah, that one is very close to reality. Every time I'm behind one of those big rigs on the highway and they're carrying all those logs, I think, is this my final destination moment? Because these movies These bring up real-life scenarios that can really happen. I mean, yeah, getting sucked into that drain actually happened this year just to an eight-year-old kid in Houston.

[00:08:38.760] - Rudy Stankowitz

That's the double train. That's right. I heard about that. That was in a lazy river. For some reason, there was a 16-inch pipe that was supposed to be pushing water into the pool and end up the pump was somehow running in reverse. I'm not even sure the details on that, but it was sucking water instead of pushing water in. Super scary.

[00:08:58.850] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Which movie or movies would you rate as maybe one of your all-time scariest that feature a pool or a water feature, and why?

[00:09:08.180] - Rudy Stankowitz

Not my favorite Nightmare on Elm Street, but Freddie's Revenge, Elm Street 2. Nightmare on Elm Street, too. There's a scene where Freddy Kruger terrorizes partygoers in a pool, and that becomes really the biggest pool party massacre you could ever imagine. I think that's a a great film. Another has to be the Poltergeist scene when Jo Beth Williams runs out of the house, ends up falling into the pool that they're about to build. It's raining, the walls are collapsing, she's in the water. Caskets start popping up, skeletons start floating around. And the cool thing about that, the really cool, cool thing about that, some trivia about the movie, is that they didn't want to manufacture skeletons. They didn't think they could get skeletons that looked real enough to be bodies. So what they did was they actually took skeletons from the science labs, the ones that they hinge together and they have in doctors' offices standing up or in classrooms. And that's what they used, real skeletons floating in this body of water with her as Poltergeist is going nuts inside the house.

[00:10:20.520] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

I just read an article about that. It's funny that you brought up the Poltergeist movie because that home where the film was actually made just hit the market for the first time in 45 years. It's listed at 1.2 million in realtor. Com, and they actually finished the pool.

[00:10:38.430] - Rudy Stankowitz

They finished the pool? Okay. They would have had to because there wasn't a pool there when they filmed it. So that came in afterwards. I imagine, I want to know who built it. If you're out there and you built that pool, I hate to do this, but contact Joe. Let him know. He'll share it with me. Contact the podcast. Joe will tell you how. If you're the builder, then or had anything to do with the build of that pool. I want to know if you found anything in the hole when you were digging.

[00:11:05.800] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

That's that one movie, I think, that still holds up to today's audiences. If you watched Nightmare on Elm Street, 1985, when Freddie's Revenge came out, it's really that campy horror movie that just gets you scared as you got back in the day. But Poltergeist, man, that one still gets me today. If I see that pool scene, I'm still hanging on the edge of my seat, man.

[00:11:32.100] - Rudy Stankowitz

You know what it is? It's Poltergeist was the very next horrific presence in a movie since The Exorcist, and that's where it really falls in place. That was the next presence along those lines that really wreaked havoc like that did. And I think that's one of the reasons why it resonates so well also, because there's not been a lot since then. I mean, we had the Conjuring films, and they're all great and all of that. But really, it's a different category. And It's about people first seeing those things, that type of stuff in the theater as well. I mean, things have been redone and redone, but the first time, and they really did a… I mean, and there's some humor in there as well. It was just a nice mix. I've got Craig T. Nelson, Jellabeth Williams. I forget the little girl that played Cari Ann, The Curse of the Movie, correct? She passed away shortly afterwards. Did she not?

[00:12:24.300] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Yeah. Tragic, tragic circumstances. It was awful. Yeah. But yeah, that movie was really a wild ride. I mean, don't build on an Indian burial ground. That's the moral of it.

[00:12:37.570] - Rudy Stankowitz

It's a good rule of thumb. Well, and the other one that's supposedly on the Indian burial ground, not a pool, but Amadilleville. In a lot of those movies- It's funny you brought up Ammityville because really, I've seen the Night Swim movie, and that was the biggest impression of where I felt like they took gravitas on some of the material was just beg, borrow, and steal from the Ammityville theme, where instead of the whole house being haunted, it's just the swimming pool that's got a demonic possession on it. There were some other things, too, that were borrowed and stolen from other movies. I mentioned that. I think it seemed like it was a quilt patchwork. I mean, if you've not seen the other movies, you wouldn't think anything of it. But if you've seen them, then you'd be like, Oh, yeah, that's from this or that's from that. That's the one thing I didn't like about it because that was, to me, aside from the fact that they did put out a decent movie, it was a little bit insulting at points. But yeah, Ammityville, you grew up near that. So did I. We both grew up not too far from that one.

[00:13:43.340] - Rudy Stankowitz

I actually used to take my kids trick or treating there when they were little down that street, Ocean Avenue in Ammityville, and we'd always stop at that house last, and nobody ever answered the door. We didn't expect them to. It never did. Then I would just take the kids home. We'd watch the movie, and that was Halloween. So, yeah, it was a blast.

[00:14:03.450] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Got to grab a selfie in front of that house. That's the point.

[00:14:07.720] - Rudy Stankowitz

At one time, I had a picture of the house with a big Christmas wreath on the front of it, but I don't know where that ended up. But I did have that photo, and I just took it because... And normally, I wouldn't take a picture of the house at all because I try to respect people's privacy, but it was just so odd to see it with a huge Christmas wreath hanging on the front of it.

[00:14:23.850] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Try to give that house a different vibe.

[00:14:26.470] - Rudy Stankowitz

They changed the windows, they changed the address even. So, yeah. But we need to talk about pools.

[00:14:33.800] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

All these movies do a great job at tapping into that primal fear that people have about swimming in general. I mean, fear of the unknown, fear of drowning. I mean, the psychological impact has been represented countless times in literature and in film. I think that the horror films that most resonate with me are the ones that use the pool to represent that thin layer between safety and terror and not every scary movie has to be a gorefest. Some of those that use tension, fear of the unknown, to great effect, are one that I personally saw was the deep end. I don't think that there's a drop of blood in this short film. It's just about a kid who decides to hop his neighbor's fence on a hot summer's day and go for a dip in their pool, but the pool is haunted. It's a truly scary little short film. I would definitely recommend that as one of mine.

[00:15:34.850] - Rudy Stankowitz

I have to tell you, I have to confess. I mean, for what I do, it's strange, but I have what they call the loss of phobia, which is basically fear of water where you can't see the bottom. Maybe it's because of those. Every time I get the chance now, and I know you know I do this, I'll go swim with rats, I'll go swim with sharks. I don't mean in a controlled environment down in the Galapagos. In my next trip, I'm planning to go to Cape Town to get in one of the cages with the great Whites. I like to try to face my fear, but yeah, I have that. I'm terrified. It takes me… I'll be literally… You remember that meme with the cat that says, Hang in there while it's attached to the screen door? I'm like that on the side of the boat. Well, basically, there is one thing, but that theme of swimming with the sharks or swimming with the owls, there's a crocidile or swimming with piranas.

[00:16:31.180] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

That comes up again and again and again in these horror movies that we've seen. Recently, the one that comes to mind, that Wednesday Netflix series that came out where the girl Wednesday drops a couple of bags of piranhas into the pool. We actually wrote about that.

[00:16:47.790] - Rudy Stankowitz

Yes, I remember that. That was fantastic. And of course, everybody's like, Well, they wouldn't survive this, that, the chlorine, this, that. You know what? That's the fun of it. And it's great. And it was such a Fantastic. That was the start to the series, wasn't it?

[00:17:02.860] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Yeah, the very start of it.

[00:17:04.530] - Rudy Stankowitz

The very first thing in there. I thought that was really cool.

[00:17:08.900] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

You got a podcast and you've written about this subject before, but I think that maybe there's a fun exercise and a hypothetical scenario we can do here. I mean, say you're called in to clean up after a Freddie's Revenge scenario. I mean, how do you approach the cleanup?

[00:17:26.550] - Rudy Stankowitz

I get this call at least two or three times a year. Not to the Freddie's revenge level, but I do get calls from folks around the country, Hey, there was a body discovered in a pool, or the fire department contacted me. They want me to come out and do the HAZMAT remediation on the pool. How do we treat it? And you can. I can go through the process. I've spoken with and developed criteria with different members of law enforcement in higher-level positions. But the reality of it is nobody's going to want to swim in the water that had a dead body in it. We can go through the whole thing. We can treat it, worst case scenario, treat it like you would, diarrhea incident in a pool, not the normal one, but the one if there was cyanuric acid in it, because that's a whole other one that takes a lot longer to do. You can go through that process. But like I said, again, in the end, people are going to want you to drain the water. Really, that's the way I would tackle it. Unless for some reason I'm out in some area where there's drought restrictions, then maybe we could go through the process just to ensure that the pool doesn't, I don't know, become a skate park or pop out of the ground or whatever, then we'll We can treat the water to get that under control, get it remediated.

[00:18:49.720] - Rudy Stankowitz

But gosh, dead animals are one thing. A dead person in the pool, they want the water out.

[00:18:55.690] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Well, it happens more often than you think I would imagine, especially at a hotels or other commercial properties.

[00:19:02.940] - Rudy Stankowitz

That's a lot of what the calls are. A lot of it are suicides, unfortunately, sadly. No matter what it's from, it's a horrible thing. But most of the calls I get involve some type of a suicide in a backyard pool.

[00:19:19.390] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

When it comes to watching scary Movies, it's almost smart not to go down in the basement, so to speak. But say by unlikely chance, you find yourself living out your worst case scenario. You're in this pool-related horror movie. What do you think is some good advice?

[00:19:36.660] - Rudy Stankowitz

Leave. That's what everybody does wrong in every horror movie. The minute you see that chair- Don't go in the way. Yeah. You see a chair move three inches across the floor. Time to move. Pack your shit. Get out. It's the thing with the pool. The automatic cover starts to close on its own. Time to go. Don't get in.

[00:19:58.340] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Lifeguards are always the first to go on those movies, right?

[00:20:01.780] - Rudy Stankowitz

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You don't want to be the first person in the movie to take a shower. There's a whole list of rules to these things. But speaking about the automatic covers, there's a movie about that as well. It's called 12 Feet Deep. It came out in 2017. It's actually directed by a person I know, Matt Eskandari, stars a couple of people, Nora Jane Noon, Alexander Park, Diane Farr, but also, who doesn't get enough credit for being in the film. Tobin Bell is the pool manager. Is that a fun...

[00:20:35.810] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

See, all these little interesting trivia tidbits when I talk to you.

[00:20:39.850] - Rudy Stankowitz

Yeah, he's the pool manager. He's not the main star in the movie, but he is there. He's the pool manager. And what happens here is there's some girls swimming in the pool and something falls in. They dive in to get it. And as he's leaving, he looks at the pool. They're underwater, so he doesn't see them. So he flips the switch. The automatic cover closes. They're underwater.

[00:21:00.600] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

See, that's one that could definitely happen.

[00:21:04.350] - Rudy Stankowitz

In this, to take it a step further, it could happen. The difference, the quality of the cover is a bit more rigid than anything that we would deal with. They were definitely some things that occur in this movie that were not realistic. But one of the things that did happen also on top of the cover closing with people in the pool, at one point, the girls swimmed down to the main drain great, and their hair, the one girl with long hair, her hair is drawn the great, and she actually gets tied to the floor of the pool. Oh, wow. And that's real. That can happen. Hair entrapment is the number one form of entrapment we deal with or used to with main drain rates before the Virginia Graham Baker Act went into effect.

[00:21:45.480] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

See? And that's what I'm saying is, some of these films that do a great job of tapping into those real-life scenarios that can play out. It encapsulates you in that one moment of time where you take all of your past swimming pool experience, and it's very relatable like, Hey, could this have ever happened to me?

[00:22:05.490] - Rudy Stankowitz

You were speaking about creature films. One came out, I think it's a Korean film, a I've been watching a lot of cool films out of Korea since the pandemic. I know. This one's called- Yeah, the one with the Crocodile. Yeah, that was- Yeah, the pool. The guy ends up in an empty pool. There's a big old crocodile falls He can't get out of the pool, and Crocodile's in there with him throughout the whole movie. It was a really good film.

[00:22:37.700] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

That's a more likely to happen in Florida, I feel.

[00:22:41.400] - Rudy Stankowitz

I've had gators, and I told you the story. I had one of my techs call me once from a pool and say, Hey, Rudy, you know what? I'm just letting you know I wasn't able to clean the whole pool today. I was like, Oh, what happened? Let me know so I can tell the customer. She said, Well, there's a six-foot gator in the pool. I said, Oh, you mean weren't able to clean anything? She goes, No, I was afraid you were going to send me back later after it left, so I just vacuumed around it.

[00:23:07.790] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

This is the stuff that could really happen.

[00:23:11.130] - Rudy Stankowitz

All I was picturing in my mind is that sheriff's vehicle with the the alligator, tearing the vendor off of it and stuff. I'm thinking, This is going to grab the hammerhead. It's going to yank you in with it. Don't clean pools with gators in it. Just don't. Wait till it's gone.

[00:23:26.780] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Yeah, this was a lot of fun today, Rudy. I mean, it's timely because We got Halloween coming up for sure.

[00:23:32.140] - Rudy Stankowitz

Definitely.

[00:23:32.420] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

But it's right in your wheelhouse. You're a film buff. I'm a film buff. I had a lot of fun just talking about movies with you.

[00:23:39.310] - Rudy Stankowitz

Good time. Oh, me too. Yeah, I love horror movies. I have since I was a kid. There's a bunch I love. Also, there's a lot of great ones that don't have pools involved, like Bunker Heights coming out later this year. Watch for it. That one's one of them. I have a handprint on that one. So check it out and then check out my minuscule acting role that got me an acting credit as well.

[00:24:02.800] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Check out the movie. Check out Rudy's IMDb. Nice plug, Rudy.

[00:24:06.820] - Rudy Stankowitz

There you go.

[00:24:07.800] - Joe Trusty - Pool Magazine

Thanks for listening in. Make sure to like, subscribe, follow, and we'll catch you next time on another episode of Pool magazine podcast.