Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick in Today's movie on Weird
Speaker 3: House is the nineteen sixty eight Mario Bava film Danger Diabolic,
Speaker 3: a movie that straddles many genres. It is a comic
Speaker 3: book adaptation, it is a crime thriller, it's an action movie.
Speaker 3: And I've even seen people refer to it as a
Speaker 3: spy movie or a euro spy thriller. This is sometimes
Speaker 3: also called like spaghetti spy movies. These are all these
Speaker 3: movies that came out in the sixties, I think somewhat
Speaker 3: writing on the success of the first James Bond films
Speaker 3: that have characters named things like James Taunt or something.
Speaker 3: And while that spy designation does not accurately describe the
Speaker 3: plot of this movie, I can see why pill say that,
Speaker 3: because Danger Diabolic takes part in a lot of the
Speaker 3: same aesthetic trends you might find in sixties spy stuff
Speaker 3: like the early James Bond films in these other continental
Speaker 3: European espionage capers. So Danger Diabolic is about a thief,
Speaker 3: but it feels like it's about a spy, but really,
Speaker 3: more than anything, it's about love.
Speaker 2: That's right, It's ultimately a movie about love. Though our
Speaker 2: heroes are definitely criminals, there's no doubt about it, but
Speaker 2: we'll discuss the flavor of crime that they're really involved in.
Speaker 2: I think ultimately you would classify this film as a
Speaker 2: super crime movie. These are super criminals engaging in super crime.
Speaker 2: They're not quite super villains per se, though I'm sure
Speaker 2: that the people they're stealing from see them as such.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's interesting because on one hand, there's not
Speaker 2: a speculative element here, like this is not really a
Speaker 2: sci fi film or a horror of fantasy or you know,
Speaker 2: the typical genres we cover here, but it is still
Speaker 2: packed with plenty of weirdness. It reminds me in our
Speaker 2: build up to this, you even brought this up, Joe,
Speaker 2: you were like, I'm not sure it'll be weird enough.
Speaker 2: But I think now that we've both rewatched it, we
Speaker 2: have found there's plenty of weirdness to be had in Diabottle.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess you know, we've always gone intuitively on
Speaker 3: like what counts as weird for weird house cinema. Usually
Speaker 3: it's got to have some kind of major anti realism
Speaker 3: element in the plot. It's either got to be about
Speaker 3: something kind of like magical or supernatural, or something sufficiently
Speaker 3: has enough science fiction distance from reality that it's really
Speaker 3: weird diabolic has. It takes place in a world of
Speaker 3: light science fiction possibilities. Actually, much like most spy movies,
Speaker 3: do you know, kind of like James Bonder Mission Impossible
Speaker 3: movies have very light sci fi elements, just sort of
Speaker 3: slight exaggerations of what's possible in reality, And this is
Speaker 3: kind of like that, except it has a much CARTOONI
Speaker 3: or style that is free to more free to experiment
Speaker 3: with what would be plausible in terms of like what
Speaker 3: people would actually do, Like would people actually make a
Speaker 3: gold ingot the size of a tanker truck because reasoning
Speaker 3: that it will be harder to steal that way.
Speaker 2: Well, this is I love that detail on the plot
Speaker 2: because that particularly feels like folkloric or mythic. It seems
Speaker 2: like the kind of thing that that various heroes in
Speaker 2: you know, Sagas and Tales of Old would have engaged in. Oh,
Speaker 2: you know, the trickster was going to steal the gold
Speaker 2: so we just need an enormous gold ingot. But ah,
Speaker 2: the mighty Hero Diabolic stole it anyway.
Speaker 3: So I actually hadn't seen this movie until a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks ago, and a good friend of mine has
Speaker 3: been telling me about it for years. I can going
Speaker 3: back probably a deck him saying this movie is actually great,
Speaker 3: and I think for a long time my expectations about
Speaker 3: it were miscalibrated by the knowledge that this movie was
Speaker 3: featured on an episode of Mystery Science Theater three thousand,
Speaker 3: which I've never seen. By the way, the very last episode.
Speaker 3: You know, that's a show I love. But that places
Speaker 3: this movie in strange company because Danger Diabolic is not
Speaker 3: like Soul Taker. It is not like Final Sacrifice or
Speaker 3: Mitchell or most of the kinds of movies that end
Speaker 3: up on Mystery Science Theater. Danger Diabolic is a wonderful movie.
Speaker 3: In fact, I would even say that it possesses a
Speaker 3: kind of genius.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean we could go in into an
Speaker 2: entire tangent on MST three K movies and the fact that, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think there are a lot of great movies that
Speaker 2: were riffed over the years, and I think there are
Speaker 2: people out there who take offense sometimes on behalf of
Speaker 2: movies that were riffed. I I don't view it like that.
Speaker 2: I think for me in particular, and for a lot
Speaker 2: of people. You are Slash were introduced to this whole
Speaker 2: world of weird cinema through Mystery Science Theater three thousand
Speaker 2: and they taught in different ways to enjoy films. But yeah,
Speaker 2: this was a film that I long associated with ms
Speaker 2: th three K because it was episode one ninety seven
Speaker 2: back in nineteen ninety nine. It was for a very
Speaker 2: long time the final episode of MST three K before
Speaker 2: it came back in twenty seventeen, and it's still the
Speaker 2: final mic episode of MST three K, so it was
Speaker 2: always bittersweet for that reason. Solid riffing, but the end
Speaker 2: of an era. I had never watched Diabolic or Danger
Speaker 2: Diabolic as it's known in the West. I'd never watched
Speaker 2: it unriffed until today. And it's, you know, like a
Speaker 2: lot of these films, it's so much fun. It certainly
Speaker 2: holds its own You don't need the rifting to experience it.
Speaker 2: That can't be said of every film that was a
Speaker 2: feature in MST three K. There are some that are
Speaker 2: bad enough that you really need a little something extra
Speaker 2: to get you through. But it is a very watchable,
Speaker 2: very fine, very sexy, good time.
Speaker 3: Absolutely all of those things. And also this is a
Speaker 3: movie that I think has special appeal to people who
Speaker 3: are interested in the process of filmmaking because it's one
Speaker 3: of those movies where you can just you can just
Speaker 3: feel the steady hand of a director working with absolute finesse.
Speaker 3: Mario Bava's shadow hanging over this movie is just so powerful.
Speaker 3: It's like, in some ways I would compare it to
Speaker 3: though I'm not really sports fan, but what I imagine it's
Speaker 3: like to, you know, really appreciate an incredible athlete, somebody
Speaker 3: who just does inhuman things with their muscles that would
Speaker 3: be impossible for other people to do, but they make
Speaker 3: it look easy. That's what I would compare the filmmaking
Speaker 3: in this movie too. It's just like it is such
Speaker 3: an effortless, feeling display of of absolute confidence and finesse
Speaker 3: in how sets and costumes and color schemes are used
Speaker 3: and how shots are framed. It's you just feel like
Speaker 3: he is taking it easy and making a perfect movie
Speaker 3: and not breaking a sweat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean he makes it seem easy, and
Speaker 2: at the same time you're in awe of some of
Speaker 2: the shots that he puts together and the way he
Speaker 2: approaches scenes that would just be so throwaway in other films.
Speaker 2: I will say that there are plenty of hypnotic shots
Speaker 2: in this movie, but since this one is more action
Speaker 2: themed compared to the other two Mario Baba films that
Speaker 2: we've talked about on the show, it has a different
Speaker 2: feel overall to it. There may be fewer of those
Speaker 2: like long hypnotizing sequences, but there's still plenty of moments
Speaker 2: like that in the film.
Speaker 3: So I want to formally apologize to my friend Ben
Speaker 3: for taking like ten years or more to watch this movie,
Speaker 3: which he's been recommending to me the whole time. You
Speaker 3: were right, this movie is great. It's great. It's great,
Speaker 3: And this is a caveat I sometimes have to issue
Speaker 3: on the show. I sometimes fear that the more I
Speaker 3: love a movie, the harder it is for me to
Speaker 3: make a good weird House episode about it. So I'm
Speaker 3: gonna try to do my best here and not just
Speaker 3: let this turn into a NonStop, repetitive overt gushing. But yeah,
Speaker 3: please please understand. I feel like I'm working with that handicap,
Speaker 3: I think I like this movie too much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know the feeling. Sometimes if I come into
Speaker 2: an episode and I'm like particularly attached to the film,
Speaker 2: I worry how that's gonna impact the episode. But I
Speaker 2: think it's gonna be great. There's a lot to talk
Speaker 2: about here.
Speaker 3: Okay, what's your elevator pitch for danger Diabolic?
Speaker 2: I've got to channel a little meat loaf here, and
Speaker 2: I would say it is I would steal anything for love,
Speaker 2: and I will absolutely steal that because it's all for
Speaker 2: love in this movie, Absolutely all for love.
Speaker 3: Yes, Why else take down the largest shipment of dollars
Speaker 3: in human history unless it's for love?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's why. And that's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: they in Diabolic. They're like, we don't understand his motivations.
Speaker 2: Why does he do the things that he does. Well,
Speaker 2: it's because he's operating on a different wavelength from you
Speaker 2: old fogies that are ruling the world on both sides
Speaker 2: of the law. He has his own agenda and we'll
Speaker 2: get into that. That's right.
Speaker 3: They want the money because it's money. He wants the
Speaker 3: money because it's his girlfriend's birthday.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, let's listen to a little trailer audio here.
Speaker 2: I don't know if we'll listen to the full trailer,
Speaker 2: and I do want to advise anyone out there that
Speaker 2: if you're interested in watching this movie in full, don't
Speaker 2: watch the classic trailer for it, because this is one
Speaker 2: of those trailers that just spoils absolutely everything. Nothing is
Speaker 2: spared visually anyway.
Speaker 3: Warning that much like the trailer, we will get into
Speaker 3: some spoiler territory. But Diabolic has a lot of excellent
Speaker 3: twists all throughout the movie, so things will be revealed.
Speaker 3: If you want to go into it knowing nothing, you
Speaker 3: should watch it before you finish this episode.
Speaker 2: All right, let's have a listen.
Speaker 4: Me Diabolic a bank Robin Hood baffles the cops. He
Speaker 4: robs from the rich to give to the girls. Ask Eva, Oh,
Speaker 4: you shouldn't have done it. She can't get a good
Speaker 4: night's sleep unless she's covered with money. Master Sportscar Racer, Masters,
Speaker 4: skin Diver, Master, lover Master, Ask keeper Diabolic the absolute
Speaker 4: gold plated end, askba.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, if you want to go out and
Speaker 2: watch Diabolic or Danger Diabolic before proceeding through the rest
Speaker 2: of the episode, Well, luckily for you, it's widely available
Speaker 2: in all formats, including a nice twenty twenty Shout Factory
Speaker 2: release on Blu Ray. And if you really like the music,
Speaker 2: we'll get into the score in a bit. The score
Speaker 2: is available on vinyl from Audio Clarity Great Score.
Speaker 3: Should we start by talking about Mario Bava? How many
Speaker 3: Bava films did you say? We've done?
Speaker 2: This would be the third one. So we've watched what
Speaker 2: Black Sabbath, and we've watched Planet of the Vampires Planet
Speaker 2: the Vampires from sixty five.
Speaker 3: Black Sabbath was the anthology horror film that we did.
Speaker 3: Was it last October or maybe the October before it is?
Speaker 3: So that's one that's got like three segments, and one
Speaker 3: of them, the one that stuck with us the most,
Speaker 3: I think, is the one that has Boris Karloff as
Speaker 3: the verdu Lac, this kind of Serbian or Carpathian mountain
Speaker 3: vampire type creature, and it has all those beautiful shots
Speaker 3: where he's just like got purple light dripping off of
Speaker 3: his face as he comes in from the cold and
Speaker 3: looks menacingly at his HouseGuest.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And that was kind of a follow up
Speaker 2: to the nineteen sixty Black and White film he did
Speaker 2: Black Sunday, but it is, you know, in many ways.
Speaker 2: It's hard to imagine, you know, Mario Baba working in
Speaker 2: black and white, because when I think of Bob, I
Speaker 2: think of those rich colors, those rich gels, which he
Speaker 2: use with a master's stroke.
Speaker 3: Well, let me stand up for his black and white films.
Speaker 3: Baba is best once the colors get pumping and he
Speaker 3: can use yeah, the gel lights and all that, but
Speaker 3: his black and white films look very good. He did
Speaker 3: an early proto Jallo film that's kind of a murder
Speaker 3: mystery thriller set in Rome called The Evil Eye or
Speaker 3: The Girl who Knew Too Much. Their title, I think
Speaker 3: those are titles. Ones for the American cut and ones
Speaker 3: for the original cut, and that movie it's not the
Speaker 3: best of the ones I've seen because of some like
Speaker 3: it's not the best script he's ever worked with, but
Speaker 3: it's a fantastic looking film, even in black and white.
Speaker 3: He uses very high contrast black and white and uses
Speaker 3: makeup to a great effect. So there's always kind of
Speaker 3: eyeliner and shading of the actors' faces and stuff, and
Speaker 3: I assume a lot of that rests on makeup, though
Speaker 3: probably some of it is use of light and shadow
Speaker 3: as well. But that one looks great. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Black Sunday is amazing. I can't remember have you seen
Speaker 3: that or not.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen Black Sunday now.
Speaker 3: Oh that one. It is also in black and white.
Speaker 3: It is one of the most visually striking black and
Speaker 3: white films I have ever seen. Also uses a lot
Speaker 3: of high contrast.
Speaker 2: Well, anyway you slice it. Yeah. Mario Bava legendary Italian
Speaker 2: director with an unmistakable obsessive and at times just phantasmagorical
Speaker 2: emphasis on visual composition. Strong still from a Bava film
Speaker 2: is often just instantly identifiable. He lived nineteen fourteen through
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty and was the father of director Lomberto Bava.
Speaker 2: We've talked more about him on the previous episodes discussing
Speaker 2: his films, and you know, I have a feeling we'll
Speaker 2: come back for more Bava in the future.
Speaker 3: I just looked it up to check. I thought so, Lambertobava,
Speaker 3: his son is the director of Demons and Demons too.
Speaker 2: There you go. Well, one way or another, we'll come
Speaker 2: back to above at some point. All Right. We don't
Speaker 2: always mention the producer on a film, but this one's
Speaker 2: notable because this is Dino di Laurentis of nineteen nineteen
Speaker 2: through twenty ten. De larentis, legendary Italian and naturalized American
Speaker 2: film producer, really one of the biggest names of all
Speaker 2: time when it comes to production, both in Italian cinema
Speaker 2: but also international cinema. Started producing in the late forties
Speaker 2: and continued on till his death. Not everything he was
Speaker 2: involved in was golden, but he had a hand in
Speaker 2: the lavish, such lavish productions as sixty eight's Barberella, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties Flash Gordon, which I would I would argue those
Speaker 2: two films and Diabolic kind of are kind of a
Speaker 2: stylistic trilogy.
Speaker 3: I think you could absolutely say that, Yeah, there's there's
Speaker 3: a lot of uh, there's a lot of sinew in
Speaker 3: common there also, didn't he Wasn't he the driving force
Speaker 3: between hiring David Lynch to adapt to Dune in the eighties.
Speaker 2: I believe, so, yeah, he was involved in David Lynch's
Speaker 2: Dune Conan the Barbarian from eighty two, as well as
Speaker 2: the sequels and also the sort of sequel Red Sonia.
Speaker 2: He was a producer on Halloween two and three, so
Speaker 2: technically we have covered one of his productions before, multiple
Speaker 2: Stephen King adaptations, including Maximum Overdrive, and also all of
Speaker 2: the Hannibal movies except for the Silence of the Lambs.
Speaker 3: Oh, so he did all the best ones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know he did some. He was involved
Speaker 2: with some good stuff. I mean, Manhunter.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, and yeah, and I actually, you know, I
Speaker 3: have sort of a soft spot for what's it called
Speaker 3: the sequel to Silence of the Lambs that had Julian
Speaker 3: Moore as Hannial Is starling Hannibal. Oh, it's just called Hannibal. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: that one. I understand why critics didn't like it. It's got
Speaker 3: some flaws, but there there's a lot to love about
Speaker 3: that movie.
Speaker 2: If memory served. I'm just going off memory here, but
Speaker 2: I believe his original working title, Harris's working title for
Speaker 2: the novel was The Morbidity of the Soul, which I
Speaker 2: think was ultimately a more fitting title for both the
Speaker 2: book and the film A book. The book I kind
Speaker 2: of hated when it came out, but I have a
Speaker 2: feeling like if I went back and at least watched
Speaker 2: the movie again, I would find a lot to love
Speaker 2: about it, Like it is a very strange movie. It's
Speaker 2: very strange story overall, agreed, all right. The writing credits
Speaker 2: for Diabolic for Danger Diabolic here. Several names involved here.
Speaker 2: So this movie is based on the comic book of
Speaker 2: the same name by Angela Gusani and Luciana Gusani. Angela
Speaker 2: lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen eighty seven and Luciana
Speaker 2: lived nineteen twenty eight through two thousand and one. They
Speaker 2: were sisters. They also share story credits with Dino Mayori,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen eighty four, Andreona Barraco
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen oh seven through nineteen seventy six. Screenplay
Speaker 2: credits go to Bava Maori, Brian Dagas who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty five through twenty twenty, and Tutor Gates who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty through two thousand and seven.
Speaker 3: Okay, so we got a lot of writers going on here,
Speaker 3: and that can often be a bad sign for a film.
Speaker 3: But it turned out great here, And I guess with
Speaker 3: the Jusani sisters. They they were the creators of the
Speaker 3: character Diabolic, who was a comic book character before it
Speaker 3: was ever adapted to film.
Speaker 2: That's right. They were inspired to create a grown up
Speaker 2: comic book for essentially for Italian commuters, something that could
Speaker 2: be printed in in a small format you could easily,
Speaker 2: you know, stuff in your pocket and then pull out
Speaker 2: when you're on the train on your commute and read
Speaker 2: offering kind of a phantomas inspired crime adventure, that sort
Speaker 2: of thing. So it ended up being a huge success
Speaker 2: in Italy when it debuted in the early sixties, and
Speaker 2: then also enjoyed international appeal afterwards. This was a French
Speaker 2: Italian co production, so like, you know, the Italian popularity
Speaker 2: is obvious, but it would have also been popular in France.
Speaker 2: And I have to say they're still making Diabolic films.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen any of them, but I looked up
Speaker 2: some of the stills and yeah, it's still clearly Diabolic.
Speaker 2: It don't look like they're messing with like the basic
Speaker 2: visual chemistry of the thing.
Speaker 3: When I was in Italy in like two thousand and
Speaker 3: seven or so, I bought a Diabolic comic book off
Speaker 3: of a news stand. Ah, and I knew nothing about it.
Speaker 3: I just saw the art and I was like, that
Speaker 3: guy looks cool. I like the mask, yeah, or the
Speaker 3: kind of anti mask actually, because what Diabolic wears is
Speaker 3: like a It's like the Domino mask in negative. His
Speaker 3: entire head is covered in a skin tight mask except
Speaker 3: for the area around the eyes and the top of
Speaker 3: the nose, which is just his face is revealed.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, it's like the mask is so skin
Speaker 2: tight that it's just ridiculous. It's like a vacuum seal
Speaker 2: to his face.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I was reading a bit about Diabolic. So
Speaker 3: the one I bought was in Italian, so I can't read,
Speaker 3: but I I've been reading a bit about the character
Speaker 3: Diabolic in the comics, and from what I understand, he's
Speaker 3: originally imagined as a master thief who you know, can
Speaker 3: steal anything and is constantly foiling the police and their
Speaker 3: attempts to capture him. And he in a way is
Speaker 3: he can do anything. You know, he knows all the sciences,
Speaker 3: and he can make any kind of gadget, and he
Speaker 3: can solve any kind of problem. So he's he's one
Speaker 3: of these like superhumans, the kind of you know, pre
Speaker 3: Jason Bourne type person who can they can just do anything.
Speaker 3: But then also what I've read is that there's an
Speaker 3: arc and we've talked about similar arcs in films before
Speaker 3: on this show where in the early in the early
Speaker 3: Diabolic comics, he is closer to an evil alignment, like
Speaker 3: he does crime and he'll just kill people whoever gets
Speaker 3: in his way to steal the thing he wants to steal.
Speaker 3: From what I've read, there was kind of an arc
Speaker 3: where as the series of comics went on, Diabolics nature
Speaker 3: became a little more like chaotic good rather than i
Speaker 3: don't know, neutral evil or something that he became more
Speaker 3: of a Robin Hood figure who was stealing from people
Speaker 3: who were understood to be powerful and bad in some way.
Speaker 3: You know, he was stealing from other criminals and crime lords, rich, rich,
Speaker 3: dangerous people and often doing good along the way. But
Speaker 3: that was later on, and you know, there's a kind
Speaker 3: of there's a kind of gravity pushing anti hero characters
Speaker 3: in that direction. I think we were talking about this
Speaker 3: with the This is a hilarious comparison with Riddick with
Speaker 3: Vin Diesel. You know, you start off trying to make
Speaker 3: them look really hard and they're really close to the
Speaker 3: evil designation. You know that the strong emphasis on the
Speaker 3: anti and anti hero, and then over time there's this
Speaker 3: tendency to just make him be like, ah, they're actually
Speaker 3: pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, coming back to Hannibal, you see that with Hannibal
Speaker 2: electra to a certain extent, like bye bye Hannibal. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, he's he's awful. He's awful. He's he's a
Speaker 2: serial killer. It's it's it's clear he's a cannibal. But
Speaker 2: he's not as bad as Mason Viger. Mason Virger is
Speaker 2: presented as like is the ultimate evil in so many
Speaker 2: other ways.
Speaker 3: Right, so yeah, he mostly kills other killers in that one.
Speaker 2: All right, well let's talk who on earth do you
Speaker 2: get to play the enigmatic diabolic? Well you get John
Speaker 2: Phillip Law to do it.
Speaker 3: This is a truly inspired bit of casting. John Philip
Speaker 3: Law is perfect in this role.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like just his physicality. Uh he has this this
Speaker 2: wiriry kind of spidery body, very muscular, but but also yeah,
Speaker 2: kind of like thin, like he's like he's he's grown
Speaker 2: up in orbit or something, you know. And then also
Speaker 2: key is that you could you can find a lot
Speaker 2: of actors of the day and a lot of actors
Speaker 2: they're working in cinema right now to play diabolic that
Speaker 2: could maybe physically look like diabolic, but they've got to
Speaker 2: have the eyes you've got to have these just wide,
Speaker 2: kind of sinister, unblinking eyes that just register from across
Speaker 2: the room, but also in close up, and John Philip
Speaker 2: Law definitely has this look down.
Speaker 3: You have to be able to make that bird of
Speaker 3: prey v with your eyebrows as well.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, the bird of Prey is a good comparison here,
Speaker 2: because he is there is a he is dangerous. Danger
Speaker 2: diabolic is the title, and it is a warning. This
Speaker 2: is a dangerous man. And if he's looking in your direction,
Speaker 2: well watch out. So John Philip Law lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: seven through two thousand and eight American actor of stage, screen,
Speaker 2: and television. He did some early Italian cinema work which
Speaker 2: helped establish him there, while at the same time attracting
Speaker 2: the attention of Hollywood director Norman Jewison, who cast him
Speaker 2: in the nineteen sixty six film The Russians Are Coming.
Speaker 2: The Russians Are Coming. This led to a co star
Speaker 2: role in Auto Primager's Hurry Sundown from sixty seven. He's
Speaker 2: co star in that Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda had a
Speaker 2: big upcoming role in a movie produced by Dino di
Speaker 2: Laurentez Barbarella. So she said Hey, I met this guy.
Speaker 2: He's great. You should have him play this weird shirtless
Speaker 2: angel dude that it's going to be in Barbarella.
Speaker 3: I haven't It's been a long time since I've seen Barbarella.
Speaker 3: I don't remember anything about what he does except that
Speaker 3: he's shirtless and has wings.
Speaker 2: He doesn't. Yeah, he doesn't have a lot to do
Speaker 2: in that. I think if you're only exposure to John
Speaker 2: Philip Blauer that movie, you might think that he's more
Speaker 2: of say the rocky horror level of actor, like because
Speaker 2: he doesn't really do much there. But you know, this
Speaker 2: is a guy who did have stage credentials, like you know,
Speaker 2: he's definitely a experienced actor at this point. But there
Speaker 2: were delays in making Barbarella, and those delays allowed him
Speaker 2: to star in the spaghetti western Death Rides a Horse
Speaker 2: from sixty seven with Lee van Cleef in addition to
Speaker 2: this production Diabolic.
Speaker 3: Okay, so while he's working on developing his Bird of
Speaker 3: Prey face, he's also playing a gunslinger in this western movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, maybe being trained in the ways of eye
Speaker 2: forward acting by Lee van Cleef. I don't know. But anyway,
Speaker 2: after a Diabolic, his Hollywood career had a little more
Speaker 2: steam in it, but he had lasting international star appeal,
Speaker 2: especially in Europe. I think he also worked at least
Speaker 2: on a couple of films that were Taiwanese productions. Other
Speaker 2: films of note here, at least for US include seventy
Speaker 2: one's The Last Movie, Roger Corman's The Red Baron in
Speaker 2: seventy one. Seventy three is The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Ah.
Speaker 3: Notable for a lot of excellent ray hair house in
Speaker 3: special effects.
Speaker 2: Nineteen seventy six is The Cassandra Crossing. Seventy nine's Ring
Speaker 2: of Darkness. That's a Satanist movie that I have not seen,
Speaker 2: but it has a great poster. Nineteen eighty five's Night
Speaker 2: Train to Terror, nineteen eighty eight Space Mutiny, an MST
Speaker 2: three K favorite, and nineteen eighty eight Blood Delirium, which
Speaker 2: I haven't seen that one either, but I know it's
Speaker 2: recently been re released on Blu Ray and has a
Speaker 2: really eye catching a bit of poster art for it.
Speaker 3: John Philip Law plays the villain in Space Mutiny, if
Speaker 3: I recall correctly, Yeah, he's what klgon I think hal Gone,
Speaker 3: driving those go karts around and sneering to compare his
Speaker 3: two Mystery Science Theater entries. I'm gonna go ahead and
Speaker 3: say Diabolic is better than Space Mutiny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it's a cut above a hefty cutbuff.
Speaker 2: But Space Mutiny might be a better episode of the show.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Space Mutiny is a classic MST three K
Speaker 2: episode for sure. Great riffing in that ridiculous film, but
Speaker 2: still a lot of neat ideas in it that are
Speaker 2: not that don't really come to life, or an interesting
Speaker 2: cast as well.
Speaker 3: But Diabolic would be nowhere without the love of his life,
Speaker 3: Eva Kant, who is a character who apparently also comes
Speaker 3: from the comics and is his partner in crime and
Speaker 3: the love of his life in this movie, played by
Speaker 3: Marissa mel.
Speaker 2: That's right, Austrian actor who lived nineteen thirty nine through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two. She played a lot of fem fatale
Speaker 2: type characters. Her other big films include nineteen sixty nine's
Speaker 2: One on Top of the Other Luccio Folci thriller, in
Speaker 2: which she plays a dual role, seventy five's Mahogany, and
Speaker 2: also in Berto Lindsay's Seven blood Stained Orchids in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two. She also appeared in She appeared in Ring
Speaker 2: of Darkness with John Philip Law, and also she pops
Speaker 2: up in nineteen sixty six's Secret Agent Super Dragon, which
Speaker 2: was also featured on Mister Sen's Theater three thousand.
Speaker 3: She and John Philip Law have such great chemistry in
Speaker 3: this movie. We will explore more as we go on,
Speaker 3: but it's this has got to be one of my
Speaker 3: all time favorite screen couples.
Speaker 2: Now. Yeah, in the past, we've talked about occult power
Speaker 2: couples in various movies. This is I would say this
Speaker 2: is a super crime power couple. Yes, all right, But
Speaker 2: of course since they're doing supercrimes, they're running up against
Speaker 2: the law and they're also running up against other criminals.
Speaker 2: So let's hit the law first.
Speaker 3: Well, to fight super crime, you need a super cop,
Speaker 3: and too bad, because there aren't any in this movie. Instead,
Speaker 3: you get a very underwhelming cop.
Speaker 2: That's right. We have Inspector Jinko played by the French actor, producer,
Speaker 2: and film director Michel Piccoli, who lived nineteen twenty five
Speaker 2: through twenty twenty, whose other works include seventy four is
Speaker 2: The Phantom of Liberty, Jean lu Goddard's Passion from nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two, as well as his film Contempt from sixty three.
Speaker 2: He also pops up in the twenty twelve weird movie
Speaker 2: Holy Motors.
Speaker 3: Okay, so I think this guy, this guy worked in
Speaker 3: some prestige cinema as well. Yeah, but I didn't mean
Speaker 3: to sell short his performance by saying we have underwhelming police.
Speaker 3: That's how it's written. The police in this movie are
Speaker 3: just not up to the task of capturing Diabolic. In fact,
Speaker 3: they have to outsource their work to other super criminals
Speaker 3: in order to catch him. And so this this police
Speaker 3: inspector is very put upon and just he's out there
Speaker 3: having a hard time. And so the actor, the casting
Speaker 3: here is interesting. The actor reminds me sort of of
Speaker 3: Christopher Lee in a way, but without the gravitas. I
Speaker 3: was thinking kind of a kind of a stepped down,
Speaker 3: humiliated Christopher Lee, somewhat combined with the Canadian character actor
Speaker 3: Elias Koteis, who was in a bunch of different things.
Speaker 3: You've seen him all over the place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that makes sense. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: he's not a character like, he's not a twisted, corrupt
Speaker 2: cop up or anything like. He's you get the impression
Speaker 2: like he's a good guy trying to fight the good fight,
Speaker 2: but maybe in a system that is is that is
Speaker 2: is a little corrupt, though he himself is not corrupted. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a like you're rooting for him, but you don't
Speaker 2: really want him to win. But then you at the
Speaker 2: end of the day you realize, well, diabolic is a criminal,
Speaker 2: and I'm I guess he needs to be caught. Maybe
Speaker 2: if someone's gonna catch him, it needs to be this guy.
Speaker 3: No, he doesn't need to be caught. He needs to
Speaker 3: get away with all of it. I don't think anybody
Speaker 3: wants the police inspector to win in this movie. You
Speaker 3: just want to see him get foiled and foiled and
Speaker 3: foiled again and keep going damnity.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a similar case in Hannibal. Coming back
Speaker 2: to Hannibal, we have remembered the Italian investigator who is
Speaker 2: looking for Hannibal in John Carlo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, great actor,
Speaker 2: great role, and also I think one of the most
Speaker 2: interesting characters in that story. You're rooting for him to
Speaker 2: a certain extent because he seems like a good guy
Speaker 2: trying to do his job, and also he doesn't want
Speaker 2: his wife to be killed by the serial killer monster.
Speaker 2: But then ultimately you're also rooting for Hannibal to avoid capture.
Speaker 3: Things don't turn out well for him. Inspector Jinko does
Speaker 3: not have things go as bad for him as they
Speaker 3: go for gian Carlo in Hannibal.
Speaker 2: All right, So anyway, the inspector here is going to
Speaker 2: have to join forces with one of his enemies, a
Speaker 2: crime boss by the name of Ralph Valmont, played by Adolfocelli,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen eighty six Italian
Speaker 2: actor and director, best known internationally, I think for his
Speaker 2: turn as Bond villain Emilio Largo in nineteen sixty five's Thunderball,
Speaker 2: which keeps coming up on the show for some reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what we were just talking about this last week
Speaker 3: for some reason, weren't we.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think we were. I don't know. I
Speaker 2: think it's just a lot of people worked in Thunderball.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, So he played the villain in Thunderball, the
Speaker 3: guy he's got the really fast driving yacht. I think
Speaker 3: he's trying to steal a law a nuclear warhead that
Speaker 3: crashed on a plane or something. But he's the guy
Speaker 3: who puts sharks in his swimming Pool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this actor was. He was also in the
Speaker 2: Phantom of Liberty as well as nineteen sixty five, The
Speaker 2: Agony in the Ecstasy, seventy two's I in the Labyrinth,
Speaker 2: Gordon Hessler's Murders in the Room Orgue from seventy one,
Speaker 2: Franco Zepharelli's brother Son Sister Moon from seventy two, and
Speaker 2: we absolutely cannot forget nineteen sixty seven's Operation Kid Brother,
Speaker 2: in which he basically rehashes his role from Thunderball opposite
Speaker 2: the character doctor Neil Connery played by Neil Connery, Sean
Speaker 2: Connery's brother. It's a total cash grab, obviously, and also
Speaker 2: one that was riffed on MST three K. But Shelley
Speaker 2: great Italian actor with a clear knack for playing heavies
Speaker 2: and villains. He has just this great sneer, you know,
Speaker 2: this great sort of sort of stereotypical mob boss physicality.
Speaker 3: I think he had a cigar permanently implanted between his
Speaker 3: teeth surgically, so he would just gnaw without end for.
Speaker 2: The rest of that and his character in this is
Speaker 2: just a complete brute, like no sympathy for this character,
Speaker 2: like this is just a horrible crime boss he's rude
Speaker 2: to everyone. You know, no method is off the table
Speaker 2: for this guy. So this is exactly the sort of
Speaker 2: fella that we're cheering on Diabolic to steal, to steal from.
Speaker 3: Well, as we've said, it's always good to have a
Speaker 3: character like this in a movie with a criminal anti hero.
Speaker 3: Diabolic is a criminal, but we love him, we want
Speaker 3: him to win. It's good to be reminded what a
Speaker 3: really nasty, cigar knowing criminal is like. For contrast, that's
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: He has a lot of Hinchmen, and I'm not going
Speaker 2: to mention them all, but i am going to mention one.
Speaker 2: This is his Hinchman, Joe, played by Federico Boido, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen forty through twenty fourteen. He may stand out
Speaker 2: and he probably still out to you, Joe, because this
Speaker 2: Italian actor was also in nineteen sixty five's Planet of
Speaker 2: the Vampires playing Keir. He's in Roger Vadim Spirits of
Speaker 2: the Dead from sixty eight, and he was also in
Speaker 2: seventy two super Fly TNT. Just a good background stooge
Speaker 2: or hinchman, and he has a great hinchman look. And
Speaker 2: then finally, in terms of the actors, here we have
Speaker 2: the Minister of the Interior, and I think his title
Speaker 2: changes later on in the film. But this is played
Speaker 2: by Terry Thomas, who lived nineteen eleven through nineteen ninety. Yes,
Speaker 2: it's Terry hyphen Thomas. You might remember him as the
Speaker 2: dirty movie enthusiast from The Abominable Doctor Fibes, British comedian
Speaker 2: and character actor who excelled at playing bumbling fops. He
Speaker 2: was in a ton of pictures, but you might know
Speaker 2: him from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World from
Speaker 2: sixty three. He also voiced Sir Hiss in the Disney
Speaker 2: Robin Hood film from seventy three. Oh he just cake, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the snake. He has a great hissing voice in general,
Speaker 2: and yeah, he's fun in this. He just Terry Thomas
Speaker 2: is all over the place. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He has some really good scenes where he's giving press
Speaker 3: conferences appealing to people's patriotism while while clearly kind of
Speaker 3: squirming like a only a bug under a microscope?
Speaker 2: All right, real quick Production design credit goes to Carlo Rombaldi,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty five through twenty twelve. He's come
Speaker 2: up before on the show. He's involved in a number
Speaker 2: of great productions over the years, including Planet of the
Speaker 2: Vampires The Never Ending Story. He also had a hand
Speaker 2: in designing et so some wonderful credits assigned to this man,
Speaker 2: sometimes credited just as Rambaldi. And then the music for
Speaker 2: the film. I think we mentioned this already, but it's
Speaker 2: a score by and Neil Morricone, who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: eight through twenty twenty. You know, the huge name Italian composer,
Speaker 2: soundtrack master. He was responsible for many amazing scores. But
Speaker 2: the two films that we've talked about previously that had
Speaker 2: a Morricone score were probably not that great as far
Speaker 2: as examples go. They were nineteen seventy nine, so The Humanoid,
Speaker 2: which I think had its moments in nineteen eighty three's
Speaker 2: Treasure of the Four Crowns, which soundtrack wise was nothing special.
Speaker 3: Well, I think Diabolic breaks that streak. This is an
Speaker 3: excellent score. I love the theme music here, or the
Speaker 3: music that's used all throughout, has got these great uh
Speaker 3: uh these kinda there are there are themes that are
Speaker 3: tagged to specific types of emotional moments in the movie.
Speaker 3: So like anytime there's a big twist, there are these
Speaker 3: these voices that I they're the ones I was thinking
Speaker 3: of is going backwards up a slide? So these like
Speaker 3: choir of voices going.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, there's some there. I think some of
Speaker 2: this music has like a sitar kind of a vibe
Speaker 2: going on oh yeah that I really liked. There's also
Speaker 2: there are also some tracks that really lean into the groovy
Speaker 2: fun angle of the thing, which is totally totally valid,
Speaker 2: totally you know, on point for this picture. And then
Speaker 2: there are some great suspenseful moments as well. So I agree,
Speaker 2: I think this is a great score. It's certainly head
Speaker 2: and shoulders above the previous Morricone scores that we've talked
Speaker 2: about here. Oh and he also wrote the theme song
Speaker 2: deep Down that we hear I feel like two or
Speaker 2: three times in the film.
Speaker 3: Do you have a favorite Morcone score?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean, as I've mentioned before, I think, you know,
Speaker 2: the mission is amazing, you know, of course I love
Speaker 2: eighty two's John Carpenter is the thing, you know, and
Speaker 2: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly from sixty six
Speaker 2: is a classic as well. But so many, so many scores,
Speaker 2: and the Lord knows I haven't heard them all.
Speaker 3: Well, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's dive into the life and times of diabolic Reminder.
Speaker 3: Again, this movie is full of surprises, so if you
Speaker 3: want to see it without having any of those surprises spoiled,
Speaker 3: please watch it before we spoil them all here.
Speaker 2: Well, there's no surprise how this is going to start.
Speaker 2: This is a movie in which money or valuables are stolen,
Speaker 2: so you have to begin with some unstolen valuables.
Speaker 3: That's right, We're gonna start with the prologue heist the
Speaker 3: largest shipment of dollars in human history. So there we
Speaker 3: come up on like the sound of sirens, engines gunning.
Speaker 3: There was a massive procession of police motorcycles riding in
Speaker 3: double file through the gates of a big, austere looking
Speaker 3: building complex. It's all concrete and corners and walls, and
Speaker 3: there are snipers lining the roofs and guards with machine
Speaker 3: guns that are standing along the alleyways within, and we
Speaker 3: see a shipment of yellow bags being loaded into an
Speaker 3: armored transport vehicle. One thing to go ahead and mention
Speaker 3: here is that there is something really inspired about the
Speaker 3: braiding in and out of different color themes in different
Speaker 3: sequences in the movie. So, for example, everything with the police,
Speaker 3: and the opening sequence here has these flourishes of yellow
Speaker 3: and black, kind of like the stripes on a bee
Speaker 3: or on a yellow jacket, which could put you in
Speaker 3: mind of like hives and workers and mindless drones all
Speaker 3: carrying out orders, or it could put you in the
Speaker 3: mind of something that can sting or something that can
Speaker 3: harm you. So I don't know, maybe I'm reading too
Speaker 3: much into it, but I see a kind of genius
Speaker 3: in the way color is used throughout the whole film,
Speaker 3: like that there are color selections that resonate thematically with
Speaker 3: what's going on on screen, and kind of interesting and
Speaker 3: oblique indirect ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean Bob is a master of color,
Speaker 2: among other things.
Speaker 3: So we see several of the officials who are overseeing
Speaker 3: this truck transport having a private conversation. One of them
Speaker 3: loads up taped stacks of blank paper into one of
Speaker 3: the yellow bags and says, you know, I wonder how
Speaker 3: security would feel if they knew they were guarding waste
Speaker 3: paper instead of ten million dollars. That got me thinking
Speaker 3: how much would it cost to simulate ten million dollars
Speaker 3: with blank paper? Like how much does the paper you
Speaker 3: would use for that cost?
Speaker 2: I mean significantly less than ten million dollars. One would hope, like.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna spend five thousand dollars on paper to simulate
Speaker 3: ten million dollars.
Speaker 2: If it keeps you ten million dollars from being stolen
Speaker 2: by super criminal, then I guess it totally works out.
Speaker 3: Too bad, It's not going to work anyway. So secretly,
Speaker 3: you know, we got a trap being set up. This
Speaker 3: armored vehicle is full of bags of fake money, so
Speaker 3: somebody's trying to set up a trap. And then looking
Speaker 3: on from a window above is the decoy truck motors
Speaker 3: away we see one of the main characters of this movie.
Speaker 3: It is Inspector Jinko, the police detective who is involved
Speaker 3: in the planning of this operation, and he is stern lawful.
Speaker 3: He's driven to catch his mark, but there's all there's
Speaker 3: also something a little bit weary in the eyes and
Speaker 3: kind of pitiful about him, and you kind of wonder
Speaker 3: is he finding fulfillment filling up armored trucks with blank paper?
Speaker 2: Yeah, one suspects not so.
Speaker 3: Inspector Jenko is talking to an ally in the scheme
Speaker 3: who says to him, I've never seen such precautions. Just
Speaker 3: to get a shipment to the port, and Jinko says,
Speaker 3: the whole underworld worries me less than a single man.
Speaker 3: And then the other guy, he gets very quiet and
Speaker 3: he whispers the name Diabolic. So Jinko goes into the
Speaker 3: other room where the police are loading the real ten
Speaker 3: million dollars into different yellow bags which are being hidden
Speaker 3: inside a chauffeured luxury car. And this thing, wouldn't it
Speaker 3: be better to hide it inside a cheap car?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah, yeah, because they're kind of fixing
Speaker 2: it up, like like this is a a chauffeur ride
Speaker 2: with swells in it. So it seems like that might
Speaker 2: attract a super criminals at anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so. But they've got a whole system here.
Speaker 3: So they've got a bunch of tough police or government operatives,
Speaker 3: some kind of tough guys who are disguised as diplomats
Speaker 3: with top hats and cravats, very formal, and they're going
Speaker 3: to ride along with the money. So the convoy of
Speaker 3: cars carrying the real money, those cars depart the police
Speaker 3: station and they head toward the port. Well, we get
Speaker 3: a taste of one of the sweet musical themes. This
Speaker 3: is the one the kind of nervous sounding descending guitar riff.
Speaker 3: And also there's some kind of wind instrument warbling in
Speaker 3: the background, maybe a saxophone or something. I'm not sure
Speaker 3: what it is. Can we get a taste of that theme?
Speaker 3: JJ nice? And then following the convoy, we catch our
Speaker 3: first glimpse of what Jared Harris might call the Jaguar.
Speaker 3: I'm not a car guy, so I don't usually get
Speaker 3: excited about cars in movies or fancy sports cars in
Speaker 3: any context really, but for some reason this broke through
Speaker 3: to me. Diabolics jaguar is so cool.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, this is a cool looking car. And I believe
Speaker 2: he buys them by like the dozen, yeah, because they're
Speaker 2: just completely disposable to Diabolic. Diabolic is a very successful
Speaker 2: super criminal. He has super riches, so he's operating with
Speaker 2: a budget well beyond any other criminal you've seen in
Speaker 2: another film.
Speaker 3: I think this might be present in the original comics
Speaker 3: as well, but it's definitely here in the movie where
Speaker 3: Diabolic and Eva both have their own Jaguar. I think
Speaker 3: it's a Jaguar E type, and he drives a black
Speaker 3: Jaguar and she drives a white one.
Speaker 2: Oh nice.
Speaker 3: So the police and the money shipmen arrive at the port.
Speaker 3: I guess it's going to be loaded on a boat,
Speaker 3: and they're driving under the giant cranes and monstrous equipment
Speaker 3: used to unpack container ships. And as they pass underneath
Speaker 3: these rusting technological archways, suddenly another musical theme strikes. This
Speaker 3: is the eerie chorus of voices going backwards up the slide.
Speaker 3: I love it. It makes me want to run with scissors.
Speaker 3: Can we hear a sample of this? So we've got
Speaker 3: these evil fairy voices ringing out on the soundtrack. Suddenly
Speaker 3: the convoy of cars is enveloped in a haze of
Speaker 3: multicolored smoke. We've got yellow, green, purple smog. They can't
Speaker 3: see anything. Inspector Jinko and the others get out of
Speaker 3: their cars to investigate. But when we finally realize what's
Speaker 3: going on, the car stuffed with all the money is
Speaker 3: being hoisted away on a crane. It's up in the air,
Speaker 3: and then there is a silhouette barely visible through the smoke.
Speaker 3: It is a tall, dark, lean figure climbing on the
Speaker 3: rigging of the crane. And then there is a fast
Speaker 3: zoom or a fast pull focus. I'm not sure what
Speaker 3: the terminology is, but the camera just charges in for
Speaker 3: a close up on his face and it is danger diabolic.
Speaker 3: We get the title. It says danger diet Ballock. We
Speaker 3: see his eyes glowering out from the kind of butterfly
Speaker 3: shaped gap in his mask, and he laughs. So he's
Speaker 3: got a sinister laughter and he's beaten them again.
Speaker 2: Yes, I love the sinister laughter to laughter to him
Speaker 2: to remind you that, yes, there is a fun evil
Speaker 2: to diabolic. He is diabolical.
Speaker 3: Did you want to do a thing about his his costume,
Speaker 3: this like skin tight suit he wears.
Speaker 2: Uh, yeah, yeah, I think we talked a little bit
Speaker 2: of the mask, but yeah, the whole outfit is basically,
Speaker 2: I think supposed to be kind of like a catsuit.
Speaker 2: As it's realized in the film. It's maybe like a
Speaker 2: little less catsuit and more like leather pants and then
Speaker 2: some sort of a kind of a turtleneck type thing.
Speaker 2: It varies, but but yeah, he has this this this
Speaker 2: black outfit that he's like a ninja ninja with but
Speaker 2: with a mask that just clings to every detail of
Speaker 2: his face.
Speaker 3: I did like when you said it was like his
Speaker 3: face was vacuum packed.
Speaker 2: It is like you vacuum sealed the face. Yeah, a
Speaker 2: face mask into the face.
Speaker 3: Yeah, souv diabolic.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. And I do have to add, I don't
Speaker 2: know that we ever see him blink. I think, I mean,
Speaker 2: he's not always wide eyed. Sometimes he's looking at things
Speaker 2: or reading things, et cetera. But I didn't think to
Speaker 2: watch the whole movie with this in mind. But it's
Speaker 2: very possible that Bava does not include a single frame
Speaker 2: of John Philip Law blinking.
Speaker 3: I think you're right about that. So Diabolic removes the
Speaker 3: money from the car while the cops are shooting at him,
Speaker 3: by the way, but Diabolic doesn't care, not afraid of bullets.
Speaker 3: He throws the money down into a speedboat waiting below,
Speaker 3: dives into the water to escape, drives the speedboat away.
Speaker 3: We get credits, so the credit sequences, you know, we
Speaker 3: see the credits running while there's like a spinning glass
Speaker 3: colored painted glass thing. I don't know exactly what's going on.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a groovy sixties Italian party song playing.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. Yeah, this would be this would be the
Speaker 2: Marconi theme somewhat deep down.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, So he escapes with the ten million dollars.
Speaker 3: So he's in the boat and then he just transitions
Speaker 3: to now he's in a car. He's driving the Jaguar,
Speaker 3: and then there's a helicopter on his tail. Oh no,
Speaker 3: there's a machine gun fire coming from above. So what's
Speaker 3: he gonna do? Well, he kind of bobs and weaves.
Speaker 3: He eludes them for a while by like driving under
Speaker 3: some some greenery, some foliage, but they find him again,
Speaker 3: and then oh no, maybe it seems like they're going
Speaker 3: to catch him, but there's a brilliant twist. Diabolic drives
Speaker 3: into a tunnel where there is already waiting the love
Speaker 3: of his life, his perfect partner in crime, Evacan't she
Speaker 3: she's here with her white Jaguar while he was driving
Speaker 3: the black one, and they do a car swap. So
Speaker 3: he sends his car speeding in reverse back out of
Speaker 3: the tunnel and it go or maybe he sends it
Speaker 3: out of the front, I don't know. Anyway, his car
Speaker 3: goes out of the tunnel, goes speeding over a cliff,
Speaker 3: so the police see it crash and they think, oh,
Speaker 3: Diabolic has been killed. Meanwhile, he and Eva speed away
Speaker 3: to their secret hideout, probably furiously kissing the entire time.
Speaker 3: They do not respect the eyes on the road rule.
Speaker 2: There is a lot of screen time in this movie
Speaker 2: devoted to Diabolic and Eva making out. It's great. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's what you're here for.
Speaker 3: I think it's time to talk about Diabolic and Eva's
Speaker 3: secret layer.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, it is amazing. It's like the It's
Speaker 2: like the bat Cave, except on some sort of groovy
Speaker 2: cocktail of sixties hallucinogens.
Speaker 3: Yes, so maybe before we get inside, I want to
Speaker 3: mention the door that opens to let them inside. So
Speaker 3: it's supposed to look like a hidden trap door in
Speaker 3: the earth, you know, so like they are just like
Speaker 3: rocks and earth. And then it opens up, pops up
Speaker 3: like the top of a pedal bin to allow them
Speaker 3: to drive down the ramp, and then it closes behind them.
Speaker 3: And this is a in the movie by I think,
Speaker 3: a very simple force perspective effect. It's a you know,
Speaker 3: little things popping up in the foreground, A little miniature
Speaker 3: door in the foreground pops up, and then they drive
Speaker 3: the car behind it. In the background, it looks like
Speaker 3: they're driving down into the earth. And the movie is
Speaker 3: full of effects like this that seem relatively cheap and
Speaker 3: easy to accomplish, and they're kind of the word might
Speaker 3: be kind of stagy. Like you can tell they're obviously
Speaker 3: not real if you're looking out for it, but if
Speaker 3: you're not, I don't know, if you're not applying a
Speaker 3: critical type of attention to it, they just wash right
Speaker 3: over you. Like so they fit into the action and
Speaker 3: the aesthetic of the film perfectly. And I would not
Speaker 3: want these beautiful, cheap, simple little effects replaced with higher
Speaker 3: budget counterparts, like they actually build a giant you know,
Speaker 3: door in the ground and drive into it, or replace
Speaker 3: it with you know, really realistic looking CGI or any
Speaker 3: of that. There there's something about these cheap, simple effects
Speaker 3: that is so nice and feels so good. It's like
Speaker 3: a real sense of confidence and finesse and playfulness in
Speaker 3: Bova's filmmaking instincts here. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Plus, I think we've mentioned before with Baba, there's a
Speaker 2: structural completeness to everything, so that when you have a
Speaker 2: lower budget effect in place, or you know, or even
Speaker 2: something that is that is maybe like that the writing
Speaker 2: is a little sub bar et cetera, Like everything else
Speaker 2: is positioned just so that nothing feels out of place
Speaker 2: and I think that definitely applies here as well. Yeah,
Speaker 2: now once we get down into the headquarters themselves, oh
Speaker 2: my goodness, it's it's it really has a sci fi
Speaker 2: feel to it. It feels like this is something that
Speaker 2: was built by aliens that were primarily interested in futuristic
Speaker 2: romantic interior design.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a It's like a Bond villain layer
Speaker 3: in a way. It's a giant underground with all these
Speaker 3: elaborate structures and oh god, I wish I knew more
Speaker 3: of the terminology of style. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 3: kind of like a kind of a mod decor style.
Speaker 3: It's that cool, hip sixties looking decor with you know,
Speaker 3: weird choices about shapes and colors and all that. So
Speaker 3: it's just gorgeous. And so what we do next really
Speaker 3: is we spend some time at home with Eva and Diabolic.
Speaker 3: And I mean this in all seriousness. Diabolic and Eva
Speaker 3: are so sweet. I already said one of my favorite
Speaker 3: screen couples of all time. They are absolutely mad about
Speaker 3: each other. And really the whole elaborate crime plot is
Speaker 3: just about them being in love and trying to have fun,
Speaker 3: which in a way makes this kind of a perfect
Speaker 3: date movie. Couples should watch Danger Diabolic together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, because it is I mean, it is a
Speaker 2: movie about the power of their love and how their
Speaker 2: love can be is tested but cannot be overcome by
Speaker 2: these other forces in the world. And then on top
Speaker 2: of that though, it's just extremely groovy. It's outrageous, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's never too serious, you know, these two never
Speaker 2: getting into arguments or squabbles about anything. And yeah, we
Speaker 2: spend just a lot of time with them here at
Speaker 2: home in their super sexy sci fi luxury underground pad
Speaker 2: that feels like it must have been I don't know,
Speaker 2: built by again ancient aliens underneath the surface of another planet.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was built by the aliens from two thousand
Speaker 3: and one of Space Odyssey and Buckminster Fuller and the
Speaker 3: and I don't know the members of the who like
Speaker 3: it's how would you like their bedroom and their bathroom?
Speaker 3: Their bedroom, they have a giant like ring shaped bed
Speaker 3: that rotates on a motor, and then next to it,
Speaker 3: they've got these things that are just backed polygons. I
Speaker 3: don't even know what to call them. I don't think
Speaker 3: they're functional. They don't look like shelves. They're just polygons
Speaker 3: that are lit from behind, so they kind of glow
Speaker 3: with the soft white through all their corners. And then
Speaker 3: in their bathroom they have his and hers glass shower
Speaker 3: enclosures with planters full of living plants in the showers.
Speaker 3: That's a choice I've never seen before, but I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also each shower has like a blurry circle
Speaker 2: bit that covers them up from the camera's view, though
Speaker 2: it's certainly in Eva's case, like only barely.
Speaker 3: You can just tell that. As much as these two
Speaker 3: love to go out and get into dangerous adventures together,
Speaker 3: they also love chilling at home. You know, they have
Speaker 3: a great time, like putting on a movie or something. Well,
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's nineteen sixty eight. I don't know
Speaker 3: about home video yet, but they, you know, they watch
Speaker 3: the news on TV and make cracks about how we're
Speaker 3: going to steal that necklace.
Speaker 2: So we spend a long time with them, but then
Speaker 2: we have to cut out. We have to see what's
Speaker 2: going on in the rest of the world.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, time to check in with the squares. No,
Speaker 3: we got consequences for the cops. Inspector Jenko is in
Speaker 3: trouble with Terry Thomas, who is playing some kind of
Speaker 3: bureaucrat who's been deeply embarrassed by all of the crime
Speaker 3: and the theft of the ten million. He says, it's
Speaker 3: absurd that one man can make a laughing stock of
Speaker 3: the entire police force, and Terry Thomas says, you know, obviously,
Speaker 3: if you think about it, logically, Diabolic's next move is
Speaker 3: going to be to find a way to get the
Speaker 3: money out of the country, So maybe we can catch
Speaker 3: him that way. Inspector Jenko says, logical, sir, but not
Speaker 3: helpful in this situation. Diabolic, he plays by his own rules.
Speaker 3: He will find some other way to put that money
Speaker 3: to use, and then cut straight to Diabolic and Eva
Speaker 3: using the money as a bed, as sort of a
Speaker 3: love nest.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, it turns out presumably they stole all
Speaker 2: that money just so they could make love on it. Yes,
Speaker 2: because again, yeah, it's that you can't you can't approach
Speaker 2: Diabolic like any other criminal. His motives are not the same.
Speaker 2: He is not like the rest of them. But it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it completely is a great sequence, very tastefully done, and
Speaker 2: just completely outrageous. So again, something that elevates this film
Speaker 2: into the sort of the flash Gordon Barbarella realm of
Speaker 2: just you know, outrageous cinema.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also, there's a very funny scene with a press
Speaker 3: conference where Terry Thomas comes out to announce that in
Speaker 3: order to crush the current wave of crime sweeping the country,
Speaker 3: the government has mercifully restored the death penalty. And at
Speaker 3: this press conference, Diabolic and Eva show up in hilarious disguises.
Speaker 3: Diabolic looks like that will Will Ferrell character on SNL
Speaker 3: where he had the tiny, the tic tac sized cell phone.
Speaker 2: Oh I don't remember this character.
Speaker 3: Well that's what Diabolic looks like. Here. He's got these
Speaker 3: square sunglasses and a turtleneck under a blazer. He looks great.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They do a lot of this, showing up really
Speaker 2: close to the heat in disguise as the most fashionable
Speaker 2: people present.
Speaker 3: And nobody blinks an eye but he Diabolic decides to
Speaker 3: humiliate Terry Thomas and Inspector Jinko by by releasing laughing
Speaker 3: gas in the room while the press conference is going on.
Speaker 3: He pretends, I guess to be a reporter and he's
Speaker 3: doing like, uh, you know, flashbowl camera photography and When
Speaker 3: the flash bowl goes off, it releases a kind of
Speaker 3: puff of stuff, and it turns out that is laughing gas,
Speaker 3: and everybody starts laughing, except, of course, Diabolic and Eva,
Speaker 3: who took antidote pills before they did it.
Speaker 2: They have everything figured out.
Speaker 3: Terry Thomas says, he's certainly not going to make a
Speaker 3: fool of me. Then I can't stop laughing.
Speaker 2: Yes, he looks. It looks very foolish. Great Terry Thomas sequence.
Speaker 3: All right, So after this, Inspector Jinco he's got to
Speaker 3: come up with a plan to stop Diabolic once and
Speaker 3: for all. So here the movie introduces the character Valmont.
Speaker 3: We learned about him through newspaper headlines linking him to
Speaker 3: a bunch of crimes, jim theft, drug dealing, all that stuff,
Speaker 3: and he seems to be kind of the ultimate crime kingpin.
Speaker 3: And now Inspector Jinco is looking for him. Maybe that's
Speaker 3: maybe somehow he can use Valmont to get to Diabolic.
Speaker 3: And here we get you know, somebody comes to Jenko
Speaker 3: and says, Inspector you know, we have a lead at
Speaker 3: one of Valmont's nightclubs. So here we're going to go
Speaker 3: see a swinging switched on sixties nightclub. I guess the
Speaker 3: movie isn't set in Italy, but I see some Italian
Speaker 3: sensibilities in how this this hippie night club is realized.
Speaker 2: As best I can tell, this movie takes place in
Speaker 2: the country of Europe, Like it's never really clear, and
Speaker 2: I guess you're not supposed to think too long and
Speaker 2: hard about it. But yeah, the nightclub sequence is amazing.
Speaker 2: We got go go dancers, medieval troubadours, blurry lighting, dope,
Speaker 2: smoke gels, just an overall miasthma of just hippie grooviness
Speaker 2: all through the Mario Bava lens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the club seems to be part chemistry lab because
Speaker 3: there are glass beakers and tubes everywhere, but also a
Speaker 3: little bit secret Commonwealth themed, like there's over on in Titanya.
Speaker 3: They're dancing in the corner, and this is a club
Speaker 3: where if you're not careful and elf is going to
Speaker 3: make your cows sick. So we see various elfin and
Speaker 3: fairy looking people around. But then also there is a
Speaker 3: pirate playing guitar for good measure.
Speaker 2: Will let you. Lady chills out on a bed wearing flowers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think she's sort of one of the
Speaker 3: elf or fairy themed people. Like she's got the garlands
Speaker 3: of leaves and flowers all around her. She seems like
Speaker 3: a hidden folk of the forest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: But also the guy. So there's like loud music playing
Speaker 3: at the club because it's a dance club, you know,
Speaker 3: it's like deafening. And this guy's sitting here playing an
Speaker 3: acoustic guitar in a pirate hat. He can't hear himself
Speaker 3: play in this Why is he playing?
Speaker 2: You know, I guess it doesn't mean you can't noodle
Speaker 2: a little bit. He's probably he's probably on the wacky weed.
Speaker 3: That's true. Also, this place has xylophone stairs. I've never
Speaker 3: seen xylophone stairs in reality before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is great. And then all we get the
Speaker 2: greatest blunt passing scene in the history of cinema as well.
Speaker 3: Within the rotation is a guy who looks like William H. Macy.
Speaker 3: But then also a sequence of people who look like
Speaker 3: Mozart's Bad News Vienna Party friends in Amadaeus.
Speaker 2: So anyway, this is Valmont's club. But you know, we
Speaker 2: don't get a sense that the club is bad. The
Speaker 2: club seems hip and groovy and so forth. But uh
Speaker 2: uh oh, something's about to happen.
Speaker 3: Here come the fizz. I think there's some drugs and
Speaker 3: this club. In fact, I know there are because we
Speaker 3: saw that blunt rotation. So there is a police rate
Speaker 3: on the club and this this gets the attention of Valmont,
Speaker 3: who again this is the largo from Thunderball Adolfocelli. So
Speaker 3: Valmont is finding out that the police are onto him
Speaker 3: and he does not like that. So we go see
Speaker 3: Valmont on his boat and as we said before, you
Speaker 3: Valmont is just he's the worst. You know, he makes
Speaker 3: Diabolic look great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's just a complete pick.
Speaker 3: So Valmont calls up Inspector Jinko with a proposal. In
Speaker 3: exchange for leniency in his own police troubles, Valmont offers
Speaker 3: to help Jinko catch Diabolic. After all, it takes a
Speaker 3: thief to catch a thief, and Jinko is intrigued. So
Speaker 3: we get a scene on Valmont's airplane where he's meeting
Speaker 3: with the other members of his criminal syndicate and they're
Speaker 3: going to vote on whether to proceed with the plan
Speaker 3: to catch Diabolic, and you can tell there's there's some descent.
Speaker 3: There are those who vote against the plan because you
Speaker 3: don't want to mess with diabolic That's right.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a dangerous guy. Not everyone wants
Speaker 2: to wants to toy with him. You know, let's let it,
Speaker 2: let him do his thing. We just hope he ignores
Speaker 2: our stuff.
Speaker 3: So several members of the criminal sindicit vote against the plan,
Speaker 3: and Valmont responds by shooting them, and he also he shoots.
Speaker 3: He accidentally shoots a hole in the fuselage of the plane,
Speaker 3: which one of his henchmen plugs with chewing gum.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is Joe, I believe cool. Joe is henchman.
Speaker 3: Yes, Valmont. Also he tries to shoot one guy, but
Speaker 3: I think he misses, and then the guy is begging
Speaker 3: for mercy. He's like, please, please, don't shoot, and Valmont says,
Speaker 3: since you said please, I won't shoot. So instead he
Speaker 3: presses a button on his desk which opens a trap
Speaker 3: door beneath the guy's feet and drops him out of
Speaker 3: the airplane. Ten out of ten bond villain trapdoor deployment.
Speaker 3: Here love a villain with a trap door. Absolutely, that's
Speaker 3: key villain infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's going to come. It's going to be
Speaker 2: important later on as well.
Speaker 3: That's right, So, so you know, now what's going on
Speaker 3: is we've got a dangerous and ruthless collection of violent
Speaker 3: crime bosses who are working together under Valmont's command to
Speaker 3: capture Diabolic and turn him over to the police. So
Speaker 3: on to the next act. We gotta have another heist.
Speaker 3: It's been a bit since we had a heist. So
Speaker 3: Diabolic and Eva are watching TV together and he's like, oh, hey,
Speaker 3: your birthday is coming up. What do you want for
Speaker 3: your birthday? And right then we see a news report
Speaker 3: there are visiting diplomats i think from the UK coming
Speaker 3: to Europe wherever this is uh and one of them
Speaker 3: is going to be wearing the world famous Axon emerald necklace.
Speaker 3: And if this is a necklace with eleven totally unique
Speaker 3: giant emeralds in it, of the most valuable pieces of
Speaker 3: jewelry in the world, and they'll be staying at Saint
Speaker 3: just Castle. So the news report is like, here's where
Speaker 3: you can find them if you would like to steal
Speaker 3: these emeralds, and Ava she sees them. She's like, ooh,
Speaker 3: those emeralds, and you can just see Diabolic he squints.
Speaker 3: He's he's working it out already in his mind.
Speaker 2: Again. He will steal anything for love, and he will
Speaker 2: absolutely steal that.
Speaker 3: That's right. So uh, Next we see Diabolic and Eva
Speaker 3: doing some kind of role play outside the castle. He
Speaker 3: like drives up in a car. She apparently has disguised
Speaker 3: herself as a sex worker and done some recon inside
Speaker 3: the castle and it's full, she reports, Okay, here's what
Speaker 3: she figured out. Is full of police. They're disguised as waiters,
Speaker 3: many of them wearing wigs. Uh. There are guards outside
Speaker 3: with rifles. There are CCTV cameras everywhere. Looks basically impossible,
Speaker 3: but not for Diabolic.
Speaker 2: Yep. They just love the challenge. They're in it for
Speaker 2: the fun. They're they're they're in they enjoy there.
Speaker 3: Were that's right, and he oh. She says, I didn't
Speaker 3: see Inspector Jenko there, And he says, if you didn't
Speaker 3: see him, that means he's there.
Speaker 2: The reverse is also true. I guess, I guess so.
Speaker 3: But so oh, it's not just the police who were
Speaker 3: involved in this trap. Valmont has recruited women who saw
Speaker 3: Eva snooping around snooping around the castle, and he knows
Speaker 3: that this woman they saw must be the infamous Eva
Speaker 3: can't partner in crime to diabolic himself. He figures that out,
Speaker 3: so he's like, if we can find her, we can
Speaker 3: get to him. So he wants the women who saw
Speaker 3: her to describe her, and then we get this bizarre looking,
Speaker 3: amazing animated scene where they're doing like a forensic reconstruction
Speaker 3: of Eva's face with the help of this computer.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't remember this sequence from the MST three
Speaker 2: K episode, which I hadn't seen in a very long
Speaker 2: time anyway, so I don't know if it was in
Speaker 2: there or it was cut. I was when they started
Speaker 2: rolling this out, I'm like, Okay, we're going to have
Speaker 2: a forensic sketch sequence and whatever. I mean, maybe I'll
Speaker 2: check my notes, but no, it's amazing. It's like whoever,
Speaker 2: I don't know whose decision this was and and everything,
Speaker 2: but like they this is this is great. This is
Speaker 2: a great use of what would otherwise be a throwaway sequence.
Speaker 3: Totally fast cuts, mixing and matching different facial elements. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like rapidly clicking the randomized button on a
Speaker 3: video game character creator mm hmm.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But then finally they zero in on a drawing of
Speaker 3: Eva that's her and Valmont's the next part. I've seen
Speaker 3: this couple of times recently, and I still never caught
Speaker 3: exactly how he does this. Valmont manages to somehow get
Speaker 3: in contact with Eva's doctor, and he's going to use
Speaker 3: Eva's doctor to find Eva and then use Eva to
Speaker 3: catch diabolic Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what the connection here is. Like there's
Speaker 2: did he go to every doctor in and said, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm looking for this lady. Have you seen this lady?
Speaker 2: You're a doctor, right, you see, lady patience. I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's not explained. There's a lot that's not explained in
Speaker 2: this movie, but most of it you don't really pause to.
Speaker 3: Question, Yeah, don't worry about it, and yeah, and.
Speaker 2: I guess this, you might as well just roll with it.
Speaker 2: But somehow he's able to make some connection and he
Speaker 2: starts knocking on who turns out to a guy who
Speaker 2: turns out to be her doctor, and ask hey, have
Speaker 2: you seen this lady?
Speaker 3: He tries to cover for her. He tries to lie
Speaker 3: and say no, I don't know her, but that'll come
Speaker 3: back to bite him.
Speaker 2: I think maybe the idea is he's a doctor who
Speaker 2: only works with criminals. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Oh, that might be it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but even then this is a tenuous connection at best.
Speaker 3: Okay, Meanwhile, the heist has got to go on, so
Speaker 3: we got to check back in with Diabolic and Eva
Speaker 3: as there. You know, he's gonna Diabolic is going to
Speaker 3: be trying to get into the Just Castle. And there
Speaker 3: was a cool moment I don't know if you caught this,
Speaker 3: where there's like a juxtaposition of showing Eva in the
Speaker 3: car with her eyes reflected in the rear view mirror,
Speaker 3: and there's like all this dark shadowy stuff outside of
Speaker 3: the windshield ahead of her, and it's kind of framing
Speaker 3: her eyes the same way that Diabolic's suit frames his eyes,
Speaker 3: and then it like cuts between them. So I thought
Speaker 3: that was cool.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was cool. And then also, I mean
Speaker 2: it also bears mentioning that Mario Bava. You know, you're
Speaker 2: in a Mario Bava film when you have a lot
Speaker 2: of these shots of things seen through other portals or windows,
Speaker 2: a lot of shots of things seen in reflection. He
Speaker 2: really makes great use of these effects.
Speaker 3: All right, So Diabolic swims up to the shore outside
Speaker 3: the castle and he goes onto the beach. He takes
Speaker 3: out some of the guards and here maybe we should
Speaker 3: discuss the morality of Diabolic in this movie, because Diabolic
Speaker 3: does kill people who are not necessarily like criminals or
Speaker 3: people trying to kill him. This is a harder edged
Speaker 3: criminal anti hero than we might be used to. So
Speaker 3: he throws knives into guard's throats to and kills them
Speaker 3: just to get past them, to get to the neck
Speaker 3: u And in this scene, with like the framing and
Speaker 3: the costume, he looks absolutely evil, and clearly he is
Speaker 3: supposed to. So I don't know, I feel like the
Speaker 3: tendency now for anti heroes is to is to have
Speaker 3: them be less anti, you know, to be they wouldn't
Speaker 3: kill somebody who wasn't in the game.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they wouldn't shoot first, right, that's yeah.
Speaker 3: But he does. He does. He's just like, these are
Speaker 3: just people in his way and he's throwing throwing knives
Speaker 3: into their necks.
Speaker 2: Was like your observation earlier. Yeah, he's a bird of prey.
Speaker 2: He is dangerous. He's a loner though outside of his
Speaker 2: life mate, you know, no one else really means anything to.
Speaker 3: Him, That's right. So this Diabolic is not Robinhood yet.
Speaker 2: Right, And he'll only kind of later on the film,
Speaker 2: he may get into some Robinhood territory, but not because
Speaker 2: he really just wants to help everybody. There are other
Speaker 2: motives and situations that lead to that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe he wants to help people. Maybe he just
Speaker 3: wants to get revenge.
Speaker 2: Oh but this is when we get limited edition white
Speaker 2: Diabolic because he's in the black suit.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Do you think that was supposed to be functional?
Speaker 3: Like he blends in better with the wall that he's
Speaker 3: going to be climbing in the white suit.
Speaker 2: I think that's the idea. But also, of course it's
Speaker 2: just visually appealing. It's like it's just snazzy.
Speaker 3: Okay, here we are at the heist. He comes to
Speaker 3: the tower where the diplomats are staying at the top
Speaker 3: and the emeralds are on the table in their room.
Speaker 3: But the emeralds have been placed in a very special location.
Speaker 3: Inspector Jinko is in there and he's going he plays
Speaker 3: them right in front of a police CCTV camera. So
Speaker 3: how is Diabolic going to get them? Well, first, how's
Speaker 3: he going to get up that wall?
Speaker 2: Well, he pulls out some suction cup devices. We were
Speaker 2: just talking about this in our our episodes on Stickiness.
Speaker 2: He has these suction cup things that are you hold
Speaker 2: with your hands, and they allow him to stick to stone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know about that. I think the stone
Speaker 3: looks a little too rough for a suction cup to work.
Speaker 2: But within the context of the film, it works, and
Speaker 2: he's able to scale that the sheer surface of that tower.
Speaker 3: He's diabolic, he can do anything. So yes, the suction
Speaker 3: cups work. He climbs the tower. He goes in through
Speaker 3: the window. He hears the diplomats argue is the it's
Speaker 3: the husband and wife who are the diplomats and they're
Speaker 3: in the bedroom arguing. The old guy says like, have
Speaker 3: you arranged my toy soldiers again? Where is my general
Speaker 3: under the bed? And she goes, you can play with
Speaker 3: your general in the morning.
Speaker 2: I don't know why he brought his minis on a trip.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's always tempting, but you gotta you gotta,
Speaker 2: you gotta scale back.
Speaker 3: So Diabolic goes into the room with the emeralds. But
Speaker 3: he realizes that the necklace is being monitored by CCTV camera,
Speaker 3: So how's he gonna get him? Obviously he's going to
Speaker 3: be seen if he goes to get it. What's he
Speaker 3: gonna do photo trickery.
Speaker 2: Sneak up there, get take a polaroid, and then use
Speaker 2: a little doudad to position the polaroid in front of
Speaker 2: the camera. I feel like this is this is a
Speaker 2: scheme that is been utilized in some other films as well.
Speaker 2: I just can't remember which ones off hand.
Speaker 3: Oh, they do the same thing in all the modern
Speaker 3: Mission impossible movies. Oh they Yeah, They'll put like a video,
Speaker 3: a video playback or a picture or something in front
Speaker 3: of a of a security camera and it works every time.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: So Diabolic gets the necklace, but then soon after he
Speaker 3: gets it, the police are onto him and a chase
Speaker 3: breaks out. He is pursued up the spiraling stairwell to
Speaker 3: the roof of the castle and then he gets there.
Speaker 3: He's cornered. The police are they'll be there any second.
Speaker 3: He's on the roof. What's he gonna do? How will
Speaker 3: he escape? And then suddenly we see Diabolic lock eyes
Speaker 3: on a catapult. For a moment, I was like what,
Speaker 3: And so the police rush up on a rush up
Speaker 3: onto the roof. We see the catapult fling out something
Speaker 3: that looks like Diabolic and they shoot at it and
Speaker 3: they They're like, I think I got him. But then
Speaker 3: as they as they leave the roof, we get a
Speaker 3: catapult fake out where a naked Diabolic now peaks up
Speaker 3: from behind the catapult and he apparently launched his limited
Speaker 3: edition white Diabolic catsuit by itself in the catapult and
Speaker 3: they just shot his clothes.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, perfect, perfect master of strategy.
Speaker 3: So Diabolic and Eva escape by car. I guess they
Speaker 3: got a new black Jaguar after they blew up the
Speaker 3: last one.
Speaker 2: Oh they have, Yeah, they have, Like they buy him
Speaker 2: by the dozen. We saw the whole rows of them
Speaker 2: in the Layer.
Speaker 3: The vibes in this movie and in this scene are
Speaker 3: so good. The feeling of freedom and fun as they
Speaker 3: are escaping with the emerald necklace in the scene, and
Speaker 3: as they like put up a this like mirror across
Speaker 3: the roadway to fool the cars that are chasing them.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, all the wonderful technology they utilize, and yeah,
Speaker 2: the youthful rebellion energy of this film is really strong, because, yeah,
Speaker 2: certainly there's the hippie vibe and all of the late sixties,
Speaker 2: but also at heart we have a pair of young lovers,
Speaker 2: our power couple here, for whom all this crime is
Speaker 2: mere for play, for whom money is a mere tool
Speaker 2: in their romance, while at the same time money is
Speaker 2: just the all consuming and all corrupting power of the
Speaker 2: elder authorities on both sides of the law. So their enemies,
Speaker 2: law and crime, now united and maybe not that dissimilar,
Speaker 2: are coming after their love. But I think we'll find
Speaker 2: that they underestimate the power of their love. So very
Speaker 2: strong our love versus the world vibes in this movie.
Speaker 3: I think that's an excellent, correct and profound interpretation. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's exactly what's going on. So the only real threat
Speaker 3: to Diabolic and Eva is a threat to their integrity
Speaker 3: as a couple. So here we get the next attack.
Speaker 3: The next act, Eva is kidnapped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole doctor's angle thing pays off, and he
Speaker 2: shows up with his goons. They murder the doctor and
Speaker 2: they kidnap Eva.
Speaker 3: That's right of Valmont personally shows up at the doctor's
Speaker 3: office to kill the doctor by shooting him with a
Speaker 3: machine gun in an ex pattern, and I think he says,
Speaker 3: like I told you, I would mark your name off
Speaker 3: of the human register. And so, of course, now Eva's
Speaker 3: been kidnapped, Diabolic will do anything to save her. So
Speaker 3: he calls Valmont. Apparently Valmont placed like an ad in
Speaker 3: the classifieds trying to sell her jaguar, her jaguar, and
Speaker 3: that is how Diabolic knows who to contact. He calls
Speaker 3: him up, he says, what do you want? And Valmont says,
Speaker 3: I want ten million dollars plus an emerald necklace, and
Speaker 3: so Diabolic says, I will pay. So Valmont lures Diabolic
Speaker 3: onto his private airplane, the one, the one with the
Speaker 3: trapdoor in the floor that will launch you out of
Speaker 3: the fuselage. So a Diabolic brings the money, he brings
Speaker 3: the necklace. But what happens here? We get another great reversal?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because you know, Valmont could shoot him right
Speaker 2: there on the plane, right he could drop him out
Speaker 2: out of that trap door, and it looks like that's
Speaker 2: where it's going. But then no, I mean, he's Valmont's
Speaker 2: too cruel and evil for this. He has some other
Speaker 2: kind of scheme in mind, it would seem. But on
Speaker 2: the other level, we also know he's working with the police.
Speaker 2: He this whole thing, this whole uh, this whole cooperation
Speaker 2: is about turning Diabolic over alive to law enforcement. So
Speaker 2: He's like, no, if you want Eva, you need to
Speaker 2: take this parachute and jump out of the trap door.
Speaker 2: He opens the trap door, but then oh crap, Diabolic
Speaker 2: has he has the the parachute on and he grabs
Speaker 2: Valmont and then pulls him with him as they both
Speaker 2: fall out of the airplane, and then as they're plummeting,
Speaker 2: the airplane explodes above them.
Speaker 3: That's right, so Diabolic says, I brought a magnetic I
Speaker 3: guess a bomb with him to blow up the airplane.
Speaker 3: And now he's got Valmont. He's like interrogating Valmont as
Speaker 3: they're plummeting through the air about like you know, who's
Speaker 3: are the police down there? And he admits, yes, they are.
Speaker 3: Is Eva down there? And he says, yes, is. So
Speaker 3: they parachute into this trap and Diabolic does manage to
Speaker 3: rescue Eva, but the police are waiting for him, so
Speaker 3: he sends Eva off on her own to escape while
Speaker 3: he draws the fire of the police, and then there's
Speaker 3: a big shootout the police and the Valmont, the Valmont,
Speaker 3: the police and Valmont on one side, Diabolic on the other.
Speaker 3: They've got him surrounded and at one point Diabolic seems
Speaker 3: out of Ammo or something maybe, but he has an idea.
Speaker 3: You see him look at like the clip on his
Speaker 3: machine gun, and then the voices going backwards up the
Speaker 3: slide play and ooh, you know, the hair is raised
Speaker 3: on the back of my neck. Something good's gonna happen.
Speaker 3: Diabolic pops out and he shoots Valmont dead, and then
Speaker 3: you see him take some kind of pill. So the
Speaker 3: police come and find him, and Diabolic himself appears to
Speaker 3: be dead when they find him, and we see Inspector
Speaker 3: Jenko later he's talking to a colleague of his and
Speaker 3: saying in a way it says, though he's become part
Speaker 3: of my life. I can't believe he's really dead. And
Speaker 3: you know what, Inspector, I can't believe it either. I
Speaker 3: don't think he is.
Speaker 2: We thought he was dead at least one other time
Speaker 2: in the film, and it seems like it's probably something
Speaker 2: that happens every time he pulls.
Speaker 3: Off high that's right. So we later we're in the
Speaker 3: morgue and we see doctors preparing diabolics body for an autopsy,
Speaker 3: but just as the scalpel is about to go in,
Speaker 3: his eyes pop open. Oh is still alive, and one
Speaker 3: of the doctors is Eva in disguise, and we get
Speaker 3: a whole explanation. Diabolic says he used a pill that
Speaker 3: was I think originally used by Tibetan lamas to enter
Speaker 3: a state of apparent death. And he says, if you
Speaker 3: let it go for twenty four hours without the antidote,
Speaker 3: the death becomes permanent and real. But Eva delivered the
Speaker 3: antidote just in time to save him. She got there
Speaker 3: just like with seconds to spare.
Speaker 2: They like to play it close to the edge.
Speaker 3: Oh, but then he gets back on the table and
Speaker 3: they cover him up with the cloth and she wheels
Speaker 3: him out through the crowd of police and reporters, which
Speaker 3: was hilarious. Then if that wasn't a good enough twist,
Speaker 3: second twist, which is just amazing. So there's a moment
Speaker 3: where the police are talking about Valmont's death as well.
Speaker 3: They're like, oh, we got the reports from his autopsy.
Speaker 3: Turns out he died of eleven gunshot wounds. And then
Speaker 3: Inspector Jenko, you see, if we get like his inner monologue,
Speaker 3: he says, eleven bullets, eleven emeralds. There were eleven emeralds
Speaker 3: on the necklace, and then cut to Diabolic already at
Speaker 3: the morgue, pretending to be a relative of Valmont's, talking
Speaker 3: to the funeral director, saying like he was, he was
Speaker 3: really a good boy Valmont's. He's there to collect Valmont's ashes,
Speaker 3: which now contain the emeralds that Diabolic I think somehow
Speaker 3: used as bullets to shoot into Valmont's body back in
Speaker 3: the desert that they parachuted into.
Speaker 2: And now I think I think that's the idea. As
Speaker 2: ridiculous as that is, I think that's what happened.
Speaker 3: That is that's an all time, like top five movie twist.
Speaker 2: We don't understand it, but we're not as good with guns.
Speaker 2: Diabolic like he knows what he's doing.
Speaker 3: He used the emeralds as bullets. So wait a minute.
Speaker 3: The main villain is dealt with, and there's like a
Speaker 3: whole other act of the movie to go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, a lot of film's gonna just call
Speaker 2: it here, but it's clearly not presented with that kind
Speaker 2: of like movie capping finale kind of a feel to it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: clearly there's more to go.
Speaker 3: There's also a great lovely scene back at the hideout
Speaker 3: where Diabolic and Eva are. You know, they're reunited, they're
Speaker 3: hanging out by the pool, and Diabolic like like sticks
Speaker 3: all of the emeralds to Eva. He I guess he
Speaker 3: doesn't have the necklace part, but he has all of
Speaker 3: an emerald, so he just like sticks him to her skin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tells her heavy birthday, and then they start kissing,
Speaker 2: and then they like fall into the water and presumably
Speaker 2: all those emeralds just fall right off of her chest
Speaker 2: and sink to the bottom of the pool, which is
Speaker 2: totally in keeping with their vibe because those emeralds have
Speaker 2: no intrinsic value to our power couple outside of their
Speaker 2: their role in enhancing their romance.
Speaker 3: Right, They're not going to sell these on a secondary market.
Speaker 3: We don't care about the cash value of the emeralds.
Speaker 3: They only matter as a token of love, that's right.
Speaker 3: So the last heist I am going to cover in
Speaker 3: less detail, but this one has a really fun, ludicrous
Speaker 3: premise as well. So the new plan to catch Diabolic
Speaker 3: is there's a one million dollar reward for his capture,
Speaker 3: and in response, Diabolic destroys all of the government's tax
Speaker 3: offices and records. And then we see Terry Thomas coming
Speaker 3: on TV actually kind of again squirming and saying I
Speaker 3: APPEALTLS sense of national pride. Please pay your taxes. You
Speaker 3: know we don't have any record of what you owe anymore.
Speaker 3: I know you will not turn your back on.
Speaker 2: Me, he says, absolutely hilarious. Yeah, we're on the honor
Speaker 2: system now right.
Speaker 3: And for some I don't remember the mechanics they explained,
Speaker 3: But this leads to the creation of the ingot, one
Speaker 3: of the funniest plot devices I can think of any movie.
Speaker 3: They say they're going to create a single giant ingot
Speaker 3: of gold. It's like the size of a tanker truck.
Speaker 3: I think the idea is that it will be harder
Speaker 3: to steal this way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just too big to steal. He could steal
Speaker 2: a lot of little gold bars, or maybe some amount
Speaker 2: of the gold bars, but if we just made one
Speaker 2: gigantic gold bar, surely he would not be able to
Speaker 2: steal this. Again, this is just like almost folkloric and
Speaker 2: mythic qualities to it.
Speaker 3: Can diabolic steal it? Of course he can diabolic and
Speaker 3: Eva together they do some great tag teaming. They work
Speaker 3: together to this one involves like car chases and submarines.
Speaker 3: There is some underwater stuff, but it's not too much
Speaker 3: underwater stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they keep it to sub thunderball levels to maintain
Speaker 2: our interest.
Speaker 3: Right, So eventually Diabolic and Eva get the gold and
Speaker 3: get back to the secret hideout. But how are they
Speaker 3: going to get the gold out of the steel case
Speaker 3: that it has been enclosed in. So the plan is
Speaker 3: they like drill a hole in the case and they're
Speaker 3: going to melt the gold out of there, so it'll
Speaker 3: run out through the hole. And Diabolic is going to
Speaker 3: do this using a suit, he says, with such thermal
Speaker 3: protection that it would allow you to walk on the
Speaker 3: surface of the sun.
Speaker 2: No questioning that.
Speaker 3: But uh oh, police raid on the hideout. They finally
Speaker 3: discovered Diabolic and EVAs.
Speaker 2: They radiated part of the gold or the container won
Speaker 2: so that they could track him. And so now the
Speaker 2: gig is truly up, Like the police are starting to
Speaker 2: raid the bat cave.
Speaker 3: That's right. So the police come there, they're shooting at
Speaker 3: him and all this there's a big final showdown with
Speaker 3: the police in which the molten gold from the ingot
Speaker 3: gets like splattered out of the case all over Diabolic
Speaker 3: in his thermal protection suit. So the gold is like
Speaker 3: flung over him like ribbons. That sort of harden in place,
Speaker 3: and he is frozen in this pose with his arm
Speaker 3: up over his head and apparently dead.
Speaker 2: Eva has destroy Yeah, we see part of the face
Speaker 2: that the glass, you know, the clear face plate of
Speaker 2: the suit there, and we see his eye just staring
Speaker 2: out his face, you know, totally totally still seemingly dead.
Speaker 2: And yeah, then they start doing a press conference around this,
Speaker 2: and you know, the inspector Jenko is like, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: it feels feels weird to parade his body like this.
Speaker 2: You know, this was an honorable foe and so forth.
Speaker 2: But then we get you know, the final twist, and
Speaker 2: it's absolutely great because in this moment, it seems like,
Speaker 2: you know, like their love has been defeated, you know,
Speaker 2: the powers that be seem victorious. Diabolic is entombed in gold,
Speaker 2: and as the crowd begins to depart, Eva arrives dressed
Speaker 2: all in black to grieve. But even this separation is
Speaker 2: temporary because if she's looking up, what does she see?
Speaker 2: She sees suddenly there's movement and he winks at her.
Speaker 3: I knew it was coming, but still it felt like
Speaker 3: It's such a pleasing.
Speaker 2: So absolutely yeah, and of course if you take it
Speaker 2: literally this is quite outlandish and unbelievable, but you know
Speaker 2: it really takes on this almost supernatural air death cannot
Speaker 2: separate them and defeat their love. Only instead of this
Speaker 2: being presented in kind of like a religious manner or
Speaker 2: certainly a horror themed flavoring, we see this kind of
Speaker 2: thing occurring with like our occult power couples a lot.
Speaker 2: But instead it's cloaked in style and super science, super crime,
Speaker 2: super science. You know, where our anti hero has been
Speaker 2: turned into art by splattering gold. But no, he's still
Speaker 2: alive in there, and even as that Eva is taken
Speaker 2: away then by the inspector, it's clear they're still hope,
Speaker 2: not only hope, their certainty.
Speaker 3: In fact, you just know she's going to find a
Speaker 3: way to get him out. That's right, And then they'll
Speaker 3: steal more. They'll steal more, by god.
Speaker 2: Yes, they'll just keep stealing. And then that's the end.
Speaker 2: And it's not at the end with a question mark.
Speaker 2: I thought they were going to show the question throw
Speaker 2: the question mark in there. But I think we do
Speaker 2: get one last diabolical laugh, don't we.
Speaker 3: I think so. I couldn't be sure, but yeah, that
Speaker 3: sounds right.
Speaker 2: If it's not there, it's implied because yeah, I think
Speaker 2: he looks at the camera, he winks again, he will.
Speaker 3: Be back danger diabolic. This has got to go on
Speaker 3: my best of list. This is one of my favorite
Speaker 3: films we've covered on Weird House Cinema. And yeah, it
Speaker 3: may not have that sci fi or supernatural speculative element,
Speaker 3: but it's also just for style reasons, one of the
Speaker 3: weirdest films we've done. It's pure joy.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's a really fun one, so I highly recommend
Speaker 2: you check it out. All Right, as we close out here,
Speaker 2: we're just gonna remind everybody that, yeah, as usual, stuffed
Speaker 2: to blow your mind as a science podcast with core
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film here on Weird House Cinema. If you want to
Speaker 2: see a list of all the movies we've covered over
Speaker 2: the years, I blog about these movies at Sumudi music
Speaker 2: dot com. Also, you can go to letterbox dot com.
Speaker 2: It's L A T T E R B O x
Speaker 2: D dot com. You'll find our profile there Weird House
Speaker 2: and there's a whole list of all the movies we've
Speaker 2: covered over the years, and you can do lots of
Speaker 2: neat things like divide them up by year and genre
Speaker 2: and so forth and see what we've talked about.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always to our regular audio producer Jjposway
Speaker 3: and to our guest producer today Chandler Mays. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 3: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.