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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Joe McCormick. Today we're bringing you an older episode

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Speaker 1: of Weird House Cinema, the movie show that Rob and

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Speaker 1: I do on Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Normally, Weird

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Speaker 1: House Cinema airs every Friday. Today we're bringing you an

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Speaker 1: episode of Weird House from the fault. This episode originally

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Speaker 1: published February fourth, twenty twenty two, and it's on the

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Speaker 1: nineteen forty six horror films starring Peter Lorie The Beast

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Speaker 1: with Five Fingers. Let's jump right in.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 3: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb

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Speaker 3: and this is Joe McCormick, and we're going back to

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Speaker 3: the nineteen forties on this one. This is going to

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Speaker 3: be only the second time we have ventured into the forties.

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Speaker 3: The last time was for the film Doctor Cyclops, and

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Speaker 3: this time we're going in for the Beast with Five

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Speaker 3: Fingers from nineteen forty six.

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Speaker 1: Both of these films that we've done from the forties

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Speaker 1: have unusually good special effects for their time. So Doctor

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Speaker 1: Cyclops the premise was there's a mad scientist who gets

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Speaker 1: a bunch of people into his house and then he

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Speaker 1: shrinks them down to about the size of mice, and

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Speaker 1: they have to find a way to defeat the giant.

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Speaker 1: But this movie is a killer Severed Hand movie, so

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Speaker 1: you might wonder, well, I don't know how good could

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Speaker 1: the killer Severed Hand effects be in nineteen forty six,

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Speaker 1: but I gotta say really good.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, the special effects in this film are pretty great,

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Speaker 3: especially for the time period. They're very effective. You know,

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Speaker 3: if you're looking for the flaws, I'm sure you you

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Speaker 3: can find them. You know, that's not an actual disembodied

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Speaker 3: hand crawling across the floor. You know, if you're looking

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Speaker 3: for a whole lot of blood, you're not going to

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Speaker 3: find it in a nineteen forty six picture for the

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Speaker 3: most part. But it's there's still some wonderfully creepy scenes,

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Speaker 3: especially when you have the wonderfully weird actor Peter Lourie

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Speaker 3: interacting with it. Because if anybody can act opposite a

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Speaker 3: rubber hand and make you believe it, it's going to

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Speaker 3: be somebody of Laurie's caliber.

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Speaker 1: That's right. This movie has two meat spiders in it.

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Speaker 1: One is the hand and the other is Peter Lourie.

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Speaker 3: That's right. Now. One of the fun things about this

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Speaker 3: is that I believe we actually mentioned this title though

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Speaker 3: neither of us had seen it yet, when we covered

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Speaker 3: the nineteen thirty five film Mad Love, which that one

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Speaker 3: was just wonderful film starring Peter Laurie Francis Dre Colin Clive,

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Speaker 3: and that film featured hand transplants and supernatural paranoid ideas

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Speaker 3: of what that might mean. As we discussed at that point,

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Speaker 3: hand transplants were science fiction. It had not been pulled

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Speaker 3: off yet, and this was a film that you know,

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Speaker 3: went wild with the idea, well, if if I received

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Speaker 3: the hands of a knife thrower, then am I now

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Speaker 3: a knife thrower? You know where?

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Speaker 1: Yes you are?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, undoubtedly, And it was well utilized in the plot.

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Speaker 3: Now that tradition storytelling tradition goes back at least as

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Speaker 3: far as the nineteen twenty four film The Hands of

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Speaker 3: Orloc which is based on the same source material as

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Speaker 3: Mad Love. But The Beast with Five Fingers takes things

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Speaker 3: in a related but different direction entirely, and that is,

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Speaker 3: if you if you cut a hand off of somebody,

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Speaker 3: if you remove the hand, does something of the original

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Speaker 3: humans will survive in that hand. Could that hand have

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Speaker 3: a life of its own? Could it crawl around and

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Speaker 3: manipulate things? Could it strangle people? And so forth, which

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Speaker 3: I guess is related to some of the anxieties and

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Speaker 3: sci fi ponderings that you find and works like Mad Love,

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Speaker 3: but this takes it into an even more ridiculous and

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Speaker 3: special effects powered level of monster movie.

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Speaker 1: Well, there are actually even more similarities than we've already mentioned,

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Speaker 1: because if you'll recall in Mad Love and the story

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Speaker 1: was based on which I guess is the hands of Orlock.

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Speaker 1: Orlock is not the name of Peter Lourie's character. Peter

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Speaker 1: Lourie is the is the sort of is the mad

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Speaker 1: surgeon who does the hand transplant. And Orlock is the

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Speaker 1: name of Colin Clive's character, who is a concert pianist.

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Speaker 1: He's like, these hands have great talent, and his hands

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Speaker 1: are badly damaged in a train accident. Colin Clive is

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Speaker 1: riding in a train car with a man who has

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Speaker 1: a large sausage with him and I think also like

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Speaker 1: a dog in a picanic basket. Yeah, but I think

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Speaker 1: that the train crashes, his hands are harmed and his

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Speaker 1: beloved comes to Peter Laurie and is like, save my

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Speaker 1: you know, She's like, save my. My fiance is brilliant hands.

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Speaker 1: And the way that Peter where he saves his brilliant

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Speaker 1: hands is by transplanting the hands of a murderer onto

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Speaker 1: this concert pianist. And he finds, you know, okay, it

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Speaker 1: works his hands, he can use them, but now he's

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Speaker 1: not really good at the piano anymore. And instead what

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Speaker 1: he's really good at is wielding a knife.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, he's an expert knife thrower.

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Speaker 1: Now, now this movie is also got some weird hand

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Speaker 1: magic going on, also involving somebody who's a concert pianist.

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Speaker 3: It does. Yeah, And this one is also notable for being,

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Speaker 3: I believe, unless I'm missing something like, this is the

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Speaker 3: film that starts at all with crawling hand movies. It's

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Speaker 3: easy to take crawling hands for granted now because you know,

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Speaker 3: it's a well established trope crawling hands or in the

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Speaker 3: Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual, you know that sort of thing.

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Speaker 3: Bottom's family, Yeah, Adam's family is a big one. The

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Speaker 3: thing now, in that I was looking it up, the

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Speaker 3: thing dates back I think to nineteen fifty four. I

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Speaker 3: think that's when it first popped up in the Charles

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Speaker 3: Adams comic of the Adams Family, but of course it

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Speaker 3: famously appeared in the TV series. It of course factored

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Speaker 3: into the two major nineteen nineties films of the Adams Family,

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Speaker 3: as well as the third I want to say made

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Speaker 3: for TV or direct to video sequel. But one thing

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Speaker 3: I was surprised at in that is that the thing

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Speaker 3: in those films, all three of those, was played by

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Speaker 3: Canadian actor and magician Christopher Hart. Which it makes sense

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Speaker 3: if you want to you want somebody to play a

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Speaker 3: disembodied hand, you get a slighter hand, guy, you get

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Speaker 3: a magician in.

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Speaker 1: There, right, Yeah, the graceful movements and the well, I

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Speaker 1: mean the magicians are practiced at doing a twirl of

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Speaker 1: the fingers right to kind of yeah, dazzle you while

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Speaker 1: they misdirect your attention. Now, now, Rob, I noticed, though

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Speaker 1: you keep calling it the thing. I think it's just thing.

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Speaker 1: I think thing is its name.

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Speaker 3: I think you're correct on that thing, not the thing. Now,

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Speaker 3: in terms of other crawling hand features that came out

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Speaker 3: after the Beast with five fingers, you have the nineteen

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Speaker 3: sixty three's the crawling hand you have a segment of

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Speaker 3: the Amicus film Doctor Terror's House of Horrors from sixty five,

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Speaker 3: starring Christopher Lee. There's another film from Amicus titled and

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Speaker 3: Now the Screaming Starts, and that has Peter Cushing and

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Speaker 3: Herbert Lawm in it. There's also a Mexican horror film

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Speaker 3: that I believe I've watched part of called Demonoid Messenger

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Speaker 3: of Death Crawling Hand movie. There's also famously The Hand

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Speaker 3: from nineteen eighty one as well, directed by Oliver Stone

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Speaker 3: and starring Michael Caine. Have you seen this one, Joe.

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Speaker 1: I haven't, but I've seen it described as a remake

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Speaker 1: of the movie we're talking about today, The Beast with

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Speaker 1: Five Fingers. I don't know if that's accurate.

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Speaker 3: I don't remember being angry. This is a film that

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Speaker 3: I think I watched it on A and E, like

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Speaker 3: on a Sunday afternoon back in the day. It was

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Speaker 3: one that was in rotation there and I remember it

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Speaker 3: being it seemed to be like more of a serious

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Speaker 3: psychological treatment. But no, no, I take that back. I

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Speaker 3: think there was really a crawling hand in it. But yeah,

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Speaker 3: Michael can good in it, and he's like a comic

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Speaker 3: book artist. It's weirdly named Joe Lansdale. I think John Lansdale,

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Speaker 3: John Lansdale, Okay, yeah, But every time I look it up,

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Speaker 3: I'm like, is that supposed to be a reference to

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Speaker 3: Joe Lansdale. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so that, but in that one, is it also

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Speaker 1: like his hand has such talent in it, and then

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Speaker 1: it becomes severed from his body and goes and does

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Speaker 1: its own business.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but then it comes back. But yeah, there's

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Speaker 3: also a lot of, like you know, Michael Caine, dark

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Speaker 3: psychological stuff going on in that one. Now, if you're

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Speaker 3: an Evil Dead fan, The Evil Dead two from eighty

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Speaker 3: seven famously features some crawling hand shenanigans.

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Speaker 1: Right, Ash's hand becomes possessed by a demon and he

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Speaker 1: has to chop it off and then put it under

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Speaker 1: a bucket which he weighs down with a stack of books,

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Speaker 1: the top of which is a farewell to arms yuck.

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Speaker 3: Yuh oh. Yeah, And that's the thing, right It kind

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Speaker 3: of I guess increases. It's so well known at this

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Speaker 3: point that it's increasingly about gags, So I think there's

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Speaker 3: a crawling hand gage at least in nineteen ninety three's Leprechaun.

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Speaker 3: And then there is the comedy horror film from nineteen

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Speaker 3: ninety nine titled Idle Hands. I vaguely remember seeing this one.

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Speaker 3: I want to say it has either either Gary Busey's

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Speaker 3: son or that other guy. Is it Matthew Lillard or

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Speaker 3: Jake Busey.

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Speaker 1: I don't think either one. I've really seen it. I

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Speaker 1: think I saw this.

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Speaker 3: I with that money that one of those two guys

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Speaker 3: is in this movie.

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Speaker 1: It's got Devin Salwa. He's the main guy. He plays

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Speaker 1: a stoner kid. It has Jessica Alba, who was all

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Speaker 1: the rage at the time. It has Seth Green and

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Speaker 1: another guy who plays you know, they play a couple

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Speaker 1: of stoner buddies. I definitely don't recall Jake Busey or

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Speaker 1: who's the other one.

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Speaker 3: You said, what Matthew Lillard?

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Speaker 1: No, No, there are no lil Ardians in the film

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Speaker 1: at all.

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Speaker 3: Huh. Well, there you go, and in my mind I

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Speaker 3: see them clearly running around with a disembodied hand.

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Speaker 1: Well, I can see why you'd think that, because it

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Speaker 1: has some of the same sheen or grime to it

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Speaker 1: as say hackers, like it's going for a alternative stoner

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Speaker 1: cool kid in the late nineties sort of thing. I

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Speaker 1: guess Hackers was probably earlier, maybe early nineties, I'm not sure,

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Speaker 1: but anyway, it's not quite at that level. It's more

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Speaker 1: of a low brow, stoner horror comedy. A lot of

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Speaker 1: the jokes are about marijuana.

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Speaker 3: Okay, Interestingly enough, Christopher Hart, who played Thing in those

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Speaker 3: three Adams Family movies, also plays the hand in Idle Hands.

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Speaker 1: It's the best performance in the film.

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Speaker 3: Oh and then also this guy goes on to play

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Speaker 3: a hand in an episode of TV's Angel as well.

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Speaker 1: I never watched Angel. That's the Buffy spin off.

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Speaker 3: This the Buffy spinoff. Yeah, but yeah, I wasn't familiar

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Speaker 3: with Christopher Hart beforehand, but this was beforehand. This was

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Speaker 3: the guy for Disembodied Hands for pretty much an entire decade.

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Speaker 3: So I guess my main point here is that, yeah,

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Speaker 3: this is this film sets a trend. This film introduces

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Speaker 3: what would become a trope, and so it's interesting to

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Speaker 3: go back and watch it and think, well, audience had

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Speaker 3: audiences had never seen this before. It's old hat to

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Speaker 3: anybody who lived during the age of the Adams Family,

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Speaker 3: you know, but at the time, like these scenes where

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Speaker 3: you finally see the beast with five fingers, which is

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Speaker 3: a hand, is a disembodied hand. It's pretty shocking, especially

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Speaker 3: since the effects are so good.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. Now, I know we set this up

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Speaker 1: at the beginning sort of in contrast with Mad Love,

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Speaker 1: and I would not say that this movie is anywhere

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Speaker 1: near as great as Mad Love, But on its own terms,

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Speaker 1: it is a fun and silly and pretty inventive little

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Speaker 1: horror thriller with good special effects for the time.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: Now at this point, do we even need to give

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Speaker 1: an elevator pitch. We've sort of already done it. It's like,

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Speaker 1: what if there were a murder mystery in which the

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Speaker 1: hand of the killer wasn't attached to a wrist. Yes,

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Speaker 1: let's hear some trailer audio.

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Speaker 4: A piano, long, silent mysteriously plays again its weird an

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Speaker 4: ominous chords, filling up a deviled house with stark terror.

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Speaker 4: A concerto of death, a cobra music of a dead

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Speaker 4: man played by a hand that returned from the grave

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Speaker 4: to wreak vengeance on his betrayals, marking each for a

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Speaker 4: murder as it strikes within human power. A horrifying monster

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Speaker 4: that takes its evil commands from beyond they cannot return

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Speaker 4: to the tomb till it completes its mission of destruction.

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Speaker 3: Now, one thing that's worth noting about this film too,

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Speaker 3: and I'm not sure. I'm not sure if this was

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Speaker 3: ever even possible, but it seems like if you were

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Speaker 3: watching this with absolutely no spoilers and having never seen

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Speaker 3: the trailer or a poster or anything, the big reveal

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Speaker 3: that the hand is crawling around on its own might

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Speaker 3: have been more impactful because they kind of set it

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Speaker 3: up like, what's happening, what's you know? And the first

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Speaker 3: time you see the hand, you can't tell that it

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Speaker 3: has that it's not attached to a body.

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Speaker 1: Right, somebody will appear in the crack of a door

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Speaker 1: and then a hand reaches around from behind them and

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Speaker 1: grabs their throat and starts choking them. But for all

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Speaker 1: you know, the hand could in fact be attached to

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Speaker 1: a wrist. It could just be somebody killing this guy.

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Speaker 1: And then there's actually some question later on in the

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Speaker 1: movie about whether it is. In fact, it probably is,

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Speaker 1: the movie implies, but it doesn't make it clear even

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Speaker 1: when you see the hand, that the hand is not

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Speaker 1: just a regular hand that's running around on its own.

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Speaker 1: You don't get to that until probably two thirds of

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Speaker 1: the way through the movie.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, Well, let's talk about some of the

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Speaker 3: people involved in this one. The director is Robert Floret,

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Speaker 3: who lived nineteen hundred through nineteen seventy nine. Industrial strength

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Speaker 3: French American director who worked from the twenties through the sixties.

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Speaker 3: One of these guys where you check out his filmography

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Speaker 3: and it's just this long list of one hundred and

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Speaker 3: eighteen credits. He's just absolutely cranking out pictures during the

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Speaker 3: nineteen thirties especially, he's hustling. Yeah. Now, his early career

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Speaker 3: was apparently more about avant garde expressionist, but he increasingly

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Speaker 3: became just like a cinematic workhouse and also apparently the

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Speaker 3: very dependable filmmaker someone of the studios could turn to

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Speaker 3: to really put the picture together, you know, put it out,

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Speaker 3: you know, under budget and on time.

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Speaker 1: That kind of great. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Now, from a purely horror standpoint, he's perhaps best known

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Speaker 3: for Murders in the Room Morgue from nineteen thirty two,

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Speaker 3: based on the Edgar Allen post story and starring Hungarian

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Speaker 3: American film legend Bella Lagosi, oh as well as ape

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Speaker 3: Suit legend Charles Gemora, who we've mentioned on the show before.

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Speaker 3: Another Float film of note is The Face Behind the Mask,

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Speaker 3: which was one I was also looking at potentially to

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Speaker 3: cover in this episode, but went with The Beast instead.

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Speaker 3: This was a film that starred Peter Laurie as an

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Speaker 3: immigrant watchmaker who's who you know. It comes in with

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Speaker 3: a lot of optimism about what he can make of

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Speaker 3: himself in America, but then he's kind of chewed up

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Speaker 3: by dark American realities and he becomes a disfigured crime

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Speaker 3: boss instead. And then also of interesting note, I was

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Speaker 3: not familiar with this film, but Florat directed a noir

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Speaker 3: film titled Daughter of Shanghai from thirty seven, which featured

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Speaker 3: a female Chinese American lead in the form of Anime Wong,

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Speaker 3: as well as Korean American actor Philip On, and this

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Speaker 3: was in some ways progressive for the time, as Asian

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Speaker 3: leads were often played by white actors, and in fact,

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Speaker 3: in the same year, Wong lost out the lead role

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Speaker 3: of a Chinese character in The Good Earth. So again

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Speaker 3: I haven't seen Daughter of Shanghai, but it seems to

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Speaker 3: be noteworthy in film history now. I think Wong typically

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Speaker 3: played sort of dragon lady stereotypes, but still it was

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Speaker 3: apparently something of the time to see her at the

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Speaker 3: top in the lead, even in a noir sort of

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Speaker 3: crime thriller type of a film. Daughter of Shanghai, by

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Speaker 3: the way, also features a young Anthony Quinn popping up

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Speaker 3: in a lesser role. So, like I said, Flore busted

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Speaker 3: out a bunch of films, directed a lot of TV

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Speaker 3: later on during his career, and his last credit is

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Speaker 3: actually an episode of the original Outer Limits series, so

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Speaker 3: one titled Moonstone, and he also did three different Twilight

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Speaker 3: Zone episodes.

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Speaker 1: Oh, you're the Outer Limits connoisseur, ho's Moonstone.

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Speaker 3: Well, I'm not a connoisseur as much of the original series.

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Speaker 3: I'm more of a connoisseur or growing connoisseur of the

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Speaker 3: nineteen nineties Outer Limits revival. So I don't think i've

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Speaker 3: seen Moonstone. I've seen some of the original Outer Limits episodes,

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Speaker 3: and of course they're great, but I haven't seen that one. Likewise,

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Speaker 3: I looked up the three Twilight Zone episodes he did,

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Speaker 3: and I faintly remember one of them, but I don't

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Speaker 3: think any of them are like the really famous Twilight

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Speaker 3: Zone episodes.

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Speaker 1: You like the era of the Outer Limits that sometimes

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Speaker 1: has CGI that looks like it's from one of the

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Speaker 1: Wing Commander games.

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Speaker 3: It really does. I mean sometimes there's also, to be fair,

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Speaker 3: there's a lot of great practical alien makeup and some

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Speaker 3: cool set design as they figure out like how can

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Speaker 3: we on a budget create a different alien or futuristic

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Speaker 3: hallway for every episode of this series. But yeah, there's

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Speaker 3: some truly awful CGI at times as well.

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Speaker 1: I love it now.

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Speaker 3: The screenplay for this film was written by a pretty

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Speaker 3: famous name, Kurtzodmack, who lived nineteen oh two through the

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Speaker 3: year two thousand. It's a German born novelist and screenwriter

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Speaker 3: who left Germany first for Britain and then for the

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Speaker 3: US due to concerns overrising anti Semitism under the Nazis.

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Speaker 3: His family was Jewish. His German output was already pretty

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Speaker 3: successful prior to this, however, including the sci fi film

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Speaker 3: I was looking at this one FP one doesn't answer,

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Speaker 3: which seems to be about sort of a sort of

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Speaker 3: an air aircraft carrier base, like a not a ship,

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Speaker 3: but like some sort of like a large like at

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Speaker 3: the time sci fi aircraft platform in the middle of

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Speaker 3: the ocean. Once he left for the UK. He did

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Speaker 3: British war thrillers, and he did some comedies, but then

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Speaker 3: he started striking it big with some horror screenplays. He

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Speaker 3: did the screenplay for the nineteen forty one film The

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Speaker 3: Invisible Man Returns that has Vincent Price in it ooh,

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Speaker 3: and then he wrote an original screenplay for nineteen forty

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Speaker 3: one's The wolf Man, starring Claude Rains, Bell Lagosi and

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Speaker 3: lom Cheney Junior. He went on from there to write

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Speaker 3: a ton of screenplays, including Frankenstein Meets Wolfman from forty three,

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Speaker 3: I Walked with a Zombie from forty three, Son of

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Speaker 3: Dracula from You Guessed At nineteen forty three, and then

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Speaker 3: House of Frankenstein from nineteen forty four, along with just

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Speaker 3: a lot of other stuff. But those are some of

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Speaker 3: the titles that jumped out of me. He also wrote

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Speaker 3: the nineteen forty two sci fi novel Donovan's Brain, which

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Speaker 3: has been adapted three times. I don't think he was

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Speaker 3: personally involved in any of the adaptations, but it was

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Speaker 3: adapted in nineteen forty four as the Lady in the

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Speaker 3: Monster in nineteen fifty three Is Donovan's Brain, and in

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Speaker 3: nineteen sixty two as the Brain.

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Speaker 1: Donovan's Brain is a great poster. Have you seen it?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, with a In fact, I think the Brain

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Speaker 3: from sixty two also has a pretty snazzy poster. But yeah,

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Speaker 3: I'm all about a good brain film.

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Speaker 1: I love the colors. It's got these big bars of

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Speaker 1: yellow and then these creepy eyes and a green background.

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Speaker 1: And it says a dead man's brain in a hidden

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Speaker 1: laboratory told him to kill, kill, kill.

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Speaker 3: So you can see why this was the perfect guy

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Speaker 3: to adapt The Beast with Five Fingers. And I say

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Speaker 3: adapt because it's based on a short story by William

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Speaker 3: Fryar Harvey, who lived eighteen eighty five through nineteen thirty seven,

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Speaker 3: I think, professionally known as W. F. Harvey, a British

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Speaker 3: writer who wrote horror and ghost stories. All right, let's

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Speaker 3: get into the cast of this film. The credited lead

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Speaker 3: is not Peter Loriie. It is Robert Alda playing Oh

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Speaker 3: let's see in the In the credits is listed as

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Speaker 3: Conrad Ryler. But that's not what people call him, right, No.

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Speaker 1: It's all over the place. The promotional materials for this

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Speaker 1: movie call him Conrad Riyler. But then characters on screen

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Speaker 1: call him Bruce Conrad. So it sounds like his name

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Speaker 1: was changed in like the shooting script, but then something

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Speaker 1: else ended up using a name from an earlier draft

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Speaker 1: or something.

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Speaker 3: That's that's crazy, because yeah, it's still listed on IMDb

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Speaker 3: as Conrad Ryler. So it's a sort of disservice to

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Speaker 3: I mean, they couldn't have possibly realized this that one

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Speaker 3: day people would be watching your film going to the

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Speaker 3: you know, this official listing of character names to keep

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Speaker 3: track of what's going on, and if you don't have

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Speaker 3: the right names there, we're just going to be lost.

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Speaker 1: Well, whether it's his first name or his last name,

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Speaker 1: he is Conrad, so we can at least stick with that.

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Speaker 3: Yes.

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Speaker 4: So.

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Speaker 3: Alda was born nineteen fourteen died nineteen eighty six. Originally

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Speaker 3: a vaudeville singing dance guy who made his way up

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Speaker 3: through the worlds of radio and burless theater before landing

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Speaker 3: a role in nineteen forty five's Rhapsody in Blue playing

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Speaker 3: George Gershwin. Huh yeah, so by the time Beast with

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Speaker 3: Five Fingers comes out, this Beast is only his fourth

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Speaker 3: film role.

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Speaker 1: Okay, well, got he's got a very optimistic youthful energy

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Speaker 1: in this Yeah, yeah, calm confidence.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, he's got a good I'm not sure what you

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Speaker 3: call the style of mustache that he has.

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Speaker 1: It's it's kind of like Clark Gable.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a Clark Gable, which which gives him

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Speaker 3: a unique look. He has kind of a I think

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Speaker 3: he pointed out, he has kind of his character has

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Speaker 3: kind of a loopine quality to it. Yes, Alda continued,

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Speaker 3: We'll talk more about his character Conrad as we move forward.

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Speaker 3: But all To continued to act in film and increasingly

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Speaker 3: in TV. But he did very well on Broadway, popping

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Speaker 3: up and made fifties and sixties runs of stuff like

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Speaker 3: Guys and Dolls. And I'm delighted to report that he

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Speaker 3: was also a cast member on Super Train from nineteen

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Speaker 3: seventy nine, a show about an atomic powered train full

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Speaker 3: of like extravagant cars that had things like swimming pools

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Speaker 3: in them, so kind of a predecessor to snow Piercer.

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Speaker 1: Like the whole show takes place on the train, right.

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Speaker 3: And I think they have murder mysteries and stuff. Everything

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Speaker 3: is terrible. That a video with clips from the mini

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Speaker 3: from the TV movie that kickstarted the one season series.

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Speaker 1: Oh, I got to look this up after we're done.

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Speaker 1: But oh, one thing that I wondered about, and you

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Speaker 1: can rest assured, yes, indeed, Robert Alda is Alan Alda's dad.

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Speaker 1: Another thing I was reading about, though there's some lack

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Speaker 1: of clarity here, I've read that the lead in the

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Speaker 1: Beast with Five Fingers was originally supposed to go to

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Speaker 1: Paul Henried, the actor who plays Victor Laslow in Casablanca.

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Speaker 1: Though I can't hell if this means he was supposed

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Speaker 1: to play the Robert Alder role or the Peter LORII role,

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Speaker 1: but either way it would have been a very different movie.

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Speaker 1: Robert Olda is giving a strangely variable performance in this movie,

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Speaker 1: and I guess the role itself is strangely variable. Sometimes

431
00:24:18,880 --> 00:24:21,520
Speaker 1: he's like I said, he's Clark Gable, He's sometimes he's

432
00:24:21,560 --> 00:24:26,080
Speaker 1: a smooth, rascally con man with this lustful twinkle in

433
00:24:26,119 --> 00:24:28,600
Speaker 1: his eye. And then other times he's just like a

434
00:24:28,640 --> 00:24:32,160
Speaker 1: straight down the middle galahad. He's just this perfectly steady

435
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:33,240
Speaker 1: and virtuous hero.

436
00:24:33,840 --> 00:24:36,800
Speaker 3: Yeah. And one of the weird unexpected things about this,

437
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:39,040
Speaker 3: you know, we'll get into the plot in a bit, but.

438
00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:40,800
Speaker 1: He, you know, he starts.

439
00:24:40,920 --> 00:24:43,359
Speaker 3: He's the he's the top build actor in the film.

440
00:24:44,160 --> 00:24:47,119
Speaker 3: He's he's the pretty much the first it's introduced, I believe,

441
00:24:47,680 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 3: and you expect him to play a more pivotal role

442
00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:53,320
Speaker 3: in like the final quarter of the film, but he's

443
00:24:53,320 --> 00:24:56,640
Speaker 3: not really. He really kind of fa He's inconsequential for

444
00:24:56,680 --> 00:24:59,280
Speaker 3: the most part. When you get into the final act.

445
00:24:59,359 --> 00:25:01,600
Speaker 1: It seems like in the second half of the movie,

446
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:05,160
Speaker 1: really he's just there to be the handsome man that

447
00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:07,520
Speaker 1: Andrea King is in love with, and that's pretty and

448
00:25:07,520 --> 00:25:09,359
Speaker 1: he stands around and watches things happen.

449
00:25:09,760 --> 00:25:14,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, he has increasingly little agency, which ultimately I'm

450
00:25:14,320 --> 00:25:16,600
Speaker 3: fine with, you know, it's it's kind of nice to

451
00:25:16,640 --> 00:25:20,520
Speaker 3: see the you know, the attractive male lead in a

452
00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:23,240
Speaker 3: film from this era ultimately mean nothing.

453
00:25:23,560 --> 00:25:25,639
Speaker 1: Well, right, you got to make more room for Peter Lourie,

454
00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:26,760
Speaker 1: which I'm all for.

455
00:25:27,359 --> 00:25:31,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, now, before we we already mentioned Andrea King as

456
00:25:31,400 --> 00:25:35,560
Speaker 3: she plays Julie Holden. Impossible to forget her name because

457
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:38,040
Speaker 3: there's a lot of screaming for Julie, a lot of

458
00:25:38,200 --> 00:25:43,440
Speaker 3: characters wandering around this big castle mansion and screaming her

459
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:44,040
Speaker 3: first name.

460
00:25:44,359 --> 00:25:47,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like the commissario with the Italian accent, just

461
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:50,040
Speaker 1: saying Julie many many times.

462
00:25:52,720 --> 00:25:56,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, so so yeah. You easily remember her name. If

463
00:25:56,840 --> 00:25:59,159
Speaker 3: you remember no other characters name in this you remember

464
00:25:59,160 --> 00:26:02,520
Speaker 3: her so. Andrea King was a French born American actor

465
00:26:02,560 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 3: who was especially active in the forties and fifties, but

466
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:08,520
Speaker 3: had a pretty long career on screen and on TV,

467
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 3: known for God Is My co Pilot and The Very

468
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:14,040
Speaker 3: Thought of You. But she also pops back up in

469
00:26:14,080 --> 00:26:18,399
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies in House of the Black Death and Blackenstein.

470
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:21,880
Speaker 1: Now. I was looking at her other stuff to see

471
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:23,720
Speaker 1: if I'd seen her in anything else, and there was

472
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:25,760
Speaker 1: nothing that really stood out to me, So I don't

473
00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:28,720
Speaker 1: know what she's like. Usually, I got to say, her

474
00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:32,520
Speaker 1: performance in this movie feels phoned in. She does not

475
00:26:32,640 --> 00:26:35,639
Speaker 1: seem to be super interested in being in the Beast

476
00:26:35,680 --> 00:26:41,119
Speaker 1: with five fingers. However, her relatively flat acting performance sometimes

477
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:44,280
Speaker 1: makes scenes more amusing than they would have been if

478
00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:47,480
Speaker 1: she was more into it, Because I don't know, it's

479
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:50,080
Speaker 1: just like a funny compliment to the weird stuff going

480
00:26:50,119 --> 00:26:54,240
Speaker 1: on around her and to her awe inspiring hairds. This

481
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:58,960
Speaker 1: movie is an event of profoundly big hair, which makes

482
00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:00,600
Speaker 1: me want to see another movie I saw that she

483
00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:03,520
Speaker 1: was in. It's a nineteen fifty topic film called I

484
00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:07,600
Speaker 1: Was a Shoplifter, which, with an exclamation, hide things in

485
00:27:07,640 --> 00:27:09,480
Speaker 1: her hair to get him out of the store.

486
00:27:09,760 --> 00:27:11,760
Speaker 3: I think. But before I watched it, when you were

487
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:13,879
Speaker 3: telling me a little bit about that about it, you

488
00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:17,399
Speaker 3: said you compared her hair to Dracula's hair, like the

489
00:27:17,440 --> 00:27:17,880
Speaker 3: Old Man.

490
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:20,440
Speaker 1: Gary Oldman, Yeah, with the butt cut in the Francis

491
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:22,880
Speaker 1: Ford Coppola Dracula, Yeah, a couple of times she has

492
00:27:23,040 --> 00:27:26,920
Speaker 1: an enormous, like curly butt cut.

493
00:27:27,600 --> 00:27:32,240
Speaker 3: Well, there are some pretty hilarious scenes where her very

494
00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:37,480
Speaker 3: flat performance is in stark contrast to say, Peter Lourie's performance.

495
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:42,720
Speaker 3: But I hesitate to heap the blame on her for this,

496
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:45,200
Speaker 3: or to really cast any blame on her at all,

497
00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:48,320
Speaker 3: because there are some questions that arise concerning the script,

498
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:51,800
Speaker 3: Like there are scenes where it's like one character can

499
00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:54,680
Speaker 3: see things that are not there, and she is perhaps

500
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 3: legitimate Her character is legitimately supposed to be looking at nothing,

501
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:01,400
Speaker 3: and therefore maybe it makes sense that she is not

502
00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:03,480
Speaker 3: reacting the same way other characters are.

503
00:28:03,960 --> 00:28:06,680
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and I also want to say it makes

504
00:28:06,720 --> 00:28:09,160
Speaker 1: perfect sense in the earlier parts of the movie where

505
00:28:09,200 --> 00:28:13,040
Speaker 1: there's like another character who is obsessed with her and

506
00:28:13,119 --> 00:28:15,639
Speaker 1: she is not into him at all, and so her

507
00:28:15,640 --> 00:28:18,120
Speaker 1: flat performance is great in those scenes because you can

508
00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: tell she's just conveying like an you get me out

509
00:28:21,040 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 1: of here kind of feeling yeah.

510
00:28:23,359 --> 00:28:26,600
Speaker 3: And kind of going for like a steely calm because

511
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:29,640
Speaker 3: there is some crazy dude ranting at you and you're

512
00:28:29,640 --> 00:28:34,119
Speaker 3: trying to not escalate the situation in trying to like

513
00:28:34,160 --> 00:28:36,679
Speaker 3: maybe play into their delusions a little bit so that

514
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:39,080
Speaker 3: you can make a b line for these gay.

515
00:28:39,120 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 1: Okay, So I'd say with both of our lead actors

516
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:43,200
Speaker 1: so far, there's a little bit of weirdness in how

517
00:28:43,240 --> 00:28:46,840
Speaker 1: the character is realized on screen. But then we get

518
00:28:46,840 --> 00:28:49,480
Speaker 1: to Peter Lourie. He gets like third billing, right, and

519
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:52,800
Speaker 1: he plays a character named Hillary Cummins, and this is

520
00:28:52,840 --> 00:28:53,480
Speaker 1: the main event.

521
00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:57,640
Speaker 3: That's right. So we're not going to go super into

522
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:01,040
Speaker 3: Laurie's biography and filmography here because we spend a lot

523
00:29:01,040 --> 00:29:02,920
Speaker 3: of time with it in the Mad Love episodes, So

524
00:29:03,080 --> 00:29:05,560
Speaker 3: definitely go back to that. But he lived nineteen oh

525
00:29:05,600 --> 00:29:10,040
Speaker 3: four through nineteen sixty four. He was an Austro Hungarian

526
00:29:10,080 --> 00:29:12,560
Speaker 3: actor of Jewish descent who made it big in Fritz

527
00:29:12,640 --> 00:29:17,120
Speaker 3: Ling's em Before like siomc fleeing the rise of anti

528
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 3: Semitism under the Nazi regime. A great actor, plagued at

529
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:24,680
Speaker 3: times by substance abuse and health problems, but completely unequaled

530
00:29:24,680 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 3: in his ability to play these kind of artful mixes

531
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:32,680
Speaker 3: of sympathetic weirdos and absolute mad men. Like it's a

532
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 3: careful you know, it's a careful mixology going on at

533
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:42,840
Speaker 3: times with a Peter Lourie roll, because it's not like

534
00:29:42,920 --> 00:29:45,680
Speaker 3: he's just great at playing like a scary weirdo. It's

535
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 3: like he does to have this sympathetic nature. And then also,

536
00:29:50,080 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 3: you know, just is really able to emote through his

537
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:57,920
Speaker 3: performance in ways that it seems like many actors around

538
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:01,520
Speaker 3: him in any just any given film he's in, either

539
00:30:01,560 --> 00:30:03,640
Speaker 3: didn't have the ability to or did not have like

540
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:06,719
Speaker 3: you know, free free reign to do.

541
00:30:06,800 --> 00:30:09,360
Speaker 1: So I like what you say about him being more

542
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:11,880
Speaker 1: sympathetic than you would expect a character in this role

543
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:15,200
Speaker 1: to be, because there's several scenes in this movie of

544
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:20,280
Speaker 1: him making these desperate begging pleas for something that is

545
00:30:20,320 --> 00:30:24,120
Speaker 1: actually a totally unreasonable request. But he's such a good

546
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:26,320
Speaker 1: performer that you feel sad for him, you kind of

547
00:30:26,360 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: get on his side. You're like, yeah, why won't why

548
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:31,240
Speaker 1: won't you just stay with this old man forever so

549
00:30:31,280 --> 00:30:33,880
Speaker 1: that Peter Lourie can continue as occult research.

550
00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there's just something about him. I mean, also,

551
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:42,480
Speaker 3: I just I just really like a good Peter Laurie performance.

552
00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:45,000
Speaker 3: That's probably I mean, that's that's one of the reasons

553
00:30:45,040 --> 00:30:49,120
Speaker 3: I was looking at this film anyway. And while I

554
00:30:49,160 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 3: was watching this, my wife asked me. She's like, how

555
00:30:51,360 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 3: can you enjoy a film like this compared so, Yeah,

556
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:58,160
Speaker 3: she's just not as into like the older pictures, you know,

557
00:30:58,240 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 3: She's like, how can you you know, you enjoy film

558
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:02,560
Speaker 3: like this the same way you enjoy a film from

559
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:05,720
Speaker 3: like the eighties or the seventies. And you know, I

560
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:07,000
Speaker 3: mean part of it is like, yeah, it is a

561
00:31:07,000 --> 00:31:10,480
Speaker 3: different era, it's a different there are different sensibilities in play.

562
00:31:10,520 --> 00:31:12,160
Speaker 3: But I think a big part of it too, is

563
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:14,720
Speaker 3: like there's something about Peter Laurie's voice. It just it

564
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:17,120
Speaker 3: calms me to hear it. Like, yeah, there's something about

565
00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:19,959
Speaker 3: a Peter Laurie performance that I'm I'm just captivated by

566
00:31:19,960 --> 00:31:20,520
Speaker 3: the whole thing.

567
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:23,240
Speaker 1: Long stretches of the first half of this movie, though

568
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:27,360
Speaker 1: I would say suffer from Peter Loriie deficiency. But he

569
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:29,600
Speaker 1: has more of a role as the movie goes on,

570
00:31:29,840 --> 00:31:33,080
Speaker 1: and whenever he returns to screen, our grail of delight

571
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:38,000
Speaker 1: overfloweth because he plays this this queasy, bookish little man

572
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:43,520
Speaker 1: who is obsessed with discovering forbidden secrets of astrology, and

573
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 1: his obsession just builds to these points of absurdity with

574
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 1: these excellent freak out scenes. I love him in this.

575
00:31:51,240 --> 00:31:53,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to say one of the main reasons

576
00:31:53,600 --> 00:31:57,160
Speaker 3: I hesitated with this film was that I expected him

577
00:31:57,200 --> 00:31:59,880
Speaker 3: to be a minor character that gets killed off half

578
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:02,800
Speaker 3: through the picture, so I was delighted when that was

579
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:04,960
Speaker 3: not the case. Though Peter Laurie is not the only

580
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 3: actor playing a crazy person, which is great because we

581
00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 3: also have Victor Fransen playing Francis Ingram. This is a

582
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:19,240
Speaker 3: fun performance. This is the actor here. Fransen was born

583
00:32:19,280 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 3: in eighteen eighty eight died in nineteen seventy seven, Belgian

584
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 3: born actor known for Hold Back the Dawn, Helen high Water,

585
00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:29,880
Speaker 3: and I accuse he's pretty great in this as the

586
00:32:30,280 --> 00:32:32,720
Speaker 3: while he's still alive before he becomes just a hand

587
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:36,520
Speaker 3: as the overly dramatic composer and concert pianist.

588
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:40,560
Speaker 1: This movie proposes that if you are paralyzed on one

589
00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:44,000
Speaker 1: side of your body, as Victor Franson's character is, so

590
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 1: that you cannot use one of your hands, the other

591
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:52,440
Speaker 1: hand somehow becomes incredibly good at both piano playing and choking.

592
00:32:53,160 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: And Victor Franson embraces this premise with cranky alacrity, really

593
00:32:58,480 --> 00:32:59,320
Speaker 1: really powerful.

594
00:33:00,120 --> 00:33:04,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was like a sort of a weird, weird

595
00:33:04,160 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 3: movie logic for the beast with five fingers to dwell on.

596
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:09,680
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's like he only has the one hand,

597
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:11,920
Speaker 3: so it has the strength of two hands. But then

598
00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:15,000
Speaker 3: on top of that, he's also this this brilliant pianist,

599
00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:17,840
Speaker 3: and so he's you know, his fingers danced across the uh,

600
00:33:18,080 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 3: you know, the ivories with just amazing dexterity. And I

601
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 3: guess the idea is that all that intense piano playing

602
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 3: just makes your the hands of a professional piano player

603
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 3: like a couple of coconut crabs. Yes, so like somebody,

604
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:34,080
Speaker 3: like a like a Tory Amos could just rip a

605
00:33:34,080 --> 00:33:37,680
Speaker 3: phone book in half with those dexterous digits averse.

606
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 1: But if she could only use one hand. Then she

607
00:33:40,400 --> 00:33:43,320
Speaker 1: could rip a phone book in half with one hand, right.

608
00:33:43,560 --> 00:33:46,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, there there. Yeah. There are times where characters are

609
00:33:46,760 --> 00:33:50,480
Speaker 3: grabbed by Ingram and they're like his his hand was

610
00:33:50,520 --> 00:33:55,240
Speaker 3: so so powerful. It's it's it's wonderful and ultimately like

611
00:33:55,240 --> 00:33:56,760
Speaker 3: that's part of it. It's like the hand becomes so

612
00:33:56,840 --> 00:33:59,480
Speaker 3: powerful that it cannot die. Like the man dies, but

613
00:33:59,520 --> 00:34:02,680
Speaker 3: the hand lives on. The only other actor of note

614
00:34:03,080 --> 00:34:08,640
Speaker 3: here for our purposes is Jay Carrol nsh who plays

615
00:34:08,680 --> 00:34:15,240
Speaker 3: Detective Video Castanio. This is the Italian law enforcement guy

616
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:19,680
Speaker 3: who commissario the Commissario, Yeah, who becomes involved with the

617
00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:21,000
Speaker 3: various murders going on.

618
00:34:21,360 --> 00:34:21,480
Speaker 4: Now.

619
00:34:22,400 --> 00:34:25,240
Speaker 3: The actor in question here is actually of Irish descent.

620
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:29,440
Speaker 3: He's playing an Italian. This is a role that I

621
00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:32,000
Speaker 3: would say feels really fun and balance for most of

622
00:34:32,040 --> 00:34:34,480
Speaker 3: the picture, but by the apps, by the time the

623
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 3: credits roll, you're sick of him.

624
00:34:36,760 --> 00:34:39,319
Speaker 1: He still sick of him, Yeah, because at the very

625
00:34:39,400 --> 00:34:41,719
Speaker 1: end of the movie they have him look directly into

626
00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:44,799
Speaker 1: the camera and then do a vaudeville comedy act. Yeah what.

627
00:34:46,239 --> 00:34:49,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is something we've run into before with films

628
00:34:49,600 --> 00:34:53,120
Speaker 3: where it's like you just could not send the audience

629
00:34:53,160 --> 00:34:56,080
Speaker 3: home with any ounce of dread in their body. You

630
00:34:56,160 --> 00:34:59,759
Speaker 3: had to take whatever was funny or heartfelt about the

631
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:02,760
Speaker 3: f and not only double down on it, but triple

632
00:35:02,840 --> 00:35:05,320
Speaker 3: down on it in the closing moments. And that's exactly

633
00:35:05,320 --> 00:35:06,680
Speaker 3: what they do with this guy's character.

634
00:35:07,200 --> 00:35:11,480
Speaker 1: You remember, Actually there is an ending to Bava's Black

635
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:15,080
Speaker 1: Sabbath much like this that suddenly at the end, Boris

636
00:35:15,160 --> 00:35:17,920
Speaker 1: Karloff shows up and he's doing a comedy routine and

637
00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:20,160
Speaker 1: he's like, actually there are no ghosts, so ho.

638
00:35:20,760 --> 00:35:20,960
Speaker 4: And the.

639
00:35:22,480 --> 00:35:24,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you see the crew and they're all like,

640
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:27,080
Speaker 1: don't be afraid. Now, it's safe to go to bed.

641
00:35:27,120 --> 00:35:28,360
Speaker 1: There's nothing in your closet.

642
00:35:30,000 --> 00:35:32,600
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, it's just I guess it's just an

643
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:36,080
Speaker 3: artifact of the time. You just couldn't send the audience

644
00:35:36,239 --> 00:35:38,960
Speaker 3: home with the sense of dread. You had to send

645
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:40,520
Speaker 3: them out with a smile on their face. I mean,

646
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:43,480
Speaker 3: this is theater, right. One of the interesting things about J.

647
00:35:43,640 --> 00:35:48,200
Speaker 3: Carrol Nish, however, is that he's an Oscar nominated actor

648
00:35:48,400 --> 00:35:52,920
Speaker 3: for Sahara from nineteen forty three and for a Medal

649
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:56,919
Speaker 3: for Benny from nineteen forty five. His final film role

650
00:35:57,280 --> 00:36:00,960
Speaker 3: was the role of doctor Frankenstein in nineteen seventy one's

651
00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:06,279
Speaker 3: Dracula Versus Frankenstein alongside long Cheney Junior. All right onto

652
00:36:06,400 --> 00:36:09,279
Speaker 3: just a few of the I guess artistic mentions here

653
00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 3: Max Steiner did the music. Steiner lived eighteen eighty eight

654
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:17,520
Speaker 3: through nineteen seventy one. Austrian born American music composer, nominated

655
00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:22,080
Speaker 3: for twenty four Academy Awards, winning three for The Informer

656
00:36:22,120 --> 00:36:25,080
Speaker 3: in thirty five, Now Voyager in forty two, and Since

657
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:27,239
Speaker 3: You Went Away in forty four. He also composed the

658
00:36:27,239 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 3: score for Casa Blanca. I don't know if this jumped

659
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 3: out at Jiujoe. I wasn't familiar with this individual, but

660
00:36:33,760 --> 00:36:41,280
Speaker 3: the costume designer on this was Travilla. Just Travilla, just Travilla, Yes, Madonna, Yeah, yeah,

661
00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:46,239
Speaker 3: this was born William Travilla. He was famed for his

662
00:36:46,320 --> 00:36:50,080
Speaker 3: work with Marilyn Monroe on various films, including The Seven

663
00:36:50,120 --> 00:36:52,120
Speaker 3: Year Itch. So that costume that she's wearing in The

664
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:55,360
Speaker 3: Seven Year Itch over the subway grate that is the

665
00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:59,040
Speaker 3: work of Travilla. He was also the costume designer on

666
00:36:59,080 --> 00:37:00,680
Speaker 3: the Day the Earth's Stood Still.

667
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:03,280
Speaker 1: Oh okay, So he came up with the gort.

668
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:06,920
Speaker 3: Suit maybe so, but anyway, Yeah, it was apparently a

669
00:37:06,960 --> 00:37:09,840
Speaker 3: big name, if not at the time. I guess at

670
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:12,400
Speaker 3: the time, you can't just call yourself Travilla and not

671
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:15,360
Speaker 3: be a big deal. I mean, I'm convinced, but he

672
00:37:15,560 --> 00:37:17,360
Speaker 3: lived nineteen twenty through nineteen ninety.

673
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:20,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, Travilla's great. So I figure we should call it

674
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:23,640
Speaker 1: the special effects because they were so good for the

675
00:37:23,680 --> 00:37:27,480
Speaker 1: time they I didn't find much written about them, but

676
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:31,839
Speaker 1: the special effects are credited to William McGann as the

677
00:37:32,160 --> 00:37:37,200
Speaker 1: special effects director and then also h kind of camp asc.

678
00:37:38,200 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was looking into either of these guys to

679
00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:44,479
Speaker 3: see of Sometimes with films like this, you can see

680
00:37:44,520 --> 00:37:47,440
Speaker 3: where the special effects people went from there and you

681
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:50,200
Speaker 3: can recognize, oh, well this guy was this guy was

682
00:37:50,200 --> 00:37:53,719
Speaker 3: a synthetic flesh master, because we see it reflected in

683
00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:57,279
Speaker 3: various pictures they were involved in. But I couldn't find

684
00:37:57,280 --> 00:37:59,839
Speaker 3: any direct signs of that here. But I guess these

685
00:37:59,840 --> 00:38:02,720
Speaker 3: are the guys to thank for these wonderful crawling hand effects,

686
00:38:02,719 --> 00:38:04,520
Speaker 3: because again, they hold up really well.

687
00:38:12,880 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 1: Should we discuss the plot?

688
00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:16,279
Speaker 3: Oh, let's do all right.

689
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:19,719
Speaker 1: Well, we begin somewhere in an outdoor market place, it

690
00:38:19,719 --> 00:38:22,480
Speaker 1: seems in a kind of Mediterranean region, though there are

691
00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:25,840
Speaker 1: mountains in the background. And then we get a text

692
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:28,680
Speaker 1: that pops up that says, this is the story of

693
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:33,360
Speaker 1: what happened or seemed to happen in the small Italian

694
00:38:33,440 --> 00:38:37,359
Speaker 1: village of San Stefano nearly fifty years ago. So if

695
00:38:37,360 --> 00:38:39,640
Speaker 1: it was nearly fifty years ago at the time of

696
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:42,320
Speaker 1: the movie, this would put this in like the eighteen nineties.

697
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:43,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, I believe so.

698
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:45,719
Speaker 1: By the way, I could not find evidence of a

699
00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:49,279
Speaker 1: real San Stefano in Italy, though there is one in Bulgaria.

700
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:51,920
Speaker 1: But it looks like, you know, business is booming in

701
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 1: the marketplace. We see children running all around fruit carts

702
00:38:55,080 --> 00:38:58,640
Speaker 1: with big dangling strings of garlic, and we see a

703
00:38:58,800 --> 00:39:02,200
Speaker 1: horse drawn cart carrying a bunch of tourists around and

704
00:39:02,239 --> 00:39:05,120
Speaker 1: it stops so they can have lunch. And then, looking

705
00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:08,480
Speaker 1: on from the shadows nearby like a wolf staring at

706
00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:12,799
Speaker 1: a herd of cattle. Is Robert Alda playing this character again,

707
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:15,560
Speaker 1: who has multiple names depending on where you look. But

708
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:19,359
Speaker 1: in the movie they call him Bruce Conrad, though if

709
00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:21,400
Speaker 1: you look him up it might say he's Conrad Ryler.

710
00:39:21,520 --> 00:39:25,040
Speaker 1: Either way, he's Conrad. He's our guy. And just just

711
00:39:25,160 --> 00:39:25,719
Speaker 1: look at him.

712
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:28,719
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I mean he's just an obvious con

713
00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:30,040
Speaker 3: man from the get go. Here.

714
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:34,480
Speaker 1: Yes, he's got the pencil mustache, he's got that Clark

715
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:37,640
Speaker 1: Gable smirk. He's got a brimmed hat kind of pulled

716
00:39:37,680 --> 00:39:41,279
Speaker 1: down low over his eyebrows, cigarette dangling loosely out of

717
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:44,320
Speaker 1: his mouth, and a kind of smooth looking suit jacket

718
00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:51,040
Speaker 1: with wide lapels. Obvious obvious cigarette smoking wolf. And he

719
00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:53,759
Speaker 1: slithers up to a couple of American rubes who sit

720
00:39:53,840 --> 00:39:57,279
Speaker 1: down at a cafe table. He insinuates himself into their

721
00:39:57,360 --> 00:40:00,920
Speaker 1: lunch state and eventually cons them into buying some fake

722
00:40:01,080 --> 00:40:04,880
Speaker 1: artifacts he's got, like, he's got this whole story about

723
00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 1: how he buys things that are actually priceless antiques, but

724
00:40:09,239 --> 00:40:11,600
Speaker 1: he gets them for a song by going through people's

725
00:40:11,719 --> 00:40:14,920
Speaker 1: estates and then he ends up selling something. I did

726
00:40:14,920 --> 00:40:17,360
Speaker 1: not know what these were, by the way. They're called cameos,

727
00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:20,240
Speaker 1: but Rachel and I watched this together and she explained

728
00:40:20,239 --> 00:40:23,319
Speaker 1: it to me. They're like these little oval things that

729
00:40:23,360 --> 00:40:25,520
Speaker 1: have people's heads in profile on them.

730
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:29,279
Speaker 3: Oh okay, so sort of a combination between like a

731
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:33,600
Speaker 3: person's likeness and jewelry that you might remember them by.

732
00:40:33,600 --> 00:40:36,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of. But he gets these people, you know,

733
00:40:36,280 --> 00:40:40,200
Speaker 1: these ignorant farmers to believe that they are buying priceless

734
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:44,160
Speaker 1: fifteenth century antiques they are not. The lady is like,

735
00:40:44,239 --> 00:40:47,319
Speaker 1: I love cameos, and the dude ends up buying a

736
00:40:47,320 --> 00:40:47,879
Speaker 1: bunch of them.

737
00:40:48,040 --> 00:40:50,439
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, he completely hustles them. It's it's it's

738
00:40:50,600 --> 00:40:54,040
Speaker 3: completely apparent before anything else happens with the plot to

739
00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:55,680
Speaker 3: confirm the matter.

740
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:58,840
Speaker 1: Right, So Conrad pulls off the con he gets some

741
00:40:58,920 --> 00:41:01,520
Speaker 1: sweet US dollars, and he ends up strolling on down

742
00:41:01,560 --> 00:41:04,640
Speaker 1: the avenue, where he strikes up a conversation with the

743
00:41:04,680 --> 00:41:10,120
Speaker 1: local commissario commisario a video Castanio, who is a smooth

744
00:41:10,360 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 1: Italian version of Ircule Poirot.

745
00:41:13,160 --> 00:41:15,120
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, I think that's a fair comparison.

746
00:41:15,320 --> 00:41:17,319
Speaker 1: And it's funny when you see them walking next to

747
00:41:17,360 --> 00:41:21,520
Speaker 1: each other because they're like both guys in hats with

748
00:41:21,600 --> 00:41:24,560
Speaker 1: thin mustaches, smoking rolled tobacco products.

749
00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:27,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this scene that they have together is actually

750
00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:29,439
Speaker 3: pretty fun. I like the dialogue in this.

751
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:32,680
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, because the commissario he's a fun character, at

752
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:36,200
Speaker 1: least for most of the movie, because he clearly knows

753
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:39,799
Speaker 1: that Conrad is crooked, but it also implies their kind

754
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:43,040
Speaker 1: of buddies and he's not interested in actually arresting him.

755
00:41:43,400 --> 00:41:46,040
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, you are aware it is illegal to

756
00:41:46,280 --> 00:41:50,080
Speaker 1: sell sell antiques without a license, and Conrad's like, I

757
00:41:50,080 --> 00:41:51,239
Speaker 1: am aware of every law.

758
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:54,920
Speaker 3: Yeah. They're basically like, I would just like to remind

759
00:41:54,920 --> 00:41:56,360
Speaker 3: you what the law is. And he's like, oh, I

760
00:41:56,600 --> 00:41:58,080
Speaker 3: know what the law is. I would not dream of

761
00:41:58,120 --> 00:42:00,719
Speaker 3: passing that line. And he's like, well, I'm just here

762
00:42:00,719 --> 00:42:03,480
Speaker 3: to remind you where that line is, and so forth.

763
00:42:03,560 --> 00:42:05,600
Speaker 3: Like they have a fun back and forth.

764
00:42:05,960 --> 00:42:06,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it.

765
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:09,520
Speaker 3: Also kind of drives home that our character Conrad here

766
00:42:10,000 --> 00:42:13,040
Speaker 3: is maybe not too bad. He's not so bad that

767
00:42:13,120 --> 00:42:17,480
Speaker 3: the local law enforcement is telling him, hey, cut it out.

768
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:19,960
Speaker 3: It's more like, all right, just make sure make sure

769
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 3: you know what you're doing a small time con man,

770
00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:23,880
Speaker 3: and don't get too big time on me.

771
00:42:24,160 --> 00:42:26,799
Speaker 1: Right. They don't mind, they don't mind him out here

772
00:42:26,920 --> 00:42:31,160
Speaker 1: mildly hustling the tourists. Yeah, but Conrad also gets some

773
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:35,680
Speaker 1: news from the commissario. It is gossip about the Villa Francesco,

774
00:42:35,840 --> 00:42:39,960
Speaker 1: the estate of somebody named Francis Ingram, who we understand

775
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:42,600
Speaker 1: as a very rich old man who has been unwell,

776
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:46,920
Speaker 1: and apparently somebody named Julie is planning to leave the

777
00:42:47,080 --> 00:42:50,640
Speaker 1: Ingram place. The Commissario reveals that he has just authorized

778
00:42:50,680 --> 00:42:54,160
Speaker 1: her exit visa earlier this morning. Presumably I guess to

779
00:42:54,480 --> 00:42:58,239
Speaker 1: leave the country, and it's also implied that Conrad has

780
00:42:58,280 --> 00:43:02,040
Speaker 1: some kind of relationship with Jew. Mister Kommisario's like, aren't

781
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:04,719
Speaker 1: you going to go see her before she leaves? So

782
00:43:04,880 --> 00:43:08,440
Speaker 1: we follow Conrad to the Villa Francesco as he approaches

783
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:11,400
Speaker 1: through the elegant courtyard that has a lot of lush

784
00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:17,000
Speaker 1: greenery and fancy looking statues, And meanwhile, a sullen looking

785
00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:21,360
Speaker 1: Peter Lorie watches from a second story window as Conrad approaches.

786
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:25,040
Speaker 1: He's just shooting laser beams of gray sadness out of

787
00:43:25,080 --> 00:43:28,400
Speaker 1: his eyeballs. And the whole time we hear piano music.

788
00:43:28,440 --> 00:43:31,759
Speaker 1: Somebody is playing with great skill and intensity, and it

789
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:35,360
Speaker 1: turns out it is mister Francis Ingram himself, again played

790
00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:38,759
Speaker 1: by Victor Fransen, the old man who owns the Villa

791
00:43:38,800 --> 00:43:43,320
Speaker 1: Francesco is a skilled pianist, though with a twist because

792
00:43:43,760 --> 00:43:46,160
Speaker 1: he is paralyzed on one side of his body, so

793
00:43:46,280 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 1: he only plays the piano with one hand, the left hand,

794
00:43:50,640 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 1: though his left hand alone is implied to be of

795
00:43:55,160 --> 00:43:58,680
Speaker 1: the most incredible skill, the incredible virtuosity of his one

796
00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:02,239
Speaker 1: handed piano playing, and Conrad stops at the door to

797
00:44:02,320 --> 00:44:06,200
Speaker 1: listen while he does this performance. And also, meanwhile, Julie

798
00:44:06,239 --> 00:44:09,480
Speaker 1: played by Andrea King, she is sitting beside the piano

799
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:13,040
Speaker 1: in a nurse's uniform, supposedly listening to him play, but

800
00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:18,480
Speaker 1: honestly looking excruciatingly bored. I was trying to think of

801
00:44:18,480 --> 00:44:21,680
Speaker 1: how to describe it. She looks like an adult at

802
00:44:21,680 --> 00:44:25,319
Speaker 1: a party who gets cornered by a friend's seven year

803
00:44:25,320 --> 00:44:28,000
Speaker 1: old kid who is explaining the plot of dragon Ball

804
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:29,520
Speaker 1: Z for thirty minutes.

805
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:33,400
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, or walking you through the evolution

806
00:44:33,520 --> 00:44:35,360
Speaker 3: of various pokemons.

807
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:40,319
Speaker 1: Yes, and you're just like, oh wow, yeah.

808
00:44:39,400 --> 00:44:41,520
Speaker 3: I have learned, by the way to ask very good

809
00:44:41,560 --> 00:44:45,120
Speaker 3: questions about Pokemon. I am a good receiver of Pokemon

810
00:44:45,680 --> 00:44:46,880
Speaker 3: conversation at this point.

811
00:44:47,280 --> 00:44:49,600
Speaker 1: So you can do this without looking as bored as she.

812
00:44:49,640 --> 00:44:51,640
Speaker 3: Does, right, I hope, So, I hope. So.

813
00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:56,640
Speaker 1: Anyway, after he finishes playing, Julie picks up this very

814
00:44:56,680 --> 00:45:00,920
Speaker 1: conspicuous gigantic ring and puts it on mister Ingram's finger

815
00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:04,799
Speaker 1: and Buddy, this ring is bananas. It is probably it's

816
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:06,440
Speaker 1: like the biggest ring I've ever seen.

817
00:45:07,239 --> 00:45:09,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, one gets the impression that it is this is

818
00:45:09,400 --> 00:45:11,280
Speaker 3: a black and white movie, but I get the impression

819
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:16,200
Speaker 3: that it's deeply red, you know, and so on the

820
00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:18,680
Speaker 3: film it's it's deeply dark and black, and it just

821
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:20,120
Speaker 3: kind of like sucks you in.

822
00:45:20,239 --> 00:45:22,640
Speaker 1: Right, So it sticks in your mind, and it's supposed

823
00:45:22,680 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: to because you will see it later to I think,

824
00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:27,319
Speaker 1: help you identify whose hand you're looking at. When you

825
00:45:27,440 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 1: just see a hand, it's this giant, conspicuous ring. And

826
00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:33,520
Speaker 1: he always takes it off and sits it on top

827
00:45:33,560 --> 00:45:35,080
Speaker 1: of the piano when he plays.

828
00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:38,279
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's this this scene with Julie here where

829
00:45:38,280 --> 00:45:40,400
Speaker 3: he holds out his hand for her to put the

830
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:44,560
Speaker 3: ring back on, which seems kind of weird. I mean,

831
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:48,120
Speaker 3: it is weird, like they're getting married. Yeah, Like there's

832
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:52,759
Speaker 3: a ritualistic quality to it, but they're cinematic payoff later.

833
00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:56,239
Speaker 1: Right, So Julie lets Conrad inside and we learn more

834
00:45:56,239 --> 00:45:58,400
Speaker 1: about all of their relationships. So we find out that

835
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:01,960
Speaker 1: Conrad is well known Villa Francesco. He and Ingram are

836
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:05,680
Speaker 1: good friends, such good friends that Ingram seems to know

837
00:46:05,760 --> 00:46:09,839
Speaker 1: about Conrad's tourist scamming racket, because Conrad's like, you look

838
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:12,760
Speaker 1: very well, and Ingram's like, ah, save it for the tourists.

839
00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:15,319
Speaker 1: Don't do that on me. And we find out that

840
00:46:15,360 --> 00:46:18,120
Speaker 1: they play chess together a lot, often for money, and

841
00:46:18,239 --> 00:46:21,000
Speaker 1: Conrad always wins and takes Ingram's money.

842
00:46:21,200 --> 00:46:23,680
Speaker 3: There are a lot of freeloaders in this household. Yeah,

843
00:46:23,680 --> 00:46:26,640
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean not, I mean, Julie's not a freeloader,

844
00:46:26,640 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 3: but Conrad and and Peter Lourie's character Hillary, Yeah, I mean,

845
00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:36,759
Speaker 3: I gat I mean, I guess there's there's camaraderie here.

846
00:46:36,800 --> 00:46:39,480
Speaker 3: I guess Ingram's getting some he's getting companionship out of it.

847
00:46:40,360 --> 00:46:44,640
Speaker 3: But they're they're very much there, you know, enjoying the

848
00:46:44,640 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 3: facilities and sharing in his money.

849
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:51,160
Speaker 1: Julie is the only one working right, everybody else has

850
00:46:51,320 --> 00:46:55,560
Speaker 1: a different kind of hustle going. But so Conrad also

851
00:46:55,680 --> 00:46:59,640
Speaker 1: complements Ingram's piano playing. I think the situation is that

852
00:46:59,719 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 1: he he was once a famed pianist who played with

853
00:47:02,520 --> 00:47:04,719
Speaker 1: both hands, and then he had a stroke or some

854
00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:09,319
Speaker 1: other kind of medical event, and his right hand became paralyzed,

855
00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:12,280
Speaker 1: so he learned to play concert piano all over again

856
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:16,319
Speaker 1: with only one hand. And Conrad helped him in this

857
00:47:16,760 --> 00:47:20,760
Speaker 1: because he's also a musician, and he rescored famous pieces

858
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:23,400
Speaker 1: of music for Ingram in such a way that they

859
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:26,480
Speaker 1: could be played one handed on the piano. Yeah.

860
00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:29,399
Speaker 3: Yeah, the film reminds you a couple of times, yeah,

861
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:32,480
Speaker 3: that Conrad is himself a musician, that we never actually

862
00:47:32,520 --> 00:47:34,120
Speaker 3: see him doing anything musical.

863
00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:38,480
Speaker 1: I don't think, no, I don't think once. And there's

864
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:42,720
Speaker 1: a moment of that bilateral hand awe because like Ingram

865
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:46,080
Speaker 1: starts looking at his left hand and he says, now

866
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:49,440
Speaker 1: that all my strength, all my will is concentrated in

867
00:47:49,560 --> 00:47:54,920
Speaker 1: these fingers, and Conrad says exactly the power, the tonal quality,

868
00:47:54,960 --> 00:47:59,239
Speaker 1: the prodigious technique. So it's not explicit, but they seem

869
00:47:59,280 --> 00:48:02,799
Speaker 1: to be implying that it's only logical that if a

870
00:48:02,840 --> 00:48:06,200
Speaker 1: man has use of only one hand, it will double

871
00:48:06,320 --> 00:48:09,719
Speaker 1: in strength and skill, absorbing the latent power of the other.

872
00:48:10,400 --> 00:48:16,000
Speaker 3: Yeah. Perhaps, even like over, it's kind of implied, especially

873
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:18,600
Speaker 3: with some of the occurrences that happen later on, that

874
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:22,359
Speaker 3: the hand becomes more powerful than Ingram himself, like yeah,

875
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:26,040
Speaker 3: it is. You know, it no longer needs Ingram.

876
00:48:26,400 --> 00:48:30,160
Speaker 1: Ingram is holding it back, right, Yeah, and maybe it

877
00:48:30,200 --> 00:48:33,240
Speaker 1: should be freed of Ingram so that it can achieve

878
00:48:33,239 --> 00:48:35,680
Speaker 1: its own dreams. Oh. But also at the same time,

879
00:48:35,880 --> 00:48:40,160
Speaker 1: Ingram has this obviously unhealthy fixation on Julie, who is

880
00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:43,240
Speaker 1: his nurse. You know, she's supposed to be there helping

881
00:48:43,280 --> 00:48:47,560
Speaker 1: take care of him during his illness, but he's he's

882
00:48:47,600 --> 00:48:50,480
Speaker 1: obviously got different plans. He's like, he's like, Julie, since

883
00:48:50,520 --> 00:48:53,680
Speaker 1: you came, I've found new life, a new source of energy,

884
00:48:53,800 --> 00:48:57,120
Speaker 1: a stronger ambition to live. And he keeps talking about

885
00:48:57,120 --> 00:49:00,719
Speaker 1: her beauty and stuff. And then when she leaves the room,

886
00:49:00,800 --> 00:49:03,479
Speaker 1: he's confessing to Conrad, He's like, I need her. She's

887
00:49:03,520 --> 00:49:05,919
Speaker 1: the only one I care about, and she is quite

888
00:49:06,000 --> 00:49:09,120
Speaker 1: rightly just kind of like, eh, like looking for ways

889
00:49:09,160 --> 00:49:12,880
Speaker 1: to leave the room. Well, anyway, Ingram invites both Julie

890
00:49:12,920 --> 00:49:16,120
Speaker 1: and Conrad to a dinner that he's hosting, where he

891
00:49:16,200 --> 00:49:20,120
Speaker 1: will be having his lawyer from Rome, a man named Duprex,

892
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:24,120
Speaker 1: and also Hillary, his secretary, who is Peter Loriie. And

893
00:49:24,200 --> 00:49:26,600
Speaker 1: the next scene is the one where we actually meet Hillary.

894
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:30,240
Speaker 1: Peter Lourie is tucked away up in his study, reading

895
00:49:30,280 --> 00:49:34,160
Speaker 1: from occult tomes. It's supposed to be implied that he's

896
00:49:34,160 --> 00:49:38,279
Speaker 1: doing serious, deep arcane research. That we get to see

897
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:40,560
Speaker 1: the title page of the book that he's got in

898
00:49:40,560 --> 00:49:43,400
Speaker 1: his hands, and I don't know, it just doesn't seem

899
00:49:43,440 --> 00:49:46,919
Speaker 1: that wild to me. It's called Lombardo's History of Astrology,

900
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:52,840
Speaker 1: a Complete Textbook for Astrologers by Federico Lombardo, And I

901
00:49:52,840 --> 00:49:54,759
Speaker 1: don't know. I thought it was funny because in a

902
00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:58,120
Speaker 1: minute he starts talking about how he's unlocking the ancient

903
00:49:58,200 --> 00:50:01,760
Speaker 1: secrets of the stars. But he's doing that by reading

904
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:06,160
Speaker 1: what looks like a mass printed introductory textbook for astrology.

905
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:08,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, the way they set it up, you'd expect it

906
00:50:08,239 --> 00:50:10,520
Speaker 3: would be more of some sort of ancient tome that

907
00:50:10,600 --> 00:50:11,719
Speaker 3: he's consulting.

908
00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:16,279
Speaker 1: But yeah, this original scroll from ancient Babylon. But no,

909
00:50:16,320 --> 00:50:17,880
Speaker 1: it's like a it's a printed book.

910
00:50:18,560 --> 00:50:21,280
Speaker 3: Well, we don't know how he seems obsessed with this research,

911
00:50:21,320 --> 00:50:23,680
Speaker 3: but we don't know how far along he is. He's

912
00:50:23,960 --> 00:50:25,839
Speaker 3: maybe he just started it the other day and he's

913
00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:27,799
Speaker 3: just super into it, but he got to start somewhere.

914
00:50:27,800 --> 00:50:31,160
Speaker 3: I might as well start with the with this before

915
00:50:31,200 --> 00:50:33,720
Speaker 3: you move on to the an economicon and so forth.

916
00:50:34,000 --> 00:50:36,640
Speaker 1: I guess so. But in this scene we learn of

917
00:50:36,640 --> 00:50:41,200
Speaker 1: a conflict between Hillary and Julie because Julie is exhausted

918
00:50:41,280 --> 00:50:44,720
Speaker 1: by constantly attending to the old man and she's creeped

919
00:50:44,719 --> 00:50:47,520
Speaker 1: out by his obsession with her, so she wants to

920
00:50:47,600 --> 00:50:50,120
Speaker 1: quit and travel back to the United States. You can

921
00:50:50,200 --> 00:50:53,600
Speaker 1: totally understand that. But then meanwhile Hillary is like, you

922
00:50:53,680 --> 00:50:58,360
Speaker 1: cannot do that, you will regret it. Why is this, Well,

923
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:00,840
Speaker 1: it's because he is in the middle of achieving a

924
00:51:00,960 --> 00:51:05,200
Speaker 1: world historical breakthrough in unlocking the secrets of ancient astrology

925
00:51:05,200 --> 00:51:09,240
Speaker 1: with this introductory textbook, and if he unlocks these secrets,

926
00:51:09,280 --> 00:51:12,880
Speaker 1: they would allow him to predict the future with absolute certainty.

927
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:15,719
Speaker 1: He tells us that this knowledge has been lost since

928
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:18,760
Speaker 1: the burning of the Alexandrian Library, but he is now

929
00:51:18,960 --> 00:51:22,680
Speaker 1: just on the cusp of rediscovering it. And anyway, so

930
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:25,640
Speaker 1: he explains to Julie, look, you have to stay here

931
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:29,040
Speaker 1: and let Ingram be obsessed with you, because if you don't,

932
00:51:29,560 --> 00:51:31,400
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to do work for him, and

933
00:51:31,440 --> 00:51:35,200
Speaker 1: I don't have time for that. I'm learning elite zodiac sorcery.

934
00:51:35,800 --> 00:51:38,239
Speaker 3: Yes, it's like the boss is obsessed with you. If

935
00:51:38,280 --> 00:51:42,399
Speaker 3: you'll leave, he will make me work, yeah, to take

936
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:45,919
Speaker 3: away all of my free time for my astrology Wikipedia

937
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:47,160
Speaker 3: scrolling right.

938
00:51:47,680 --> 00:51:50,640
Speaker 1: So, and he begs her quite desperately to stay with

939
00:51:50,760 --> 00:51:55,520
Speaker 1: Peter Lourie's trademark pitiful puppy dog, eyes welling with tears

940
00:51:55,560 --> 00:51:58,680
Speaker 1: at the thought of not succeeding at becoming a wizard.

941
00:51:59,200 --> 00:52:01,959
Speaker 1: And she she's like, I don't know. I mean, i'd

942
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:03,759
Speaker 1: like to help you, but I really do need to

943
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:08,040
Speaker 1: get out of here. And he's like, no, please. And

944
00:52:08,120 --> 00:52:10,759
Speaker 1: she also has no comment at all about the astrology

945
00:52:10,840 --> 00:52:13,480
Speaker 1: or wizardry or anything. She's just like, yeah, I get it,

946
00:52:13,520 --> 00:52:14,520
Speaker 1: but I need to go.

947
00:52:14,880 --> 00:52:15,040
Speaker 4: Yeah.

948
00:52:15,080 --> 00:52:17,640
Speaker 3: There's very little follow up really on the on the

949
00:52:17,680 --> 00:52:20,080
Speaker 3: astrology thing. I kept expecting it to become more of

950
00:52:20,120 --> 00:52:23,440
Speaker 3: a of a plot focus, but I and then ultimately

951
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:25,400
Speaker 3: I guess it's not as important, Like just we know

952
00:52:25,480 --> 00:52:30,279
Speaker 3: that it's his area of obsession and if his if

953
00:52:30,360 --> 00:52:33,319
Speaker 3: his if his obsession were threatened, then who knows what

954
00:52:33,480 --> 00:52:34,000
Speaker 3: might happen.

955
00:52:34,440 --> 00:52:38,440
Speaker 1: Anyway, later we see this dinner where Ingram and Julie

956
00:52:38,560 --> 00:52:41,959
Speaker 1: and Conrad and Hillary and the lawyer Duprex are all

957
00:52:42,000 --> 00:52:45,160
Speaker 1: gathered around the table, and then I love the scene

958
00:52:45,160 --> 00:52:47,719
Speaker 1: that follows where the old man is like, let's all

959
00:52:47,719 --> 00:52:50,040
Speaker 1: go around the table now, and everyone talk about how

960
00:52:50,120 --> 00:52:55,279
Speaker 1: sane I am, and they're, oh, you you're extremely saying

961
00:52:55,360 --> 00:52:58,080
Speaker 1: you're the sanest person I've ever met. Well, I think

962
00:52:58,080 --> 00:52:59,560
Speaker 1: you're even saner than he does.

963
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:01,640
Speaker 3: I think one of the things I was thinking watching

964
00:53:01,680 --> 00:53:03,960
Speaker 3: this though, is like, I don't really remember what dinner

965
00:53:03,960 --> 00:53:07,799
Speaker 3: parties were like exactly. Yeah, so you know, since they

966
00:53:07,800 --> 00:53:10,360
Speaker 3: were pre pandemic. So it's like I'm thinking, maybe this

967
00:53:10,480 --> 00:53:12,399
Speaker 3: is what they will be like when they're finally back.

968
00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:14,839
Speaker 3: No one will actually know how to entertain multiple people

969
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:16,920
Speaker 3: at a dinner table, and we'll just like go around,

970
00:53:17,400 --> 00:53:18,280
Speaker 3: am I not saying?

971
00:53:19,680 --> 00:53:22,719
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, everybody will just go on at length about

972
00:53:22,760 --> 00:53:26,799
Speaker 1: how your mental balance is awesome and and make sure

973
00:53:26,800 --> 00:53:30,440
Speaker 1: that your lawyer can can hear them saying that. Now,

974
00:53:30,480 --> 00:53:33,760
Speaker 1: why this whole performance, Well, it's because Duprex, the lawyer,

975
00:53:34,200 --> 00:53:36,920
Speaker 1: has brought a new copy of Ingram's will, and everybody

976
00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:39,520
Speaker 1: there asked to sign it to testify that Ingram is

977
00:53:39,600 --> 00:53:42,920
Speaker 1: of sound mind when he authorizes this this version of

978
00:53:42,960 --> 00:53:46,239
Speaker 1: the will. And then Ingram plays the piano for everybody,

979
00:53:46,239 --> 00:53:49,120
Speaker 1: and I was wondering, Okay, so is Duprex the lawyer

980
00:53:49,200 --> 00:53:51,480
Speaker 1: getting paid to have dinner and listen to him play

981
00:53:51,560 --> 00:53:52,080
Speaker 1: the piano.

982
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:54,880
Speaker 3: I mean probably, so you know, he's he's you know,

983
00:53:54,920 --> 00:53:55,959
Speaker 3: he's charging by the hour.

984
00:53:56,239 --> 00:53:59,600
Speaker 1: Anyway, later in the garden, Conrad and Julie meet up,

985
00:53:59,600 --> 00:54:01,279
Speaker 1: and I think this is the first time we really

986
00:54:01,280 --> 00:54:05,759
Speaker 1: see them having some alone time, and they discussed what

987
00:54:05,800 --> 00:54:09,600
Speaker 1: they each want. Conrad confronts her about whether she's leaving,

988
00:54:10,239 --> 00:54:13,479
Speaker 1: and she says, how did you know? And then Conrad says,

989
00:54:13,520 --> 00:54:17,319
Speaker 1: there are three forms of communication, the telephone, the telegram,

990
00:54:17,440 --> 00:54:21,120
Speaker 1: and the commisario. Commisario is the fastest. So it's like

991
00:54:21,320 --> 00:54:24,600
Speaker 1: gossip cop strikes again. I don't know if that is

992
00:54:24,719 --> 00:54:27,680
Speaker 1: unique to the character in this movie, or was there

993
00:54:27,680 --> 00:54:30,640
Speaker 1: a general idea at the time that, like late nineteenth

994
00:54:30,680 --> 00:54:33,480
Speaker 1: century Italian police were huge gossips.

995
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:36,960
Speaker 3: I guess I just I figured he's he's kind of

996
00:54:36,960 --> 00:54:39,520
Speaker 3: the you know, a central part of the community. He

997
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:42,000
Speaker 3: kind of knows what's going on with everybody, and he's

998
00:54:42,040 --> 00:54:45,680
Speaker 3: also he's also very a nosy about everything.

999
00:54:45,640 --> 00:54:49,000
Speaker 1: Right he is. And they talk about what they want,

1000
00:54:49,120 --> 00:54:51,759
Speaker 1: and it's a very tender scene and She discusses how

1001
00:54:51,800 --> 00:54:54,520
Speaker 1: she feels guilty but also that she has to escape,

1002
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:57,680
Speaker 1: and Conrad confesses that he's in love with her, and

1003
00:54:57,719 --> 00:55:00,600
Speaker 1: it seems like she likes him too, so they decide

1004
00:55:00,640 --> 00:55:04,320
Speaker 1: to run away together and they kiss. Meanwhile, Peter Laurie

1005
00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:06,680
Speaker 1: is creeping on them from behind the hedges where he

1006
00:55:06,719 --> 00:55:10,360
Speaker 1: overhears everything and you can just see the anguish in

1007
00:55:10,440 --> 00:55:14,279
Speaker 1: his face. He's like, no, my astrology research, I will

1008
00:55:14,320 --> 00:55:18,200
Speaker 1: never achieve awesome power unless I sabotage this right now.

1009
00:55:18,600 --> 00:55:21,560
Speaker 1: So he goes to Ingram and just immediately tattles.

1010
00:55:22,239 --> 00:55:26,800
Speaker 3: Yes. Yeah, He's like, like, Conrad's out there, he's talking

1011
00:55:26,840 --> 00:55:29,960
Speaker 3: to Julie. They were smoochin. He's going to take her

1012
00:55:30,000 --> 00:55:32,960
Speaker 3: away from you, and we can't let that happen, Ingram.

1013
00:55:33,320 --> 00:55:35,719
Speaker 1: But of course Ingram, he doesn't want to hear this,

1014
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:38,799
Speaker 1: you know, is this is rocking his world and he's

1015
00:55:38,800 --> 00:55:42,600
Speaker 1: not happy with it. So he becomes enraged and brutally

1016
00:55:42,760 --> 00:55:46,640
Speaker 1: chokes Hillary with his left hand, and Julie runs in

1017
00:55:46,880 --> 00:55:49,560
Speaker 1: just in time, just in time to save Hillary's life,

1018
00:55:49,600 --> 00:55:53,640
Speaker 1: and dude has horrible scars on his throat. Ingram orders

1019
00:55:53,719 --> 00:55:55,480
Speaker 1: Hillary out of the house. He says, I never want

1020
00:55:55,520 --> 00:55:58,520
Speaker 1: to see you again. And oh, we also see that Duprex,

1021
00:55:58,600 --> 00:55:59,560
Speaker 1: the lawyer is nearby.

1022
00:55:59,600 --> 00:55:59,880
Speaker 3: Spy.

1023
00:56:00,120 --> 00:56:04,000
Speaker 1: Did you notice how many scenes of a character hiding

1024
00:56:04,000 --> 00:56:06,719
Speaker 1: in the shadows spying on other characters there were in

1025
00:56:06,760 --> 00:56:08,600
Speaker 1: this movie. It's constant, it is.

1026
00:56:08,760 --> 00:56:13,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of conniving and eavesdropping in this picture.

1027
00:56:13,560 --> 00:56:18,000
Speaker 1: But later that night, the spookiness sets in because the

1028
00:56:18,320 --> 00:56:22,240
Speaker 1: atmosphere changes. Wind tears through the gardens and the window

1029
00:56:22,280 --> 00:56:25,520
Speaker 1: shutters are banging and clattering in the dark, and then

1030
00:56:25,600 --> 00:56:29,759
Speaker 1: ominous music swells as Ingram senses something and he wakes up.

1031
00:56:29,800 --> 00:56:32,080
Speaker 1: He gets out of bed, he gets into his wheelchair,

1032
00:56:32,440 --> 00:56:34,520
Speaker 1: and he goes out to the main hall where he

1033
00:56:34,600 --> 00:56:38,319
Speaker 1: believes he hears a ghostly figure playing his piano like

1034
00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:42,840
Speaker 1: he hears his own piano performances. But there's nobody there,

1035
00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:46,000
Speaker 1: nobody at the piano, and this appears to drive him

1036
00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:48,520
Speaker 1: mad and he ends up falling down the stairs and

1037
00:56:48,560 --> 00:56:49,120
Speaker 1: he dies.

1038
00:56:49,760 --> 00:56:52,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a weird scene. It was a weird

1039
00:56:52,200 --> 00:56:54,360
Speaker 3: scene at the time, not knowing what was going to happen,

1040
00:56:54,440 --> 00:56:56,359
Speaker 3: and by the end of the film, looking back on it,

1041
00:56:56,880 --> 00:56:59,160
Speaker 3: I have a lot of questions about what was actually

1042
00:56:59,320 --> 00:57:02,400
Speaker 3: occurring here. But they do that kind of like wayvy

1043
00:57:02,520 --> 00:57:05,160
Speaker 3: optical effect that makes it feel like there is some

1044
00:57:05,200 --> 00:57:09,480
Speaker 3: sort of delusion going on here, that he is hallucinating

1045
00:57:10,160 --> 00:57:10,960
Speaker 3: and is unwell.

1046
00:57:11,360 --> 00:57:13,239
Speaker 1: Now, given what we find out at the end of

1047
00:57:13,280 --> 00:57:16,520
Speaker 1: the movie, though, do you think there was a hidden

1048
00:57:16,600 --> 00:57:20,960
Speaker 1: record player involved in this scene?

1049
00:57:21,120 --> 00:57:23,320
Speaker 3: I mean, I want to make an argument for it,

1050
00:57:23,360 --> 00:57:24,919
Speaker 3: but then I feel like if that were the case,

1051
00:57:24,920 --> 00:57:27,760
Speaker 3: it would break a lot of things about the plot

1052
00:57:27,840 --> 00:57:30,880
Speaker 3: as we understand it, because it means there's some other

1053
00:57:31,800 --> 00:57:34,400
Speaker 3: villain at play here. Well, I don't know, could.

1054
00:57:34,120 --> 00:57:37,880
Speaker 1: Be Hillary a hidden record player to drive them in

1055
00:57:38,040 --> 00:57:41,520
Speaker 1: mad by thinking that he's hearing somebody playing his own music.

1056
00:57:42,360 --> 00:57:46,840
Speaker 3: Maybe I don't know it. It doesn't feel like a

1057
00:57:46,840 --> 00:57:49,120
Speaker 3: perfect fit for some reason. I'm not sure though.

1058
00:57:49,240 --> 00:57:51,360
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I guess that's jumping ahead to the Scooby

1059
00:57:51,400 --> 00:57:53,080
Speaker 1: Doo ending, which we'll have to come back to in

1060
00:57:53,120 --> 00:57:56,680
Speaker 1: a bit. But I thought also, I know they weren't

1061
00:57:56,720 --> 00:57:58,560
Speaker 1: doing this on purpose, but there was a bit of

1062
00:57:58,600 --> 00:58:02,720
Speaker 1: slightly awkward editing where for some reason it cuts from

1063
00:58:02,920 --> 00:58:06,840
Speaker 1: Ingram's death scene to church bells and mourners in procession,

1064
00:58:07,240 --> 00:58:10,560
Speaker 1: and for some reason, the feeling the edit suggests is

1065
00:58:10,640 --> 00:58:14,040
Speaker 1: that this is Ingram's funeral, and it's like fifteen minutes later.

1066
00:58:14,440 --> 00:58:16,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, like Ingram died and they just called the whole

1067
00:58:16,920 --> 00:58:19,720
Speaker 3: town over. They're like, all right, everybody, come, it's happened.

1068
00:58:19,760 --> 00:58:20,680
Speaker 3: We got to do this now.

1069
00:58:20,960 --> 00:58:23,200
Speaker 1: I think it's because they're both at night, and I

1070
00:58:23,240 --> 00:58:25,560
Speaker 1: don't know something visual about the cut. It just makes

1071
00:58:25,600 --> 00:58:27,880
Speaker 1: it seem like and then a few minutes later, here's

1072
00:58:27,880 --> 00:58:30,720
Speaker 1: where we are, and Ingram's laid out on a big

1073
00:58:31,040 --> 00:58:34,960
Speaker 1: black cushion and people are observing him, and the Commissario

1074
00:58:35,080 --> 00:58:37,360
Speaker 1: even comes to the funeral where he and Conrad have

1075
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:41,040
Speaker 1: some Marsala together and talk things over, and they discuss

1076
00:58:41,080 --> 00:58:45,720
Speaker 1: how Ingram's money grubbing. Distant relatives have already showed up.

1077
00:58:45,760 --> 00:58:49,200
Speaker 1: They are here to claim their inheritance. They want the money.

1078
00:58:49,840 --> 00:58:52,840
Speaker 1: And these are a couple of American guys from London

1079
00:58:53,040 --> 00:58:57,560
Speaker 1: named Raymond and Donald Arlington. Raymond is the father played

1080
00:58:57,560 --> 00:58:59,880
Speaker 1: by Charles Dingle, and I think he is supposed to

1081
00:58:59,920 --> 00:59:03,320
Speaker 1: be the Ingram's brother in law. He was married to

1082
00:59:03,480 --> 00:59:07,280
Speaker 1: Ingram's sister. I think correct, yes, and then Donald is

1083
00:59:07,360 --> 00:59:11,480
Speaker 1: his son, and they say, yeah, we're his only living relatives,

1084
00:59:11,480 --> 00:59:13,600
Speaker 1: so they think that they are here for some money.

1085
00:59:14,200 --> 00:59:18,360
Speaker 1: And oh oh, and there are people, of course mourning outside,

1086
00:59:18,400 --> 00:59:22,320
Speaker 1: and the commissario explains, oh, these are the professional mourners.

1087
00:59:22,320 --> 00:59:24,720
Speaker 1: They will be mourning through the night. It is customary

1088
00:59:24,760 --> 00:59:28,880
Speaker 1: in these parts. And Raymond and Donald are obviously they're

1089
00:59:28,960 --> 00:59:31,560
Speaker 1: very stuffy types and they're bothered by all of the

1090
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:35,160
Speaker 1: audible mourning. So Donald is like, ask those witches to

1091
00:59:35,200 --> 00:59:40,200
Speaker 1: stop howling. And they're not very sympathetic to local customs.

1092
00:59:40,520 --> 00:59:42,600
Speaker 3: Well, they're not looking to put down roots here, they're

1093
00:59:42,640 --> 00:59:45,600
Speaker 3: looking to collect and cut out right.

1094
00:59:45,920 --> 00:59:49,120
Speaker 1: In fact, they're even they focus on the occult books,

1095
00:59:49,200 --> 00:59:52,880
Speaker 1: the astrology books. Raymond Donald start just grabbing books off

1096
00:59:52,920 --> 00:59:56,480
Speaker 1: the shelf and they're like, oh, Lombardo's Astrology a you know,

1097
00:59:56,520 --> 00:59:59,080
Speaker 1: the British Library will give me ten pounds for this book.

1098
01:00:00,080 --> 01:00:05,760
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, Peter Lourie is in the background going like no.

1099
01:00:05,960 --> 01:00:08,080
Speaker 3: It's it's a kind of an alarming scene where he

1100
01:00:08,360 --> 01:00:13,720
Speaker 3: actually gets in in Donald's face. Yeah, and it's like

1101
01:00:13,760 --> 01:00:16,320
Speaker 3: tells him to leave the books alone, and it's it's

1102
01:00:16,320 --> 01:00:19,760
Speaker 3: one of those moments where like Laurie is intimidating in

1103
01:00:19,800 --> 01:00:22,280
Speaker 3: this moment, like maybe he's even a little too intimidating,

1104
01:00:22,320 --> 01:00:25,480
Speaker 3: like they actually maybe should have done another take and

1105
01:00:25,560 --> 01:00:27,120
Speaker 3: backed it up a little bit, you.

1106
01:00:27,040 --> 01:00:31,000
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, yeah, yeah, Well he's furious and you understand why,

1107
01:00:31,160 --> 01:00:35,600
Speaker 1: like they're undercutting his his wizard quest and just to

1108
01:00:35,680 --> 01:00:38,800
Speaker 1: get a few pounds from the British Library. So so

1109
01:00:39,000 --> 01:00:44,760
Speaker 1: immediately there is conflict over who will be inheriting the goods.

1110
01:00:44,960 --> 01:00:47,640
Speaker 1: It's a classic murder mystery setup, right, it's you know,

1111
01:00:48,440 --> 01:00:50,640
Speaker 1: there are a ton of movies like this. Oh you know,

1112
01:00:50,680 --> 01:00:53,520
Speaker 1: it's actually the same premise as Knives Out.

1113
01:00:53,760 --> 01:00:56,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought, really, you know, thinking back on Knives Out,

1114
01:00:56,720 --> 01:01:00,200
Speaker 3: you know, fine film would have benefited from a disembodied hand. Yes,

1115
01:01:00,560 --> 01:01:09,200
Speaker 3: maybe they're going to do that in the sequel.

1116
01:01:10,440 --> 01:01:13,800
Speaker 1: Right, So everybody's got to fight over the dead man's possessions,

1117
01:01:14,520 --> 01:01:16,800
Speaker 1: and we get a reading of the will scene where

1118
01:01:16,840 --> 01:01:20,720
Speaker 1: we learn, gasp that in the most recent revision of

1119
01:01:20,720 --> 01:01:22,600
Speaker 1: his will, the one that everybody had to come to

1120
01:01:22,680 --> 01:01:25,320
Speaker 1: dinner and talk about how sane he was in order

1121
01:01:25,400 --> 01:01:30,280
Speaker 1: to make possible, Ingram radically changed the distribution of his assets.

1122
01:01:30,360 --> 01:01:33,520
Speaker 1: So in the previous draft, everything had been going to

1123
01:01:33,680 --> 01:01:37,240
Speaker 1: Donald Arlington, the mean youth, who was like, make those

1124
01:01:37,240 --> 01:01:41,960
Speaker 1: witches be quiet, and now Ingram has changed it so

1125
01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:44,880
Speaker 1: that all of his possessions are instead going to Julie.

1126
01:01:45,200 --> 01:01:48,560
Speaker 1: And obviously the Arlingtons do not like this. They're here

1127
01:01:48,600 --> 01:01:50,480
Speaker 1: for the money, and when they find out they're not

1128
01:01:50,520 --> 01:01:53,440
Speaker 1: getting the money, they're instantly threatening to sue. They say

1129
01:01:53,440 --> 01:01:55,400
Speaker 1: they're going to go to court and get this will

1130
01:01:55,480 --> 01:01:57,760
Speaker 1: thrown out so that they can get possession of the

1131
01:01:57,840 --> 01:02:01,919
Speaker 1: Villa Francesco and all of Hillary's press astrology books. And

1132
01:02:01,960 --> 01:02:05,200
Speaker 1: there's some scheming that goes on. Oh, Duprex, the lawyer,

1133
01:02:05,720 --> 01:02:10,080
Speaker 1: he's doing some triple dealing. He's like telling the Arlington's

1134
01:02:10,120 --> 01:02:14,880
Speaker 1: in private that if they will promise him a third

1135
01:02:15,080 --> 01:02:18,160
Speaker 1: of the inheritance, that he will come work for them

1136
01:02:18,240 --> 01:02:20,800
Speaker 1: and definitely get the new copy of the will thrown

1137
01:02:20,840 --> 01:02:23,760
Speaker 1: out in court. Yeah, and it seems like a done deal.

1138
01:02:23,800 --> 01:02:26,960
Speaker 1: They're like okay, and Duprex is like okay, tomorrow the

1139
01:02:27,000 --> 01:02:31,880
Speaker 1: will will be broken. But later that night, strange things

1140
01:02:31,920 --> 01:02:35,880
Speaker 1: start happening. For example, the servants in the kitchen notice

1141
01:02:35,920 --> 01:02:38,880
Speaker 1: there is a light out in the mausoleum where Ingram's

1142
01:02:38,880 --> 01:02:41,800
Speaker 1: body was laid to rest. And this is apparently so

1143
01:02:41,920 --> 01:02:44,080
Speaker 1: frightening that when the maid in the kitchen sees it.

1144
01:02:44,160 --> 01:02:47,160
Speaker 1: She screams and drops something breakable on the floor, which

1145
01:02:47,760 --> 01:02:50,200
Speaker 1: that seems to me a little bit excessive. Just seeing

1146
01:02:50,200 --> 01:02:52,600
Speaker 1: a light in the crypt that is that scream worthy?

1147
01:02:52,720 --> 01:02:53,280
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.

1148
01:02:53,560 --> 01:02:57,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, might be something to be alarmed about,

1149
01:02:57,920 --> 01:03:00,760
Speaker 3: but it doesn't necessarily mean that Dad or coming back

1150
01:03:00,800 --> 01:03:01,280
Speaker 3: to life.

1151
01:03:01,520 --> 01:03:04,440
Speaker 1: Well, the Arlingtons go to investigate, but they find nobody

1152
01:03:04,440 --> 01:03:07,000
Speaker 1: out there, nothing out of the ordinary. But later that

1153
01:03:07,120 --> 01:03:11,560
Speaker 1: night Duprex, oh, he has a date with He's gonna

1154
01:03:11,600 --> 01:03:14,800
Speaker 1: have a whole handful of trouble, and we get some

1155
01:03:14,880 --> 01:03:18,200
Speaker 1: wonderful close ups on his face. I'm sorry you listeners

1156
01:03:18,200 --> 01:03:21,880
Speaker 1: out there cannot see the screen grabs I got and

1157
01:03:21,920 --> 01:03:25,600
Speaker 1: I'm having rob look at right now, but wide eyes.

1158
01:03:26,120 --> 01:03:28,120
Speaker 1: There's a really great part. Is like you see a

1159
01:03:28,200 --> 01:03:32,480
Speaker 1: hand wearing Ingram's ring reach around a door as it

1160
01:03:32,560 --> 01:03:35,840
Speaker 1: creeps open, and then Duprex is like pinned up against

1161
01:03:35,840 --> 01:03:39,960
Speaker 1: the wall doing the like face back, nostrils flaring kind

1162
01:03:40,000 --> 01:03:42,400
Speaker 1: of thing that it's coming to get me. The Mummy

1163
01:03:42,520 --> 01:03:46,000
Speaker 1: is going to break my neck. And honestly, I miss

1164
01:03:46,120 --> 01:03:47,920
Speaker 1: Duprex when he's gone from the movie.

1165
01:03:48,440 --> 01:03:50,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he was a fun presence.

1166
01:03:50,920 --> 01:03:52,440
Speaker 1: I think he's just got one of those kind of

1167
01:03:52,440 --> 01:03:56,480
Speaker 1: curious looking faces that is nice to round out a movie.

1168
01:03:57,240 --> 01:03:59,560
Speaker 1: Oh but also, somebody starts playing piano in the middle

1169
01:03:59,600 --> 01:04:02,640
Speaker 1: of the night, sounding just like Ingram, and people are

1170
01:04:02,640 --> 01:04:05,240
Speaker 1: woken up by the sound. But when they go to investigate,

1171
01:04:05,240 --> 01:04:09,240
Speaker 1: there's no one at the piano, though Ingram's giant ring

1172
01:04:09,840 --> 01:04:12,640
Speaker 1: is there. It's sitting on top of the piano. And

1173
01:04:13,040 --> 01:04:15,080
Speaker 1: they find a dead lawyer in the corner of the room.

1174
01:04:15,200 --> 01:04:18,440
Speaker 1: It's dup Rex. He has been choked. So oh, and

1175
01:04:18,480 --> 01:04:20,440
Speaker 1: then it looks like the Arlingtons aren't going to get

1176
01:04:20,440 --> 01:04:23,760
Speaker 1: their special astrology books after all. But the police are

1177
01:04:23,760 --> 01:04:26,160
Speaker 1: called in to investigate, and what do you know, it's

1178
01:04:26,160 --> 01:04:30,320
Speaker 1: our old friend, the Commissario gossip cop once again, and

1179
01:04:30,440 --> 01:04:34,360
Speaker 1: he's there to do all the forensics. So they look

1180
01:04:34,440 --> 01:04:38,600
Speaker 1: for fingerprints. They take fingerprint dustings from the piano and

1181
01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:41,600
Speaker 1: they compare those to everybody alive in the house, and

1182
01:04:41,800 --> 01:04:44,760
Speaker 1: it turns out that they match no one alive in

1183
01:04:44,840 --> 01:04:48,760
Speaker 1: the house. Huh. So there's a lot of talking about,

1184
01:04:48,840 --> 01:04:52,680
Speaker 1: you know, motive, who could it have been? And they

1185
01:04:52,760 --> 01:04:55,560
Speaker 1: do discuss that a former will existed that would have

1186
01:04:55,640 --> 01:04:58,720
Speaker 1: left everything to Donald, which would seem to implicate Julie

1187
01:04:59,680 --> 01:05:04,200
Speaker 1: or implicate Conrad as Julie's ally, and so people go

1188
01:05:04,280 --> 01:05:08,400
Speaker 1: all around pointing fingers. But I love how Conrad just

1189
01:05:08,440 --> 01:05:11,320
Speaker 1: comes straight out and he's like, well, obviously Ingram's ghost

1190
01:05:11,440 --> 01:05:14,960
Speaker 1: killed Duprex because he didn't want his will contested. And

1191
01:05:15,000 --> 01:05:17,680
Speaker 1: then the Kammisario is like, but there are no such

1192
01:05:17,720 --> 01:05:22,680
Speaker 1: things as ghosts. But then there's a there's just absolutely

1193
01:05:22,760 --> 01:05:27,000
Speaker 1: exquisite logic scene that follows. So the Kammasario is like,

1194
01:05:27,040 --> 01:05:28,840
Speaker 1: how can we know it was a ghost? I've never

1195
01:05:28,880 --> 01:05:32,160
Speaker 1: seen a ghost, and Conrad says, neither have I, but

1196
01:05:32,280 --> 01:05:35,720
Speaker 1: one can never be absolutely sure they don't exist. So

1197
01:05:35,960 --> 01:05:38,080
Speaker 1: oh well, then it must have been a ghost. You know,

1198
01:05:38,160 --> 01:05:41,160
Speaker 1: you can't prove they don't exist. Then therefore this murder

1199
01:05:41,240 --> 01:05:42,040
Speaker 1: was done by one.

1200
01:05:42,440 --> 01:05:45,520
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's believe. It was what the Sherlock

1201
01:05:45,600 --> 01:05:48,480
Speaker 3: Home quote, you know, when when all natural.

1202
01:05:50,560 --> 01:05:54,280
Speaker 1: Excluded the impossible, the improbable room whatever it is.

1203
01:05:54,400 --> 01:05:57,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so in this it's it's similar. It's just

1204
01:05:57,520 --> 01:05:59,600
Speaker 3: if you've thought of the impossible, just stick with that.

1205
01:06:00,240 --> 01:06:00,919
Speaker 3: That sounds good.

1206
01:06:01,280 --> 01:06:03,800
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, anyway, the next day, everybody goes to the

1207
01:06:03,840 --> 01:06:07,080
Speaker 1: mausoleum to investigate a lead about the light in the

1208
01:06:07,120 --> 01:06:09,680
Speaker 1: crypt of the night before, and they find a number

1209
01:06:09,720 --> 01:06:13,600
Speaker 1: of very odd things. There is a tiny window broken

1210
01:06:13,680 --> 01:06:17,560
Speaker 1: from the inside to the outside, with a little jagged

1211
01:06:17,680 --> 01:06:20,360
Speaker 1: opening that a person could clearly not fit through.

1212
01:06:20,680 --> 01:06:22,840
Speaker 3: And they also's point, I'm getting excited like that. That

1213
01:06:23,400 --> 01:06:25,120
Speaker 3: was like, oh, well, we're getting there, we're getting to

1214
01:06:25,160 --> 01:06:25,479
Speaker 3: the hand.

1215
01:06:25,720 --> 01:06:27,960
Speaker 1: It's going to be a hand, and the coffin has

1216
01:06:27,960 --> 01:06:31,160
Speaker 1: been tampered with. They open it up and uh oh,

1217
01:06:31,240 --> 01:06:34,360
Speaker 1: the corpse of Ingram is missing its left hand.

1218
01:06:35,000 --> 01:06:38,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was really excellent, I thought, because yeah, everybody shocked,

1219
01:06:38,280 --> 01:06:39,760
Speaker 3: and I was afraid they weren't going to show it.

1220
01:06:39,800 --> 01:06:42,240
Speaker 3: But then they do show it. There's a knife in

1221
01:06:42,680 --> 01:06:45,640
Speaker 3: like the paralyzed hand. Yeah, and then there's the bloody

1222
01:06:45,640 --> 01:06:49,880
Speaker 3: stump where the superpowered hand was previously.

1223
01:06:49,400 --> 01:06:54,440
Speaker 1: Attached, right. And then they also find outside the broken

1224
01:06:54,480 --> 01:06:59,880
Speaker 1: window no footprints, but hand prints, yeah, single a line

1225
01:07:00,040 --> 01:07:03,760
Speaker 1: of single hand prints, as if a hand by itself

1226
01:07:03,960 --> 01:07:06,080
Speaker 1: was crawling along the ground.

1227
01:07:06,120 --> 01:07:08,560
Speaker 3: Or if not crawling, then at least like flip flopping,

1228
01:07:08,760 --> 01:07:10,360
Speaker 3: like doing yea some sort of a fish out of

1229
01:07:10,400 --> 01:07:10,960
Speaker 3: a water thing.

1230
01:07:11,280 --> 01:07:13,720
Speaker 1: And then there's a kind of fun sequence where they

1231
01:07:13,720 --> 01:07:15,760
Speaker 1: go out in public. Conrad and Julie like go to

1232
01:07:15,800 --> 01:07:18,320
Speaker 1: the cafe to get some brandy, and the whole town

1233
01:07:18,480 --> 01:07:21,840
Speaker 1: just shuns them because apparently they believe somebody at the

1234
01:07:21,920 --> 01:07:25,040
Speaker 1: Villa Francesco has the evil eye and they just can't

1235
01:07:25,240 --> 01:07:27,600
Speaker 1: can't do business with them anymore. Even like the guy

1236
01:07:27,640 --> 01:07:30,120
Speaker 1: at the cafe who had served them before is like,

1237
01:07:30,160 --> 01:07:33,080
Speaker 1: I reserve the right to refuse service. You can't come

1238
01:07:33,080 --> 01:07:33,439
Speaker 1: in here.

1239
01:07:33,800 --> 01:07:36,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think Conrad's realize. He's like, we're

1240
01:07:36,720 --> 01:07:38,800
Speaker 3: going to have to leave because otherwise we will starve.

1241
01:07:38,960 --> 01:07:40,000
Speaker 3: Nobody will feed us.

1242
01:07:40,360 --> 01:07:42,080
Speaker 1: Right, They're going to be starved out of the town.

1243
01:07:42,120 --> 01:07:45,200
Speaker 1: And then also they meet up with the Commissario and

1244
01:07:45,280 --> 01:07:48,240
Speaker 1: there is new evidence. I think he says, am I

1245
01:07:48,320 --> 01:07:50,600
Speaker 1: right about this. He's like, Okay, so the fingerprints on

1246
01:07:50,640 --> 01:07:54,160
Speaker 1: the piano who we assume belonged to the killer, they

1247
01:07:54,160 --> 01:07:57,520
Speaker 1: were Ingram's and they were not older than a day,

1248
01:07:57,960 --> 01:08:00,560
Speaker 1: so this would have been after Ingram was dead. But also,

1249
01:08:01,200 --> 01:08:02,880
Speaker 1: can you date fingerprints?

1250
01:08:03,760 --> 01:08:05,920
Speaker 3: I mean, you can do anything with forensics in a

1251
01:08:05,960 --> 01:08:06,640
Speaker 3: motion picture.

1252
01:08:06,960 --> 01:08:10,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh. But at some point the Kammissario seems to

1253
01:08:10,040 --> 01:08:12,760
Speaker 1: be won over because he says, in my mind, there

1254
01:08:12,840 --> 01:08:17,120
Speaker 1: is no doubt the hand is walking around, but I'd

1255
01:08:17,120 --> 01:08:19,880
Speaker 1: say it's right about here that the movie transitions into

1256
01:08:19,960 --> 01:08:22,920
Speaker 1: high gear hand mode, would you agree, Yeah.

1257
01:08:22,600 --> 01:08:25,640
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely. And I was totally on board with

1258
01:08:25,640 --> 01:08:30,040
Speaker 3: all of this because it's clear that this is a

1259
01:08:30,160 --> 01:08:34,800
Speaker 3: disembodied hand crawling around attacking people in the night. And

1260
01:08:35,320 --> 01:08:38,040
Speaker 3: they have some just some fabulous scenes follow.

1261
01:08:38,080 --> 01:08:42,240
Speaker 1: Right, there's a great confrontation between Hillary and Donald Arlington

1262
01:08:42,320 --> 01:08:47,120
Speaker 1: the shut those witches up, kid, and so Donald Arlington

1263
01:08:47,160 --> 01:08:49,680
Speaker 1: comes into Hillary's office and he's like, hey, what are

1264
01:08:49,720 --> 01:08:52,160
Speaker 1: you expecting to find in all these old astrology books?

1265
01:08:52,600 --> 01:08:54,960
Speaker 1: And Peter Laurie says that you know the law that

1266
01:08:55,080 --> 01:08:59,000
Speaker 1: changes unknown fate into scientific fact. Oh great, And as

1267
01:08:59,000 --> 01:09:02,519
Speaker 1: an example or a demonstration of what he can predict

1268
01:09:02,640 --> 01:09:06,320
Speaker 1: with his astrology knowledge, he's like, hey, Donald, did you

1269
01:09:06,439 --> 01:09:09,240
Speaker 1: know that there were two other people who lived hundreds

1270
01:09:09,280 --> 01:09:11,280
Speaker 1: of years ago who have the same birthday as you

1271
01:09:11,640 --> 01:09:14,880
Speaker 1: and they both died by being choked to death. And

1272
01:09:15,360 --> 01:09:18,000
Speaker 1: Donald's like wow, okay.

1273
01:09:17,840 --> 01:09:20,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, He's like, well, good, I hate surprises, like a

1274
01:09:20,800 --> 01:09:22,120
Speaker 3: kind of a fun comeback.

1275
01:09:21,760 --> 01:09:24,960
Speaker 1: There, and they oh oh oh. And then there it

1276
01:09:25,000 --> 01:09:27,920
Speaker 1: turns out Donald remembers where there was a safe hidden

1277
01:09:28,000 --> 01:09:32,519
Speaker 1: behind the bookcase in the study here because he saw

1278
01:09:32,680 --> 01:09:34,880
Speaker 1: Ingram open it when he was a young child. He

1279
01:09:34,960 --> 01:09:39,280
Speaker 1: remembers there is a jingle to summon the combination to mind,

1280
01:09:39,880 --> 01:09:42,200
Speaker 1: and Donald comes back later in the night to try

1281
01:09:42,200 --> 01:09:45,960
Speaker 1: to return to the safe. But then meanwhile the commissario

1282
01:09:46,120 --> 01:09:48,600
Speaker 1: is in the house. He's like hiding out behind the fireplace,

1283
01:09:48,680 --> 01:09:52,000
Speaker 1: watching from the shadows, and it's those bad fingers striking

1284
01:09:52,040 --> 01:09:54,960
Speaker 1: once again. Donald's creeping around and he opens up the

1285
01:09:55,000 --> 01:09:57,759
Speaker 1: door to the study a crack while the commissario is looking,

1286
01:09:58,360 --> 01:10:01,600
Speaker 1: and a hand reaches around as if from behind, and

1287
01:10:01,680 --> 01:10:06,000
Speaker 1: grabs him by the throat, wearing the Ingram ring. But

1288
01:10:06,080 --> 01:10:09,280
Speaker 1: this time it's like, man, this is a lock, because

1289
01:10:09,360 --> 01:10:13,040
Speaker 1: the police detective is right there and he witnesses the

1290
01:10:13,080 --> 01:10:14,320
Speaker 1: attack by the killer hand.

1291
01:10:14,640 --> 01:10:17,679
Speaker 3: Yeah, so at this point I'm completely convinced and excited

1292
01:10:17,720 --> 01:10:18,639
Speaker 3: to see more of the hand.

1293
01:10:19,080 --> 01:10:23,120
Speaker 1: Though technically still the hand, you can't see if it

1294
01:10:23,200 --> 01:10:25,200
Speaker 1: belongs to an arm or not, because it's like the

1295
01:10:25,200 --> 01:10:26,519
Speaker 1: door is only open a crack.

1296
01:10:27,040 --> 01:10:29,479
Speaker 3: I would say one of the advantages to the plotting

1297
01:10:29,520 --> 01:10:32,200
Speaker 3: here is that at this point in the film you

1298
01:10:32,280 --> 01:10:35,200
Speaker 3: might not know exactly how good the special effects will

1299
01:10:35,200 --> 01:10:38,680
Speaker 3: be and so you don't know if the limitations here

1300
01:10:38,720 --> 01:10:41,160
Speaker 3: are based on what was possible with the effects, Like

1301
01:10:41,200 --> 01:10:44,360
Speaker 3: maybe the hand is always going to attack people close

1302
01:10:44,360 --> 01:10:47,680
Speaker 3: to a door, because that's all that's possible with the filmmaking.

1303
01:10:48,240 --> 01:10:52,320
Speaker 1: Right. So Donald is not killed, he is injured, and

1304
01:10:52,439 --> 01:10:55,120
Speaker 1: Julie says that there is a possibility of brain fever,

1305
01:10:55,280 --> 01:10:58,639
Speaker 1: but he's there recovering in the night. Meanwhile, the servants

1306
01:10:58,680 --> 01:11:01,280
Speaker 1: all flee the villa because they believe that the hand

1307
01:11:01,360 --> 01:11:04,559
Speaker 1: is loose and it's the devil. And then later that

1308
01:11:04,640 --> 01:11:07,000
Speaker 1: night there is one of the best scenes in the movie,

1309
01:11:07,040 --> 01:11:11,000
Speaker 1: this great long one on one scene between Peter, Lorie

1310
01:11:11,160 --> 01:11:14,320
Speaker 1: and the hand and we finally see the hand revealed

1311
01:11:14,360 --> 01:11:15,320
Speaker 1: in all its glory.

1312
01:11:15,640 --> 01:11:17,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's pretty great. I mean, you know

1313
01:11:17,080 --> 01:11:20,000
Speaker 3: exactly what it's going to be nowadays, it's going to

1314
01:11:20,080 --> 01:11:23,160
Speaker 3: be that effect of the disembodied hand, like they've somehow,

1315
01:11:23,680 --> 01:11:25,599
Speaker 3: you know, cut out the rest of the body. Today

1316
01:11:25,680 --> 01:11:28,080
Speaker 3: today you would accomplish it with a like a green

1317
01:11:28,200 --> 01:11:33,360
Speaker 3: suit with everything covered except for the hand. But it

1318
01:11:33,400 --> 01:11:34,280
Speaker 3: looks really good.

1319
01:11:34,560 --> 01:11:36,960
Speaker 1: So what happens in the scene, Oh.

1320
01:11:36,800 --> 01:11:40,040
Speaker 3: Well, it's I mean, it's cool. I mean, it's a

1321
01:11:40,120 --> 01:11:43,320
Speaker 3: pretty complex scene, I guess because it's it's crawling across

1322
01:11:43,760 --> 01:11:49,519
Speaker 3: the table. It's crawling towards Hillary and the ring that

1323
01:11:49,560 --> 01:11:51,439
Speaker 3: he was looking at that he puts out on the

1324
01:11:51,479 --> 01:11:55,400
Speaker 3: table crawls out of this box like a crab, like

1325
01:11:55,439 --> 01:11:59,880
Speaker 3: a spider, and he's like overcome with this, this complex

1326
01:12:00,479 --> 01:12:03,840
Speaker 3: array of Peter Laurie emotions a lot of dread in there,

1327
01:12:03,880 --> 01:12:07,519
Speaker 3: but also this sense of maybe wonder. The hand crawls

1328
01:12:07,560 --> 01:12:10,599
Speaker 3: across the table to him, and then it kind of

1329
01:12:11,080 --> 01:12:12,880
Speaker 3: it sort of does a dinosaur, you know, like how

1330
01:12:12,920 --> 01:12:14,400
Speaker 3: you do with your your hand where you put the

1331
01:12:14,640 --> 01:12:19,479
Speaker 3: middle finger becomes the like a brachiosaurus neck. It kind

1332
01:12:19,479 --> 01:12:22,000
Speaker 3: of does that. But it's clear what it is doing.

1333
01:12:22,320 --> 01:12:24,840
Speaker 3: It is doing what Ingram did in life. It is

1334
01:12:24,960 --> 01:12:27,640
Speaker 3: reaching out and asking if the ring be put on

1335
01:12:27,680 --> 01:12:32,519
Speaker 3: the finger. Oh so good, and Laurie's character Hillary does it,

1336
01:12:32,880 --> 01:12:36,439
Speaker 3: and yeah, it's a pretty a pretty crazy scene, a

1337
01:12:36,439 --> 01:12:40,680
Speaker 3: pretty horrifically satisfying scene, especially for a picture from the

1338
01:12:40,720 --> 01:12:41,439
Speaker 3: nineteen forties.

1339
01:12:42,200 --> 01:12:44,599
Speaker 1: But then Laurie he gets the better of the hand

1340
01:12:44,640 --> 01:12:47,760
Speaker 1: and he ends up trapping it in a drawer and

1341
01:12:47,800 --> 01:12:50,800
Speaker 1: he runs and get gets Conrad's help. He's like, hey,

1342
01:12:51,040 --> 01:12:53,960
Speaker 1: come look, the hands alive. I caught it in a drawer.

1343
01:12:54,000 --> 01:12:56,120
Speaker 1: But when then when they go check, it's not there,

1344
01:12:56,600 --> 01:12:59,920
Speaker 1: and Hillary has this epic fit of screaming, searching around

1345
01:13:00,120 --> 01:13:02,759
Speaker 1: for the hand. He's all over the place. He eventually

1346
01:13:02,800 --> 01:13:05,240
Speaker 1: finds the hand hiding behind a bunch of books and

1347
01:13:05,320 --> 01:13:05,599
Speaker 1: the book.

1348
01:13:06,280 --> 01:13:09,760
Speaker 3: This is a great sequence too, because it shot. It's

1349
01:13:09,760 --> 01:13:11,519
Speaker 3: shot from the point, you know, the impossible point of

1350
01:13:11,600 --> 01:13:14,599
Speaker 3: view of behind the bookshelf, and we see Laurie's mad

1351
01:13:14,640 --> 01:13:17,320
Speaker 3: face the whole time as he's pulling these books off

1352
01:13:17,320 --> 01:13:20,760
Speaker 3: the shelf. And then the hand's cowering like a like

1353
01:13:20,800 --> 01:13:23,719
Speaker 3: a cornered spider, like a corner tarantula behind the last

1354
01:13:23,720 --> 01:13:25,760
Speaker 3: two books, and he pulls those off as well, and

1355
01:13:25,800 --> 01:13:26,439
Speaker 3: he grabs it.

1356
01:13:26,640 --> 01:13:28,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he wrestles with the hand and then ends

1357
01:13:28,840 --> 01:13:30,360
Speaker 1: up nailing it to a base.

1358
01:13:30,680 --> 01:13:32,519
Speaker 3: Oh God, such a good scene.

1359
01:13:32,680 --> 01:13:37,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Oh. And then later Donald and Raymond they're

1360
01:13:37,080 --> 01:13:39,960
Speaker 1: going to I think Donald remembers how to open the

1361
01:13:40,000 --> 01:13:41,960
Speaker 1: safe to get the whatever it is out of it.

1362
01:13:42,160 --> 01:13:44,080
Speaker 1: He's looking for. Maybe it's the will or something I

1363
01:13:44,120 --> 01:13:46,760
Speaker 1: don't recall, but he's trying to get in there. And

1364
01:13:46,800 --> 01:13:49,160
Speaker 1: they managed to open up the safe and then when

1365
01:13:49,160 --> 01:13:53,160
Speaker 1: they do what's inside the safe? It's the severed hand. Yeah,

1366
01:13:53,240 --> 01:13:57,040
Speaker 1: so Donald sees it and then runs away screaming. But

1367
01:13:57,080 --> 01:14:00,839
Speaker 1: then we get the final sort of confrontation and real sequence.

1368
01:14:00,880 --> 01:14:02,280
Speaker 1: So how do we describe that.

1369
01:14:02,800 --> 01:14:07,920
Speaker 3: Well, so at this point in the film that we've

1370
01:14:07,920 --> 01:14:10,080
Speaker 3: come up to it, like, it really feels like this

1371
01:14:10,800 --> 01:14:14,360
Speaker 3: hand is a reality, right, Yeah, there, we've seen it

1372
01:14:14,400 --> 01:14:17,679
Speaker 3: crawling around, I guess. But then you quickly are made

1373
01:14:17,680 --> 01:14:21,160
Speaker 3: to realize who has actually seen the hand in its

1374
01:14:21,200 --> 01:14:25,080
Speaker 3: full glory. Only one character, Peter, and that's Peter Laurie's

1375
01:14:25,120 --> 01:14:27,639
Speaker 3: Hillary character. No one else has seen it crawling around

1376
01:14:27,720 --> 01:14:29,679
Speaker 3: on the table, and no one else has nailed it down.

1377
01:14:30,160 --> 01:14:32,880
Speaker 3: And his attempts to show it to other people, come, look,

1378
01:14:32,920 --> 01:14:35,519
Speaker 3: it's in the drawer haven't actually panned out.

1379
01:14:35,960 --> 01:14:38,799
Speaker 1: Now, Donald and Raymond did see it in the safe,

1380
01:14:38,800 --> 01:14:41,960
Speaker 1: but it wasn't moving. It's laying there in the safe.

1381
01:14:42,240 --> 01:14:45,240
Speaker 3: So yeah, we're coming to the realization that, yes, that

1382
01:14:45,360 --> 01:14:49,000
Speaker 3: corpse's hand is missing, that corpse's hand is in the safe,

1383
01:14:49,080 --> 01:14:53,639
Speaker 3: nailed to a board, but perhaps it isn't actually alive.

1384
01:14:53,960 --> 01:14:58,200
Speaker 3: Perhaps only Peter Laurie's character Hillary thinks that the hand

1385
01:14:58,320 --> 01:15:01,000
Speaker 3: is alive and if that that is the case, well

1386
01:15:01,000 --> 01:15:03,439
Speaker 3: who's doing all the strangling, Well it would have to

1387
01:15:03,439 --> 01:15:05,200
Speaker 3: be Peter Lourie's character.

1388
01:15:05,000 --> 01:15:08,320
Speaker 1: Hillary, right, And that's the conclusion that Julie seems to

1389
01:15:08,320 --> 01:15:11,519
Speaker 1: come to. There's kind of a confrontation between Julie and Hillary,

1390
01:15:12,120 --> 01:15:16,400
Speaker 1: and then Hillary tries to choke her but fails, and

1391
01:15:16,479 --> 01:15:20,040
Speaker 1: then he further descends into madness. He loses his mind,

1392
01:15:20,040 --> 01:15:23,080
Speaker 1: and he thinks he sees the hand everywhere.

1393
01:15:23,200 --> 01:15:26,080
Speaker 3: Right, And there's a scene where he's he's coming and

1394
01:15:26,280 --> 01:15:30,519
Speaker 3: increasingly unhinged, and he's approaching her with a knife and

1395
01:15:30,640 --> 01:15:33,280
Speaker 3: she kind of turns the tables on him. She plays

1396
01:15:33,280 --> 01:15:35,439
Speaker 3: into his madness and she's like, no, you're right, it

1397
01:15:35,560 --> 01:15:37,599
Speaker 3: is the hand. We've got to get that hand. We've

1398
01:15:37,600 --> 01:15:39,920
Speaker 3: got to stop that hand. And that buys her a

1399
01:15:39,960 --> 01:15:40,479
Speaker 3: little time.

1400
01:15:40,720 --> 01:15:43,840
Speaker 1: She's on team anti hand. Yeah, but I think what

1401
01:15:44,240 --> 01:15:47,879
Speaker 1: we're supposed to understand is that so Hillary did indeed

1402
01:15:48,160 --> 01:15:51,559
Speaker 1: sever the hand, Yes, And so he went to the

1403
01:15:51,560 --> 01:15:54,639
Speaker 1: grave cut off the hand and then used the severed

1404
01:15:54,720 --> 01:15:59,320
Speaker 1: hand to attack the lawyer Duprex and like put the

1405
01:15:59,400 --> 01:16:02,320
Speaker 1: fingerprint all over the piano and stuff to fool everybody

1406
01:16:02,400 --> 01:16:04,400
Speaker 1: and make make them think the hand had come back

1407
01:16:04,439 --> 01:16:07,599
Speaker 1: to life, but then he started to believe his own story,

1408
01:16:07,680 --> 01:16:09,960
Speaker 1: and as he's losing his mind, he thinks the hand

1409
01:16:10,040 --> 01:16:11,360
Speaker 1: is actually pursuing him.

1410
01:16:11,840 --> 01:16:13,919
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's kind of a healthy dose of the telltale

1411
01:16:13,960 --> 01:16:16,840
Speaker 3: heart and all of the swear. Yeah, he's driven mad

1412
01:16:16,880 --> 01:16:20,600
Speaker 3: by his own crimes and begins to believe that the

1413
01:16:20,640 --> 01:16:23,760
Speaker 3: hand is actually alive, begins to see the hand, and

1414
01:16:23,800 --> 01:16:27,200
Speaker 3: then ultimately, you know, ends up battling the hand.

1415
01:16:27,640 --> 01:16:30,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a great SmackDown scene where he fights the

1416
01:16:30,920 --> 01:16:33,320
Speaker 1: hand and in the end he has to purge it

1417
01:16:33,360 --> 01:16:33,920
Speaker 1: by fire.

1418
01:16:34,600 --> 01:16:37,120
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, throws the hand into the fireplace. And this

1419
01:16:37,240 --> 01:16:40,360
Speaker 3: is all just a great showcase for Laurie. You know,

1420
01:16:40,400 --> 01:16:43,640
Speaker 3: he gets to act mad and physical and you know,

1421
01:16:44,040 --> 01:16:49,240
Speaker 3: just enraged and also full of horror. Really fun performance

1422
01:16:49,280 --> 01:16:50,960
Speaker 3: that he didn't think we were going to get, because again,

1423
01:16:51,360 --> 01:16:53,719
Speaker 3: the first half of the film, you can easily imagine

1424
01:16:53,720 --> 01:16:56,920
Speaker 3: it's going to be all this character Conrad battling the

1425
01:16:57,000 --> 01:17:00,680
Speaker 3: hand and saving the female lead at the end. But

1426
01:17:00,920 --> 01:17:03,240
Speaker 3: Conrad's never really not seen much.

1427
01:17:03,439 --> 01:17:06,360
Speaker 1: What's he doing. He's somewhere, you know, having.

1428
01:17:06,240 --> 01:17:08,960
Speaker 3: A smoke or something. I guess, selling some crap to

1429
01:17:09,280 --> 01:17:10,080
Speaker 3: some tourists.

1430
01:17:10,200 --> 01:17:14,479
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, he's trying to sell Julie some cameos. But

1431
01:17:14,560 --> 01:17:19,000
Speaker 1: in the end, after this big confrontation, wait, I'm suddenly

1432
01:17:19,040 --> 01:17:21,080
Speaker 1: forgetting Hillary dies. But how does he die?

1433
01:17:21,960 --> 01:17:25,519
Speaker 3: The hand it chokes him. He falls down, and then

1434
01:17:26,040 --> 01:17:28,800
Speaker 3: we do a fade where the hand disappears to make

1435
01:17:28,840 --> 01:17:31,120
Speaker 3: it clear to the audience. I guess that the hand

1436
01:17:31,160 --> 01:17:32,520
Speaker 3: was a figment of his imagination.

1437
01:17:32,960 --> 01:17:34,600
Speaker 1: So did he choke himself?

1438
01:17:35,160 --> 01:17:37,200
Speaker 3: Well? I thought that when the hand disappeared it was

1439
01:17:37,320 --> 01:17:38,640
Speaker 3: or the hand was going to be shown to be

1440
01:17:38,640 --> 01:17:40,360
Speaker 3: his own hand, But then there's no hand there at all,

1441
01:17:40,400 --> 01:17:42,559
Speaker 3: So I don't know if it's just like he died

1442
01:17:42,680 --> 01:17:46,840
Speaker 3: via psychic damage from the madness, or if he it's

1443
01:17:46,840 --> 01:17:49,000
Speaker 3: implied that he choked his self and it's just maybe not.

1444
01:17:50,520 --> 01:17:54,040
Speaker 3: They didn't really show it on screen in a way

1445
01:17:54,080 --> 01:17:54,960
Speaker 3: that was convincing.

1446
01:17:55,320 --> 01:17:57,519
Speaker 1: But it's a full on Scooby Do ending because they

1447
01:17:57,640 --> 01:18:00,000
Speaker 1: like uncover all of the like here's what they were

1448
01:18:00,160 --> 01:18:04,360
Speaker 1: do it because there is a gramophone. There's like a

1449
01:18:04,400 --> 01:18:08,479
Speaker 1: record player inside a suit of armor that was hidden

1450
01:18:08,560 --> 01:18:13,240
Speaker 1: there to apparently simulate Ingram's ghost playing the piano, because

1451
01:18:13,240 --> 01:18:16,080
Speaker 1: it was a recording of Ingram playing and they would

1452
01:18:16,160 --> 01:18:19,160
Speaker 1: and that they said that Hillary would play that in

1453
01:18:19,280 --> 01:18:22,120
Speaker 1: order to fool people into thinking that Ingram was running around.

1454
01:18:22,439 --> 01:18:24,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is great. We love an ending. When they

1455
01:18:25,160 --> 01:18:27,640
Speaker 3: describe something, they give you all the details in a

1456
01:18:27,680 --> 01:18:30,519
Speaker 3: way that it makes no sense whatsoever. Like, yeah, this

1457
01:18:31,320 --> 01:18:34,120
Speaker 3: means that it's such a good vinyl recording where it's

1458
01:18:34,160 --> 01:18:39,519
Speaker 3: such a good late nineteenth century sound system that it's

1459
01:18:39,560 --> 01:18:45,479
Speaker 3: indistinguishable from live piano performance. People in the house are

1460
01:18:45,520 --> 01:18:47,479
Speaker 3: just like, the piano is clearly playing the dead have

1461
01:18:47,520 --> 01:18:50,240
Speaker 3: come back to life, right, And it just feels like,

1462
01:18:50,320 --> 01:18:52,960
Speaker 3: you know, it's one of these ending. It's like, don't worry,

1463
01:18:53,000 --> 01:18:56,000
Speaker 3: there's nothing supernatural exists. There are no monsters, there are

1464
01:18:56,040 --> 01:18:59,000
Speaker 3: no hands. This was all just a clever scheme and

1465
01:18:59,040 --> 01:19:01,640
Speaker 3: it wasn't clever and for the good guys, don't you

1466
01:19:01,680 --> 01:19:02,160
Speaker 3: forget it?

1467
01:19:02,520 --> 01:19:05,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then the commisario does the whole comedy routine.

1468
01:19:05,360 --> 01:19:08,360
Speaker 1: Oh there's the glove. There's like the glove that's dropped

1469
01:19:08,360 --> 01:19:10,320
Speaker 1: on the stairs and you think it's a hand, but

1470
01:19:10,360 --> 01:19:11,360
Speaker 1: then it's just a glove.

1471
01:19:11,840 --> 01:19:14,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I thought they were, Oh, maybe they're going

1472
01:19:14,240 --> 01:19:15,720
Speaker 3: to go for it and they're going to have the

1473
01:19:15,720 --> 01:19:18,000
Speaker 3: twist ending. Nope, the hand is real. The hand was

1474
01:19:18,040 --> 01:19:19,840
Speaker 3: real the whole time, and it's going to kill you.

1475
01:19:20,080 --> 01:19:21,920
Speaker 3: I would have loved that, and I thought that's what

1476
01:19:21,960 --> 01:19:23,880
Speaker 3: we were getting. But then they're like, no, he just

1477
01:19:23,960 --> 01:19:25,759
Speaker 3: dropped a glove and it made a made faint.

1478
01:19:26,160 --> 01:19:28,960
Speaker 1: Well, there's like four twist endings that they take back.

1479
01:19:29,120 --> 01:19:32,320
Speaker 1: Then later you think that they're doing it again because

1480
01:19:32,360 --> 01:19:34,280
Speaker 1: the hand with the ring is creeping up at the

1481
01:19:34,320 --> 01:19:37,719
Speaker 1: Kamasario's neck while he's doing comedy into the camera. Yeah,

1482
01:19:37,760 --> 01:19:40,000
Speaker 1: and then he's like, oh, it is my own hand.

1483
01:19:41,520 --> 01:19:44,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's absolutely terrible. It says like, come on, I

1484
01:19:45,000 --> 01:19:46,920
Speaker 3: feel like you're making fun of the film that we

1485
01:19:47,080 --> 01:19:51,160
Speaker 3: just watched and enjoyed. But like we said, it seems

1486
01:19:51,160 --> 01:19:53,320
Speaker 3: to have been more or less the style of the time.

1487
01:19:53,600 --> 01:19:55,880
Speaker 3: I mean, didn't Edgar Allan Poe do this, you know

1488
01:19:55,920 --> 01:19:58,320
Speaker 3: where at the end of the Telltale Heart he's like,

1489
01:19:58,560 --> 01:20:01,879
Speaker 3: you know, he's talking about the Maddening Beach, just kidding,

1490
01:20:02,560 --> 01:20:04,800
Speaker 3: is not a real heart at all. I'm just it

1491
01:20:04,840 --> 01:20:07,599
Speaker 3: was all in my mind, isn't that kookie? Isn't it crazy?

1492
01:20:08,000 --> 01:20:11,800
Speaker 3: There are no undead hearts people don't worry about.

1493
01:20:13,240 --> 01:20:16,000
Speaker 1: Oh man, all right, Well, I feel like we got

1494
01:20:16,040 --> 01:20:17,839
Speaker 1: to wrap it up for the beast with five fingers.

1495
01:20:18,400 --> 01:20:20,519
Speaker 3: All right, yeah, let's do it. But hey, if you

1496
01:20:20,560 --> 01:20:23,400
Speaker 3: want to see this film yourself, I guess for the

1497
01:20:23,400 --> 01:20:25,720
Speaker 3: most part, you're in luck because it is widely available

1498
01:20:25,800 --> 01:20:29,519
Speaker 3: to purchase or rent digitally. You can also pick it

1499
01:20:29,600 --> 01:20:32,080
Speaker 3: up on DVD. But on the other hand, we were

1500
01:20:32,120 --> 01:20:34,400
Speaker 3: talking about this before we recorded. This doesn't seem to

1501
01:20:34,439 --> 01:20:37,840
Speaker 3: be a film that's received any like remastering love or

1502
01:20:38,360 --> 01:20:40,400
Speaker 3: certainly doesn't seem to have been released on Blu Ray

1503
01:20:40,560 --> 01:20:43,880
Speaker 3: or anything. So maybe we'll get that in the future.

1504
01:20:43,960 --> 01:20:47,880
Speaker 3: And that being said, it's still a beautiful looking film.

1505
01:20:48,280 --> 01:20:52,240
Speaker 3: It's not like the film quality is degraded or anything

1506
01:20:52,600 --> 01:20:55,559
Speaker 3: to any degree that makes it unwatchable. But I feel

1507
01:20:55,560 --> 01:21:00,360
Speaker 3: like it deserves more love than it's seen. Agreed, all right, Well,

1508
01:21:00,640 --> 01:21:03,280
Speaker 3: write in if you have thoughts on this particular film

1509
01:21:03,439 --> 01:21:07,240
Speaker 3: or other crawling hand movies related crawling hand movies that

1510
01:21:07,280 --> 01:21:09,799
Speaker 3: we didn't cover. I'd also love to hear from anyone

1511
01:21:09,800 --> 01:21:12,679
Speaker 3: out there who plays the piano. What's the deal with

1512
01:21:12,680 --> 01:21:14,160
Speaker 3: with one headed piano? Is that?

1513
01:21:14,320 --> 01:21:14,400
Speaker 4: Is?

1514
01:21:14,720 --> 01:21:18,120
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess is that a thing? Let us know.

1515
01:21:19,320 --> 01:21:21,280
Speaker 3: We would love to hear from you in the meantime,

1516
01:21:21,280 --> 01:21:22,840
Speaker 3: if you'd like to check out other episodes of Weird

1517
01:21:22,840 --> 01:21:25,120
Speaker 3: House Cinema, it publishes every Friday in the Stuff to

1518
01:21:25,160 --> 01:21:28,800
Speaker 3: Blow Your Mind podcast feed You know, we're primarily a

1519
01:21:28,840 --> 01:21:32,040
Speaker 3: science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, listener

1520
01:21:32,040 --> 01:21:34,959
Speaker 3: mail on Mondays, and an artifact short form episode on Wednesdays.

1521
01:21:35,000 --> 01:21:38,960
Speaker 3: But on Friday, that's when we set aside most serious

1522
01:21:38,960 --> 01:21:40,840
Speaker 3: matters and just talk about a strange film.

1523
01:21:41,080 --> 01:21:44,280
Speaker 1: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

1524
01:21:44,360 --> 01:21:47,200
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch

1525
01:21:47,200 --> 01:21:49,599
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,

1526
01:21:49,720 --> 01:21:51,840
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to

1527
01:21:51,880 --> 01:21:55,160
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff

1528
01:21:55,160 --> 01:22:03,599
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com.

1529
01:22:03,800 --> 01:22:06,720
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1530
01:22:06,800 --> 01:22:10,640
Speaker 2: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1531
01:22:10,720 --> 01:22:12,519
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.