Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about the nineteen sixty two
Speaker 3: fantasy adventure The Magic Sword starring Basil Rathbone, directed by
Speaker 3: bert I. Gordon, the director of another film we've covered
Speaker 3: on Weird House Cinema at least one other. Gordon was
Speaker 3: the director of Attack of the Puppet People. Also known
Speaker 3: as Mister Big Big his initials, he was well known
Speaker 3: for shrinking and blowing up things in his movies, either
Speaker 3: making little things big or making big things little, and
Speaker 3: we get some of both in this one.
Speaker 2: That's right. One of the things about The Magic Sword
Speaker 2: from nineteen sixty two is that it is a special
Speaker 2: effects spectacular. You're gonna there's so many special effects coming
Speaker 2: at you, some of them very noticeable and and others
Speaker 2: you can easily take for granted, especially today, where you
Speaker 2: know various things like, for instance, the magic mirror that
Speaker 2: we see in the movie. You know, it's an impressive
Speaker 2: special effect, and it's it's one of just many, many
Speaker 2: special effects that are used to create this magical world
Speaker 2: of love and happiness, but also horror and mutilation.
Speaker 3: Now, Bert Eye Gordon was well known for making sort
Speaker 3: of low budget, B grade movies, movies that a lot
Speaker 3: of people would would call hack but or in many
Speaker 3: ways quite enjoyable. You know, the King Dinosaur and stuff
Speaker 3: like that, movies that ended up on Mystery Science Theater
Speaker 3: three thousand.
Speaker 2: As did this one.
Speaker 3: I've actually never seen that episode, but this, from what
Speaker 3: I understand, is widely regarded as one of his best movies,
Speaker 3: and I can see why it it has it still
Speaker 3: has some of the hallmarks of his other stuff. Like
Speaker 3: it has some i would say, texturally or tonally inappropriate
Speaker 3: special effects that actually do look pretty good, but they
Speaker 3: don't fit the vibe of the movie. Like the movie
Speaker 3: is ostensibly, you know, sort of a fun, magical adventure
Speaker 3: almost maybe aimed at a younger audience, aimed at kids,
Speaker 3: but it also has just absolutely unnerving, almost perverse gore
Speaker 3: in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would compare it in a way to Peter
Speaker 2: Jackson's King Kong in that respect. You know, moving made
Speaker 2: by you know, a consumant pro somebody that also had
Speaker 2: a great lot of experience with the special effects creating
Speaker 2: a film that is aimed at a very wide audience,
Speaker 2: very mainstream audience, but ends having some moments of just
Speaker 2: extreme horror or well, I don't know. In the case
Speaker 2: of The Magic Sword, it might be a bit much
Speaker 2: to say extreme horror, but still are that does seem
Speaker 2: maybe a little out of pace with the rest of
Speaker 2: the picture, and seems to have been out of pace
Speaker 2: at the time. I mean, there were some seemingly strong
Speaker 2: reactions to this. I was reading that upon initial release
Speaker 2: the British Film Board gave it an X rating. They right, No,
Speaker 2: you were not having any of this. And later, you know,
Speaker 2: some things get adjusted and it comes out.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like if you imagine Disney's The Sword
Speaker 3: and the Stone, but if it included a lot of
Speaker 3: close ups of nights being melted by acid and radiation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, And in that, you know, radiation
Speaker 2: is a hallmark of other bird Eye Gordon pictures and
Speaker 2: that element is at least visually present in this that
Speaker 2: nobody's calling it radiation.
Speaker 3: But another one of the things that I would single
Speaker 3: out this movie for is it has some deliciously hammy
Speaker 3: performances especially the ones from Estelle Wyndwood and Basil Rathbone
Speaker 3: as the two main sorcerers in the movie, they are
Speaker 3: hamming it up. It's some all time ham here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of other bird Eye Gordon films don't
Speaker 2: necessarily have as strong of human performances, and this is
Speaker 2: a film that really has the human special effects at
Speaker 2: least in a couple of roles to match up with
Speaker 2: the the the actual special effects. So yeah, I think
Speaker 2: it is a really solid, enjoyable picture, and yeah, it
Speaker 2: is often sided just one of Burnye Gordon's best.
Speaker 3: Now, I'm trying to think, have we done another high
Speaker 3: fantasy movie on weird house with like knights and wizards
Speaker 3: and stuff like that is the closest we've come to that, Krull.
Speaker 2: Oh, well, I mean we did Crawl. I mean you
Speaker 2: you could. You could also think of another sword. You
Speaker 2: can think of a thrilling, bloody sword, though that's a
Speaker 2: little bit different. We of course did Conquest, uh so uh,
Speaker 2: and I imagine I'm forgetting one or two. But you know,
Speaker 2: we do touch in on the the epic fantasy of
Speaker 2: different shades now and again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a I guess all of those have elements
Speaker 3: of this, so so I would say all of the
Speaker 3: weird grotesque texture aside, which makes this movie wonderful. Just
Speaker 3: in terms of straight plot content, this is the most
Speaker 3: down the middle high fantasy we've done, and.
Speaker 2: Yet there are a number of just real bonkers elements
Speaker 2: to it that are going to be fun to get into,
Speaker 2: like just in terms of like, yeah, like the textures
Speaker 2: are all sort of traditional mainstream fantasy, but some of
Speaker 2: the things that the screenplay does with it I ended
Speaker 2: up really admiring. All right, So what would your elevator
Speaker 2: pitch be for the magic sword?
Speaker 3: Oh? Can I not do sword in the stone? But
Speaker 3: with radiation melting? I guess we already said that. Let's see, that's.
Speaker 2: Olid, we can stick with it, stick with what works.
Speaker 3: Let me try another one. Let's say George A an
Speaker 3: adventurous young lad of only twenty years old fus It's
Speaker 3: debatable in the movie whether he is supposed to be
Speaker 3: understood as a child or not. At the age of twenty,
Speaker 3: he falls in love with the princess without ever having
Speaker 3: met her. He just like observes her through magical TVs
Speaker 3: of various sorts. Then she is kidnapped by a wizard
Speaker 3: and he must come to her rescue and brave seven
Speaker 3: perils and curses along the way, and it's gonna be gross.
Speaker 2: The curses are all amazing. The titular magic sword is
Speaker 2: probably the fakest looking thing in the whole picture. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so it is kind of weird that, like, that's the
Speaker 2: selling point. And the poster says the most incredible weapon
Speaker 2: ever wielded.
Speaker 3: So funny because yeah, it does not look incredible. It's
Speaker 3: one of the least good props and effects in the movie.
Speaker 3: It looks very flimsy, very plastic. It's the sword is
Speaker 3: kind of lame.
Speaker 2: Its special power is set manipulation, and it fails halfway
Speaker 2: through the picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that is funny. It has the power to
Speaker 3: open doors. Wow. But you know what I do like.
Speaker 3: I like a version of the sword that completely misrepresents
Speaker 3: what it's like in the movie. The I think it's
Speaker 3: either the Italian or the Spanish poster for the movie
Speaker 3: La Spada Magica that makes the sword look really cool.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's glowing. I don't think it ever really
Speaker 2: glows like this. And you also have a great image,
Speaker 2: a great drawing of Basil Rathbone has Lodak in the background,
Speaker 2: looming large.
Speaker 3: All right, should we do some trailer audio.
Speaker 2: Let's do that trailer audio.
Speaker 4: I am Sir George, possessor of a magic saw, my his powers.
Speaker 4: I will lead you on the sun great adventure.
Speaker 2: Each one might hear the leon.
Speaker 4: Together we will go where no man has ever gone,
Speaker 4: into the land of terror itself, where the superman of
Speaker 4: evil is king. Let no man race my seven cousins
Speaker 4: and reached the dragons. Together we will dare the demon
Speaker 4: of the green Flame. See the white hot face of
Speaker 4: the fiery rock. Enter the mammoth cave that closes behind you,
Speaker 4: where humans are trapped and tombed. Brave the volcanic inferno
Speaker 4: of the boiling crater. See the miracle of the magic Sword.
Speaker 4: Battle the gigantic ogre.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 4: You will be thrilled to the hill by the magic sword.
Speaker 4: None like it since the world began two thousand year
Speaker 4: old legend Hollywood waited until now to tell the Magic Sword.
Speaker 2: All right, So you might be wondering at this point, well,
Speaker 2: where can I watch the magic Sword? Well, it is,
Speaker 2: at first glance, widely available. You know you can. You
Speaker 2: can find the mst through K version. I think Riff
Speaker 2: Tracks did a version of it. You know, usual caveats
Speaker 2: on on riff content. You know, it's like it can
Speaker 2: be a lot of fun and so forth, but you're
Speaker 2: are going to lose some scenes, especially in the MST
Speaker 2: three K episodes. And I have to say, even though
Speaker 2: this one looks like it's streaming everywhere, I initially like
Speaker 2: marked it to stream on a on a prime channel.
Speaker 2: I went and queued it up, started watching it terrible quality.
Speaker 2: I ended up having to watch it kind of like
Speaker 2: last minute. I found a YouTube stream that was in
Speaker 2: higher death and so I have to say my main
Speaker 2: recommendation for watching The Magic Sword is make sure you
Speaker 2: watch it in as good a quality as possible, because again,
Speaker 2: this is a special effects film, and if you watch
Speaker 2: it in high depth, it looks really nice, has some
Speaker 2: wonderful colors and textures to it, and that's just lost
Speaker 2: in the grated version. I would recommend grabbing it on
Speaker 2: physical media. Kale Studio Classics put it out on Blu Ray.
Speaker 2: I think that's probably the way to watch it. If
Speaker 2: you can find an official stream that's good quality, great,
Speaker 2: but it looks like a lot of them are not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, there are a lot of kreuddy rips
Speaker 3: out there.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's get into the cast and crew here,
Speaker 2: or some of the highlights of the cast and crew.
Speaker 2: As usual, we can't highlight everybody that made the picture happen,
Speaker 2: but yeah, starting at the top, Bird Eye Gordon, director, producer,
Speaker 2: story credit, special visual effects, along with his wife, I believe,
Speaker 2: and he lived nineteen twenty two through twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: the legendary mister Big, as we've been saying, an icon
Speaker 2: of nineteen fifties B cinema. His earliest credit is producer
Speaker 2: on fifty four Serpent Island, and he moved on into
Speaker 2: the director's chair and the writing chair with his follow up,
Speaker 2: fifty five's King Dinosaur. We talked about him a greater
Speaker 2: length than our episode on the fifty eight film Attack
Speaker 2: of the Puppet People. Other films of note include the
Speaker 2: amazing Collossal Man from nineteen fifty seven that I think
Speaker 2: we absolutely will do if we get a proper release
Speaker 2: of it and I can watch it in decent quality
Speaker 2: Earth Versus a Spider from fifty eight, Village of the
Speaker 2: Giants from sixty five, an Empire of the Ants from
Speaker 2: seventy seven.
Speaker 3: Did we ever figure out what's going on with the
Speaker 3: rights to Amazing Colossal Man, Like why is there not
Speaker 3: a good Blu Ray of that?
Speaker 2: I don't know the answer I checked in. I haven't
Speaker 2: checked in recently on it either, so it's entirely possible
Speaker 2: something's been announced and I haven't missed it. I try
Speaker 2: and pay attention to the various channels and so forth
Speaker 2: that would announce this sort of thing, but sometimes it
Speaker 2: slips through. I have no idea, Like Amazing Colossal Man
Speaker 2: is such a tremendously fun movie that it needs to
Speaker 2: have a proper Blu Ray release, and I don't know
Speaker 2: what's holding that back. Far lesser films are getting elaborate
Speaker 2: Blu Ray releases.
Speaker 3: Agreed, And I do want to emphasize again I sort
Speaker 3: of said this up top, but despite Bird Eye Gordon's
Speaker 3: reputation and the dullness of some of his other movies,
Speaker 3: this one is I would say this is a well
Speaker 3: made film like it just it's got energy. It just
Speaker 3: zips right along, and it's fun even if you're not
Speaker 3: in it. For the weirdness of the texture is the
Speaker 3: way that we are. I think you're probably not going
Speaker 3: to be bored by this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the plot moves right along, and yeah, we have
Speaker 2: to give credit. Screenplay credit to Bernard see Schoenfeld, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen oh seven through nineteen ninety American screenwriter. His
Speaker 2: first screen credit state back to nineteen forty four's Phantom Lady.
Speaker 2: His other credits include fifty eight The Space Children. That
Speaker 2: was one directed by Jack Arnold, who've talked about on
Speaker 2: the show before, and he did a lot of TV work,
Speaker 2: including sixteen episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and one episode
Speaker 2: of The twilight Zone from Agnes with Love about a
Speaker 2: computer technician who begins to take advice from a computer
Speaker 2: that he has fallen in love with.
Speaker 3: Wait, is that the original Twilight Zone? Oh that's original?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I should stress that because I know there
Speaker 2: have been like thirty or four different iterations of the
Speaker 2: twilight Zone at this point. This was original Twilight Zone
Speaker 2: and also original Alphad Hitchcock Presents, because there were at
Speaker 2: least two different versions of that as well.
Speaker 3: I guess I didn't realize they were doing fall in
Speaker 3: love with the computer stories back then.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean the various sci fi writers
Speaker 2: and horror writers of the time, like a lot of
Speaker 2: that stuff was. It still holds up today, at least
Speaker 2: from a plot and script standpoint. Yeah, so yeah, on
Speaker 2: the whole, I love the weird energy and the interwoven
Speaker 2: schemes in this picture. We'll get into all that again.
Speaker 2: It depends on a lot of the textures of traditional
Speaker 2: old timey fantasy films and likely swashbuckling fantasies as well.
Speaker 2: But I'm just not that up on But the plotting
Speaker 2: feels pretty fresh and at times really bonkers.
Speaker 3: It does bring just like warm jets of zaniness that
Speaker 3: just keep coming in anew. There are multiple things in
Speaker 3: the movie that, you know, I almost kind of wonder
Speaker 3: if they were actually in the script, or if it
Speaker 3: was in the original draft of the script, or if
Speaker 3: it was just like bird Eye Gordon Floor Gordon saying
Speaker 3: we can do this kind of effect. What if we
Speaker 3: had some people trapped in a tiny cage, you know,
Speaker 3: what if we had this or that and they just
Speaker 3: wanted to show it to you.
Speaker 2: So here it is. Yeah, and this is the guy
Speaker 2: who figured out how to weave all that together into
Speaker 2: a coherent plot, because yeah, it has like all of
Speaker 2: these things, like it seems like he maybe had a
Speaker 2: checklist to work with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we've already done the attack of the puppet people.
Speaker 3: Let's just put some puppet people in.
Speaker 2: There, people giants of some sort. Yeah, all right, let's
Speaker 2: get into the cast here. As we mentioned, oh, we
Speaker 2: have the wonderful Basil Rathbone in this playing the evil
Speaker 2: and vain wizard Lodac. We talked about Rathbone before. He
Speaker 2: lived eighteen ninety two through nineteen sixty seven, South African
Speaker 2: born English actor with a very long history on stage
Speaker 2: and screen. He popped up in sixty six is Queen
Speaker 2: of Blood, but I have to say, yeah, yeah, he
Speaker 2: was in it, but very forgettable because he It's difficult
Speaker 2: to compare that Basil Rathbone to this Basil Rathbone because
Speaker 2: we get like full powered, you know, hamming it up
Speaker 2: Basil Rathbone in this picture, and what we saw in
Speaker 2: Queen of Blood was a lot more subdued.
Speaker 3: I truly did not remember he was in that. I
Speaker 3: remember Dennis Hopper more than him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't think rath I think ratt was
Speaker 2: one of those pictures where Rathbone did his stuff in
Speaker 2: like one or two days. He's just an ultimately very
Speaker 2: small role in the picture. But in this, I mean
Speaker 2: he's in almost every scene.
Speaker 3: He's in some scenes he's not in in this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, his energy resonates through the picture. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to get in all the details, but yeah.
Speaker 2: He started appearing in films during the early twenties, often
Speaker 2: in Swashbuckler's always you know, Buckling that swash. He stayed
Speaker 2: active on stage, won a Tony Award in nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 2: and he was nominated for two Oscars I Believe nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty nine's If I Were King and a nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: seven adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. He also had a
Speaker 2: big footprint in horror and detective series. He played Sherlock
Speaker 2: Holmes multiple times, and he played Baron von Wolf in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine Son of Frankenstein, the third Universal Frankenstein film,
Speaker 2: with Carloff and Bella Legosi.
Speaker 3: I feel like Rathbone was sort of on the second
Speaker 3: tier of the great horror stars. If you have like
Speaker 3: Karloff and Legosi at the very top, that the level
Speaker 3: under that is where Rathbone hangs out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, tremendous talent, and again we get to
Speaker 2: see him firing on all cylinders in this picture. Very
Speaker 2: energetic performance, just captivating. And also, you know something that
Speaker 2: I think is always admirable when you have an actor
Speaker 2: of this caliber is that he does seem to bring
Speaker 2: a little extra out of the other players in their
Speaker 2: shared scenes.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, in every scene he's in, it feels
Speaker 3: like the other actors are having fun with him.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And I would say some of the most fun
Speaker 2: we have is when you have has interactions with our
Speaker 2: next actor, and that's Estelle Wynwood, who plays Sybil, the
Speaker 2: which foster mother of our hero, Sir George.
Speaker 3: She has her own kind of excellent handiness. So Rathbones
Speaker 3: Hamminess is, Yeah, like you said, he's this arrogant, vain,
Speaker 3: you know, pompous wizard who's who's just like can't stand
Speaker 3: to have his ego pricked. Meanwhile, Stelle Winwood's sorceress is
Speaker 3: she's like very checked out. She's almost like half of
Speaker 3: her brain is not on this plane of existence.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, she's been raising this twenty year old boy
Speaker 2: all by herself, and she doesn't get a lot of
Speaker 2: help from the chimpanzee or the the conjoining twins or
Speaker 2: two headed I'm not sure exactly what's going on with
Speaker 2: that character. But these these folks are not helping her
Speaker 2: out a lot around the house. And clearly, as we'll
Speaker 2: discuss Sir George, it's is a lot to handle. And yeah,
Speaker 2: so she she can't have she doesn't have her head
Speaker 2: in her scheme all the time. And it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's also established early on, like she's not the best
Speaker 2: witch or wizard in the world. You know, Lodak is
Speaker 2: a towering figure and she rates you know, a good
Speaker 2: bit down the list. But still she's a good witch ultimately.
Speaker 2: But she's not afraid to get her hands a little.
Speaker 3: Dirty, that's right. Well, unlike Lodak, she has the power
Speaker 3: of love in her corner.
Speaker 2: That's right. So. Stelle Winwood lived eighteen eighty three through
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four English actress of stage, screen and TV,
Speaker 2: who had a very long and celebrated history career here
Speaker 2: in the US. She made her Broadway debut in nineteen sixteen.
Speaker 2: In her first film roles in the early nineteen thirties,
Speaker 2: but some of her biggest, most memorable films were from
Speaker 2: the fifties and sixties, including nineteen fifty nine's Darby O'Gill
Speaker 2: and the Little People. She plays the mom of the
Speaker 2: town bully pony, who of course gets into at least
Speaker 2: a couple of punch ups with Sean Connery. I've never
Speaker 2: seen that. It's it's tremendous fun. I mean, Stell was
Speaker 2: great in it, and then everyone else is great, and
Speaker 2: it's it's just a really fun, you know, old timey
Speaker 2: Irish fantasy film.
Speaker 3: You've brought it up before as the I think in
Speaker 3: the context of being a pre Bond Sean Connery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I highly recommend it. It's great Saint Patrick's
Speaker 2: Day viewing in my opinion, or at least you know,
Speaker 2: I grew up watching it on Saint Patrick's.
Speaker 3: Day anyway, Okay, I'll have to see it sometime.
Speaker 2: But Winwood was also in nineteen sixty four's Dead Ringer,
Speaker 2: sixty seven's Camelot as well as the producers both two
Speaker 2: huge films in sixty seven, and her final film role
Speaker 2: was in nineteen seventy six, is Murdered by Death. Like
Speaker 2: I said, when it comes down to interactions between Sybil
Speaker 2: and Lodac, they're so much fun. Even when they're not
Speaker 2: actually in the same space at the same time. They
Speaker 2: have a wonderfully spicy interaction just via closed circuit magic
Speaker 2: mirror at one point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, despite the fact that, I mean, this is
Speaker 3: a silly movie and it's hard to get too wrapped
Speaker 3: up in the you know, in the battle of good
Speaker 3: and evil in the plot here. But nevertheless, I did
Speaker 3: find her defeat of Lodak at the end of the
Speaker 3: movie very satisfying.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, all right, let's move on to Sir George,
Speaker 2: who again Sybil has been raising as her foster son,
Speaker 2: played by Gary Lockwood born nineteen thirty seven. Former stuntman
Speaker 2: and stand in for Anthony Perkins. He's probably best remembered
Speaker 2: as doctor Frank Poole in nineteen sixty eight two thousand
Speaker 2: and one A Space Odyssey. You know, we've talked before
Speaker 2: about actors from two thousand and one A Space Odyssey
Speaker 2: kind of like classing up the joint in pictures. We
Speaker 2: talked about that in Gorgo right. I don't know, I
Speaker 2: don't quite get the same effect with Lockwood's presence here.
Speaker 2: This one man he plays he plays a real goober,
Speaker 2: a lovable goober, and a young boy of twenty He
Speaker 2: was actually I think twenty four to twenty five filmed old. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then there are other weird We'll get into some
Speaker 2: of the other weird aspects about his character. What sort
Speaker 2: of home environment he has here in this Witch's Layer.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's weird, but it's kind of sweet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's sweet. He's sweet anyway. Lockwood had a
Speaker 2: memorable guest role in the third episode of Star Trek,
Speaker 2: the original Star Trek, the episode where No Man Has
Speaker 2: Gone Before from nineteen sixty six. I believe he's a
Speaker 2: crew member who gets possessed by an alien force. His
Speaker 2: other credits include sixty one Splendor in the Grass, the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty three Elvis movie It Happened at the World's Fair,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine's Model Shop, in nineteen ninety five's Night
Speaker 2: of the Scarecrow, also in the nineteen sixty one Elvis
Speaker 2: movie Wild in the Country.
Speaker 3: Wait, what happened at the World's Fair?
Speaker 4: It?
Speaker 3: What was it?
Speaker 2: I don't know, you know. I meant to reach out
Speaker 2: to my aunt to who's an expert on all these
Speaker 2: Elvis movies, and ask her about these two and find
Speaker 2: out if these are good ones or not. I had
Speaker 2: not heard of either of them, but I didn't get
Speaker 2: the chance to reach out to her, So I have
Speaker 2: to pick up the thread on that in listener mail.
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna choose to believe the Elvis movie It
Speaker 3: Happened at the World's Fair is about the HH Holmes murders.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure that's it. All right, we have we've
Speaker 2: been talking about Sir George. Of course he's gonna he's
Speaker 2: fallen in love with the princess. The princess is Princess Elaine,
Speaker 2: played by Anne Hilm born nineteen thirty eight. Her biggest
Speaker 2: film was probably the nineteen sixty two Elvis movie again,
Speaker 2: follow that Dream, And I cannot tell you what the
Speaker 2: dream in question is, but this is a movie about
Speaker 2: following it. She's also in the nineteen sixty nine horror
Speaker 2: film Nightmare in Wax, starring Cameron Mitchell as the mad
Speaker 2: wax Master. This one I have seen. This is how
Speaker 2: my movie viewing history tends to go.
Speaker 3: I think we talked about this one in our episode
Speaker 3: on wax. Well, we did an episode on like the
Speaker 3: science of wax, but then also talked about wax horror movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one that fels very grimy and sweaty.
Speaker 2: I remember a lot of close ups of Cameron Mitchell's
Speaker 2: face looking kind of sweaty.
Speaker 3: He's got an eye patch in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the one where he has an eye patch.
Speaker 2: Not the best Wax movie, but still very much an
Speaker 2: important entry in the wax Master franchise.
Speaker 3: It's hard to beat Vincent Price's House of Wax.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the absolute best.
Speaker 3: Now, maybe we should save this for later, but I
Speaker 3: just want to say it now so I don't forget.
Speaker 3: I feel like we should do a compare and contrast
Speaker 3: on Vincent Price versus Basil Wrathbone, because I feel like
Speaker 3: they have a lot of qualities but also some hard
Speaker 3: to define differences that are nevertheless important.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, well, yeah, I feel like Vincent Price was better
Speaker 2: at conveying kind of like the the internal mechanisms of
Speaker 2: his scheming, you know, whereas wrath Bone, especially in this
Speaker 2: there is a sense that he's he's not considering you
Speaker 2: much at all. Like his enemies, He's very dismissive of
Speaker 2: their abilities, you know. That's his level of vanity and arrogance,
Speaker 2: at least as he plays it up in this character.
Speaker 2: And I feel like in you know, certainly Vincent Price
Speaker 2: could play some vain and evil characters but there was
Speaker 2: always a sense that no, he wasn't he wasn't underestimating
Speaker 2: you per se. He was thinking long and hard about
Speaker 2: your various strengths and weaknesses.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. Yeah, that's very astute. I would
Speaker 3: say if Vincent Price had been in this role, I
Speaker 3: think you would have played it a little bit colder
Speaker 3: and would you would have seen him taking the stock
Speaker 3: of George and his allies more than just kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, batting at them like a gnat that's bothering him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he would have seen Sybil as more of a
Speaker 2: rival and not as an ant. He seems to see
Speaker 2: everyone as just mere pieces on the chessboard.
Speaker 3: Oh but hey, Basil Rathbone is not the only bad
Speaker 3: guy in this movie. We actually get multiple Hammi villains.
Speaker 2: That's right. We have Sir Brandon, who is a romantic
Speaker 2: rival for the princess's heart and a seemingly brave knight
Speaker 2: at first, but we get a series of twists that
Speaker 2: reveal that no, he's not here to make friends, he's
Speaker 2: not here to play fair. He'll do whatever it takes.
Speaker 2: He's here to kick you in the acid, Yes, kick
Speaker 2: you in the button, make you fall on the Acid,
Speaker 2: played by Liam Sullivan, who lived nineteen twenty three through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight. Yeah, very very fun character, and the
Speaker 2: performance here provides I think, a nice dry counterpoint to Lodac.
Speaker 2: You know, like you're not gonna have You can't have
Speaker 2: two villains that are going for that level of hammed
Speaker 2: up villainry. This is the right level for your secondary villain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess you're right about that. I did identify
Speaker 3: him also as a hammy performance, but it's in a
Speaker 3: different way than Basil Rathbone, not at the same level,
Speaker 3: and it has a different quality. It's more kind of sneering.
Speaker 3: It has a sneering, snidely whiplashiness to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, still solid villain for sure. Sullivan was an
Speaker 2: American actor of TV and film. I'd say mostly TV.
Speaker 2: He did episodes of Star Trek Original, Twilight Zone, Original
Speaker 2: Man from Uncle, and his film credits include sixty Five's
Speaker 2: That Darn Cat, eighty four is What Waits Below, and
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighty six film Wisdom all Right. The next
Speaker 2: character is credited as Mignonette. I don't remember if they
Speaker 2: call her this in the film. She's a seducer, a witch.
Speaker 2: We find out some sort of a hag creature.
Speaker 3: The false magical mask of a witch that is used
Speaker 3: to seduce a knight who is French. And they explain
Speaker 3: this in the plot. They're like, well, he's French, you know,
Speaker 3: so he's into pretty ladies. So she is the pretty
Speaker 3: lady form of the evil witch who wants to bite
Speaker 3: his neck and I don't know, drink his blood maybe,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Blood blood there for sure. Yeah, And she falls into
Speaker 2: some of the other schemes of Lodak as we see.
Speaker 2: But she's played by Nielle de Metz born nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 2: French born actress who worked in American film and television.
Speaker 2: She appeared in nineteen fifty nine's Return of the Fly,
Speaker 2: which you know, if you haven't seen, you might remember
Speaker 2: from the Misfits song, and she had a small part
Speaker 2: in Blake edwards nineteen sixty eight film The Party. Mostly
Speaker 2: active in the sixties and seventies, she was nominated for
Speaker 2: an Emmy for a special guest part on The Man
Speaker 2: from Uncle in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 3: I don't believe I've seen Return of the Fly. Does
Speaker 3: she become a fly?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I just I haven't seen it either,
Speaker 2: have just seen stills in which a fly headed man
Speaker 2: is approaching her and she is screaming. Well, so, I
Speaker 2: don't know if she's like the main heroine of the
Speaker 2: picture or if she's just like an early victim. I'm
Speaker 2: not entirely certain, but there are a number of stills
Speaker 2: of her in the picture.
Speaker 3: Nobody likes to get cornered by a flyhead guy at
Speaker 3: a party?
Speaker 2: No, absolutely not all right? And then finally, the score
Speaker 2: is by Richard Markowitz, who lived nineteen twenty six through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four. Emmy nominated composer best known for his
Speaker 2: work on such TV shows as Murder. She wrote Mission Impossible,
Speaker 2: though I knew do need to stress that he did
Speaker 2: not write the theme music for either of these series.
Speaker 2: He's the father of singer Kate Markowitz, who also worked
Speaker 2: as a backup singer for such artists as James Taylor,
Speaker 2: Randy Newman, Katie Lang, and Warren Zevon. Her two thousand
Speaker 2: and three solo album was Map of the World. But
Speaker 2: as far as as Richard Markowitz's work goes, there are
Speaker 2: plenty of places in this score that are very traditional
Speaker 2: highlighting either like the sweeping mainstream drama of the thing
Speaker 2: or some nutty high jinks, nutty magical hijinks. But it
Speaker 2: also gets weird and I believe electronic at times. There's
Speaker 2: some nice suspense in a later cave scene, and there's
Speaker 2: this wonderful Sibylis cooking sequence that features an absolutely bonkers
Speaker 2: track full of bleeps and bloops and monster croaking. It's fabulous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a nice mix of things. So in the
Speaker 3: traditional end, we've got the you know, the King of
Speaker 3: the Castle horns bump bump, bump, bump bump kind of stuff,
Speaker 3: and then we've also, yeah, in the funny scenes, we've
Speaker 3: got plenty of doom do Doom do doom. But I
Speaker 3: know what you're talking about with the experimental moments. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I liked those parts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Well let's jump into the plot of
Speaker 2: the Magic Sword.
Speaker 3: All right, Well after the credits. The credits just are
Speaker 3: pretty straightforward. They're like red credits playing over a painted
Speaker 3: backdrop that looks like Saint George slaying the Dragon, which
Speaker 3: I suppose is loosely the inspiration for this movie, but
Speaker 3: I would place emphasis on loosely. The action opens with
Speaker 3: a shot of a witch's layer So there's a bubbling
Speaker 3: cauldron and a table with a polished human skull as
Speaker 3: a centerpiece, and it's all saturated in red light. This
Speaker 3: movie really likes the red gel lights, especially in Sibyl's
Speaker 3: sort of fortress of magic.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, she has so many red gels going in there.
Speaker 2: It's like a dark ring. You would think, yeah, she's
Speaker 2: developing an Eastern Kodak film in there or something.
Speaker 3: So we pan up and we meet Estelle Winwood as
Speaker 3: Sybil the Sorceress. She's wearing kind of a sorceress dress
Speaker 3: with like the big dangly open sleeves, and she's got
Speaker 3: jewels around her neck and all that. She looks very magical,
Speaker 3: and she's talking to herself. She says, he's gone again.
Speaker 3: What good is my sorcery if I can't help my
Speaker 3: own boy? Answer me someone? So like, who's there to answer? Well,
Speaker 3: we're going to pant around the room and see. First
Speaker 3: of all, we've got a chimpanzee dressed in a red
Speaker 3: tunic and a leather belt who's sitting at a chair
Speaker 3: at the dinner table here. He has no input, He's
Speaker 3: just sitting there scratching his head. And then Sybil says,
Speaker 3: he's not fooling me. I know where he is. He's
Speaker 3: at the magic pool again. Now commenting on that, we
Speaker 3: suddenly hear from Sybil's other I don't know, like her
Speaker 3: coworker or friend or help her here, which is a
Speaker 3: two headed man who's two heads say simultaneous lee, love
Speaker 3: is his curse. He is in love?
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: One thing I noticed about the two headed man here
Speaker 3: is that the way that the two heads here they
Speaker 3: behave in a way that sort of defeats the purpose
Speaker 3: of imagining this, this creature with two heads, because they
Speaker 3: always say the exact same thing at the exact same
Speaker 3: time in unison.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well, I assume that they've just worked together
Speaker 2: for a very long time and it just had to
Speaker 2: They had had to come together in agreeance on a
Speaker 2: number of things here, because we don't know the origin
Speaker 2: of this character or characters, I mean, she might have
Speaker 2: made them through her sorcery at some point or another.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Sybil says, yes, I've tried to cure him of
Speaker 3: this love? Why have I failed? Am I losing my
Speaker 3: skill as a sorceress? Doesn't my witchcraft cure snake bites
Speaker 3: chill Blaines, carbuncles, pink eye, hangnails, and unhappy memories. And
Speaker 3: I'd love to imagine who is coming to sibyls like
Speaker 3: red Witch Cave and the chimpanzee and saying I have
Speaker 3: pink eye.
Speaker 2: I feel like the movie kind of like cut to
Speaker 2: the chimp when she said pink eye, and it was
Speaker 2: like implyed that, like this chimp is just can pink
Speaker 2: eye like crazy, like every week having to cure this
Speaker 2: chimp with pink eye.
Speaker 3: But her two headed friend here assures her, yes, her
Speaker 3: powers are still strong, so why can't she cure her
Speaker 3: son George of his love infection. She sort of argues
Speaker 3: with the two headed guy about this that they say
Speaker 3: George is a man and he's human, so you know
Speaker 3: he's going to fall in love, but she says he
Speaker 3: is not a man. He is only twenty years old,
Speaker 3: which means he is still a child. She obviously does
Speaker 3: not approve of his decision to grow up. At first,
Speaker 3: I didn't understand what this whole thing about, like her
Speaker 3: repeatedly asserting that a twenty year old is a child.
Speaker 3: But I think it's because she is an immortal sorceress
Speaker 3: who is I think she says four hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: years old, So compared to that lifespan, it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: he is a child.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he should not get the keys to the
Speaker 2: car until he's like at least sixty five.
Speaker 3: So meanwhile, we go to meet George at the magic
Speaker 3: pool that Sybil was talking about. So he's leaning over
Speaker 3: the water's edge, the water's bubbling, and he starts begging,
Speaker 3: begging the water to show him the princess. So first
Speaker 3: we see a castle, and then we cut inside the
Speaker 3: castle to the throne room, where like the whole court,
Speaker 3: the king is sitting there on the throne holding his scepter,
Speaker 3: wearing his crown, and then everybody in the court is
Speaker 3: gathered and they're just watching a belly dancer perform. Yeah,
Speaker 3: nothing going. Princess is not there. Everybody's just like a
Speaker 3: good show.
Speaker 2: Good. I mean, he apparently spends a lot of time
Speaker 2: just watching, spying on the castle so that he can
Speaker 2: see the princess that he's in love with. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: is our first hint at like the idea that George's
Speaker 2: whole upbringing is just weird, Like he's he's grown up
Speaker 2: in this magical crypt. He has access to all of this,
Speaker 2: you know, privacy defying, magical pools and mirrors and so forth,
Speaker 2: and then gets fixated on people he's never met.
Speaker 3: That's right, and the privacy violations get worse because he's like,
Speaker 3: all right, she's not in the throne room. Show me
Speaker 3: the pond in the palace garden where yep, that is
Speaker 3: where she is. In fact, she's bathing in the pond
Speaker 3: there with her lady in waiting, hanging out and like, dude,
Speaker 3: respect the princess's privacy please, But you know he's just watching. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so this is Princess Helene. She gets out and starts
Speaker 3: talking to her lady in waiting, and she's talking about
Speaker 3: how she's upset with her situation in life. She's like,
Speaker 3: you know, even though I'm a princess, I'm unhappy because
Speaker 3: I'm not allowed to fall in love. Essentially, she can't
Speaker 3: even speak to a man, she can't meet people or
Speaker 3: talk to them. She's sort of like kept away apart
Speaker 3: from the world in a tower. And she tells her
Speaker 3: lady in waiting, quote, you can do whatever you please,
Speaker 3: fall in love, fall out again, a squire one day,
Speaker 3: a stable boy the next, and the lady in waiting
Speaker 3: does not take offense to this. She's like, it's the
Speaker 3: cost of being a princess. But suddenly a voice calls out. Oh,
Speaker 3: it's like a ghostly, otherworldly voice. It says Princess Helene.
Speaker 3: And she looks around and then sees the kind of
Speaker 3: insubstantial figure moving toward her. It's like the figure of
Speaker 3: a lady with a green veil over her head, some
Speaker 3: kind of fairy like queen. And this lady is coming
Speaker 3: toward her, and she says, Princess, I'm going to take
Speaker 3: care of you, and then her eyes flash green and
Speaker 3: I don't think we ever see this lady again. Do
Speaker 3: we have no idea who she is?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean presumably it is some sort of agent
Speaker 2: of Lodac, but not someone that is named or featured later.
Speaker 2: This is also a great scene where the ghost is
Speaker 2: coming right at the camera, right out at the audience.
Speaker 2: And there are a number of moments like this in
Speaker 2: the picture, because again, this is all about special effects.
Speaker 2: It's about thrilling the audience and so Bert's come and
Speaker 2: ride at you.
Speaker 3: This movie would have been a great candidate for three D.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm kind of glad it's not three D
Speaker 3: because I enjoy it in the two D format, but
Speaker 3: it has a lot of stuff coming at you. Could
Speaker 3: have been a three D option for sure. So anyway,
Speaker 3: George witnesses this magical fairy abduction of the princess through
Speaker 3: his magical spy pool. He jumps up and he shouts Helene.
Speaker 3: Then he runs back home to Sybil and explains that
Speaker 3: the princess is in danger and he's got to go
Speaker 3: rescue her at once. But Sybil is very dismissive of this.
Speaker 3: Her points are the following, You're only a boy, You're
Speaker 3: not old enough to be in love. You can't be
Speaker 3: in love with somebody you only saw in a magic
Speaker 3: pool and have never met. That's a good point, and
Speaker 3: also just basically, like I love is silly. But I
Speaker 3: guess they're like, well, we'll get some more information. So
Speaker 3: she takes George over to her magic mirror, which is
Speaker 3: yet another long range magical surveillance device. And this sad
Speaker 3: me wondering, wait, why did George have to go use
Speaker 3: the magic pool if they've got magic mirror at home?
Speaker 2: You know, I guess it's like sometimes you know, you
Speaker 2: have like two TVs in the household, you know, perhaps
Speaker 2: so the dad can watch football and the kids can
Speaker 2: watch cartoons. It's like she has witching stuff she needs
Speaker 2: to do. She can't have George in the way spying
Speaker 2: on princesses the whole time.
Speaker 3: She's got to call into her sorceress Zoom meetings. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so Sybil tunes into Throne Room TV and she sees
Speaker 3: the King, presumably done with his belly dancing session. He's
Speaker 3: talking to his court about his daughter's disappearance. Now in
Speaker 3: the scene, we're going to meet a couple of other
Speaker 3: major characters, Sir Branton and Lodak. Sir Branton we meet first.
Speaker 3: He is this haughty, arrogant, goateed knight wearing a blue
Speaker 3: tunic with a blazing sun emblem over the top of
Speaker 3: his mail, and he explains to the King that Princess
Speaker 3: Helene cannot be found anywhere. And while they're in the
Speaker 3: middle of discussing what to do, suddenly a palace guard
Speaker 3: enters the throne room escorting Basil Wrathbone. Basil Wrathbone here
Speaker 3: is dressed in a black sorcerer's robe with a golden
Speaker 3: dagger at his belt. He's got a giant jewel encrusted
Speaker 3: pendant on his chest. He's wearing a red and silver
Speaker 3: cloak with almost Santa CLAUSI implications. He's also wearing some
Speaker 3: kind of wound cloth head covering. I don't know if
Speaker 3: this technically is a turban or is supposed to be
Speaker 3: a turban, or if it's something else. Everything he's wearing
Speaker 3: pretty much has gold trim on it, and he just
Speaker 3: looks really smug.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, very smug, very colorful. Yeah, it's a fabulous
Speaker 2: presentation and just absolute confidence oozing off of them. Here.
Speaker 3: The guard is like, we found him skulking on the
Speaker 3: castle grounds. He won't speak, and Sir says there are
Speaker 3: means to make him speak. So I love that Branton
Speaker 3: is going straight to suggesting torture with no information whatsoever
Speaker 3: on the sky. But also, look at him. This guy
Speaker 3: is going to speak. You can look at him and
Speaker 3: know he's about to speak. You don't need to worry
Speaker 3: about him not speaking.
Speaker 2: Also, I'm gonna have to ding the script here, or
Speaker 2: at least the way the script was performed, because this
Speaker 2: is not a character that has ever skulked in his life.
Speaker 2: This is no sculptor. I think you mean to say
Speaker 2: vainly awaiting his audience with the king.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you skulking, I think requires a down a downturned
Speaker 3: angle of the head, like you know, the head is
Speaker 3: sort of down, but this guy's chin has never even
Speaker 3: like been parallel with the ground. Right. So Basil raises
Speaker 3: his arms up. He stirs up some kind of magic.
Speaker 3: The lights go dim, thunder cracks, and he says, your
Speaker 3: most serene majesty, you can call off the search the princess.
Speaker 3: Your daughter is in my castle under lock and he
Speaker 3: So the king demands to know who this sorcerer is,
Speaker 3: and he answers Loadak. So they know who this is.
Speaker 3: They know him by reputation. He is a bad sorcerer.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's not Lodak the Great, the terrible. Just all
Speaker 2: you need to know is Lodak. It's great branding.
Speaker 3: I don't know why, but I imagine I always imagine
Speaker 3: Lodak's name when I heard it here as an acronym,
Speaker 3: like it's all capital letters. I don't know what it
Speaker 3: stands for.
Speaker 2: I mean, lord of damnation, and I don't know. Pick
Speaker 2: a sea word and you got it, I think.
Speaker 3: So they ask him, you know, why did you kidnap
Speaker 3: the princess, and Lodak says, this is the quote. The
Speaker 3: answer is very simple. Your father executed my sister for
Speaker 3: witchcraft when she was only eighteen years old. I have
Speaker 3: waited until your daughter reached that age so that my
Speaker 3: dragon could relish the flesh of the princess. I don't
Speaker 3: know if that's very simple. It's moderately simple. I guess.
Speaker 3: So Lodak has a dragon. He's going to feed the
Speaker 3: princess to the dragon to get revenge on the king's family,
Speaker 3: or so, he says.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't even know if we should believe him.
Speaker 2: This never comes up again. He doesn't seem to be
Speaker 2: dwelling on this too much, and Lodak doesn't seem like
Speaker 2: a sentimental type.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like if some king executed his sister
Speaker 3: for witchcraft, he'd be like, shouldn't have gotten caught. But
Speaker 3: in reaction to this, Sir Branton, he's coming out hot.
Speaker 3: He says, I'm not afraid of some warm eatn sorcerer.
Speaker 3: I'll come straight to your castle and rescue the princess.
Speaker 3: But then Lodak warns them all. He says, look, it's
Speaker 3: not hard to find my castle. It's right down the road.
Speaker 3: It's a week's journey from here, but between here and
Speaker 3: there you'll have to face Lodak's original recipe of seven
Speaker 3: signature curses. No one has ever passed through all seven
Speaker 3: curses and survived. Then he explains that his dragon is
Speaker 3: going to eat the princess in seven days time, and
Speaker 3: he starts to show himself the door by the way
Speaker 3: he like. He turns and starts walking toward the door,
Speaker 3: toward the camera with his arms just raised up in
Speaker 3: the air, and then suddenly he changes course and then
Speaker 3: turns into a crow and flies away. That had me
Speaker 3: laughing out loud.
Speaker 2: It's so showy, it's wonderful.
Speaker 3: Also, right after this that I did a still frame.
Speaker 3: You can look out here Rob the King and Sir Branton,
Speaker 3: they have this look on their face, just like okay,
Speaker 3: but anyway, Sir Brandon, he's still saying he's going to
Speaker 3: save Helene. He says he does not care about the
Speaker 3: seven curses. For Helene, he would face seventy curses, and
Speaker 3: the King promises him that if he succeeds, he will
Speaker 3: receive half of his wealth and the princess's hand in marriage. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: back in the Witch hole. George and Sybil have been
Speaker 3: watching all this in the magic mirror. I kind of
Speaker 3: forgot about them while the scene was going on, but
Speaker 3: I guess we've been watching what they are watching. And
Speaker 3: George is not happy. He's mad. He does not want
Speaker 3: Sir Branton to save Helene. He does not want Sir
Speaker 3: Branton to marry Helene. He's the one who loves her,
Speaker 3: even though than never met. So he begs Sybil to
Speaker 3: let him go rescue the princess, and Sybil is like, nonsense,
Speaker 3: you are only a child. So here we're about to
Speaker 3: get some backstory. First of all, we learned that three
Speaker 3: hundred years ago, Sybil's father and brother were eaten by
Speaker 3: Lodak's dragon, and they were excellent sorcerers, so Lodak is
Speaker 3: far too dangerous for them to face. She says, I
Speaker 3: fear him almost as much as I hate him. And
Speaker 3: after all, while Sybil is a sorceress who is hundreds
Speaker 3: of years old, George is a mortal and still a child.
Speaker 3: And we're also told that this is not framed as
Speaker 3: a revelation. It's just more like, as you know, George,
Speaker 3: when you were only a week old, your royal parents
Speaker 3: died of the plague, and then I took you in
Speaker 3: and raised you as my own son. And we learned
Speaker 3: that Sybil has been a kind and loving mother to George,
Speaker 3: but being an ancient sorceress, she doesn't get him because
Speaker 3: he's mortal, so she doesn't really understand that humans are
Speaker 3: not children at the age of twenty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he's a difficult age right now. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, it I think there's a lot
Speaker 2: of evidence to support the idea that Sybil has just
Speaker 2: had to do a lot of guess work in how
Speaker 2: to raise a boy, a mortal boy like he seems
Speaker 2: like maybe he hasn't been as exposed to like other kids,
Speaker 2: growing up into a wider world. He's had maybe a
Speaker 2: little bit too much access to magical items, and she's,
Speaker 2: as we'll see, you know, kind of spoiled him a
Speaker 2: bit too. So again it makes for this George ends
Speaker 2: up being this very weird hero in this picture because
Speaker 2: you know, he doesn't have the same sort of origin
Speaker 2: story introjectory that you would expect of your Dragon Slayer character.
Speaker 2: He's lived a very privileged in many ways upbringing, but
Speaker 2: also a very there's been a lot of deprivation in
Speaker 2: his upbringing, it seems. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also, this is where we get the scene where
Speaker 3: he's really he's moping. He's upset because of you know,
Speaker 3: her denials here, and then she tries to cheer him
Speaker 3: up by turning into a panther. But she doesn't do anything.
Speaker 3: It's not like she turns into a panther and I
Speaker 3: don't know, like spins plates on her head or something.
Speaker 3: She just is a panther. And then she's not.
Speaker 2: That should be enough.
Speaker 3: I can't do that, That's true. I can't either. What
Speaker 3: am I gainsaying this for? Yeah, okay, she turns into
Speaker 3: a panther and doesn't do anything, But that's that's pretty impressive.
Speaker 3: But he says, mother, not that trick again, Like she's
Speaker 3: like blowing raspberries on his belly or something. Anyway, this
Speaker 3: leads Sybil to take George on a She like takes
Speaker 3: him down into a kind of dungeon to show him
Speaker 3: the birthday presence she's going to give him next year
Speaker 3: when he turns twenty one. And these presents include a
Speaker 3: magical white stallion called Bayard that is faster than any
Speaker 3: horse on earth, a magical suit of armor that cannot
Speaker 3: be pierced by any weapon, and a magic sword that
Speaker 3: has a name. I was trying to hear what I
Speaker 3: think it's called Escalon, which that sounds right, okay. Escalon
Speaker 3: defies all swords in battle, neutralizes black magic, and it
Speaker 3: can open or close any door, portcullis, or portal with
Speaker 3: a touch.
Speaker 2: So basically, she's like, George, you're gonna be a level
Speaker 2: one character, but I have three legendary magical items for you.
Speaker 2: That's just right out of the gate. You're going to
Speaker 2: totally destroy these cobonts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a level one fighter with the with the
Speaker 3: Saber of Doors, I guess. Yeah. Oh. Also, George just
Speaker 3: starts like groaning with pleasure when he holds the magic sword.
Speaker 3: He's like, Oh, it feels like it's part of my
Speaker 3: own body. Also in the room, she just happens to
Speaker 3: mention these are not presented as part of his birthday presence.
Speaker 3: It's just like, oh, yeah, those six night statues there
Speaker 3: against the wall, these are the six most valiant knights
Speaker 3: in the world, which were turned to stone by Sybil's brother,
Speaker 3: which makes me wonder, Wait a minute, was Sibil's brother
Speaker 3: a good sorcerer? Or a bad one.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, Yeah, it sounds like maybe he was the
Speaker 2: bad sort, because these are six noble knights that were
Speaker 2: evidently defeated, imprisoned, you know, made eternal servants of this
Speaker 2: Witchcraft family. Yeah. I think there's a lot to suggest
Speaker 2: that this is not a beneficial fate that was bestowed
Speaker 2: upon them.
Speaker 3: But here George comes up with a clever trick. He
Speaker 3: manages to trick Sibyl into going down into an enchanted
Speaker 3: sub basement to I don't know what he did, just
Speaker 3: to go down there and look at it, I guess.
Speaker 3: And then as soon as she goes down ahead of him,
Speaker 3: he taps the stone trapdoor of the access to this
Speaker 3: basement and it closes behind her, trapping her inside. Now
Speaker 3: he's free to go save the princess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he said, barries his mama so that he can
Speaker 2: god and pursue his love.
Speaker 3: Seems kind of cruel, Yeah, But also they do. I
Speaker 3: feel like they drop a few things to emphasize that, like, oh,
Speaker 3: she is an immortal sorceress, so it's not like she's
Speaker 3: gonna die of thirst down there or anything. But she
Speaker 3: still doesn't like it.
Speaker 2: She's like, oh, you scamp.
Speaker 3: So he then uses his sword to unfreeze the knights
Speaker 3: because I guess they were frozen by black magic. And
Speaker 3: we're going to meet all the knights in the next scene.
Speaker 3: But they wake up, and then there's one with a
Speaker 3: French accent who is like, oh, thank you. But here
Speaker 3: we go straight to a scene another scene in the
Speaker 3: throne room room of the castle, where at the beginning
Speaker 3: of the scene it's just like a repeat of what
Speaker 3: we already saw, like Sir Branton is promising to rescue
Speaker 3: the princess, but at this point he kneels in front
Speaker 3: of the king he makes this solemn vow to rescue her,
Speaker 3: and the king is like, hmm, that's a strange ring
Speaker 3: with a picture of a dragon on it. Sir Branton, Well,
Speaker 3: let's not pay any attention to that. They are interrupted
Speaker 3: by George, who is now calling himself Sir George. He
Speaker 3: barges into the throne room. He's dressed in his magical armor,
Speaker 3: he's got his magical sword, and he is accompanied by
Speaker 3: his six unfrozen cave men lawyer knights, and they all
Speaker 3: introduce themselves and show off their accents. So we've got
Speaker 3: and they're they're each like from a country of Europe.
Speaker 3: So the strange thing about this is it's not set
Speaker 3: in like an alternate land. It's not you know, Middle
Speaker 3: Earth or something. It seems to be set in Christian
Speaker 3: Europe in Earth. So we have Sir Denis of France,
Speaker 3: they say, Dennis. I don't know if that would be
Speaker 3: Deni in real life, but Sir Denis of France, Sir
Speaker 3: Pedro of Spain, Sir Patrick of Ireland, Sir Anthony of Italy,
Speaker 3: Sir James of Scotland, and Sir Ulrich of Germany, and
Speaker 3: they all sort of like say a hello in their accents.
Speaker 3: The German Knights. Sir Ulrich said he looks at the
Speaker 3: king and he's like mine Kaiser.
Speaker 2: And that's actually the voice of Paul Freese, the noted
Speaker 2: voice actor who worked on such things as The Bullwinkle Show,
Speaker 2: The Last Unicorn and just tons of of of various
Speaker 2: animated shows of old like he was in you know,
Speaker 2: The Return of the King, The Flight of Dragons, you know,
Speaker 2: the Frosty Snowman specials and so forth.
Speaker 3: Oh I did not know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's a he's a frequent name and all
Speaker 2: of those.
Speaker 3: Well, here we get some conflict because Sir George is
Speaker 3: he shows up, he stands next to Sir Branton. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm also going to save the princess, and I'm also
Speaker 3: going to marry her. And Sir Branton doesn't like this.
Speaker 3: He tries to fight George. George doesn't want to draw
Speaker 3: his sword, so Branton strikes first, but just ends up
Speaker 3: shattering his sword on George's magical armor. And eventually the
Speaker 3: King he's he literally says, I like these knights. So
Speaker 3: he decides, well, they're all going to have to go
Speaker 3: save the princess together. They'll have to work together, George,
Speaker 3: the six Knights, and the scheming creep Branton.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The King sort of reminds them here that, like,
Speaker 2: actually the important thing is saving her from the wizard.
Speaker 2: We're getting a little sidetracked in the whole, like who
Speaker 2: should get to marry her things? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Meanwhile, at Lodak's castle, we are going to check
Speaker 3: in with the princess. Now, Princess Helene is being taken
Speaker 3: to her cell and there she meets a couple of
Speaker 3: other princesses who are sisters. And this scene sort of
Speaker 3: suggests that Lodak is running like a full time princess
Speaker 3: dragon feeding operation. Like he's processing incoming princesses on a
Speaker 3: bi weekly basis, so he always has some princesses in
Speaker 3: the hopper when he feeds the ones that have already
Speaker 3: been there to the to the dragon. So I think
Speaker 3: he's like seasoning them in the dungeon while the dragon
Speaker 3: eats the ones that have been there already.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it also makes me wonder are there attached
Speaker 2: skins for these princesses as well that result in some
Speaker 2: sort of revenue income or magical item income. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: seems like a big operation because this is not some
Speaker 2: dusty old sorcerer. This man has a fabulous wardrobe, He
Speaker 2: has a big cut castle to upkeep, He has various
Speaker 2: pets and curses to take care of. You know, you
Speaker 2: gotta stay busy to keep that afloat.
Speaker 3: It is indicated that that he asks for ransom. He
Speaker 3: doesn't for Princess Helene because he says that she is
Speaker 3: a special case. But what we're led to believe is
Speaker 3: that normally, yeah, he's got princesses coming in all the time,
Speaker 3: and he gets there, he gets their king fathers to
Speaker 3: pay money. So these princesses think that they're going to
Speaker 3: be fine because their father will pay the ransom required
Speaker 3: to save them. Unfortunately, Lodac says their father did not
Speaker 3: pay up, and instead he sent a company of knights
Speaker 3: to rescue them, and the knights all died facing his
Speaker 3: seven curses. I have questions about this, like would there
Speaker 3: be an enough princesses to sustain this kind of operation indefinitely?
Speaker 3: Like how does Loadak not exhaust the supply of princesses
Speaker 3: at this rate?
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe he's working internationally. We don't know, Like
Speaker 2: he's just in Christian Europe, Medieval Europe at this point,
Speaker 2: but maybe he's also jetting off to uh and to
Speaker 2: you know, to East Asia. At times he's heading he's
Speaker 2: heading to Africa, South America, like he's got a full,
Speaker 2: full global operation going here. Maybe he franchises.
Speaker 3: I wonder if sometimes like he can't get a princess
Speaker 3: and it's just like this week, I had to feed
Speaker 3: my dragon an earl. Anyway, he tried a basil rathbone,
Speaker 3: tries to make Helene watch the other princesses being fed
Speaker 3: to the dragon, but she won't look, and we don't
Speaker 3: get to see the monster yet. So then Lodak explains, Hey,
Speaker 3: you know, there are some Knights who are coming to
Speaker 3: rescue you, but don't worry, they will fail. First of all,
Speaker 3: he says, Sir Branton is coming, and she seems not
Speaker 3: excited by this prospect, so I guess she doesn't like him.
Speaker 2: She's like, I'd like to be saved, but.
Speaker 3: Not a big fan of Sir Brant.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: But there's also somebody coming named Sir George, and despite
Speaker 3: having never met him and not knowing who who he is,
Speaker 3: she's like, oh, George sounds cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and his main main attraction being that he's not
Speaker 2: Sir Branton.
Speaker 3: I guess, oh, that's a good point. Maybe she's just
Speaker 3: excited that it's anybody but Sir Branton. So Lodak is like, well,
Speaker 3: I'll show you the young fool. And then once again
Speaker 3: we tune into Magical Remote Surveillance TV. So, like on
Speaker 3: a screen on the wall, Lodak shows George Branton and
Speaker 3: the other Nights approaching the First Curse. What is the
Speaker 3: first Curse? Well, you know what, I really like the
Speaker 3: set and the landscape they set up here. It is
Speaker 3: quite creepy. So they go into this this landscape of
Speaker 3: strangely shaped trees that at first I was like, what
Speaker 3: are we looking at? It almost looks like trees that
Speaker 3: have been pulled up out of the ground and you
Speaker 3: can see the whole root structure around in this pyramid
Speaker 3: shaped kind of structure. But no, I don't think that's
Speaker 3: what it is. I think it's actually supposed to be
Speaker 3: trees that have been knocked over in some way at
Speaker 3: like ten feet up off the ground. But I gotta
Speaker 3: give him credit. I really like this set. It does
Speaker 3: make me feel uneasy what lives here? And then we
Speaker 3: find out it's an ogre. It's a big old ogre
Speaker 3: that starts trying to smash the knights, And I also
Speaker 3: the ogre design. It's gross looking, it's creepy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this monster has like that. Obviously this is going
Speaker 2: to be something akin to amazing Colossal Man, but yeah,
Speaker 2: in terms of just being this giant humanoid. But yeah,
Speaker 2: also has this kind of like were wolfy wolfman quality
Speaker 2: to it, and also seems I don't know, I ended
Speaker 2: up feeling more sorry for this creature than anything because
Speaker 2: he doesn't really do much. He just kind of stands
Speaker 2: there and howls while Knights attempt he's got like.
Speaker 3: One thing that looked creepy to me about him is
Speaker 3: that it's like he's got different kinds of teeth in
Speaker 3: his mouth, So they're not just like a row of
Speaker 3: sharp teeth. It's like he has teeth from three different
Speaker 3: kinds of creatures all in the same mouth.
Speaker 2: This may also be the character I've read. I think
Speaker 2: Michael Weldon points out that Richard Keel is in this
Speaker 2: movie but is completely uncredited. This would seem to be
Speaker 2: the role you would have him in if you had
Speaker 2: an uncredited Richard Keel.
Speaker 3: I wonder, But I know what you're saying about feeling
Speaker 3: sad for the creature, because it almost does seem like
Speaker 3: he's just trying to hang out in this little blasted
Speaker 3: landscape here, and then these things come in and start
Speaker 3: poking at him with spears.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I know what's happening. Yeah, he didn't ask
Speaker 2: to be the first curse maybe, I mean, that's the thing.
Speaker 2: He's somebody who is cursed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. So there's a long battle scene. George
Speaker 3: eventually defeats the Ogre by galloping in circles around him
Speaker 3: on his magically fast horse, and the Ogre is trying
Speaker 3: to like follow him in order to crush him, but
Speaker 3: round he goes round around in circles, and then the
Speaker 3: Ogre becomes dizzy and falls over, and then George pokes
Speaker 3: him in the heart with his sword.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Can't be that satisfying of the victory, honestly.
Speaker 3: Oh, and some of the Knights are killed here. So
Speaker 3: Sir Ulrich and Sir Pedro are killed by the Ogre
Speaker 3: and they have a little funeral for them and show
Speaker 3: them being buried, and Sir Brandon skips the funeral he's
Speaker 3: scouting ahead. Meanwhile, there are just like some scenes in
Speaker 3: the castle where Helene is running around. She like sneaks
Speaker 3: out of her cell and is running around getting scared
Speaker 3: by various things, one of which is shrunken people inside
Speaker 3: a cage. There's like dull sized people in a little
Speaker 3: cage saying help us, help us, like attack of the
Speaker 3: puppet people. Yeah, a Lodax castle also has like these
Speaker 3: like blue ghules and guys with conical heads, and people
Speaker 3: in plague doctor like bird masks, and just various people
Speaker 3: being scary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but mostly cone heads. There a lot of coneheads.
Speaker 3: So on the road the Knights travel on to the
Speaker 3: next curse, which is a vile, misty swamp full of
Speaker 3: bubbling acid pools. In this swamp, the Knights become separated
Speaker 3: from one another and Sir Anthony falls into a bubbling
Speaker 3: acid pool. George tries to go save him, and Branton
Speaker 3: intentionally knocks George into the pool. Somehow, George doesn't realize
Speaker 3: this later. I don't know if he thinks it was
Speaker 3: an accident or he doesn't realize somebody kicked him. I'm
Speaker 3: not sure.
Speaker 2: But the result is pretty gruesome because we don't get
Speaker 2: You might expect it from a movie like this. You
Speaker 2: might expect it to be like that high school biology
Speaker 2: classroom skeleton rising to the surface. No, what we get
Speaker 2: is is a big grimmer.
Speaker 3: It's like a skull with very bleached white, gritted teeth,
Speaker 3: and then where the flesh would be over the skull
Speaker 3: is just like bubble gum has been stretched over the bone.
Speaker 2: But the bubblegum that's had all the flavor chewed out
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's a nasty looking And it happens like
Speaker 3: immediately Anthony's He's like swimming in the pool, going and
Speaker 3: being like help, help, and then it cuts away and
Speaker 3: then cuts back and now he's just the skull.
Speaker 2: Done for fatality.
Speaker 3: But George survives the acid pool. I think because of
Speaker 3: his magical armor. I assume that's the reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's indestructible on this stuff. Now.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, back at the witch Hut, Sybil finally escapes the basement.
Speaker 3: She realized owing her her friends there in the witchholder
Speaker 3: like playing chess, and she realizes George is in danger,
Speaker 3: so she decides she has to intervene to save him.
Speaker 3: But first she's gonna watch him on magic TV. So
Speaker 3: we see her watching in the magic mirror. The camp
Speaker 3: of the Knights after Anthony also has died, So now
Speaker 3: there are only three of the other Knights left, I think,
Speaker 3: Sir James of Scotland, Sir Patrick of Ireland, and Sir
Speaker 3: Denis of France. And at the camp, Sir Branton is
Speaker 3: giving a speech trying to convince the other Knights to
Speaker 3: abandon the journey. He's like, go home, you, you don't
Speaker 3: have to risk your lives anymore. But the other Knights refuse,
Speaker 3: and Sir Patrick mocks him. He says his tongue is
Speaker 3: like the honey from a clover patch. Is that an expression?
Speaker 3: I've never heard that.
Speaker 2: I've only ever heard it in this movie.
Speaker 3: So while the other night's sleep, Sir Branton sneaks off
Speaker 3: alone to a house in the countryside, all for an
Speaker 3: illicit rendezvous with Loadak. So here we get a big twist.
Speaker 3: Turns out they have been conspiring together from the beginning.
Speaker 3: Remember that ring with a dragon on it that Sir
Speaker 3: Branton had and the King noticed and then nobody said
Speaker 3: anything about. So it works like this. Lodak lost his
Speaker 3: magic ring a while back. Sir Branton found it. Lodak
Speaker 3: wants the ring back, but he can't take it because
Speaker 3: the ring protects itself against being taken by force. So
Speaker 3: they make a deal. In exchange for the return of
Speaker 3: the ring, Lodak will help Sir Branton win the hand
Speaker 3: of Princess Helene and the reward of half of the
Speaker 3: King's kingdom for her rescue. So he would do that
Speaker 3: by staging this abduction and then allowing Sir Branton to
Speaker 3: bring her back.
Speaker 2: I love it. Yeah, a nice side scheme to everything here.
Speaker 2: The plot dickens.
Speaker 3: It is a good twist and but clearly the party.
Speaker 3: One thing I like about it is that they're not
Speaker 3: just cleanly in league like the parties involved here distrust
Speaker 3: one another. They are both snakes, and they're both wondering,
Speaker 3: how will the other one try to betray me? Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, either one will stab the other one in the
Speaker 2: back once they have what they want.
Speaker 3: Oh and then suddenly, while they're talking, Lodak is like, oh,
Speaker 3: Sir Denis of France is coming, you know he So
Speaker 3: Sir Denis noticed Branton leaving the camp early in the morning,
Speaker 3: and he followed him to investigate. While everybody else is sleeping.
Speaker 3: Lodak detects he's coming, but don't worry. He has a plan.
Speaker 3: It's some kind of horrible love trap, Like he sees
Speaker 3: Sir Denis coming and then he's like, ah, he's a
Speaker 3: Frenchman and so I will get him with a pretty woman.
Speaker 3: So suddenly, a while Dennis is approaching this house that
Speaker 3: he's trying to investigate, just like a pretty lady just
Speaker 3: wanders onto the screen singing Freira Shaka, and Sir Dennis
Speaker 3: is like, there can't be anything suspicious about this. So
Speaker 3: he's just like monto more, I'm in love. He is
Speaker 3: successfully catfished by magic. I guess you would call this witchfished.
Speaker 3: And so he's like they're just sitting there smooching, and
Speaker 3: then suddenly she transforms into a witch and tries to
Speaker 3: bite his neck. And the witch has like the witch
Speaker 3: is creepy looking, she's got like one eye melting off
Speaker 3: of her head. She tries to bite him in the neck,
Speaker 3: but Sir George comes to the rescue. Dennis is saved
Speaker 3: because George does something like with his magic shield and
Speaker 3: it like emits light that scares the witch and makes
Speaker 3: her vaporize. Oh and then I like how Dennis is
Speaker 3: He just fully plays into the Lodax assumed seo type
Speaker 3: here when he's talking to George, He's like, yeah, Lodak
Speaker 3: got me. He must have known I was French.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it's enough to make you wonder are
Speaker 2: these knights even real? Were they really captured knights or
Speaker 2: were they just made by sorcery and therefore based on
Speaker 2: just broad stereotypes.
Speaker 3: That's funny. Yeah. Oh, and then there's a confrontation where
Speaker 3: George and Dennis go into the house to see Sir Branton,
Speaker 3: but Branton lies his way out of it. And there's
Speaker 3: also after they leave, there's a funny scene where the
Speaker 3: witch like they have a performance review the witch does
Speaker 3: with Lodak, and she's like, I almost killed him.
Speaker 2: I tried, but you know that's not gonna cut it.
Speaker 2: So what does he do? Bam, turns her into a spider.
Speaker 2: All right, So how far into the curses are we now, Joe,
Speaker 2: This is a good question.
Speaker 3: I sort of got confused trying to count the curses.
Speaker 3: So the ogre is the first curse, and the swamp
Speaker 3: with the acid pools, I think that's the second curse.
Speaker 2: Okay, we're at least two.
Speaker 3: In third curse is I think the witch who looks
Speaker 3: like a French lady.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so that would mean we're ready for four
Speaker 2: at this point.
Speaker 3: But when when I think about the rest of it,
Speaker 3: it doesn't add up. I'm like, what are the seven curses?
Speaker 2: Well, the next one is definitely a doozy.
Speaker 3: Oh my lord? Yeah, okay, So at this point I
Speaker 3: think somehow Sir James of Scotland and Sir Dennis of
Speaker 3: France like, go ahead to investigate what's down the road,
Speaker 3: and that leaves Sir George, Sir Branton and Sir Patrick
Speaker 3: of Ireland and the three of them they they they're
Speaker 3: approaching their their comrades. But the comrades who went ahead
Speaker 3: are now just like melted. They're horribly irradiated, covered in blisters.
Speaker 3: Their hair is gone, their skin is like peeling away
Speaker 3: like old wallpaper.
Speaker 2: Is.
Speaker 3: It's disgusting, absolutely disgusting. You see them in like a cave,
Speaker 3: I think, staring into this yellow spiral and they're shirtless
Speaker 3: and their hair is gone. And then they turn and
Speaker 3: look into the camera and they're all messed up, partially melted,
Speaker 3: and then you see their like silhouettes coming over a
Speaker 3: hilltop and then they just disappear. It's like they turn
Speaker 3: to dust.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in a way, almost like a decade appropriate version
Speaker 2: of the Robocot melt scene, you know, because it's like
Speaker 2: they're coming right at us. They look horrible, they look
Speaker 2: in pain. And it's this moment especially where I can think,
Speaker 2: I can rationalize. It's like, Okay, I could see where
Speaker 2: some sensors might have had a problem with the tonal
Speaker 2: inconsistency of this film. One second, it's a chimpanzee playing chess,
Speaker 2: and then later on it's this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, can't you just imagine Sir Branton here in ray
Speaker 3: wise fashion and being like, don't touch me in yeah,
Speaker 3: all right, So those nights. They're gone melted, blasted by
Speaker 3: whatever that the yellow spiral thing was. Now somewhere in
Speaker 3: here this may actually have already happened, or it's somewhere
Speaker 3: in here that there's a whole scene where Sybil back
Speaker 3: at home, is trying to intervene to help George. She
Speaker 3: wants to like brew up a potion and do a
Speaker 3: spell that will help him somehow, but she ends up
Speaker 3: having the exact opposite of her intended effect, and she
Speaker 3: accidentally disables his magic powers instead.
Speaker 2: This is the sibyl is cooking scene that I referenced earlier,
Speaker 2: And even though it doesn't pay off for her, it's
Speaker 2: still a fabulous sequence because again, the music just gets
Speaker 2: super weird. You got those red gels, and yeah, she's
Speaker 2: just cooking away and I love it.
Speaker 3: And you could tell she's improvising, like she she doesn't
Speaker 3: remember the recipe, so she's you know, it's like she's
Speaker 3: playing a solo here, making it up as she goes, Yeah,
Speaker 3: well I think I need the ear of a rabbit.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she doesn't have the recipe in front of her,
Speaker 2: she doesn't have everything prepared, but oh man, her cauldron
Speaker 2: is an upturned monster skull.
Speaker 3: Yeah that's good.
Speaker 2: So I love everything about this sequence, even if it
Speaker 2: doesn't really pay off the way she's hoping it will.
Speaker 3: So after this, Sir Branton leads George and Sir Patrick Ireland,
Speaker 3: the last of the six Nights, into a cave and
Speaker 3: then he like leads him into the cave I can't remember.
Speaker 3: He kind of like taunts them somehow and makes them
Speaker 3: follow him, and then they go into the cave and
Speaker 3: then he leaves the cave and it the door of
Speaker 3: the cave closes behind him, so they're trapped inside. And
Speaker 3: then these weird green mask ghosts come out. They're like
Speaker 3: floating in the air and wailing, and one of the
Speaker 3: ghosts kills Sir Patrick sort of just by flying into
Speaker 3: his face and then seeping into him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's kind of a hard to follow sequence,
Speaker 2: but the ghosts are creepy, the music is good. The
Speaker 2: ghost kind of looked like shrunken heads, and like you said,
Speaker 2: also like masks. So uh, yeah, it mostly works. It does.
Speaker 3: The one thing that works less well is that the
Speaker 3: tone of what follows. So Sir Patrick dies and he
Speaker 3: can be heard violently screaming George help me. It's like
Speaker 3: really painful to hear ragged screaming desperate. But then a
Speaker 3: ghost face flies into the wall of the cave and
Speaker 3: a door opens to the outside, so like they were
Speaker 3: trapped inside. Oh and George had tried to use his
Speaker 3: sword to open the door because it's supposed to open
Speaker 3: any doors, but it has been deactivated from afar by Sybil,
Speaker 3: so that didn't work. And so yeah, this ghost face
Speaker 3: flies into the wall, the wall opens up yet again,
Speaker 3: and then the voice of Sir Patrick, still screaming in
Speaker 3: exactly the same way, says George.
Speaker 2: Through the wall. Yeah, and yeah, it's hard to follow
Speaker 2: exactly what has happened here, and which character is it
Speaker 2: that then tells us in a bit here and explains that, oh,
Speaker 2: well it's Patrick's faith.
Speaker 3: That yeah, Lodak explains it. Actually, So George escapes the
Speaker 3: cave because of whatever that was, the like face flying
Speaker 3: into the wall and the screaming voices door it opened.
Speaker 3: George gets out. There's this lingering shot of Sir Patrick's
Speaker 3: dead body in the cave as the wall closes behind
Speaker 3: George on his way out. Then we see once again
Speaker 3: somebody watching magic remote TV Loadak and Sir Branton are
Speaker 3: looking upon a magic fire scheming, and Sir Branton says,
Speaker 3: was it magic? Loadak says, no, not magic. Sir Branton says,
Speaker 3: then how did George escape. Loadak says, I think, yes,
Speaker 3: something stronger than magic, the power of Patrick's faith.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, where does that come from? We have not
Speaker 2: There's been nothing to establish that Patrick was particularly religious.
Speaker 2: All we know is that he is Irish and he
Speaker 2: doesn't even like call out to God or Jesus or
Speaker 2: anything during that final encounter, Like that alone would have
Speaker 2: been if he was like Jesus Christ, save our hero
Speaker 2: or something anything, But no, it's it's just apparently his
Speaker 2: faith was strong enough that God intervened.
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, I agree with all of that very strange,
Speaker 3: but I think it's funny that Lodak acknowledges that his
Speaker 3: powers are helpless in the face of like prayer, so
Speaker 3: his enemies would just like pray to God to defeat
Speaker 3: him they could win.
Speaker 2: I guess he's kind of like, well, God only gets
Speaker 2: involved directly on rare occasions, so it's gonna happen every
Speaker 2: now and then, but not to the extent that it's
Speaker 2: going to actually derail my plans here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyway, this seems to be the last of
Speaker 3: the seven curses somehow, or maybe there's one still at
Speaker 3: the castle something like. George gallops up to.
Speaker 2: No way, we're past five here this don't know.
Speaker 3: Where are the others. George gallops to the castle on
Speaker 3: his white horse, and as he wanders through the deserted courtyard,
Speaker 3: a heavy wooden door creaks open by itself to allow
Speaker 3: him inside. And Lodak and Branton they know he's here.
Speaker 3: They're watching as he heads towards helene cell, and Lodak says,
Speaker 3: don't worry about it, Sir Branton, It'll all work out
Speaker 3: just fine. So George gets to Helene's cell, he greets her.
Speaker 3: Helene says, George, Oh, I must be dreaming, but you are,
Speaker 3: George or is this just more of Lodak's magic? And
Speaker 3: he I guess he has to be like, Hi, you
Speaker 3: know I've been spying on you in the magic pool
Speaker 3: for years but we have not met. But she is
Speaker 3: happy to see him, and there's some type of parody here,
Speaker 3: because she says Lodak has been showing her visions of
Speaker 3: him just to torture her. So they like both only
Speaker 3: know one another from magical remote surveillance, and this is
Speaker 3: the first time either one has seen the other in person.
Speaker 3: They start smooching. Of course there's kissing there, and what
Speaker 3: about Sir Branton? Who cares? So they try to sneak out,
Speaker 3: but just as they are able to reach the front door,
Speaker 3: Lodak springs a trap. His weird minions magically materialized in
Speaker 3: front of the exit, and George and Helene are caught.
Speaker 3: Sir Branton's treachery is revealed. Branton, thinking that the deal
Speaker 3: has been finished, gives the magical ring back to Lodak,
Speaker 3: and then Helene says she will happily leave with Sir Branton. Huh,
Speaker 3: I thought she didn't really like him. Why was she
Speaker 3: so happy to go with him? I mean, I guess
Speaker 3: it would kind of make sense, you'd be happy to
Speaker 3: leave with anybody. But you know, it's surprising to the viewer.
Speaker 3: But guess what, it's another double cross. We sort of
Speaker 3: saw this coming, didn't we. You can't trust Lodak captured
Speaker 3: well in this production still that I drug rob or
Speaker 3: so Sir Branton is like embracing Helene and she it's
Speaker 3: the witch double cross again.
Speaker 2: Hagged again, but he's not going to get off that.
Speaker 3: No, of course, no, Loadak says, did you think I
Speaker 3: did you really think I'd keep my word once I
Speaker 3: had the ring? And Brandon seems genuinely shocked and betrayed.
Speaker 3: Did you notice like it's weird, how like surprised he
Speaker 3: seems by this?
Speaker 2: But I made a deal with an evil wizard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like we already even talked about this, Like
Speaker 3: how does he I don't know, but Sir Branton says
Speaker 3: she belongs to me. We made a bargain, and Lodak says,
Speaker 3: I don't bargain with mortals. I destroy them. And then
Speaker 3: we get the magical destruction of Branton. What does Lodak
Speaker 3: do to him? Does he summon an ogre to crush
Speaker 3: him like a grape? Does he create another heat tornado
Speaker 3: to melt his flesh away?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: He transforms Sir Branton into a mounted head on the wall,
Speaker 3: like a stuffed deer head at a hunting lodge.
Speaker 2: And the effect is pretty funny here.
Speaker 3: Yes, it does look funny. In fact, I don't I'm
Speaker 3: not even sure it's not just the actor sticking his
Speaker 3: head through a hole in the wall.
Speaker 2: Been it might have been that simple, or it might
Speaker 2: have been some you know, some optical special effects that
Speaker 2: especially to a modern view, or you know, we're liable
Speaker 2: to miss because we take that sort of thing for granted. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, back at home, we see more of Sybil trying
Speaker 3: to help George. She is trying to remember the words
Speaker 3: to a spell that she knows she could use to
Speaker 3: save George and defeat Lodak, but she can't remember the words.
Speaker 3: She knows, like, there's like a number of lines and
Speaker 3: they all rhyme with sack, I think, but you can't
Speaker 3: remember the last word in the last line. Turns out
Speaker 3: it is attack.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: The last line when she finally does remember it later,
Speaker 3: it's help my son to attack. It seems like that'd
Speaker 3: be kind of obvious, but magic's complicated, It's true. She
Speaker 3: decides to transform into a bird and fly to Lodak's castle,
Speaker 3: and she's going to figure out the spell on the way.
Speaker 3: So at Lodak's castle, Lodak brings Helene to a dungeon
Speaker 3: room where George is shirtless and tied to a rack,
Speaker 3: and he he's, uh, this part's creepy. Yeah, He's like, hmm,
Speaker 3: show me what young mortals in love dude to bid
Speaker 3: farewell before they die. So I think he just wants
Speaker 3: to watch them make out a little.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and and and mock them. But he's like
Speaker 2: two feet away from them, maybe.
Speaker 3: Yes, standing right there, and they're they're smooching, and then
Speaker 3: he's like, m how tender. Uh yeah, but too bad,
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's too late for love now. Now
Speaker 3: you're gonna die. Uh. So they both say they love
Speaker 3: each other, and George is the plan is he's gonna
Speaker 3: have to watch through the window as Helene has fed
Speaker 3: to the dragon, much like she was supposed to watch
Speaker 3: as the other princesses were fed to the dragon.
Speaker 2: Now, have we had the part where Lodak and Sybil
Speaker 2: have their final zoom conference with each other and he
Speaker 2: destroys her mirror. We may we may have skipped over
Speaker 2: that by one.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. I think I forgot to mention that scene.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's it's wonderfully spicy because like it's like Zdak
Speaker 2: calls in on the magic mirror and he's like, hmm, Sybil,
Speaker 2: you're looking old, and I just stop to a really
Speaker 2: toxic start between these two and they kind of talk
Speaker 2: trash to each other, and then he destroys her mirror
Speaker 2: and he's like, you're not getting interfere with my plants.
Speaker 3: Oh, but Lodack's in for a surprise. So we get
Speaker 3: a scene of Lodac's minions preparing a feast, and one
Speaker 3: of them is supposed to go get the cage of
Speaker 3: shrunken people like the puppet people to put in the stew.
Speaker 3: But he drops the cage and they escape, and it's
Speaker 3: a repeat of attack of the Puppet People. It's literally
Speaker 3: like the shrunken people get out and start like setting
Speaker 3: up traps and wreaking havoc within the room.
Speaker 2: It's nice they condensed all of that into a short
Speaker 2: segment in a much better film. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the puppet people, for some reason, they break
Speaker 3: into George's cell and they bring him his magic sword
Speaker 3: and they use it to cut the ropes that are
Speaker 3: binding our hero. They set him free. George thanks them.
Speaker 3: He tells them that even though the sword has lost
Speaker 3: its magic, it's still a which.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like an escalator, you know, it breaks down,
Speaker 2: nish Hedberg pointed out, still stares. That's a good point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the dragon is coming to eat Helene and
Speaker 3: she's you know, like tied up there for the dragon
Speaker 3: to eat. She's screaming in terror. And you know what
Speaker 3: I'm gonna say, This dragon looks surprisingly good. I would say,
Speaker 3: actually shockingly good. For a Bert Eye Gordon movie. This is,
Speaker 3: without doubt the best looking special effect I've ever seen
Speaker 3: from mister Big.
Speaker 2: Absolutely looks looks amazing. You know, obviously you see it
Speaker 2: in motion. You know that it's an effect, you know,
Speaker 2: but it's it is very well done, and it's shooting flames.
Speaker 2: It looks dangerous and wild.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So it's like a big two headed dragon breathing fire.
Speaker 3: It has frills on its head heads. And George comes
Speaker 3: in on his horse. He's trying to save Helene, squaring
Speaker 3: off against the dragon with his lance. And then Sybil arrives.
Speaker 3: She she like parks next to Lodak, who is looking
Speaker 3: down from above on a parapet, and Lodak says, Sybil,
Speaker 3: come to watch your boy die. But Sybil, she's busy
Speaker 3: trying to remember the next line of the spell to
Speaker 3: restore George's magic. I gotta say in the performance here,
Speaker 3: she does not seem to have the appropriate sense of urgency.
Speaker 3: She's still just doing her kind of absent minded, only
Speaker 3: half present, you know what was that next line? But
Speaker 3: eventually she does come up, she doesn't just remember it.
Speaker 3: Lodak cues her, you know. Lodak sees that George's magical
Speaker 3: weapons are not working against the dragon, and Lodak says
Speaker 3: he's even lost the power to attack. And then Sibyl's like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's the word attack. Give my boy the power to attack,
Speaker 3: and so now I guess he's powered up once again.
Speaker 3: Oh and then while Lodak is distracted, Sybil steals Lodak's ring.
Speaker 2: That's good, yep, yep. I'm a little foggy on how
Speaker 2: it works though, because we were told earlier you couldn't
Speaker 2: be taken by force, but I guess it can be
Speaker 2: slipped off while you're looking the other way. Too much
Speaker 2: wizard grease on your fingers there.
Speaker 3: Now, Loadak doesn't consider himself defeated yet. She takes his ring,
Speaker 3: but he says they will still die. I curse you,
Speaker 3: curse upon curse, and so George, Oh, here's how the
Speaker 3: math works out. Now that I'm remembering it, I think
Speaker 3: the dragon itself is the sixth the curse. And then
Speaker 3: Lodak explains that the seventh curse is himself is Lodak.
Speaker 2: That's fitting. That's fitting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Lodak seems ready to blast out some kind
Speaker 3: of killing magic, but then, in a fantastic payoff to
Speaker 3: what seemed like a really pointless setup that we were
Speaker 3: even making fun of earlier, Sybil turns into a panther
Speaker 3: and mauls Lodak, killing him. It's George's favorite trick when
Speaker 3: he was a boy.
Speaker 2: And now it's paid off once more. It's great and
Speaker 2: it's a great moment when Sybil gets her come up
Speaker 2: and see her because again Lodak has not considered her
Speaker 2: threat at all the entire time, and now she she
Speaker 2: has completely defeated him. For George, I get, you know,
Speaker 2: George is the hero. I get. I don't know. I
Speaker 2: feel like Sybil's the hero.
Speaker 3: I mean, Sybil does most of the work, like she
Speaker 3: enchants all of the items that allow George to defeat
Speaker 3: these monsters and stuff. I would say the most the
Speaker 3: craftiest thing that George does of his own accord is
Speaker 3: actually when he tricks Sybil into going in the basement
Speaker 3: at the beginning and traps her there and his it
Speaker 3: is and most of his equipment does the.
Speaker 2: Rest yeah, which again she supplied.
Speaker 3: But anyway, okay, so all is all is restored, All
Speaker 3: is happy now, and we go back to the castle
Speaker 3: where the king is and Helene and George of return
Speaker 3: and it seems like the king approves of George now,
Speaker 3: so of course they're going to get married somehow. The
Speaker 3: Six Nights are alive again. They just are shown walking
Speaker 3: into the throne room. I don't think there's any explanation
Speaker 3: of how they're not dead. Did you pick up anything there?
Speaker 2: I kind of I was thinking about this and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, I guess it's because you know, Sybil's
Speaker 2: brother whenever he froze them, like he made them his
Speaker 2: sorceress slaves forever. So it's like, you guys are not
Speaker 2: getting out of this just because you died horribly in
Speaker 2: this quest. Like no, no, no, Sybil. You belong to
Speaker 2: Sybil forever and you have to serve her son or
Speaker 2: whoever happens to have the reins here.
Speaker 3: It's like a Warlock pact. It's like, yeah, if you die,
Speaker 3: you still you go to your you're in a Vernas,
Speaker 3: and you still have to serve the warlock. The patron.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they still seem upbeat about it, but I don't
Speaker 2: think they have any choice in the matter.
Speaker 3: Well, who's complaining. We get to hear all those wonderful
Speaker 3: accents again. And and then Sybil is also hanging out
Speaker 3: in the throne room. I guess she's like the court sorceress.
Speaker 3: Now she's gonna she's gonna heal the king's pink eye.
Speaker 3: And I think that's that's as about as happy an
Speaker 3: ending as one could ask for.
Speaker 2: It's really the rise of Sybil too, because she's gonna
Speaker 2: basically be running the place I was not super impressed
Speaker 2: by the king. Uh, Sybil is totally ruling this kingdom.
Speaker 2: Now there's a huge power vacuum left by the death
Speaker 2: of Lodak. So yeah, this is the reign of Sybil
Speaker 2: day one.
Speaker 3: I agree with that. The king's previous most decisive moments
Speaker 3: were things like I like these nights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, more belly dancing please. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I pledge fealty to Lady Sybil. It may she
Speaker 3: rain for ten million years.
Speaker 2: All right. Well this one was a really fun one. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I encourage everyone out there to see this one. If
Speaker 2: if you were a fan of the old MA St
Speaker 2: three k version or the newer Riff tracks. Yeah, do that.
Speaker 2: It's a great film to enjoy rift, but it also
Speaker 2: more than stands up on its own and again, if
Speaker 2: you do seek it out to watch it, watch it
Speaker 2: in the best quality you can get your hands on.
Speaker 2: All right, Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, but here on Fridays we set aside
Speaker 2: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a
Speaker 2: list of all the movies we've covered over the years,
Speaker 2: can go over to letterbox dot com. It's l E
Speaker 2: T T E R B O x D dot com.
Speaker 2: Our username is weird House. We have an ongoing list
Speaker 2: of all the movies we've covered so far, and sometimes
Speaker 2: a peek ahead at what's coming up next. We're currently
Speaker 2: if the math is all right, I'll correct here. This
Speaker 2: was one forty eight, so we're almost a one fifty.
Speaker 3: Wow, how time goes by?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Huge, Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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