Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. My name
Speaker 1: is Joe McCormick. Today we're bringing you an older episode
Speaker 1: of Weird House Cinema. This is the feature that we
Speaker 1: did on Legend, directed by Ridley Scott, starring Tom Cruise,
Speaker 1: MIAs Sarah, and Tim Curry. This originally published on August thirtieth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about the nineteen eighty five Ridley Scott fantasy tale Legend
Speaker 1: starring Tom Cruise, MIAs Sarah, and Tim Curry. I wanted
Speaker 1: to start off just by because I mentioned it so
Speaker 1: many times on the show that I love a good
Speaker 1: synthetic forest set, like a you know, a fairytale woodland
Speaker 1: built inside a sound stage. Legend is a kind of
Speaker 1: heaven for me because it is there's more of that
Speaker 1: in this movie than any other movie I can think of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they built an enormous forest for this one inside
Speaker 3: the double Low seven Stage at Pinewood Studios. That was
Speaker 3: the studio that was built for nineteen seventy seven's The
Speaker 3: Spy Who Loved Me, and interestingly enough, it burned down
Speaker 3: shortly before filming could wrap on Legend, tragically killing the
Speaker 3: last two living unicorns.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now, no, the unicorns are fine, but some of
Speaker 3: their final scenes had to be filmed in an actual
Speaker 3: outdoor location because of this. So if you're watching closely,
Speaker 3: there may be some unicorn scenes here and there where
Speaker 3: you're like, oh, that looks like maybe that's for real
Speaker 3: outdoors instead of this lush and amazing indoor forest they built.
Speaker 3: But they do a good job of making you not
Speaker 3: necessarily focus.
Speaker 1: On the difference. I love that it goes back and
Speaker 1: forth and you can't always tell if you're actually outside
Speaker 1: or if this is an indoor forest.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Like they just like they're like particles floating around
Speaker 3: in the air. I'm not sure if it's like pollen
Speaker 3: or fairy dust. I mean, it's just there's a lot
Speaker 3: going on. It's a very rich visual texture.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, this is an almost perfect example of
Speaker 1: a movie that has all the things it needs to
Speaker 1: be absolutely wonderful, but it doesn't know exactly how to
Speaker 1: use them to the greatest effect. So this this movie
Speaker 1: has unbelievably gorgeous sets, some of the most amazing production
Speaker 1: design of any movie I can think of ever. It
Speaker 1: has stupendous makeup effects and costumes. Has a great cast,
Speaker 1: especially in the sort of the down cheat character role
Speaker 1: in the villain roles. It has some intriguing ideas and moments,
Speaker 1: and some fun and funny dialogue in it. It's got
Speaker 1: unicorns all the resources and technical skill that is needed
Speaker 1: to make a best of the best fantasy adventure. And
Speaker 1: yet somehow the movie always still feels like it kind
Speaker 1: of doesn't come together right. Something kind of falls apart
Speaker 1: at the core of it. It's like it's not organized
Speaker 1: correctly toward a toward its storytelling purpose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know what you mean, and this is going
Speaker 3: to be something we're going to discuss back and forth,
Speaker 3: I think, the whole episode. But it's also I think
Speaker 3: one of the reasons that I realized that the time
Speaker 3: was right to discuss legend. We've been talking a lot
Speaker 3: about alien and alien related content on the show, and
Speaker 3: I was heavily tempted. And we may still come back
Speaker 3: and do Alien at some point. But Alien is one
Speaker 3: of those films, a Ridley Scott film that I mean,
Speaker 3: it's it's basically perfect, like it like everything works in
Speaker 3: that picture, and it's and it's fun to talk about
Speaker 3: films we're passionate about and that you know, are so
Speaker 3: great that you don't really have anything critical to say
Speaker 3: about them. But I don't know, sometimes it's a little
Speaker 3: more engaging maybe to get into something like this, a
Speaker 3: film that is rougher around some of the edges in
Speaker 3: some aspects of the production.
Speaker 1: I very much agree that Alien is basically perfect, but
Speaker 1: Legend is different. This is not the only Ridley Scott
Speaker 1: movie that could be described in this way as having
Speaker 1: so many technical elements that are just at the peak
Speaker 1: of excellence. You know, maybe has a kind of esthetic perfection,
Speaker 1: but something just doesn't all work as a narrative. It
Speaker 1: doesn't fit together in the right way. And I want
Speaker 1: to be clear that nobody's going to tag me as
Speaker 1: a Ridley hater, you know, as I already said, I
Speaker 1: think Alien is basically perfect. I'm not one of those
Speaker 1: people who thinks Blade Runner is overrated. Some people say
Speaker 1: that now I don't agree. I think it is brilliant,
Speaker 1: and I even personally find delight in some of Ridley
Speaker 1: Scott's more arguably or some would even say objectively bad
Speaker 1: films like Hannibal or Alien Covenant. I sort of think, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe they are bad, but I kind of like them anyway.
Speaker 1: But apart from that, I think it's interesting that Scott
Speaker 1: has made a number of these films that, at least
Speaker 1: as I see it, pull together the best of the
Speaker 1: best in terms of all the technical elements of filmmaking.
Speaker 1: They look amazing, they sound amazing, they have beautiful and
Speaker 1: interesting things to show you, but at the same time
Speaker 1: they can end up feeling kind of disorganized, flabby, and
Speaker 1: sometimes even irritating. Exercises in storytelling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I would broadly agree with all that, and
Speaker 3: I think maybe a lot of it comes down to
Speaker 3: the particular way that really Scott seems to command a picture,
Speaker 3: because yeah, I think he's a tremendous visual director. His storyboards,
Speaker 3: which are often called Ridley Grahams. I don't know if
Speaker 3: he calls them Redly Grahams or people who work with
Speaker 3: them call them Ridley Graams, but I'm not sure of
Speaker 3: the term. But the Ridley Grams alone are always worth
Speaker 3: a look because on one hand, they're just I mean,
Speaker 3: they look you could say, here's a comic book past
Speaker 3: the Ridley Grahams and you would buy it. Like they don't.
Speaker 3: They don't feel as much like a rough sketch of
Speaker 3: what is to be filmed as as some storyboards, do
Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And also it's it's provides a lot of insight into
Speaker 3: how it all comes together, even though again they are
Speaker 3: essentially blueprints of everything to come. It's where he takes
Speaker 3: the screenplay written by others and projects them into a
Speaker 3: more solidified visual form. And like you say, you know that.
Speaker 3: On top of that, really Scott's going to bring in
Speaker 3: just the absolute best behind the scenes crew and generally
Speaker 3: just great casting choices as well to make it all
Speaker 3: come alive. That being said, yeah, he is often criticized
Speaker 3: for being inconsistent. And I guess one of the weird
Speaker 3: things here is I'm, by by all means not a
Speaker 3: Ridley Scott complete us. There are a bunch of Ridley
Speaker 3: Scott films. I haven't seen many of these. Yeah, many
Speaker 3: his historical pieces, for example, many of his dramas, even
Speaker 3: some of the big dramas like Film and Luise. I
Speaker 3: just haven't seen it and it's not on my immediate
Speaker 3: to watch list. It's not something we could work into
Speaker 3: Weird House, you know, But that one was critically acclaimed
Speaker 3: and nominated for multiple awards. But yeah, for my money,
Speaker 3: Alien and Blade Runner are all timer's. I personally loved
Speaker 3: Prometheus and Alien Covenant, and really admired Covenant more. On
Speaker 3: a recent rewatch, I realized that one's kind of divisive,
Speaker 3: but it certainly has its fans, and I think its faults,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, are trivial in the face of everything
Speaker 3: it does.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Hannibal, that's another weird one to look at. Hannibal is
Speaker 3: one I would almost consider doing for Weird House as well,
Speaker 3: because I remember when the novel came out and it
Speaker 3: was I thought it was kind of a mess and
Speaker 3: kind of repellent, And if anything, the film improved matters
Speaker 3: by cutting out some of the more lurid elements and
Speaker 3: finding its own sort of strange, grotesque tale to tell
Speaker 3: again with a stunning cast, great visuals and this kind
Speaker 3: of like, you know, baroque awfulness that Scott does so well.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's one I probably need to rewatch, but
Speaker 3: it's it's also not one I'm in a super hurry
Speaker 3: to see again.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Ridley has a kind of magic that
Speaker 1: even when he makes a movie that I'm not going
Speaker 1: to go out and defend I don't think is a
Speaker 1: great movie, I do want to keep looking at it.
Speaker 1: Usually like I will come back to these movies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean Ridley is going to bring
Speaker 3: you somewhere you haven't been before, and in all likelihood
Speaker 3: no one else is going to bring you to, you know,
Speaker 3: And I think that's one thing I really love about Covenant.
Speaker 3: That's one thing that I even admire about Hannibal is
Speaker 3: like there have even been other adaptations of the source
Speaker 3: material for Hannibal, and that adaptation as well has its
Speaker 3: own visual flare, but it's not quite the same.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: There's just something about the Ridley is really Scott approach
Speaker 3: to filmmaking that is just really going to sing.
Speaker 1: I'm curious about your own viewing history with Legend, because
Speaker 1: mine is a bit confused. I'm going to say what
Speaker 1: I think it was, but I'm not positive about this.
Speaker 1: I think the order for me goes. I saw pieces
Speaker 1: of this movie on TV growing up, so, you know,
Speaker 1: running it. I don't know which cut they'd be airing
Speaker 1: on TV. We'll have to talk about the multiple cuts
Speaker 1: of the film. I'd guess probably the US theatrical cut,
Speaker 1: but bits of it on TV where I was just
Speaker 1: seeing like a big devil with gigantic horns that's very
Speaker 1: striking and hard to forget Mia Sara wearing a kind
Speaker 1: of like triangle shaped black dress with goth makeup on,
Speaker 1: and seeing Tom Cruise's legs and thinking I didn't know
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise was ever in a fantasy movie like this.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what's going on, but it just kind
Speaker 1: of getting past me, you know. I'd see a little
Speaker 1: bit here and there, and then at some point I
Speaker 1: saw the film in full, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: cut it was, but I remember thinking it was beautiful
Speaker 1: and I was mighty impressed by it in some ways.
Speaker 1: But I do kind of remember feeling tempted to fall
Speaker 1: asleep at certain parts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there are plenty of stretches of this
Speaker 3: film that are very hypnotic and also in places a
Speaker 3: little slow. Especially. It depends on the cut of the film,
Speaker 3: which we'll get into there. I think two major cuts
Speaker 3: and probably four separate cuts you could point to. But
Speaker 3: with me, it's possible I saw part of it on
Speaker 3: TV at some point, or had seen a VHS box
Speaker 3: for it certainly previously. But my clear memory was being
Speaker 3: homesick from school one day and I had a couple
Speaker 3: of movies rented movies to watch. One of them was
Speaker 3: Highlander and the other was This wo And I do
Speaker 3: remember from the moment the VHS type started playing the
Speaker 3: film proper, I remember getting hit with that Tangerine dream score,
Speaker 3: and then you know, the visuals began to kick in,
Speaker 3: and I realized right away there was something special about
Speaker 3: this one. You know, this was an enthralling, dark fantasy
Speaker 3: world that I just hadn't seen anything like this on
Speaker 3: the screen before. You know, like you look back to
Speaker 3: this time period and like, what else, what else did
Speaker 3: you have in nineteen eighty five that really, I mean,
Speaker 3: that gave you live action fantasy at all, but much
Speaker 3: much more, to the point, gave you live action fantasy
Speaker 3: that was this dark in its texture, you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: nowadays you can easily point to Peter Jackson's Lord of
Speaker 3: the Rings films, which really get in there with all
Speaker 3: the mor door stuff that works in the goblins and
Speaker 3: deliver it to you know, in spades. But at the time,
Speaker 3: like this was kind of this is as deep as
Speaker 3: dark and dark as it got.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess you've got the different sort of sub
Speaker 1: genres of fantasy. So like by the mid eighties you
Speaker 1: had you had Conan type stuff which could be dark,
Speaker 1: but was more I don't know, it was more gritty
Speaker 1: and though it had magic in, it was more brutal
Speaker 1: and realistic overall, and it was more pitched at a
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is the right word, but
Speaker 1: a mature audience. You know, it was the original Cone
Speaker 1: and rated R. Surely not or was it?
Speaker 3: I believe it was an R.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh okay, I mean so just like very violent,
Speaker 1: kind of gritty, barbarian fantasy, you had that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Of course, you had the more animated approach often to
Speaker 1: high fantasy type stuff. But I think it's interesting that
Speaker 1: Legend is is dark fantasy that shows you a lot
Speaker 1: of scary, devilish kind of stuff, but at its core
Speaker 1: it is a fairy tale. It's not a grim, gritty,
Speaker 1: more kind of muscle and steel fantasy like the Conan movies.
Speaker 1: It's a fairy tale with a broad fairy tale kind
Speaker 1: of brushstroke to it, but it's also very dark.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think this is another thing that even
Speaker 3: early on I realized there was kind of a disconnect
Speaker 3: with because the visual style of Legend is insanely epic,
Speaker 3: the actual story that it tells is maybe it. I mean,
Speaker 3: it has high stakes, like you know, yea the world,
Speaker 3: it's about saving the world, but in many other respects
Speaker 3: it's less epic. The story is a little more simplified
Speaker 3: and more I think, just sort of fairy tale in form.
Speaker 3: So it's yeah, it's it feels it feels like the
Speaker 3: visuals are like far out delivering the actual story.
Speaker 1: Can I suggest I think a reason why it feels
Speaker 1: less epic. I think it's because it's a fairly tight
Speaker 1: character list, Like there are not we never see masses
Speaker 1: of people or armies or anything like that in this movie.
Speaker 1: It's actually quite intimate in terms of the characters. The
Speaker 1: only regular people we ever meet in the movie is like,
Speaker 1: is a single cottage full of peasants in the forest.
Speaker 1: You know that MIAs Sarah's character goes to visit at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the movie, And so there's no sense
Speaker 1: at all of kind of the broader world of peoples
Speaker 1: and armies clashing or anything like that. I mean, we
Speaker 1: are too believe that somewhere out there there is a
Speaker 1: castle where the king MIAs, Sarah's father lives and all that,
Speaker 1: but we never see them. So the characters almost kind
Speaker 1: of exist in this private, intimate kind of fantasy forest
Speaker 1: dream world. And so though we know that the fate
Speaker 1: of the entire world is at stake with what happens
Speaker 1: to the unicorns in the movie, we never see mighty
Speaker 1: forces coming together.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, I think that's a solid red. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: because just looking at the picture, they're less than like,
Speaker 3: less than twenty people in the whole world, but we
Speaker 3: know that they're out there. There's supposed to be a castle,
Speaker 3: there's supposed to be these more expansive civilizations, we assume.
Speaker 1: Now, Rob, maybe this is a good place to address
Speaker 1: the different cuts of the movie, because when you picked
Speaker 1: Legend for the show and you told me we're going
Speaker 1: to be watching the director's cut, which is not the
Speaker 1: cut that has a Tangerine Dream score, I was quite
Speaker 1: confused how you could make this selection. But this is
Speaker 1: preferred by most fans of the movie. They're going to
Speaker 1: say that the director's cut, which is a good bit
Speaker 1: longer and has a traditional orchestrated Jerry Goldsmith's score instead
Speaker 1: of the Tangerine Dream score, most people say this is
Speaker 1: massively preferable to the US theatrical version.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the vibe I've always gotten. And so I
Speaker 3: felt like, well, if we're going to talk about Legend,
Speaker 3: even though I'm all my nostalgia and my love is
Speaker 3: built up around this theatrical cut, it's going to be
Speaker 3: a little weird if we come in and then we're saying, well,
Speaker 3: this movie has problems, and then people are going to say, well,
Speaker 3: did you watch the director's cut, And we'll say no, no,
Speaker 3: we just watched the one that we're familiar with. So
Speaker 3: and you know, I want to thought, well, this is
Speaker 3: a way to experience a film that I do have
Speaker 3: nostalgia for and then I do admire in many ways,
Speaker 3: it's experiencing it in a different light. So yeah, it
Speaker 3: was like, let's do director's cut and then we can compare.
Speaker 1: To be clear, I still think the director's cut has problems.
Speaker 3: But yeah it does.
Speaker 1: I will say, on rewatching it, I was expecting, you know,
Speaker 1: I sort of had this idea in my memory that
Speaker 1: it was a very beautiful looking movie that had massive
Speaker 1: narrative deficiencies. I don't know which cut it was I
Speaker 1: saw in you know, the intervening years in between seeing
Speaker 1: Bits on TV and this rewatch. It may have been theatrical,
Speaker 1: may have been director's cut. I'm just not sure. But
Speaker 1: I thought the film was not as bad as I
Speaker 1: remembered in terms of putting together a cohesive narrative. I
Speaker 1: still think it's flawed, but it's better than I would
Speaker 1: have said. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll get into some particular examples of ways that
Speaker 3: I think that the director's cut improves upon the theatrical cut,
Speaker 3: and I do want to also go ahead and throw
Speaker 3: in here that I think there are maybe like four
Speaker 3: different cuts total that have been out there and the
Speaker 3: ecosystem of movie viewing. The director's cut, which came out
Speaker 3: years later, decades later. I think there's the US theatrical cut,
Speaker 3: there's the euro theatrical cut that I think is in
Speaker 3: large part reflected in the director's cut, and then there's
Speaker 3: apparently some sort of a TV cut out there that
Speaker 3: I think was US theatrical cut with some extra added stuff.
Speaker 3: Added in, you know, to fill out a certain run time,
Speaker 3: that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: However, one other thing I want to say about the
Speaker 1: different cuts is that I was not able. I didn't
Speaker 1: have time to watch the US theatrical cut in full,
Speaker 1: but I watched the full director's cut and then the
Speaker 1: first I don't know ten minutes of the US theatrical cut.
Speaker 1: And the difference is not just that there is more
Speaker 1: stuff in the director's cut that was taken out for
Speaker 1: the theatrical That is not the only difference. There is
Speaker 1: a very different style and approach. For example, in the
Speaker 1: opening scenes, the US theatrical cut just straight up shows
Speaker 1: you the villain's face, which is delayed for a long time.
Speaker 1: In the director's cut, there's a big build up. And
Speaker 1: so I perceived the US theatrical version to be significantly
Speaker 1: more clumsy and awkward in its edit from the very beginning,
Speaker 1: even without talking about major differences in what material is there?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Like it feels like the US theatrical cut
Speaker 3: was very much an attempt to make everything tighter and
Speaker 3: more exciting at the beginning, and like I guess, to
Speaker 3: keep people from falling asleep or leaving the theater or something.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: But in doing so, Yeah, they make some choices like this, like,
Speaker 3: let's go ahead and show them darkness in full, Let's
Speaker 3: go ahead and show them the tree, Let's go ahead
Speaker 3: and show them the hell kitchens. We're gonna go ahead
Speaker 3: and roll out all of some of our at least
Speaker 3: a glimpse of some of our big set pieces early on.
Speaker 3: And they have this scrolling in on the screen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it really feels like the abstract from a peer reviewed
Speaker 3: science paper, you know, where it just lays out all
Speaker 3: the basics of the hypothesis, tells you what the experiments
Speaker 3: were and the findings right up top. Whereas the director's
Speaker 3: cut does not do this. The director's cut lets you
Speaker 3: pick up on this or not pick up on it
Speaker 3: on your own. But the yeah, the the US theatrical
Speaker 3: cut basically force feeds it to you.
Speaker 1: Now, on one hand, you can kind of understand the
Speaker 1: impetus behind the theatrical cut, because you were saying they
Speaker 1: were trying to make it tighter and more exciting right
Speaker 1: at the beginning. I don't know if the director's cut
Speaker 1: needed to be more exciting right at the beginning, but
Speaker 1: I will say the first twenty or thirty minutes of
Speaker 1: the director's cut. It happens at a very dreamy, lilting pace,
Speaker 1: and that can feel particularly it can have a kind
Speaker 1: of sedative effect, especially when you know Tom Cruise and
Speaker 1: Mia Sarah are just kind of frolicking around in the
Speaker 1: forest and you know, looking at the flowers and stuff.
Speaker 1: I was feeling the call of sleep at those times.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Again, it's very hypnotic and dream like as well
Speaker 3: in these sequences, and be watching all unicorn run and
Speaker 3: slow motion through an unreal forest. Yeah, I mean, you're
Speaker 3: supposed to feel at peace at that point.
Speaker 1: I'm not knocking it too much. I'm just saying, like
Speaker 1: I can understand somebody watching this and saying the first
Speaker 1: third of it is slow, Like you've got to have
Speaker 1: some patience to go with it at the beginning there.
Speaker 1: But I agree that the way they tightened it in
Speaker 1: the US version is not an improvement. Instead, it just
Speaker 1: sort of like it kind of blows the air out
Speaker 1: of the whole thing.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, let's go ahead and hear a little
Speaker 3: little trailer audio, not the full trailer, but just a
Speaker 3: little of it to get a certain taste of it.
Speaker 4: There is a balance to the universe. The struggle to
Speaker 4: maintain that balance is the stuff of legends. For there
Speaker 4: can be no good without evil, no love without hate,
Speaker 4: life needs death, innocence, please last. There can be no
Speaker 4: heaven without hell. There's no light without.
Speaker 5: Meeting I am darkness.
Speaker 3: All right. If you want to go out and watch Legend, well,
Speaker 3: you can stream, And I'm mostly speaking of the US
Speaker 3: situation here. I'm not sure what availability is like in Europe, where,
Speaker 3: of course there was a theatrical cut, but at least
Speaker 3: here in the United States you can stream Legend in
Speaker 3: a number of places. You can buy it rent it digitally,
Speaker 3: but at least currently for the director's cut, you'll need
Speaker 3: to hunt that up on disc. Fortunately, there's a great
Speaker 3: Arrow Blu ray of the film that features both the
Speaker 3: US theatrical cut and the director's cut, plus loads of extras.
Speaker 3: This is the version that I rented for video.
Speaker 1: Dr Yeah, I watched the Arrow Blu ray and Robert,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you had the same thought to me.
Speaker 1: I was kind of surprised by how much grain it
Speaker 1: still felt like there was in the film, Like it
Speaker 1: seemed like something that would or could have been sharpened
Speaker 1: up a good bit, but it wasn't, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's for lack of effort or if that's
Speaker 1: an intentional choice about this release.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wouldn't sure about that either. I'm not tech
Speaker 3: savvy enough on their whole remastering scenario. But certainly we've
Speaker 3: seen some older films that have been remastered to like
Speaker 3: just a level of perfection that that that certainly influences
Speaker 3: your viewing of other films. You know, why why aren't
Speaker 3: other films as flawless looking as this one? So I
Speaker 3: don't know what exactly, you know, the choices or hurdles
Speaker 3: were with this one, but there was more grain than
Speaker 3: I expected, But still it did not get in the
Speaker 3: way of appreciating these visuals in the long run.
Speaker 1: No, I almost wonder if it's a oh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: kind of a film version of like t staining a
Speaker 1: document to make it look ancient, you know, that if
Speaker 1: maybe there was a concern that if it was sharpened
Speaker 1: up too much, it wouldn't have the kind of the dreamy,
Speaker 1: fairy tale effect that they were going for.
Speaker 3: I wonder if these you know, i'd have to go
Speaker 3: back and rewatch, but I wonder if these were some
Speaker 3: of the restored segments in the director's cut. I know,
Speaker 3: sometimes there's a sourcing issue there and you have to
Speaker 3: sort of make do with what you can get when
Speaker 3: you're restoring sequences and scenes that were not used in
Speaker 3: like the main cut.
Speaker 1: Of the film. Possibly.
Speaker 3: All right, let's get into the people involved in this one,
Speaker 3: starting at the top, of course, with Sir Ridley Scott
Speaker 3: born nineteen thirty seven, highly successful and influential English filmmaker who,
Speaker 3: at eighty six years old and turns eighty seven in
Speaker 3: just a few months, shows no signs of slowing down
Speaker 3: on his directing and producing. I mean, it's really quite uninspiring.
Speaker 3: He worked on projects as a TV production designer from
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty two through nineteen sixty five, and his first
Speaker 3: directorial credit was a nineteen sixty five episode of a
Speaker 3: police series in the UK called Z Cars.
Speaker 1: Sounds great. Yeah.
Speaker 3: His debut film was, of course, nineteen seventy sevens The Duelists,
Speaker 3: starring Keith Carrodine, Harvey Kaiitel and Albert Finney, a serious
Speaker 3: historical drama that is cited as a key inspiration on Highlander.
Speaker 1: I've wanted to see this for years, but I never have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this one kind of ends up falling through the
Speaker 3: cracks for me because it is it's a Ridley Scott
Speaker 3: period piece. And I mean I have seen some of
Speaker 3: his historical films. Of course, I've seen Gladiator, but I
Speaker 3: don't know, They're just not the ones that I'm drawn
Speaker 3: to as much. So he followed this up, of course,
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy nine with Alien and then in eighty
Speaker 3: two with Blade Runner. He tackled some smaller projects during
Speaker 3: that time, including the Apple Mac nineteen eighty four commercial,
Speaker 3: and so already a really strong, genre heavy early career,
Speaker 3: and then comes Legend, a fairy tale, a fantasy, and
Speaker 3: this of course ends up proving a commercial failure upon release,
Speaker 3: and from here we see Ridley Scott veer off into
Speaker 3: historical crime and drama pictures. He doesn't return to science
Speaker 3: fiction or fantasy for twenty seven years, returning to the
Speaker 3: Alien franchise with Prometheus in twenty twelve, and then he
Speaker 3: did twenty fifteen's The Martian, which it is quite good
Speaker 3: as well, based on the novel, and then he did
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen's Alien Covenant and two episodes of The Super Weird,
Speaker 3: very original and criminally canceled Max series Raised by Wolves,
Speaker 3: which he also produced. Now as a producer, he's also
Speaker 3: had a hand in many other great films and series,
Speaker 3: including including AMC's The Terror, which I really enjoyed. The
Speaker 3: recent alien Romulus is of course a Scott free production,
Speaker 3: and Academy Award nominations for Ridley Scott include nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: two's Film and Louise, two thousand and ones Gladiator, two
Speaker 3: thousand and two's Blackhawk Down, and twenty sixteen's The Martian.
Speaker 3: I should note that Ridley Scott, as far as I
Speaker 3: can tell, has never directed what you'd truly call a
Speaker 3: kids movie or maybe even a family movie. This really
Speaker 3: Legend from eighty five is really the best case you
Speaker 3: can make for either category. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: it is just way too dark, both visually and thematically
Speaker 3: for children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is who this is one of those who
Speaker 1: is this for movies? I mean, I don't have a
Speaker 1: problem enjoying it, because I'm the kind of adult that
Speaker 1: can enjoy a fairy tale, but it is clearly it's
Speaker 1: a fairy tale which is going to make a lot
Speaker 1: of adults think, oh, this movie is not meant for me.
Speaker 1: And while the movie. It doesn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: like explicit like sex or violence in it. It really
Speaker 1: doesn't seem appropriate for kids because of the way that
Speaker 1: it is. I don't know, it has kind of erotic undercurrents,
Speaker 1: and it has a lot of very scary suggestions of violence,
Speaker 1: even if you're not seeing explicit like blood and guts
Speaker 1: on screen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also a subtext that I'll get back to
Speaker 3: that seems to deal with with sin and shame. Yeah,
Speaker 3: in ways that I just don't feel as fun for
Speaker 3: you know, ten and twelve year.
Speaker 1: Olds, right, So it's like it's a fairy tale but
Speaker 1: not probably not appropriate for kids. So you're limiting your
Speaker 1: audience here. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: The screenwriter on this one was William Hertzberg, who lived
Speaker 3: nineteen forty one through twenty seventeen American writer, best known
Speaker 3: for his work on this film, as well as as
Speaker 3: his nineteen seventy eight horror novel Falling Angel that was
Speaker 3: adapted into the nineteen eighty seven Alan Parker movie Angel Heart.
Speaker 3: I did read this book ages ago, and I remember
Speaker 3: liking it. I remember liking it more than I liked
Speaker 3: the actual film, all right. Now, getting into the cast, Yes,
Speaker 3: this is a Tom Cruise movie. But it's also not
Speaker 3: a Tom Cruise movie in the sense that it from
Speaker 3: the modern perspective of what you expect from a Tom
Speaker 3: Cruise movie. It's not that it's something different, it's something
Speaker 3: a little it's like proto Tom Cruise movie.
Speaker 1: This is from before Tom Cruise was Tom Cruise. I
Speaker 1: mean he was a star at this time, I think
Speaker 1: because he'd already been in risky business.
Speaker 3: Right, that's correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, so he was like a young actor who'd
Speaker 1: been in at least one or two big movies, So
Speaker 1: like he wasn't a nobody at the time, but he
Speaker 1: also was not like the Hollywood juggernaut that we know today.
Speaker 1: He was like a young, up and coming, good looking actor.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean today, Tom Cruise is someone that is
Speaker 3: known around the world. He's like one of, if not
Speaker 3: the most bankable stars in Hollywood. You know, you put
Speaker 3: him in Blockbusters, that's where he lives as his ecosystem,
Speaker 3: and he's one of these people too that it's like
Speaker 3: he's more industry than man. You almost don't think of
Speaker 3: Tom Cruise as an individual, but he's like an industry
Speaker 3: built around somebody that is almost as much myths as human,
Speaker 3: if not more myth than human, at least from our perspective.
Speaker 3: Outside of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of built around, I mean now, I think
Speaker 1: some of his movies they build around some stunts he
Speaker 1: wants to do. He's like, so he'll be a producer
Speaker 1: on the movie. He's like, here, I'm going to cling
Speaker 1: to the side of an airplane or something. Write a
Speaker 1: script around that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Legend was only his seventh film role. His debut
Speaker 3: part was in nineteen eighty one's Endless Love, and he
Speaker 3: also had a supporting role in Taps the same year,
Speaker 3: but two he had a starring role in the team
Speaker 3: comedy Losing It, and nineteen eighty three was a real
Speaker 3: breakout year with parts in Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders
Speaker 3: and the starring role in both Risky Business and the
Speaker 3: football movie All the Right Moves. So the time was
Speaker 3: right for Tom Cruise to do a genre film, but
Speaker 3: not a B movie, you know, not a not a
Speaker 3: B sci fi or horror movie on your Way Up,
Speaker 3: but I know, a lavish, twenty five million dollar epic
Speaker 3: that of course wouldn't quite break even at the box office.
Speaker 3: So the next year he would go on to star
Speaker 3: in the mega hit Top Gun, and I guess his
Speaker 3: legacy was assured at that point. But then again, it's
Speaker 3: kind of with Tom Cruise. It's easy to say that
Speaker 3: because he has proven to have this real staying power
Speaker 3: in Hollywood and has remained this juggernaut despite you know,
Speaker 3: various things popping up that would you know, you might
Speaker 3: expect to derail some careers, or certainly the occasional film
Speaker 3: that doesn't deliver to the degree that producers would like.
Speaker 3: For the most part, he has remained stable up there
Speaker 3: and is still big business.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So from what I understand, apart from weird movie connoisseurs,
Speaker 1: if you're just looking at it from the kind of
Speaker 1: Hollywood business point of view, I think Legend would have
Speaker 1: long been mainly regarded as a as an early misstep
Speaker 1: in the career of Tom Cruise. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: like a this was some weird, failed little movie that
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise did early on that critics hated and audiences
Speaker 1: hated too, and just didn't go anywhere. But then he
Speaker 1: corrected course and was in Top Gun.
Speaker 3: Though it is kind of interesting that I don't think
Speaker 3: he would come back to any genre pictures like this
Speaker 3: for a while, though he would in time come back
Speaker 3: and do you know at least some weirder and sci
Speaker 3: fi type material, but still very much like blockbuster angled
Speaker 3: material at the same time. But that was the case
Speaker 3: with this film as well. This film was meant to
Speaker 3: be a big success at the box office. That's why
Speaker 3: they spent twenty five million dollars on it.
Speaker 1: Wait, is this the first time we've talked about either
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise or Ridley Scott on Weird House?
Speaker 3: The first time they've come up that we've looked at
Speaker 3: something they were either involved with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 3: they're both you know, huge mainstream successes. Though when Ridley
Speaker 3: wants to go weird, he definitely I think goes weirder
Speaker 3: than Tom Cruise goes weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, in terms of movie plots.
Speaker 3: Yes, And part of this too is like, what is
Speaker 3: Tom Cruise's role in a picture? It is the leading man,
Speaker 3: and it has always been the leading man with you know,
Speaker 3: a few small caveats along the way, you know, you're
Speaker 3: only going to go so weird in that kind of
Speaker 3: role that Tom Cruise plays. Well, maybe there's an alternate
Speaker 3: dimension where he ends up playing a bunch of villains
Speaker 3: and it's really fascinating as well. I don't know, but anyway,
Speaker 3: Cruise was twenty three at the time, and we should
Speaker 3: acknowledge that he was, I think, by many estimates, dangerously hot.
Speaker 3: I was looking around for some like outside the podcast
Speaker 3: commentary on this, and I found some words from the
Speaker 3: blogger Jin at ep bot dot com, who has a
Speaker 3: post titled Legend, the thirty six year old movie that's
Speaker 3: a love letter to Tom Cruise's thighs and other thoughts.
Speaker 1: I could not help but notice that the camera is
Speaker 1: all up in Tom Cruise's upper thighs. Yes, it's uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So they gave him a costume like once he gets
Speaker 1: his armor on, it's basically like a short tunic. He
Speaker 1: wears no pants most of the movie, and just yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's all up in his haunches.
Speaker 3: Here's here's a quote from that post by Jen at
Speaker 3: epbot dot com. Tom Cruise was twenty two during filming,
Speaker 3: and fresh off the set of Risky Business, the movie
Speaker 3: that gave us the world famous underwear dance. Not to
Speaker 3: be outdone, the producers of Legend decided Tom would not
Speaker 3: only be pantiless the entire movie, he would also be
Speaker 3: prohibited from walking upright for most of it.
Speaker 1: I noticed the same thing. He is like squatting or
Speaker 1: crawling or on the ground in nearly every shot of
Speaker 1: the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I guess part of this is that he
Speaker 3: is kind of like a feral creature, you know, especially
Speaker 3: early on, like he is a he's a boy of
Speaker 3: the woods. He's kind of a Peter Pan. Yeah, he's
Speaker 3: a little loopine, So I guess that's part of the
Speaker 3: whole attraction here. I also want to note that this
Speaker 3: is Cruz prebracest, So he doesn't have that perfect Hollywood
Speaker 3: smile yet, but he has like he has a smile
Speaker 3: befitting of a fair young man in a fantasy world,
Speaker 3: which I think is perfect. He also has like a
Speaker 3: bit of a unibrow going on, like not a full unibrow,
Speaker 3: but like his brows are a little more connected, you know,
Speaker 3: he's which again is also perfect for a fairal young
Speaker 3: man running around the woods falling in love with princesses.
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 3: So, speaking of that princess, the princess is of course
Speaker 3: played by Mia Sara born in nineteen sixty seven. This
Speaker 3: is Lily, and we talked about her previous on Weird
Speaker 3: House Cinema because she was in nineteen ninety four's Time Cop.
Speaker 5: Ah.
Speaker 1: Yes, I was thinking, this is not our first Mia
Speaker 1: Sarah film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was. This was her first film role, following
Speaker 3: up just of one shot I think on TV's All
Speaker 3: in the Family, Legend and Labyrinth were shooting next to
Speaker 3: each other at the same time here, and the casts
Speaker 3: and crew apparently frequently mingled, And this is where she
Speaker 3: would meet her future husband Brian Henson.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, but was she in Time Cop? Yes, she was.
Speaker 1: So you can go back and check out our episode
Speaker 1: on Time Cop if you want. Now. Is this also
Speaker 1: our first Tim Curry movie on Weird House?
Speaker 3: This is the first time we have gotten to talk
Speaker 3: about Tim Curry. There was a time when you were
Speaker 3: out in Parental Leave and Annie Reese came on the
Speaker 3: show and we talked about Congo, Oh my.
Speaker 1: Lord, where he plays her Kimerhamolka, the formerly of Romania,
Speaker 1: traveling the world and doing good.
Speaker 3: Yes, another great scene chewing performance, but not as the
Speaker 3: primary antagonist, second or third level antagon.
Speaker 1: Tim Curry in Congo is one of the most hilarious
Speaker 1: movie acting jobs I can think of ever. He is.
Speaker 1: I love Tim Curry. He is just a delight every time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he plays darkness in this Born nineteen forty six. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just a true legend stage, screen and TV. He was,
Speaker 3: of course doctor Frankenfurter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Speaker 3: back in nineteen seventy five, and was in the original
Speaker 3: stage version as well. He was Wadsworth in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: five's Clue. Other memorable films and Clue, Let's see There's Annie.
Speaker 3: There's the nineteen ninety adaptation of it, in which he
Speaker 3: played penny Wise, the dancing clown. And he's also done
Speaker 3: a great deal of voice work over the years, I know,
Speaker 3: outside of weird House cinema. You and I have also
Speaker 3: discussed his triple role in the Tales from the Crypt
Speaker 3: episode Death of Some Salesman.
Speaker 1: Oh, where he terrorizes Ed Begley Junior. Right, Ed Begley Junior.
Speaker 1: Is he's like some kind of corrupt salesman or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, obviously just a terrific all round performer.
Speaker 3: Been in a share of more than his share of
Speaker 3: bad movies as well, but some of the other like
Speaker 3: credits worth noting nineteen ninety is The Hunt for the
Speaker 3: Red October nineteen ninety two's fern Gully, ninety three's The
Speaker 3: Three Musketeers, ninety four is The Shadow, and nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: six is Muppet Treasure Island. But like, even if it's
Speaker 3: a not a great film, you know that Tim Curry
Speaker 3: is going to be amusing in it no matter what.
Speaker 1: Now, this movie makes an interesting decision, which is a legend.
Speaker 1: Takes a solid gold character actor with charm for Miles
Speaker 1: and hides him behind forty seven pounds of makeup. He
Speaker 1: is under so much makeup in this movie it is
Speaker 1: hard to believe. And the makeup I think looks amazing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's an interesting way to like there's a
Speaker 1: trade off here, isn't there. It's almost like maybe they
Speaker 1: did have to cast somebody with Tim Curry's you know,
Speaker 1: kind of not just screen presence, but stage presence almost
Speaker 1: like it's almost like it requires a type of stage
Speaker 1: act to get through the makeup to the camera. Does
Speaker 1: that make sense?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely. I think it is a huge testament to
Speaker 3: both Curry and the effects crew that this works as
Speaker 3: tremendously well as it does. That it doesn't feel like
Speaker 3: you've buried Tim Curry and a bunch of prosthetics that
Speaker 3: you know that it doesn't feel like you have something
Speaker 3: that only works in close up shots or something like.
Speaker 3: They managed to make this feel like a cohesive living
Speaker 3: being as opposed to know what it could have been.
Speaker 1: Of course, Tim Curry plays the main villain in the movie.
Speaker 1: I don't know if we already said this, but he
Speaker 1: is like the devil essentially, he's the lord of darkness
Speaker 1: and he has I don't know how long do you
Speaker 1: think his horns are. I mean, he's got so much
Speaker 1: horn on his head it looks like his neck muscles
Speaker 1: should be sore.
Speaker 3: It is. I mean, if you haven't seen it, do
Speaker 3: look up at least images of this character, because it
Speaker 3: is essentially an outrageous red devil men a tar that
Speaker 3: it feels like it's about eight feet tall, not counting
Speaker 3: the horns. So it is a bold design choice and
Speaker 3: they manage to make it work.
Speaker 1: You know who else in this movie I feel like
Speaker 1: really acts through heavy makeup and just shines right through
Speaker 1: a character design is Alice Playton as blicks.
Speaker 3: Yes, Oh my god, she's so good in this. She
Speaker 3: lived nineteen forty seven through twenty eleven. Stage actor with
Speaker 3: a lot of Broadway and off Broadway credit its TV
Speaker 3: and film credits going back to sixty three, but she's
Speaker 3: often best remembered for her voice because she has this
Speaker 3: this kind of childlike voice that she can utilize, and
Speaker 3: she can perfectly lean into really haunting an uncanny territory
Speaker 3: with it. She voiced a demon in nineteen eighty two
Speaker 3: Amityville to the Possession. She has also voice credits and
Speaker 3: things like nineteen eighty one's Heavy Metal nineteen eighty six
Speaker 3: is My Little Pony the movie. She was also in
Speaker 3: twelve episodes of The Croft Super Show in seventy six.
Speaker 3: But yeah, in this she plays the scheming goblin blicks
Speaker 3: like just a perfect goblin that also has an outrageous
Speaker 3: design in play, you know, with the long nose and
Speaker 3: like elongated head, just so nasty, so vicious looking, and
Speaker 3: she just shines here.
Speaker 1: Appears to be made of rot in a way, almost
Speaker 1: kind of an undead looking sort of goblin, and also
Speaker 1: speaks in rhyming couplets, which I love. I would say
Speaker 1: that you know it's weird because we were saying. The
Speaker 1: way in which this movie falls short, despite all of
Speaker 1: its great elements, is in its cohesiveness as a story.
Speaker 1: So you might think from that the script is weak,
Speaker 1: but actually I think the moment to moment, line to line,
Speaker 1: the script is pretty strong. Like the dialogue is good.
Speaker 1: And so this character speaks in rhyming couplets that are
Speaker 1: mostly I think, great rhyming couplets. They're very pleasing when so,
Speaker 1: like when Blicks is looking down on Princess Lily, he says,
Speaker 1: may be innocent, maybe sweet, ain't half as nice as
Speaker 1: rotting meat, And Clayton really sells the couplets, like I
Speaker 1: just believe that this is how Blix talks.
Speaker 3: Yes, and indeed like just such a goblin, like just
Speaker 3: delights in grotesqueness and depravity but not but not within
Speaker 3: like without any underlying argument for why that is the
Speaker 3: superior choice. It's just that is just the texture of
Speaker 3: Blix's life and Blix's values, and Blix is very vocal
Speaker 3: about his his preferences here.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, interestingly enough, I mentioned that that Alice Clayton's voice
Speaker 3: like it has this she can lean into these uncanny aspects,
Speaker 3: but she can also get kind of like a childlike
Speaker 3: voice going on as well. She actually dubs the character
Speaker 3: Honeythorn Gump.
Speaker 1: Oh picture, Okay, that makes sense. Honey Thorn Gump.
Speaker 3: Is our elf, our youthful elf guy who's helping out,
Speaker 3: played physically here by David Bennett born nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 3: a German actor at the time eighteen or nineteen years old,
Speaker 3: but he looks younger, and yeah, we don't hear his
Speaker 3: actual voice. I've read that producers thought he sounded too German,
Speaker 3: which I'm kind of like, why did you cast a
Speaker 3: German actor? Didn't want him to sound potentially German? But anyway,
Speaker 3: Bennett is still really good in this is still a
Speaker 3: very good physical performance even though we don't hear his voice,
Speaker 3: and he's been working in German productions for ages, still
Speaker 3: active now, started out at an early age. His other
Speaker 3: like big international credit is probably nineteen seventy nine's The
Speaker 3: ten Drum.
Speaker 1: I think the job they did dubbing him. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize while I was watching that that was also Alice
Speaker 1: Playton doing his voice. But I think the ubbing is fantastic.
Speaker 1: It totally matches the pace of the character speaking, and
Speaker 1: instead of feeling uncanny and unpleasant, as some post production
Speaker 1: dubbing without live sound can be, instead it fits the
Speaker 1: character the way that his voice doesn't feel like it's
Speaker 1: coming like it's what should be coming out of his
Speaker 1: mouth works and makes him feel more kind of magical.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree, I would agree. So, yeah, it
Speaker 3: didn't throw me off. It's one of those things I
Speaker 3: only picked up on much later reading about the production. Yeah,
Speaker 3: all right, now, I want to probably try and speed
Speaker 3: things along here a little bit, so I'm going to
Speaker 3: spend less time than I should, perhaps on some of
Speaker 3: the additional cast members. We have a number of various
Speaker 3: Elvin folk that are involved in the plot. For instance,
Speaker 3: they're Screwball, played by the tremendous Billy Bardi, who lived
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty four to through the year two thousand, three
Speaker 3: foot nine character actor who often played wise, cracking, little
Speaker 3: person roles, but he instantly stands out in any ensemble
Speaker 3: cast because he is at the heart just a tremendous
Speaker 3: character actor. His uncredited work goes back to I believe
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty and apparently includes a very small part as
Speaker 3: the baby in nineteen thirty five's Bride of Frankenstein. So
Speaker 3: one of those early scenes with the little miniature people
Speaker 3: in the vials.
Speaker 1: Wow, I didn't realize that so.
Speaker 3: Many credits to Billy Bardy, but they include the likes
Speaker 3: of Roger Corman's The Undead in nineteen fifty seven, nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty seven's Masters of the Universe film. He has a
Speaker 3: memorable role in that. He's in eighty eight Willow, but
Speaker 3: he also did some voice acting as well, like nineteen
Speaker 3: nine he's the rescuers down under. All right, some of
Speaker 3: the other folks here. We have Brown Tom, who I
Speaker 3: guess is kind of a leprechaun. He's part of the
Speaker 3: good guy Elvin Krk here. He's played by Cork Hubert,
Speaker 3: who lived nineteen fifty two through two thousand and three.
Speaker 3: A four foot eleven actor. His other credits include eighty
Speaker 3: one's cave Man under the Rainbow from eighty one and
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine sent Bat of the Seven Seas.
Speaker 1: He has a real dad joke moment in the movie
Speaker 1: that I think works pretty well. Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's also there's a scene where he thinks he's been shot.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. That's great. Okay, all right,
Speaker 3: we have Pox. Pox is a pig demon and somewhere
Speaker 3: underneath all of the prosthetics for this role there is
Speaker 3: a man by the name of Peter O'Farrell. I couldn't
Speaker 3: find any additional information about this actor in terms of
Speaker 3: his you know, when he was born and so forth.
Speaker 3: But his other credits include nineteen eighty has Hawk the Slayer,
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty five Santa Claus, and he has a role
Speaker 3: in two thousand and two is Harry Potter and the
Speaker 3: Chamber of Secrets. All right, we also have Blunder. We'll
Speaker 3: get into Blunder in a bit. He's kind of he's
Speaker 3: one faction then another. But he's played by Kieran Shaw
Speaker 3: born nineteen fifty six, a four foot one and a
Speaker 3: half tall actor who is Elijah Woods scale double in
Speaker 3: all three Lord of the Rings films. His other credits
Speaker 3: include two thousand and five's The Chronicles of Narnia, Star
Speaker 3: Wars Productions, The Dark Crystal and Raiders of the Last Art.
Speaker 3: We also have a fairy Una played by Annabelle Lanyon
Speaker 3: born nineteen sixty British actress who has worked a lot
Speaker 3: in TV. She's temperamental tinker Bell.
Speaker 1: She doesn't want you don't get to know about what
Speaker 1: her powers are. That's that's for her to decide.
Speaker 3: Yes, Oh, and then we've talked about this. This is
Speaker 3: a character that it comes up every now and then
Speaker 3: on the show pretty much anytime we're talking about hags,
Speaker 3: because oh we have such a hag in legend. The
Speaker 3: character is Meg Mucklebones and the actor underneath there, and
Speaker 3: also I think doing a great job shining through and
Speaker 3: making this a living being is Robert Picardo really? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 3: we talked about him previously in our episode on Joe
Speaker 3: Dante's Grimlins too, because he's like the he's like one
Speaker 3: of the executives there that ends up marrying the lady Grimlin.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh, yes, that's right, Yes, what a what a
Speaker 1: beautiful marriage? Yes? But he what is he? Is he
Speaker 1: like a coach on The Wonder Years, Jim Teacher or something?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, some sort of role like that. I wonder
Speaker 3: he's been a while since seeing that he was on
Speaker 3: China Beach, But most I think people would know him
Speaker 3: from like Star Trek Voyager. He's like the hologram guy
Speaker 3: on there. But his other film credits include eighty one's
Speaker 3: The Howling, eighty seven's Inner Space. Oh, he's Johnny cab
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety's Total Recall, And he also has a
Speaker 3: role in the twenty sixteen Coen Brothers film Hail Caesar.
Speaker 1: The Door Opened. You got in.
Speaker 3: Richard O'Brien what was apparently considered for this role, and
Speaker 3: that's what led them to realizing that Curry would be
Speaker 3: perfect for darkness.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: All right, some behind the scenes people worth noting here.
Speaker 3: Production design Hashton Gordon, who lived nineteen thirty through twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: worked on such films as nineteen sixty six Is a
Speaker 3: Blow Up, nineteen seventy one's Get Carter in two thousands,
Speaker 3: Shadow of the Vampire. The director of photography was Alex Thompson,
Speaker 3: who lived nineteen twenty nine through two thousand and seven.
Speaker 3: Regular camera operator for Nicholas Rogue in the nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: before becoming a director of photography in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3: Nominated for an oscar for his work on the nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty two John Borman epic ex Caliber, which I think
Speaker 3: that shows there's definitely some great scenes in this with
Speaker 3: the lighting and shiny armor that made me think about Excalibur.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You've mentioned Excalibur before as a movie that is gleaming, yes,
Speaker 1: and yeah, we have some gleaming armor in this one
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: Thompson's other cinematography credits include Doctor Fibes Rises Again, which
Speaker 3: we've talked about on the show Deathline from the same
Speaker 3: year in nineteen seventy two, Michael Man's The Keep from
Speaker 3: eighty three, Electric Dreams in eighty four, Labyrinth in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty six, which is like right next door, So I
Speaker 3: guess he's just walking back and forth Leviathan in eighty nine,
Speaker 3: Alien three and ninety two, Demolition Man in ninety three,
Speaker 3: and Hamlet in nineteen ninety six. Who you called this
Speaker 3: one out, Joe? What credit stood up to you?
Speaker 1: It's just because I saw it in the credits as
Speaker 1: it was rolling by. So we have somebody named Vic
Speaker 1: Armstrong as he was given two titles. I don't remember
Speaker 1: what the first one was, but the second one was
Speaker 1: Unicorn Master.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, it's not often you have a Unicorn Master
Speaker 3: on set, but yeah, that's Vick Armstrong. He was also
Speaker 3: the stunt coordinator born nineteen forty six, Very Prolific. Guinness
Speaker 3: Book of World Records has listed him as the most
Speaker 3: prolific like stunt coordinator, but his earliest role is apparently
Speaker 3: an uncredited Ninja extra part in nineteen sixty seven's You
Speaker 3: Only Live Twice.
Speaker 1: Oh, recently came up in our Ninja episodes.
Speaker 3: Yep, he's still working well. The costumes in this are
Speaker 3: pretty great. Costume designer and this was Charles Node. He
Speaker 3: lived nineteen forty two through twenty twenty three, English costume
Speaker 3: designer whose work includes nineteen seventy nine's Life of Brian,
Speaker 3: the Munty Python film, Blade Runner fourteen ninety two, The
Speaker 3: Conquest of Paradise, another Ridley Scott film. Oh, and then
Speaker 3: Braveheart from ninety five.
Speaker 1: Costumes are great, you could mention a number of them.
Speaker 1: Mia Sarah's goth gown is just the triangular color hood thing.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is, but it's great.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, and then everything that Jack is wearing, from
Speaker 3: his the rags that he's wearing initially like the feral rags,
Speaker 3: to the like gleaming Elven armor that he dons for
Speaker 3: the main adventure portion of the picture. Yeah, but then
Speaker 3: again we have to come back to the special effects
Speaker 3: makeup and the special effects makeup lead on this was
Speaker 3: Rob Botein, who've talked about on the show before. The
Speaker 3: Rob Botin crew as well various people working with and
Speaker 3: for him on this. He was born nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 3: special makeup practical effects wizard who worked on such films
Speaker 3: as Squirm in seventy six, Star Wars in seventy seven,
Speaker 3: The Howling The Thing from eighty two, the John Carpenter
Speaker 3: version Robocot from eighty seven. I think we talked about
Speaker 3: him in that one as well. Total Recall from nineteen ninety.
Speaker 3: Just capable of such phenomenally nasty, fleshy work. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's hard to imagine this picture with anyone else. It
Speaker 3: would be a different picture if anyone else had done
Speaker 3: the makeup effects.
Speaker 1: Now, wait, so Robert Piccardo played the Johnny Cab. Did
Speaker 1: Rob Bottin make the Johnny Cab in Total Recall?
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a good question. I don't know for certain
Speaker 3: on that, because I mean, we know for certain some
Speaker 3: of the things that Rob Botein was doing on Total Recall,
Speaker 3: you know, but I'm not sure about Johnny Cab. But
Speaker 3: I guess it very likely.
Speaker 1: How to split my time between a quatto and a
Speaker 1: Johnny Cab?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he was definitely on quata duty, all right. Now,
Speaker 3: coming to the music, this film Fade famously features those
Speaker 3: two separate scores. There's the original Jerry Goldsmith's score, and
Speaker 3: this is the one that is used in the original
Speaker 3: euro theatrical release of the picture. But then for the
Speaker 3: US theatrical release, they brought in Tangerine Dream to do
Speaker 3: a new score for the film. Now, I, of course,
Speaker 3: is what we've been saying. Grew up on the Tangerine
Speaker 3: Dream score, and I think it's absolutely excellent. I listened
Speaker 3: to it a couple of times through while working on
Speaker 3: notes for this episode. It really connected with me when
Speaker 3: I was younger, and there are a few things that
Speaker 3: I love more today as an adult than a really
Speaker 3: good Tangerine Dream motion picture score, So this one, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, They instantly elevate anything they touch, so it
Speaker 3: was hard for me to set that aside and watch
Speaker 3: a full cut of the picture, an even longer cut
Speaker 3: of the picture that has this score by Jerry Goldsmith.
Speaker 3: Jerry Goldsmith lived nineteen twenty nine through two thousand and four.
Speaker 3: Multiple Academy Award winner, responsible for the scores of seventy
Speaker 3: sevens to Omen Alien, nineteen eighties Star Trek, the Motion Picture,
Speaker 3: and many more. Obviously, Jerry Goldsmith is no slouch. This
Speaker 3: is his score for Legend is terrific. There are times
Speaker 3: where it is maybe more is certainly more mainstream, more
Speaker 3: swashbucklery in its scope, maybe by some estimates, a little
Speaker 3: hammy in an intentional way, but it's also just really
Speaker 3: great in moments as well, like the whole section we'll
Speaker 3: get into with the Hell Kitchen. Jerry Goldsmith's score here
Speaker 3: is tremendous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very traditional score you would expect with
Speaker 1: the fantasy movie and it delivers on that front. But yeah,
Speaker 1: as I said earlier, Rob, I know your love for
Speaker 1: Tangerine Dream, for electronic music generally, but especially Tangerine Dream,
Speaker 1: goes so deep. That is why I was shocked that
Speaker 1: you would have us watch the director's cut. But what's
Speaker 1: the main difference in the sonic texture here? What does
Speaker 1: the Tangerine Dream score sound like in the US cut?
Speaker 3: Oh? I mean the Tangerine Dream cut is, of course
Speaker 3: it's electronic, it's very synth heavy, but it also has
Speaker 3: this kind of ethereal otherworldly vibe to it, you know,
Speaker 3: and that I think is typified by that opening bit
Speaker 3: of music that plays in the US theatrical cut, where
Speaker 3: it's like a strange Elven synth flute playing to you,
Speaker 3: you know, across the dimensional barrier. Tangerine Dream is, of
Speaker 3: course a German electronic act founded by the late Edgar Frosie,
Speaker 3: who lived nineteen forty four through twenty fifteen. There have
Speaker 3: been numerous lineups over time, but he was the only
Speaker 3: consistent member of the group at the time of this score.
Speaker 3: I believe Christopher Frank and Johannes Schmoling were also in
Speaker 3: the group. The band Tangerine Dream is still around. They
Speaker 3: still record and tour, but it is a younger lineup,
Speaker 3: so none of the original members. And I could be
Speaker 3: wrong in this, but I don't think any of the
Speaker 3: current members were alive when the band was initially formed.
Speaker 3: But you know, I haven't seen them. I assume they're
Speaker 3: still great, but it is not the original members all right. Finally,
Speaker 3: of note, we also have two different vocal tracks on
Speaker 3: the US release, We have Loved by the Sun, a
Speaker 3: Tangerine Dream track with vocals by John Am, former lead
Speaker 3: singer of the band. Yes, this one plays towards the
Speaker 3: end of the very end of the picture. I don't
Speaker 3: hate it, but it's far outclassed I think by the
Speaker 3: end credits song, which is Brian Fairies. Is your love
Speaker 3: strong Enough?
Speaker 1: I was trying to describe this one, and it's like,
Speaker 1: it's such a mood. It is soft, smooth, neon waves
Speaker 1: of emotion.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a great vibe. You got
Speaker 3: you got Fairy in his vocals, of course is the
Speaker 3: was the front man of Roxy Music. Ridley Scott co
Speaker 3: directed one of their music videos in eighty two and
Speaker 3: then on guitars. For this track we have David Gilmour
Speaker 3: of Pink Floyd. So great track, I think, a great
Speaker 3: way to end the picture. I think is one that
Speaker 3: I overlooked this when I was a kid. I was
Speaker 3: like I had some sort of cheesy pop song. But
Speaker 3: now now I'm like, this song is amazing and it
Speaker 3: should be it should be heard.
Speaker 1: You ready to go to the plot, Let's do it.
Speaker 1: So note as we get into the plot that I'm
Speaker 1: going to be talking about this from the point of
Speaker 1: view of having watched the director's cut most recently so
Speaker 1: in this version, the plot begins with a character we
Speaker 1: do not see or only see from behind, in a
Speaker 1: high backed chair like doctor Claw. This is the Lord
Speaker 1: of Darkness, and he is in a shadowy hall within
Speaker 1: a stonework palace illuminated by fire, with fog flowing across
Speaker 1: the floor, and we hear his voice. It's deep and complex.
Speaker 1: It's almost like it was kind of made of multiple voices,
Speaker 1: or maybe it contains its own echo, and Darkness says,
Speaker 1: I am the Lord of Darkness. I require the solace
Speaker 1: of the shadows and the dark of the night. Sunshine
Speaker 1: is my destroyer. All this shall change tonight, the sun
Speaker 1: sets forever, there shall never be another dawn. So we
Speaker 1: learn that the Lord of Darkness has a place he
Speaker 1: wants to forever, destroy the sunshine and rule over a
Speaker 1: frozen kingdom of eternal midnight. And he calls forth his
Speaker 1: most loyal, infernal servant, a foul, fetid goblin named Blicks,
Speaker 1: and Darkness says that he senses the presence of an
Speaker 1: enemy in the forest outside, an enemy that mercifully he
Speaker 1: had almost forgotten the existence of. But now it's sort
Speaker 1: of resurging in his mind. It's out there. It's a
Speaker 1: power that threatens him. What power could that be? Well,
Speaker 1: Darkness says, looking upon these frail creatures, one would not
Speaker 1: think they could contain such power. One could rule the
Speaker 1: universe with it. And then he tells Blicks, you must
Speaker 1: find them for me and destroy them. Blicks asks what
Speaker 1: these creatures look like? And Darkness gets very angry, says
Speaker 1: you fool, and he stabs a piece of silverware into
Speaker 1: Blicks's head, or it might be a dagger or something.
Speaker 1: So the answer is they look like this. They've got
Speaker 1: a single spike growing out of their heads, like an
Speaker 1: antenna reaching up to heaven. Now, Blix is like, okay,
Speaker 1: single horn on the head, intenna reaching to heaven. Got it.
Speaker 1: I will destroy them. And but wait a minute, how
Speaker 1: am I going to find these creatures? And here Darkness says,
Speaker 1: you know, there's only one lure for such disgusting goodness,
Speaker 1: one bait that never fails. Blick says, what's the bait?
Speaker 1: And Darkness says, in no sense, in no sense, I
Speaker 1: can't quite capture Tim Curry's delivery there, but it is
Speaker 1: the best.
Speaker 3: This is This is a great scene. Pretty much any
Speaker 3: interaction between Blicks and Darkness is golden, and I wish
Speaker 3: we had more of it, because yeah, Darkness is of
Speaker 3: course just absolute, over the top dramatic evil, and Blicks
Speaker 3: is of course also extremely evil, but in a more
Speaker 3: sniveling way. But also you know, like he like, clearly
Speaker 3: Blicks can and will betray darkness at any moment, but
Speaker 3: he also knows he could be destroyed at any moment
Speaker 3: by darkness, so he's yeah, I love this line where
Speaker 3: he's like, what be the bab Please you teach you
Speaker 3: teach me, you know, and oh it's so good.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Blix is your classic subordinate villain, who is who
Speaker 1: is haughty and abusive when he is out on his
Speaker 1: own with his own subordinates, but then very servile when
Speaker 1: in the presence of his of his infernal lord.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's tremendous, great vocal performance, great physical performance,
Speaker 3: shining through the makeup.
Speaker 1: It's a bummer that Blicks and the other goblins just
Speaker 1: disappear at some point in the movie, like somewhere in
Speaker 1: the second act. They never show up again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I read that at some point it
Speaker 3: was they'd written it so that they would come back
Speaker 3: in for the final showdown, you know, which would make sense, right,
Speaker 3: because there's especially Blicks is such a great character, This
Speaker 3: is such a great secondary villain. It's weird that he
Speaker 3: just like retires or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Blick's goes out hunting the in no sense
Speaker 1: with a couple of other goblins. One of them is
Speaker 1: a bipedal hog named Pox, and the other is a
Speaker 1: goblin whose face we do not see. This goblin is
Speaker 1: named Blunder and he wears a cage visored bucket helmet
Speaker 1: with horns.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he kind of looks like he could have wandered
Speaker 3: out a labyrinth down down the studio road there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so next we're gonna meet our main characters, Lily
Speaker 1: and Jack. Lily is a princess, but we learn that
Speaker 1: she does not want to be cooped up in the
Speaker 1: stuffy castle with her servants and her glittering treasures. She
Speaker 1: wants to wander free in the countryside and roam through
Speaker 1: the forest. She hangs out with peasants in their cottages,
Speaker 1: and especially she wants to meet up with Jack, and
Speaker 1: she I think she's talking to well, I don't remember
Speaker 1: if she's talking to one of her peasant friends or
Speaker 1: to Jack when she says this, But she says, this
Speaker 1: place holds more magic for me than any palace in
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 3: So Lily is, of course the embodiment of purity and
Speaker 3: innocence here, but there is something more, and it's kind
Speaker 3: of underscored at this point in the picture, especially I
Speaker 3: imagine more so in the in the US theatrical cut.
Speaker 3: But I think her privilege is also really key to
Speaker 3: her character, because you know, who would deny you anything, princess?
Speaker 3: You know, you know, she's really sweet and she's innocent,
Speaker 3: but she does feel like she has the right to
Speaker 3: everything in the world, be it walking into a peasant's
Speaker 3: house and observing their life and feeling to some level
Speaker 3: like she gets to be a part of it, or
Speaker 3: as we'll see in a bit, that she should be
Speaker 3: able to walk right up to a unicorn and touch it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The other side of innocence is naivety, and so
Speaker 1: she does not realize the consequences of her actions and
Speaker 1: maybe doesn't even consider them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she doesn't understand that there are things in the
Speaker 3: world that are not meant for her.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, the other character or is Jack, played by
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise and Jack, I'm not sure exactly what he
Speaker 1: is in the movie. I see if you agree with this, Rob,
Speaker 1: I think the layout is that he is biologically a
Speaker 1: regular human, so he's not a fairy or an elf
Speaker 1: or any of the other types of hidden folk that
Speaker 1: we meet in the story, but he does not seem
Speaker 1: to be a part of human society and seems to
Speaker 1: live alone in a in a kind of ageless and
Speaker 1: carefree communion with the forest. He's almost a hot raticas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think hot ratagas is a good
Speaker 3: way of putting it. I also was thinking of him
Speaker 3: as sort of a fairal Peter Pan, you know. So
Speaker 3: he also has more than his share of innocence. He's
Speaker 3: very connected with nature, very connected to the forces of
Speaker 3: light in the fairy Folk, but this is underscored a
Speaker 3: bit as well. But he's also lusty, granted in a
Speaker 3: way that I think we're to understand is a largely
Speaker 3: in a largely innocent way part of his youthfulness. And
Speaker 3: it's not like he's manipulating Lily or anything like that.
Speaker 3: But his desire is obvious as well, so you know,
Speaker 3: it's like that's kind of that's we're setting that up
Speaker 3: to be his sin here. And I mentioned this because
Speaker 3: the plot, especially in the in the director's cut, is
Speaker 3: very concerned with the interconnectedness of light and darkness, as
Speaker 3: well as feelings of shame and are two protagonists. Though
Speaker 3: it feels rather lily heavy in that regard, which I guess,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of matches up the basic story of
Speaker 3: Adam and Eden, where it's you know, far more shame
Speaker 3: is placed on the female in the scenario, when really
Speaker 3: it takes two people to touch sacred fruit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So Jack and Lily they meet together in the
Speaker 1: forest to frolic about, and eventually Jack takes Lily to
Speaker 1: show her something very special. He sort of blindfolds her
Speaker 1: while he's leading her to a secret place, and he
Speaker 1: takes her blindfold off when they arrive. They're at this
Speaker 1: kind of hidden brook somewhere somewhere in in the forest glen,
Speaker 1: and what they see there is a pair of unicorns
Speaker 1: that emerge from the trees, and then they kind of
Speaker 1: gallop about together like they're playing. And these unicorns, we understand,
Speaker 1: are sacred creatures, almost primordial, and their fates are linked
Speaker 1: to the fate of the world itself. So Jack communicates somehow,
Speaker 1: we've got to treat these creatures with reverence. You know,
Speaker 1: remember she had to be like blindfolded to go to
Speaker 1: their secret grounds.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these this matches up with some of the ideas
Speaker 3: swirling around the concept of the unicorn. We talked about
Speaker 3: unicorns in an older episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 3: where at times like the unicorn is presented as Christ
Speaker 3: as Jesus Christ himself in the form of a single
Speaker 3: horned horse.
Speaker 1: Now we watch the unicorns play together and Lily becomes enraptured.
Speaker 1: I guess because of her in no sense she does
Speaker 1: not take the proper precautions in their presence. She doesn't
Speaker 1: want to hold back and just observe them from a
Speaker 1: distant a distance like Jack recommends. She sort of runs
Speaker 1: out of hiding and touches one of them. I think
Speaker 1: the stallion right.
Speaker 3: And it's not so much the touch that is going
Speaker 3: to be disastrous, but it does impact other elements in play.
Speaker 1: Right, because all along Lily has been tracked by the
Speaker 1: Goblin trio. They've been they've been following the inno sense,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, the innocense led them straight to the unicorns.
Speaker 1: And I think this is around the scene where Blick
Speaker 1: says that line, maybe innocent may be sweet, ain't half
Speaker 1: as nice as rotting meat. So we see where Blick's
Speaker 1: preferences lie, and they are with death and attack. So
Speaker 1: when they when the Goblins see the unicorns, I think
Speaker 1: Blunder yells out look ugly one horned mule, and they
Speaker 1: take the opportunity to strike. They shoot one of the
Speaker 1: two unicorns with a poisoned dart, and the unicorns gallop away,
Speaker 1: and I think at first Jack and Lily don't realize
Speaker 1: what has happened. Like Jack is disturbed that Lily was
Speaker 1: so brazen with these holy creatures, but he is quickly
Speaker 1: distracted by love because Lily takes off a piece of jewelry,
Speaker 1: a golden ring inlaid with gems, and she throws it
Speaker 1: into the pool at the base of a waterfall where
Speaker 1: they're hanging out, and she says, I'm gonna marry whoever
Speaker 1: finds this ring, and Jack is just hot diggity he
Speaker 1: dives right in after it. Yeah. Now a lot happens
Speaker 1: while Jack is diving under the water looking for the ring.
Speaker 1: The goblins catch up to the unicorn, which is faltering
Speaker 1: under the influence of the poison, and blicks his dart
Speaker 1: and they go up to it and they chop off
Speaker 1: its horn, and this instantly causes a worldwide calamity. A
Speaker 1: supernatural winter descends. The peasants are frozen solid in their cottages.
Speaker 1: Ice forms over the pool where Jack is diving for
Speaker 1: the ring, so like when he comes up for air,
Speaker 1: he has to break through the ice. Lily is caught
Speaker 1: out in the blizzard and she runs in terror as
Speaker 1: the Goblins come tramping through the new world of frosty
Speaker 1: horror that they've created. It's a scary time, and it.
Speaker 3: Must have been scary to read this script and think
Speaker 3: about producing this. You know, this is it's like, we're
Speaker 3: gonna build a forest, then it's gonna be winter in
Speaker 3: the forest. We're gonna have a frozen over pond. We're
Speaker 3: gonna have somebody swimming in that and breaking up through
Speaker 3: the ice later, like I don't know. It is one
Speaker 3: of the many places in the film where you'd really
Speaker 3: have to admire the what they really set out to
Speaker 3: do here, Like this is a lot.
Speaker 1: Blick says, mortal world turned ice. Here be Goblin paradise.
Speaker 1: So the goblins are having a ball, they run around
Speaker 1: using the unicorn horn as a magic wand they're just
Speaker 1: doing all kinds of mischief and Lily eventually tracks them
Speaker 1: back to their Goblin camp, which I think his position's
Speaker 1: sort of down in a kind of ravine or a
Speaker 1: pit in the earth, and they've got a fire going
Speaker 1: and they're playing around with the horn, and this is
Speaker 1: all good stuff. I love this scene. I think this
Speaker 1: is where Blick says, higher burning fire, making music like
Speaker 1: a choir, and they're all sort of talking about what
Speaker 1: they could do with their new found of power. I
Speaker 1: think the pig Goblin I love this, suggests turning everything
Speaker 1: into garbage. That's a quote. He says, why not turn
Speaker 1: everything into garbage, A big, towering mountain of slot. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: that be magic?
Speaker 3: He's a simple guy, he knows what he wants.
Speaker 1: Love numb, numb garbage.
Speaker 3: Now, one of my recurring questions on this rewatch of Legend,
Speaker 3: given recent changes and slaying, is this goblin mode? Does
Speaker 3: this constitute goblin mode? If you're not familiar, Goblin mode,
Speaker 3: as defined by the Oxford Dictionary in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: is a type of behavior which is unapologetically self indulgent, lazy, slovenly,
Speaker 3: or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms
Speaker 3: or expectations.
Speaker 1: You know, I would say that the goblins in this
Speaker 1: movie are not in goblin mode by default, but in
Speaker 1: this particular scene, they are going goblin mode. Okay, like
Speaker 1: Pox's desire to quote turn everything into garbage. That's goblin mode.
Speaker 1: That's going right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, at the same time, Blick's he seems he's having
Speaker 3: a big time here waving this unicorn horn wand around
Speaker 3: and it seems like he has he has greater designs.
Speaker 3: He's thinking about the power of the wand here and
Speaker 3: what he could do with it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, so we'll see what happens and when
Speaker 1: Darkness shows up. So Darkness arrives at the goblin camp,
Speaker 1: he's covered in a cloak, so we still don't see
Speaker 1: his face or his true form. And this is where
Speaker 1: one of the three goblins, I know it's Blunder, the
Speaker 1: one with the helmet on, tries to take the horn
Speaker 1: and use it to usurp the power of the Lord
Speaker 1: of Darkness, but he's he's not strong enough. Tim Curry
Speaker 1: just like sucks it out of Blunder's hand magically and
Speaker 1: then reanimates a nearby mummy, grab up Blunder and cast
Speaker 1: him into a crevice in the earth, though we'll meet
Speaker 1: him again later.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a great thing because basically, yeah, Blicks
Speaker 3: has been playing around with the wand there's really getting
Speaker 3: into it. And has all these flourishes to his movements.
Speaker 3: You know, clearly he's really digging this power trip, and
Speaker 3: you get the impression that Darkness has shown up really
Speaker 3: to be like, Okay, enough of this before it gets
Speaker 3: out of hand. I'm here for what's mine. So but
Speaker 3: Blix is smart enough to just drop it to the
Speaker 3: ground immediately. Yeah yeah, But but Blunder is stupid, and
Speaker 3: Blunder is like, oh, there's the wand it's mine now,
Speaker 3: this is my time to shine, and as sind at
Speaker 3: the top, and he's just instantly destroyed. Yeah, or seemingly
Speaker 3: at the time.
Speaker 1: Blunder has some good lines though, before he gets cast
Speaker 1: into the ravine when they're like they're talking about uh
Speaker 1: Lily and they're like, oh, she's so beautiful, and then
Speaker 1: Blunder's like, I know, I could eat her brains.
Speaker 3: Like jam, they just don't have the same values as mortals.
Speaker 4: Though.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, the mission is not fully accomplished because Darkness is like,
Speaker 1: you fools, look, Dawn is about to break. That means
Speaker 1: one of the unicorns still lives. You have to get
Speaker 1: both of them, So go find the other unicorn and
Speaker 1: bring it to me.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Because the remaining. Unicorn is the mayor, and they're
Speaker 3: like what, it's just the female and Darkness is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that one has the power of creation, you dummies, Like
Speaker 3: that's the most important unicorn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you got to bring me Unicorn too. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Jack wakes up after being frozen in the Blizzard of Wickedness,
Speaker 1: and when he does, when he wakes up, he is
Speaker 1: surrounded by a coterie of hidden folk. So there is
Speaker 1: a sort of panlike magical boy called Honeythorn Gump. I
Speaker 1: think he's supposed to be an elf, do they say? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I believe so.
Speaker 1: I don't know technically what all of the fantasy classes
Speaker 1: of these creatures of the forest are. They're all various
Speaker 1: hidden folk of different kinds. A couple of them are
Speaker 1: Brown Tom and Screwball. They will be companions along the
Speaker 1: rest of the journey. In the movie, there is a
Speaker 1: fairy creature named Una, who I think is like a
Speaker 1: will of the Wisp. Yeah, honey Thorne Gump is sort
Speaker 1: of the leader of them. He's he's got the most
Speaker 1: lore information in his head and seems to like kind
Speaker 1: of know what's going on. And Gump is interesting. He
Speaker 1: has these great fantasy time units that he always talks
Speaker 1: in like he all the expressions of time are things
Speaker 1: like three flicks of a badger's tail or two hundred
Speaker 1: beats of a sparrow's heart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like you get the impression where if you
Speaker 3: were in tune with nature as much as as an
Speaker 3: elf is or any of these magical fairy folk here,
Speaker 3: you would know exactly what that means. You would innately
Speaker 3: know what that means. But to us mortals, we're a
Speaker 3: little lost on the particulars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are some initial negotiations. When they first meet
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise, he has to answer a riddle or die.
Speaker 1: I think, is that right?
Speaker 3: I'm always this scene kind of lost me a little bit.
Speaker 3: I'm sure exactly what is happening in the scene, But
Speaker 3: then it's kind of like, Okay, I guess he passed
Speaker 3: the test, whatever it was.
Speaker 1: Also, I don't understand the logic of the riddle. The
Speaker 1: answer is flowers, bluebell flowers, but I don't understand how
Speaker 1: it corresponds to the riddle itself. Anyway. They eventually decide
Speaker 1: that Tom Cruise is the champion foretold who must defend
Speaker 1: the world from the Lord of Darkness, and so there's
Speaker 1: a scene of him being sent to raid a treasure
Speaker 1: trove and a hidden barrow to get magical armor and weapons.
Speaker 1: Around here is where I first started to notice that
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise is not getting to stand up in this movie.
Speaker 1: He's always squatting or creeping on the ground.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and now he has like a golden chain mail
Speaker 3: skirt to wear the whole time. Yeah, and a really
Speaker 3: cool shield and sword too, So he's decked out. He's
Speaker 3: gotten his plus one plus two gear from the dungeon
Speaker 3: Master and is ready to hop into the main adventure.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Meanwhile, there's a scene where Lily makes her way
Speaker 1: to sort of the camp where Jack originally was, but
Speaker 1: they don't meet up. Lily is there with the Unicorn
Speaker 1: Mayor and they get captured by the goblins and taken
Speaker 1: back to Tim Curry. And there's a funny moment here
Speaker 1: where Brown Tom, who was with them, one of the
Speaker 1: good guys, he gets shot in the head with an
Speaker 1: arrow and you think he's dead, and he thinks he's
Speaker 1: dead when his companions show back up. He says, I
Speaker 1: was shot through the brain pan. But then he takes
Speaker 1: his hat off and he literally had a pan in
Speaker 1: his hat. And it was the arrow went through it.
Speaker 3: It's a great moment when this movie wants to be
Speaker 3: silly and funny, it succeeds.
Speaker 1: So now that Tim Curry has Lily and the last
Speaker 1: living Unicorn, that they got to turn this into a
Speaker 1: rescue operation, right, So Jack and his magical friends make
Speaker 1: the journey to the Layer of Darkness to confront Darkness
Speaker 1: and his minions. And I thought this was interesting. It's
Speaker 1: shown from the outside and it is not your typical
Speaker 1: stone castle, but seems to be built inside a giant
Speaker 1: ancient tree. The Honeythorn. Gump describes it by saying, the
Speaker 1: Great Tree, when evil anarchy ruled the land, the wicked
Speaker 1: came here to sacrifice. That's an interesting, almost kind of
Speaker 1: biblical foundation story that, like the Cursed Place, is a
Speaker 1: place that you associate with the sacrifices made by an
Speaker 1: ancient enemy.
Speaker 3: It's interesting too in that like what we have here
Speaker 3: in form and it looks amazing in the picture with
Speaker 3: we see like the spots of carrion birds circling around it.
Speaker 3: But in many respects you could compare this to like
Speaker 3: a world tree from various mythologies, you know, connecting the
Speaker 3: realm of Earth to the realm of the cosmos, but
Speaker 3: it's corrupted and it's dark. But on the other level,
Speaker 3: numerous times we have, especially our evil characters, speak to
Speaker 3: a universe here in which darkness was the purity of
Speaker 3: existence that was then invaded by light. And therefore it
Speaker 3: maybe feels kind of fitting that the world tree here
Speaker 3: is something of the darkness, because the darkness is the
Speaker 3: original structure of the universe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is an interesting mythology, and again we get
Speaker 1: these statements about the necessary interconnectedness of the elements that
Speaker 1: come back in the very end as well. Okay, now
Speaker 1: on the way to the castle, they've got to do
Speaker 1: battle with a swamp hag. Right. We brought a megg
Speaker 1: muckle Bones early on, played by Robert Piccardo in some
Speaker 1: amazing makeup and prosthetics or I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: puppet Tree involved in as well.
Speaker 3: It feels like it there feels like there's some sort
Speaker 3: of like device that's moving him around at the base.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's like a big old Jenny Green teeth
Speaker 1: pops up out of the water and is going to
Speaker 1: eat Tom Cruise because she's like, you look delicious, and
Speaker 1: he starts trying to get out of it by flattering
Speaker 1: her beauty, and she ends up saying, ooh, what a
Speaker 1: fine meal you'll make be the rest of you as
Speaker 1: sweet as your tongue.
Speaker 3: And this scene, this scene is just so perfect but
Speaker 3: just and I'm just to touch on like some of
Speaker 3: the little things that make it great. The scene where
Speaker 3: he has the resplendent golden shield up and Meg is
Speaker 3: like close to it, half seeing a reflection in it,
Speaker 3: and her nails are tapping against it, and there's also
Speaker 3: so there's the gleam of the shield, but then also
Speaker 3: there's a little bit of her sliminess on it. So
Speaker 3: it's just like visually and just sonically too, that tapping
Speaker 3: is just complete overload. It's just a tremendous scene, even
Speaker 3: in this small detail.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So eventually Meg is decapitated and our heroes,
Speaker 1: you know, they go on their way into the Great
Speaker 1: Tree of Wickedness, where they quickly fall into a pit
Speaker 1: and end up trapped inside prison cells. Now they will
Speaker 1: get out of these eventually released by the Fairy Una
Speaker 1: after she reveals that she had abilities that even Gump
Speaker 1: did not know of before. She's interesting because she's one
Speaker 1: of the heroes. But she's capricious, you know, she doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be pinned down. She's like, I'll do what
Speaker 1: I want, and you know, just so happens that that
Speaker 1: turns out to be helping them sometimes. But she also
Speaker 1: wants Tom cruise. By the way, Yes, but while in
Speaker 1: this prison, they meet the goblin Blunder, who reveals he
Speaker 1: is not actually a goblin. He takes his helmet off
Speaker 1: and we learned that he is one of the hidden
Speaker 1: folk of the forest and known to Screwball and Brown Tom.
Speaker 1: But I guess he sort of went astray and now
Speaker 1: he's back on the team. But unfortunately, right after they
Speaker 1: meet him and realize who he is, he gets snatched
Speaker 1: up by their jailers and the dungeon and taken away
Speaker 1: to be baked into a pie. Because this dungeon is
Speaker 1: right next to the kitchens of Hell. This set, we
Speaker 1: need to talk about the hell kitchens. Here. There's this
Speaker 1: doctor Salvador prep table in this blow bucket kitchen, where
Speaker 1: like right in the middle of the floor there are
Speaker 1: random fires burning, so it's like a barbecue preparation area
Speaker 1: attended by like bondage axe murderers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like big ogres and like execution hoods just
Speaker 3: very physically intimidating. The fires are just raging, like just
Speaker 3: out of control levels of flame. It's like a delirious
Speaker 3: vision of hell, like a baroque mashup of Texas chainsaw
Speaker 3: massacre and a medieval wood cut. And they're also throughout
Speaker 3: like the last half or third of the picture. There
Speaker 3: are also just lots of creepy statues, Like there's a
Speaker 3: pazuzu statue from that pops up twice, I think, once
Speaker 3: in the swamp and then once in the depths of
Speaker 3: the underworld here. Sometimes those statues are actually alive and
Speaker 3: they move. So there's just a very rich, disturbing visual
Speaker 3: world down here in the hell. Kitchens are just yeah,
Speaker 3: absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 1: Now, there's also an extended series of scenes, a kind
Speaker 1: of drama here where after Lily is brought to the
Speaker 1: palace as a captive, Darkness decides that he wants to
Speaker 1: seduce her, and he's sort of instructed by this other voice,
Speaker 1: this kind of statue or other god speaking to him.
Speaker 1: I think it says, make her one of us, and
Speaker 1: so that's his goal. He wants to take the innocence
Speaker 1: of the princess and to make her evil as well,
Speaker 1: to bring her into the darkness and make her a
Speaker 1: creature of the night.
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting that you look at this in Labyrinth,
Speaker 3: two films being made at the same time, next door
Speaker 3: to each other. They both have very similar elements in
Speaker 3: that you have a dark lord who is pleading with
Speaker 3: like trying to seduce and ultimately just offering to be
Speaker 3: subservient to a woman. He is in love with a
Speaker 3: mortal woman, and they I'm to understand that with Labyrinth too,
Speaker 3: they were aware of what was going on in Legend
Speaker 3: and made deliberate choices with Jareth the Goblin Goblin King
Speaker 3: to portray him in a less like overtly satanic manner
Speaker 3: and like finding a different sort of form for him.
Speaker 3: But it is interesting that, yeah, out of the same
Speaker 3: production timeline, you're getting like these two different I guess
Speaker 3: kind of like equally iconic versions of somebody's potential supernatural boyfriend,
Speaker 3: you know, from beyond the realm of mortals. You know.
Speaker 3: So it's like, ultimately, like who do you see yourself
Speaker 3: with on the dating show? Is it Darkness the Prince
Speaker 3: of Evil, or is it Jareth the Goblin King, I
Speaker 3: don't know, your preference may vary.
Speaker 1: But now Lily here goes through a transformation. At some
Speaker 1: point she gets a kind of spell cast on her
Speaker 1: while in the banquet Hall of Darkness here, and she
Speaker 1: becomes gothly. She like transforms to have this bizarre gown
Speaker 1: with like there's sort of this this we were talking about,
Speaker 1: this big extending triangular hood or collar thing, and then
Speaker 1: like a big V cut in the middle of it,
Speaker 1: and her hair gets very stringy and dark, and she's
Speaker 1: got this, I don't know what you call it, the
Speaker 1: kind of a a twiggy, twiggy black crown on her head.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a very strange and interesting look and
Speaker 1: props again to the costume designers there. But so there's
Speaker 1: like it's it's to symbolize that she has in a
Speaker 1: way had a spell cast over her. But she that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean she's been like hypnotized fully by the Lord
Speaker 1: of Darkness, because she's still not into him at this point.
Speaker 1: He's he's trying to make all these you know, seducing
Speaker 1: her to evil kind of moves, and she she's still
Speaker 1: screaming like, no, I will do nothing for your pleasure,
Speaker 1: but In the end, she does appear to make a turn.
Speaker 1: She says, Okay, I will stay with you here if
Speaker 1: you will grant me one thing. Let me be the
Speaker 1: one who cuts the throat of the last unicorn instead
Speaker 1: of you and Tim Curry. You could just see him.
Speaker 1: He's like, yes, yes, He's.
Speaker 3: Like, this is exactly the sort of thing I'm into,
Speaker 3: and I'm so glad you are into it as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But oh but before we get to that point, I
Speaker 3: have to talk about her brow though. Oh because yeah,
Speaker 3: because yeah, her costume of goth Lily is amazing, you know,
Speaker 3: the makeup is amazing. But they make a seemingly very
Speaker 3: deliberate choice to narrow and nearly unify her brow. So
Speaker 3: she has this very sweek monobrow youni brow going on
Speaker 3: here in a way that is that is of course
Speaker 3: also very like beautiful and hot. Don't don't get me wrong.
Speaker 1: It is enough.
Speaker 3: It is like the kind of like stylized you a
Speaker 3: brow that can make you realize, you know, it is
Speaker 3: like maybe a silly cultural thing that some of us
Speaker 3: don't think brows should grow together, because here's proof that
Speaker 3: it can look really cool. But like, first they made
Speaker 3: this decision, and I wonder, like how how they talked
Speaker 3: about it behind the scenes, where they're like, I really
Speaker 3: think we need to give her a unibrow here, and
Speaker 3: like maybe people were doubtful and then they saw the
Speaker 3: results and they're like, no, you got it. This is
Speaker 3: exactly what God Lily needs.
Speaker 1: So the audience at this point may be left to wonder, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: has she fully been captured by the darkness? Does she
Speaker 1: want to kill the unicorn for real? But no, No,
Speaker 1: Lily has a plan, and Jack's about to get a
Speaker 1: plan too. Like the Jack and his friends, they've snuck
Speaker 1: into the palace and they're like peeking through a through
Speaker 1: a window and watching what's going on. And so Jack
Speaker 1: comes up with an idea that involves bringing light into
Speaker 1: the darkness. So they need to go gather a bunch
Speaker 1: of big shiny plates from the hell Kitchens to have
Speaker 1: shiny plates for some reason that they're going to use
Speaker 1: to create a series of reflector beams to bring sunlight
Speaker 1: from up above down into the darkness where it will
Speaker 1: destroy Tim Curry now on the way. At one point
Speaker 1: they get drawn into a fight with the ogres and
Speaker 1: the Hell Kitchen. I think they they beat them by
Speaker 1: like dumping out a big pot of broth. Unclear exactly
Speaker 1: how this fight is resolved.
Speaker 3: Here now, yeah, I'm not sure either, but while it's happening,
Speaker 3: the fight is very cool. There's a lot of running
Speaker 3: around and jumping and dodging, and of course the set
Speaker 3: is amazing.
Speaker 1: And skipping over a few more things that go on
Speaker 1: in the palace here, it all leads up to this
Speaker 1: final confrontation where Lily and Darkness are down there with
Speaker 1: the last unicorn and Lily is about to exercise her
Speaker 1: privilege to be the one to put an end to
Speaker 1: all goodness and bring on the forever night, and Jack
Speaker 1: and Honeythorn Gump are They've got the plans set up
Speaker 1: to bring the light in and they're watching from above
Speaker 1: with bows drawn as this is about to happen, and
Speaker 1: Gump is saying, oh, no, she's going to kill the unicorn.
Speaker 1: You've got a stopper, Jack, But Jack says, no, I
Speaker 1: trust you, Lily, And so this is a sort of
Speaker 1: repeated idea that he puts his trust in her, and
Speaker 1: it was well placed, because she in fact does not
Speaker 1: go through with hurting the unicorn. She instead cuts it
Speaker 1: free of its bindings, and then it kicks off a
Speaker 1: final action scene where Jack rushes in to fight the
Speaker 1: Lord of Darkness and put an end to this once
Speaker 1: and for all. The fight scene here, I'm of mixed
Speaker 1: opinions about it. It has some cool elements, something about
Speaker 1: it feels kind of thrown together in a way, but
Speaker 1: individual moments of it I like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the thing I was most impressed by
Speaker 3: is that Darkness still feels like a cohesive entity here,
Speaker 3: despite the fact that we're suddenly seeing him move around
Speaker 3: a lot more like he's swinging a giant sword. He's
Speaker 3: like shooting fire from his fingertips, and in one sequence
Speaker 3: like runs like charges like a bull at Jack and
Speaker 3: sort of like pins into the wall and snarls at him.
Speaker 3: And I feel like like, if the effects were not
Speaker 3: just so on point here, either this wouldn't feel believable
Speaker 3: or we wouldn't see an attempt like this at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I agree U. And he has some great
Speaker 1: dialogue in the scene too, like while they're fighting, at
Speaker 1: one point, Darkness says, every wolf suffers fleas 'tis easy
Speaker 1: enough to scratch. Oh, and then at the final defeat, Okay,
Speaker 1: so you know, they blow the doors open with the
Speaker 1: sunlight brought in through the maze of mirrors, and it
Speaker 1: shines a big ray of sunlight onto darkness, which is
Speaker 1: a destructive It like unleashes this destructive gale upon him
Speaker 1: that blows him out through this big sort of aperture
Speaker 1: we've seen in the wall. There's like this gap in
Speaker 1: the wall that seems to lead out into space and
Speaker 1: the night. We just see black and stars beyond it.
Speaker 1: And as he's being blown out, Darkness says, you think
Speaker 1: you have won? What is light without dark? What are
Speaker 1: you without me? I'm a part of you all. You
Speaker 1: can never defeat me. We are brothers eternal. But he
Speaker 1: is seemingly defeated. He's blown out into space. And I
Speaker 1: just want to point out for comparison, so the villain
Speaker 1: of this movie is destroyed by being sucked out into space.
Speaker 1: How is the Starbis defeated at the end of Alien,
Speaker 1: also by Ridley Scott from several years earlier, blown out
Speaker 1: the airlock. Both of these movies end with the villain
Speaker 1: being the villain nor the monster being blown out into space.
Speaker 3: That's also how Gladiator defeated Emperor Commutists in that movie, right,
Speaker 3: just out through the airlock, you know.
Speaker 1: Strangely, I would say, Thelma and Louise does have an
Speaker 1: almost kind of out into space ending.
Speaker 3: That's true, Yeah, like into the void. I guess you
Speaker 3: could say.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now, after the evil is defeated, the unicorn is
Speaker 1: all right. Somehow we see the other unicorn revived, so
Speaker 1: now they're both okay. The supernatural winter ends, Lily is freed,
Speaker 1: and everything can go back to normal. I think depending
Speaker 1: on which cut of the film you are seeing, there'll
Speaker 1: be a slightly different ending. There might be one where
Speaker 1: it seems like they're going to get married or something.
Speaker 1: I think there is one ending where we hear darkness
Speaker 1: laughing after the happy ending, suggesting, oh, he's act coming back.
Speaker 1: The ending of the director's cuts has them coming to
Speaker 1: a kind of bittersweet agreement where Jack and Lily conclude
Speaker 1: that Jack can't really be part of Lily's world, that
Speaker 1: he is going to have to stay in the forest,
Speaker 1: But she says, can I come visit you every day?
Speaker 1: And he says yes, all right.
Speaker 3: I guess this getting into the the basic thesis statement
Speaker 3: that our heroes are going to have to embrace darkness
Speaker 3: and light, that they're going to have to find some
Speaker 3: balance of things, and that maybe, like the ideal happy
Speaker 3: ending isn't really in the cards, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: But then I don't know. Especially in the US theatrical cut,
Speaker 3: it does feel a lot more good conquers everything, you know,
Speaker 3: good over evil, And then we can't argue with those songs.
Speaker 3: We're hit first with that Tangerine Dream vocal track, and
Speaker 3: then we get your love Is your love strong enough?
Speaker 3: And the answer is yes, clearly, The answer is yes
Speaker 3: a million times. Yes, love is absolutely strong enough.
Speaker 1: Is your love strong enough to turn the world into garbage?
Speaker 1: One great big mountain of slop?
Speaker 3: All right, Well, there you have it. Legend from Ridley Scott.
Speaker 3: I'd be very interested to hear what everyone out there
Speaker 3: has to say about this film, like did you see it?
Speaker 3: What version did you initially see, and what were your impressions?
Speaker 3: And has it grown on you over the years, like again,
Speaker 3: like it's a film that had such an impact on me,
Speaker 3: like visually that it's always stuck with me, but it's
Speaker 3: also a film that I always come back to and
Speaker 3: realize that well, you know, it's a little rough around
Speaker 3: the edges in the in the end, but you know,
Speaker 3: it's definitely developed its own cult following, and it has become
Speaker 3: iconic in its own right.
Speaker 1: I can't deny there's something about it that just doesn't
Speaker 1: quite come together. And yet I'm not going to get
Speaker 1: rid of my copy. I know I'm going to be
Speaker 1: watching it again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a great one to put on. I've
Speaker 3: played this one before just in the background with other
Speaker 3: music on top of it, and it's always a delight.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: All right, Well we're going to go and close out
Speaker 3: this episode of Weird House Cinema, but we'll be back
Speaker 3: with the future installments, which air on Fridays in the
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. If you want
Speaker 3: to see a full list of the movies we've covered
Speaker 3: over the years for Weird House Cinema, go to letterbox
Speaker 3: dot com. It's L E T E R B o
Speaker 3: x D dot com. You'll find us on there. Our
Speaker 3: user name is weird House and there's a list of
Speaker 3: all the films we've covered and sometimes a peek ahead
Speaker 3: at what's coming out next. Also, if you're on Instagram,
Speaker 3: go to st b ym podcast. That's the Stuff to
Speaker 3: Blow Your Mind podcast channel handle and you'll get updates
Speaker 3: there as well.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.