Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is The
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind, focusing on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: The world lost a true musical icon yesterday on July
Speaker 2: twenty second, twenty twenty five, with the passing of Black
Speaker 2: Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne born nineteen forty eight. It's almost
Speaker 2: impossible to imagine rock music itself without the Oz Man's influence,
Speaker 2: much less downstream subgenres of heavy, doom and stone or metal,
Speaker 2: and so I figured it might be fitting to remember
Speaker 2: him here on The Monster Fact, following up recent explorations
Speaker 2: of the Werewolf with a look at his nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: three hit Bark at the Moon. Now, we can certainly
Speaker 2: acknowledge that this song, the title track off Ozzy's third
Speaker 2: post Sabbath solo album, stands out as a prime example
Speaker 2: of his pivot from heavy metal and hard rock to
Speaker 2: a poppier, synth infused sound. The song was a hit,
Speaker 2: and today it easily stands out as one of the
Speaker 2: top tracks from his solo work. But I want to
Speaker 2: mainly talk about that Werewolf. Yes, The album, single and
Speaker 2: music video all prominently feature Ozzy Osbourne in full magnificent
Speaker 2: were wolf makeup, created by special effects wizard Greg Cannon,
Speaker 2: who would go on to win an Oscar for his
Speaker 2: work on nineteen ninety two's bram Stoker's Dracula, which of
Speaker 2: course also features an amazing lupine transformation. His credits also
Speaker 2: include nineteen eighty one's The Howling, nineteen eighty six is Vamp,
Speaker 2: and of course weird House cinema favorite Without Warning from
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty Werewolf. Ozzy is just so perfectly executed. We
Speaker 2: easily recognize the rocker through the hair, teeth and prosthetic
Speaker 2: facial features, and yet he looks believably like in topic,
Speaker 2: a physical representation of his wild man reputation and rock
Speaker 2: music era. The music video, reportedly a difficult shoot, is
Speaker 2: a highly entertaining mashup of gothic hammer horror imagery Vetroom
Speaker 2: music video director Mike Mansfield filmed the production, which shot
Speaker 2: at England's Holloway Sanatorium, the same location used for numerous
Speaker 2: classic nineteen eighties music videos, including Alphaville's Forever Young and
Speaker 2: Oh Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart. It features
Speaker 2: Ozzy and his band, but I sadly can find nothing
Speaker 2: on the additional background actors that give it that hammer
Speaker 2: horror flavor. It's a music video, so it's more vibes
Speaker 2: than plot, but we might loosely connect the dots here.
Speaker 2: Victorian gentleman scientist Ozaman Diaz Osbourne, haunted by the pale
Speaker 2: faced specter of Death, seeks a formula that might unleash
Speaker 2: his inner beast control it. It's uncertain what he aims
Speaker 2: for here, but the experiment results in his complete transformation
Speaker 2: into a rampaging wolfman. As his beloved watches on, there
Speaker 2: is no choice but to commit good Sir Osborne to
Speaker 2: a sanitarium, where the treatment seem to range from barking
Speaker 2: dog exposures to electro shock. In what may be a
Speaker 2: visual representation of this inner struggle, we see Cuman Osborne
Speaker 2: flee from his werewolf's self through the bowels of the sanatorium,
Speaker 2: all while pale Death watches on. Eventually, he walks free
Speaker 2: through the gates of the sanitarium, smiling with his beloved,
Speaker 2: while his beast's self howls from the upper reaches of
Speaker 2: the sanitarium walls. Everyone seems pleased with this outcome, So
Speaker 2: perhaps the Beast truly is a thing of the past now,
Speaker 2: but we horror fans might reasonably have our doubts. Plus
Speaker 2: before the final struggle between beast and man, we see
Speaker 2: Osborne deceased in a casket and then reduced to bones
Speaker 2: and ash by a priest's blessings. So does the characters
Speaker 2: separation from the Beast a her only in death or
Speaker 2: does this represent something else. It's open to interpretation. The
Speaker 2: video plays with themes from various Gothic werewolf films, and
Speaker 2: there's a little Doctor Jacky will Mister Hyde thrown in
Speaker 2: for good measure, and in doing so, all of this invokes,
Speaker 2: at least playfully, very old and deep concepts of lacanthropy,
Speaker 2: the best deal inner self, the struggle between wildness and civilization,
Speaker 2: and the contradictory twin desires to both channel the inner
Speaker 2: wolf and to exercise its influence. And of course it
Speaker 2: all takes on an additional layer of meaning given the
Speaker 2: well known biographical details and larger than life legends surrounding
Speaker 2: the legendary Ozzy Osbourne himself. May he rest in peace
Speaker 2: or run forever through the Fay Wilds beneath an everlasting
Speaker 2: full mood. Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Factor,
Speaker 2: The Artifact or Animalius to Pendi Hum each week. As always,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.
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