Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb
Speaker 2: and this is Joe McCormick, and we're back with Yes,
Speaker 2: another classic erotic vampire movie. I know it wasn't that
Speaker 2: long ago that we covered nineteen eighty three's The Hunger,
Speaker 2: but despite some thematic similarities, today's film, nineteen seventy one's
Speaker 2: Daughters of Darkness is an entirely different cinematic experience. Like
Speaker 2: The Hunger, it does paint with erotic cues while also
Speaker 2: pursuing its own high minded ideas. It'd be easy to
Speaker 2: dismiss this one, certainly if you just watch the trailers,
Speaker 2: or maybe just look at a few posters as being
Speaker 2: more in the exploitation zone. But this is a beautiful
Speaker 2: and haunting film that is composed with deliberate style and intention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree with that. Despite its main things
Speaker 3: being sort of love, sex and romance in the context
Speaker 3: of murder and a vampire story, it's not a very
Speaker 3: romantic film. Actually, it's like it shows a quite bleak
Speaker 3: side of love, but is psychologically fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's very, very fascinating. On the psychological front. Now
Speaker 2: other ways that it ties in with past episodes of
Speaker 2: Weird House. I think we could consider this another off
Speaker 2: season European holiday horror film. Okay, similar in ways to
Speaker 2: Footprints on the Moon. Hmmm, all right. I think it
Speaker 2: is our first Belgian movie, though this was an international
Speaker 2: co production, so ultimately like this was a multinational effort
Speaker 2: to make Daughters of Darkness. We'll get into some of
Speaker 2: the details of that as we go.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of seemingly random correlation between accents and
Speaker 3: where characters are supposed to be from.
Speaker 2: Yes. Also, of note, this is our second Lady Bathory
Speaker 2: Lady by film. This is a character that pops up
Speaker 2: of course, is of course you know, has historical origins,
Speaker 2: but often pops up in far from historically accurate horror
Speaker 2: and horror related media. So you hear her name pronounced
Speaker 2: in various ways, from Bathory to BATORI we get the
Speaker 2: I think the much more convincing, buttry in this picture.
Speaker 2: But a version of this character last popped up on
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema in the Paul Nashy film Night of
Speaker 2: the Werewolf from nineteen eighty Oh.
Speaker 3: Okay, I vaguely recall that did we ever talk about
Speaker 3: how there's a metal band that I've actually never listened to,
Speaker 3: can't vouch from, don't know if they're any good, but
Speaker 3: a metal band called Bathory seems like right kind of theme,
Speaker 3: you know, murder, bathing in blood, that kind of thing,
Speaker 3: some kind of metal band. But they've got one of
Speaker 3: those calligraphy fonts on their name and it looks like
Speaker 3: it says bat lord.
Speaker 2: Well, that couldn't help I think the already confused issue
Speaker 2: of the pronunciation there.
Speaker 3: Oh right, yeah, so you say but Torri, I say
Speaker 3: bat lord.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, probably and batlrd you know it does? You know?
Speaker 2: That's I think that's the confusing thing about it. Lady.
Speaker 2: The stories of Lady Butri are often associated with a
Speaker 2: bath of blood. Yeah, it's she's associated to some degree
Speaker 2: with vampires and therefore vampires and bats. So you know,
Speaker 2: things can get out of whack pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: There's actually a scene in Daughters of Darkness where she
Speaker 3: puts her cape up like a bat, even though she
Speaker 3: never transforms.
Speaker 2: Into a bat in the movie.
Speaker 3: We get no animal transformations at all in the film,
Speaker 3: but she's like standing up in a big sand dune
Speaker 3: in the nighttime and we see the kind of purple
Speaker 3: blue sky behind her and she just like puts up
Speaker 3: the bat wings.
Speaker 2: It's a beautiful shot. Yeah, yeah, classic. This is a
Speaker 2: film that has a very strong cult following at this point.
Speaker 2: It's been popping up on lists for me over the
Speaker 2: years whenever I look up interesting vampire films, you know,
Speaker 2: certainly from the nineteen seventies, and this one also came
Speaker 2: highly recommended from the folks at Videodrome here in Atlanta,
Speaker 2: who I believe hosted a screening of it just last year,
Speaker 2: but I don't think I was in town at the time,
Speaker 2: so I did not go.
Speaker 3: Am I right that you ended up picking this because
Speaker 3: you were asking them for French films and this is
Speaker 3: this is as close as you could get to a
Speaker 3: wee French movie you wanted.
Speaker 2: They have a lot of French films, and there are
Speaker 2: a lot of French horror films. I've found it challenging
Speaker 2: over the years here to pick one, pick a French
Speaker 2: weird house film that is also this sort of film
Speaker 2: that would be fun for us to talk about. Like,
Speaker 2: there's some really hard hitting French horror films, and they're
Speaker 2: not necessarily my cup of tea or necessarily what we'd
Speaker 2: want to talk about on the show. I don't know,
Speaker 2: and some others just didn't feel like the right pick
Speaker 2: at the right time. So I'm always open to listener
Speaker 2: suggestions on this front. I've got a few on my list. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe we'll get around to them.
Speaker 3: But again what you said earlier. Daughters of Darkness, despite
Speaker 3: being an international action, is mostly Belgian in origin, and
Speaker 3: it takes place within Belgium as well. It takes place
Speaker 3: at a seaside town or a seaside city on the
Speaker 3: Belgian coast called Ostan or I think, depending on whether
Speaker 3: you have the Dutch pronunciation or the French, it might
Speaker 3: be Ostend as well. But it's yeah, this like deserted
Speaker 3: seaside community, which is one of the bleakest types of
Speaker 3: settings there is. I've realized, like being next to the ocean,
Speaker 3: but there being nobody.
Speaker 2: On the beach.
Speaker 3: That's the thing that gives me chills when I see it.
Speaker 3: I didn't I didn't realize that really until this movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean this, This film is very well shot.
Speaker 2: A lot of intense selection went into the various scenes
Speaker 2: that we have in the In the picture and so
Speaker 2: they really lean into this idea of, you know, the
Speaker 2: desolate seaside town of the of the coast being kind
Speaker 2: of like the edge of civilization and time and so forth. Yeah,
Speaker 2: definitely an off season vacation movie, though I'm to understand
Speaker 2: they didn't necessarily shoot everything off season, like some of
Speaker 2: this stuff was shot in July. Wow, huh.
Speaker 3: To refine what I said a little bit, Actually, I
Speaker 3: think it's specifically the fact that it's like a beach
Speaker 3: made to be full of people. So you see chairs
Speaker 3: and little changing houses and everything like it's it's usually populated.
Speaker 3: I guess it would be less, it would have less
Speaker 3: of this kind of impact if it were more of
Speaker 3: a beach in a wilderness. But it's not that it's
Speaker 3: a beach right in the right world. The hotels let out,
Speaker 3: so it should be full of tourists, and it's not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even when they go to Bruges, Yeah, there's very
Speaker 2: few people around. Like everything feels a little bit like
Speaker 2: a ghost town for our characters here. The only different world.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, the only local attraction in Bruges is the
Speaker 3: the murder Victim. It's like, yeah, get your tickets to
Speaker 3: see the hand to pop out of the gurney one
Speaker 3: more time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you guys didn't go to the museums. What's up? Oh?
Speaker 2: They do ride what's it called? They ride one of
Speaker 2: those little boats in the canals. Yeah. Is it a
Speaker 2: gondola if it's in Bruges. I don't know technically, but
Speaker 2: they do ride with the dude wearing.
Speaker 3: The UFO Elvis sunglasses. They're crazy. Yeah, we will have
Speaker 3: a lot to say. I'm sure about the fashion choices
Speaker 3: throughout the film, because this movie is extremely invested in style.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, because it's not only a film full of
Speaker 2: dismal landscapes, but also just dazzling splashes of color, generally
Speaker 2: red and green, sometimes white, pure light even and of
Speaker 2: course darkness. And often all of these elements seem to
Speaker 2: be like speaking in a code, you know, like why
Speaker 2: is this actor wearing red right now? And what does
Speaker 2: that mean? When suddenly they're wearing white and this one's
Speaker 2: wearing red. It doesn't feel random. It feels very intentional,
Speaker 2: but like it's it's blinking a code to me that
Speaker 2: I'm supposed to decipher.
Speaker 3: Like the character Valerie is very coded as white and gold,
Speaker 3: whereas the character of the Countess is very black, white
Speaker 3: and red, which has some kind of unsavory associations. Even
Speaker 3: if you don't make the connection consciously, I feel like
Speaker 3: you can kind of sense it there. This looks like
Speaker 3: a flag I've seen before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was watching some extras. I think I
Speaker 2: was listening to the commentary track with the director and
Speaker 2: one of the screenwriters, Harry Comel. He said, these are
Speaker 2: the colors of dictatorship, and they're reflected throughout the film
Speaker 2: and also in this character. But then also sometimes she's
Speaker 2: a mirror.
Speaker 3: Ball, that's true. Yeah, the full sequin dress. Yeah, she's
Speaker 3: the disco ball. Yeah, some fabulous gowns, fabulous gowns. But
Speaker 3: like some other romantically themed vampire movies, this movie also,
Speaker 3: I think, is very concerned with the kind of subtleties
Speaker 3: of power and domination within romantic relationships.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as many have pointed out over the years and
Speaker 2: will become obvious in our discussion but also in any
Speaker 2: of your individual viewings of the picture, it's a film
Speaker 2: deeply concerned with the patriarchal control. And we might very
Speaker 2: roughly see Stephan, our lead male character, as paradoxically an
Speaker 2: individual who exists on both sides of this control directly
Speaker 2: subjicated by patriarchal control, and also exerting increasingly violent patriarchal
Speaker 2: control over his new bride and any women who ventured
Speaker 2: too close. But again, not all of this often feels
Speaker 2: like it is very It's presented in at least a
Speaker 2: semi cryptic fashion, so it's not too on the nose
Speaker 2: with a lot of these points. Sometimes it's a little
Speaker 2: on the nose, but a lot of it. It gives
Speaker 2: you a lot to think about. It's a lot to
Speaker 2: contemplate concerning the psychology of the picture.
Speaker 3: I liked what you said about it feeling like it
Speaker 3: takes place in another world that's really sinking in for me. Now,
Speaker 3: I don't think I put it in those words myself,
Speaker 3: but yes, this movie does feel like it is a
Speaker 3: place where the characters have kind of ventured outside of
Speaker 3: reality and outside of normal life into these otherwise deserted
Speaker 3: play places like I think it's significant that most of
Speaker 3: the film takes place in luxury environments, environments where people
Speaker 3: go for recreation to have a good time a fancy
Speaker 3: expensive hotel or these beachside resorts and tour buses and
Speaker 3: train compartments, and you know, like a luxury train compartment,
Speaker 3: private compartment. They're all like places where rich people play.
Speaker 3: And our characters come into these places where rich people play,
Speaker 3: but they're deserted of all the other people. It's like
Speaker 3: they were set up as some kind of experiment, like
Speaker 3: just to have these characters in particular kind of clash
Speaker 3: together and interact. There's something that feels intentionally kind of
Speaker 3: surreal and artificial about it, like that it is supposed
Speaker 3: to feel that way, that like we're kind of dolls
Speaker 3: being played with.
Speaker 2: Does that make any sense? Yeah, yeah, it does. And
Speaker 2: to the dreamlike aspect of things, the non reality aspects
Speaker 2: of things. I mean, there was at one point in
Speaker 2: one of the extras I was watching or listening to,
Speaker 2: the director said films are not reality, they are dreams,
Speaker 2: which I think is something that does reson It certainly
Speaker 2: resonates throughout this picture.
Speaker 3: That makes sense having seen this movie. Yeah, that spirit
Speaker 3: is running through it. There is a.
Speaker 2: Dream like quality where.
Speaker 3: You know, actions aren't always fully explained, they're not always logical,
Speaker 3: but they also make a kind of symbolic sense. It
Speaker 3: feels like they mean something, even if you couldn't say
Speaker 3: what it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and This is of course intensified by so many
Speaker 2: of the different visual choices that are made. There are
Speaker 2: these frequent red out transitions that I really liked in
Speaker 2: the picture, which of course feels very appropriate for a
Speaker 2: vampire film, a film concerned with blood, But it also
Speaker 2: just adds to this feeling that like everything is some
Speaker 2: sort of a fever dream, you know, and we're just
Speaker 2: sort of, you know, redding out from one scene into
Speaker 2: the next as the blood is surging to our head
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting. There's another thing I was thinking about
Speaker 3: the transitions in the movie.
Speaker 2: Did you notice a kind.
Speaker 3: Of weird pattern where a scene will kind of like
Speaker 3: escalate to negativity, where characters, like at the end of
Speaker 3: a scene are in maximal conflict, and then it'll cut
Speaker 3: and that'll be the end of the scene. And then
Speaker 3: the next time we see the characters again, they are
Speaker 3: behaving cooperatively or even happily together, And do you know
Speaker 3: what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, there's several
Speaker 2: key examples of this, and they yeah, it does sort
Speaker 2: of add to this kind of dreamlike quality, but also
Speaker 2: in a way that I mean, it doesn't in the
Speaker 2: sense that the dream we see here is a reflection
Speaker 2: of real life. So it's not like the characters are
Speaker 2: behaving like unrealistically, but we were getting that kind of
Speaker 2: like kaleidoscope vision of their lives.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking specifically of the kind of like horrible awkwardness
Speaker 3: while while they're on the bus returning from Bruges, well,
Speaker 3: Valerie and stephan they have this kind of argument about
Speaker 3: something that really should be a major red flag about
Speaker 3: Stephana and like this guy is oops, I'm married a
Speaker 3: serial killer. Like this guy's not good, and then it
Speaker 3: gets even weirder from there, and then we cut away
Speaker 3: after that, and the next time we see them, they're
Speaker 3: coming in the door from out of the rain, like
Speaker 3: laughing and just you know, having a great time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I mean maybe they're they're kind of faking
Speaker 2: it a little bit there, I don't know.
Speaker 3: But we don't see the resolutions from those moments where
Speaker 3: the terror or the awkwardness is just left hanging.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I think kind of works in a major
Speaker 2: way because since we don't see resolution, we don't see
Speaker 2: them patching it up. For us us, it feels all
Speaker 2: the more unresolved. You know, we don't see the tender
Speaker 2: moment that allows them to move on to the next
Speaker 2: few hours. So we're like, what are you guys doing here?
Speaker 2: This is not working. This is a this is a
Speaker 2: doomed romance even without vampires involved.
Speaker 3: Okay, So normally we would do some trailer audio about
Speaker 3: the film that rob understand that you checked out the trailers,
Speaker 3: then they're no good.
Speaker 2: Oh they're they're terrible. Like, I'm so glad I watched
Speaker 2: this movie without having seen a trailer for it, because
Speaker 2: this is one of those cases where the trailers either
Speaker 2: misrepresent things about the film or outright spoil things, and
Speaker 2: certainly visually spoil a lot of the key moments. So
Speaker 2: I would advise against the trailers. Just just pick up
Speaker 2: the film if you want to see it. And if
Speaker 2: you want to see it, you're in luck because this
Speaker 2: one's presently available to stream, at least in the States
Speaker 2: on a number of platforms, including Shutter and two B,
Speaker 2: so like there are options at all, you know, budget levels.
Speaker 2: And there was an excellent blu ray of it out
Speaker 2: from Blue Underground from several years back, and that's what
Speaker 2: I watched it on. I rented it from Videodrome and
Speaker 2: it has a great array of extras and commentary tracks.
Speaker 3: I just had to stream this one. But yeah, I
Speaker 3: would say more than most of the movies we watched,
Speaker 3: this is one where I really want to know more
Speaker 3: about the process, so I would be interested in those extras.
Speaker 3: I want to know what the creators were thinking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fascinating. I didn't have time to even explore
Speaker 2: all of the extras. And because they're like three different
Speaker 2: commentary tracks, you know, like multiple hours worth of content,
Speaker 2: And you know, it seems like there's a lot of
Speaker 2: interesting behind the scenes stories and you know, I'll pass
Speaker 2: on some of those, but you know, this is a
Speaker 2: film that people have been talking about ensuring their experiences
Speaker 2: making it for decades at this point, and so you know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of lore out there. All right, let's
Speaker 2: talk about the people who made the picture, starting at
Speaker 2: the top with Harry Kommel, the director and one of
Speaker 2: the screenwriters. Born nineteen forty Belgian film director, best known
Speaker 2: for this film certainly internationally, which achieved cult status throughout
Speaker 2: Europe and the United States and is now considered a
Speaker 2: classic of its genre. He was active as a director
Speaker 2: from around nineteen fifty three through two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: and while Daughters of Darkness was his big cold hit,
Speaker 2: his most critically successful film was the follow up I
Speaker 2: believe it also came out in nineteen seventy one, The
Speaker 2: Legend of doom House or it's also known as Malpatrie.
Speaker 2: That one stars Orson Wells and Susan Hampshire.
Speaker 3: I've had this one on the list for a bit,
Speaker 3: but I've never seen it. Of course, it's seventies Orson Wells,
Speaker 3: which I'm here for that, and it just looked like
Speaker 3: it looked suitably weird, so I've been wanting to check
Speaker 3: it out for a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, supposed to be great. Another picture of his note
Speaker 2: is nineteen sixty nine's Monsieur Howarden, which also has something
Speaker 2: of a following concerning the tale of a nineteenth century
Speaker 2: French female cross dresser whose two male lovers fight a
Speaker 2: duel over her, apparently based on an historic person, but
Speaker 2: I don't know the full story there. But as far
Speaker 2: as Daughters of Darkness goes splendid work here and the
Speaker 2: interview extras that I've watched and listened to, he comes
Speaker 2: off as very detail oriented, and I know that others
Speaker 2: have also talked about him being very detail oriented and
Speaker 2: a bit weird, but he points out that with Daughters
Speaker 2: of Darkness, they really wanted to make a film that
Speaker 2: was not only artistically solid but also fun, giving its
Speaker 2: genre trappings, and you know, I would I would say
Speaker 2: that I agree with that. It's you know, it's not
Speaker 2: you know, it's not you know, an explosion every minute
Speaker 2: or anything like that. A lot of people have pointed
Speaker 2: out that it has maybe kind of a slow burn
Speaker 2: build in some respects, certainly for a genre picture. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I feel like it was pretty fun throughout.
Speaker 3: There are certainly sometimes when it gets it gets very dark,
Speaker 3: but it's not. It's a very attention gripping picture. It
Speaker 3: is easy to stick with, at least in my experience.
Speaker 2: All Right, moving on to some of the other writers.
Speaker 2: Pierre Drew born nineteen forty three was also associate producer.
Speaker 2: He was also a director in his own right. In
Speaker 2: the extras on the Blue Underground discs, he reminisces on
Speaker 2: the three weeks he spent writing the script with Harry
Speaker 2: before the director who's also present in this extra with him,
Speaker 2: reminds him that it was actually three days. They were
Speaker 2: somewhat older at this point. It had been a long time.
Speaker 2: But that sounds like Roger Corman and Charles Griffith. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's different. Recollections on how this came together. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: came together it did. Drew's other credits as a writer
Speaker 2: include nineteen eighty seven's Mascara starring Charlotte Rampling Let's See Then.
Speaker 2: Also Jean Ferry nineteen oh six through nineteen seventy four
Speaker 2: also credit on the screen French writer who also contributed
Speaker 2: to Malpatri that we referenced to earlier. And there are
Speaker 2: a couple of other names that are also cited for
Speaker 2: work on the screenplay. And I believe Kummel and Drew
Speaker 2: also mentioned an American who did something. But I believe
Speaker 2: that Kummel and Drew are considered like the main writers
Speaker 2: on this picture.
Speaker 3: But at the center of this movie, you've got a
Speaker 3: bathory or a batty or a vampire. Let's say so,
Speaker 3: who is our vampire countess?
Speaker 2: It is Delphine Serik, who lived nineteen thirty two through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety And oh my goodness, she is amazing in this.
Speaker 2: This is just this is just a breathtaking performance. This
Speaker 2: is one of those performances where anytime she is on
Speaker 2: the screen, and thankfully she's on the screen a lot.
Speaker 2: You're just totally captivated by every little choice she's making,
Speaker 2: you know, with her body language, with her voice. I mean,
Speaker 2: her voice alone is just amazing. What are our eyes doing?
Speaker 2: It's just such a complete and total performance.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, the way she embodies a kind of violent glamour,
Speaker 3: this kind of passive aggressive predation, the way she's always
Speaker 3: the way she's always saying, like be nice to me.
Speaker 3: Oh man, it's so evil and it's so good.
Speaker 2: So playing our Hungarian countess. We have yet. Lebanese born
Speaker 2: French actress Delphine serig here Ye star of stage and screen,
Speaker 2: also a film director in her own right, a major
Speaker 2: European star in her day, as well as a prominent
Speaker 2: French feminist. She rose to stardom with nineteen sixty one's
Speaker 2: Last Year at Marimbad, which was based on the novel
Speaker 2: by Alan Robe Grillat, an author that I've I've read
Speaker 2: quite a bit of, but I've never watched any of
Speaker 2: his films. This was an adaptation of his films, and
Speaker 2: then he directed a number of films, but I have
Speaker 2: not seen any of his film work. The picture in
Speaker 2: question last year at Marion Bed was directed by Francis
Speaker 2: alan Renee, who subsequently cast Sarigh in nineteen sixty threes
Speaker 2: Muriel and subsequent films of note for her include nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty nine's Mister Freedom, nineteen seventies Donkey Skin, seventy two's
Speaker 2: The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie, nineteen seventy threes, The
Speaker 2: Day of the Jackal in nineteen seventy four's The Black Windmill.
Speaker 3: Donkey Skin multiply recommended to us that's been on the
Speaker 3: weird House list for a bit.
Speaker 2: Well, if she's in it, all the more reason to
Speaker 2: see it, because I had not seen her in anything before.
Speaker 2: But yeah, she was at the time a big star
Speaker 2: and the only actor that they actively tried to get
Speaker 2: for this picture. And then we're kind of shocked that
Speaker 2: they were able to get her attached to the film.
Speaker 2: In some of the commentary tracks, like they point out
Speaker 2: that apparently she was paid in cash, like a purse
Speaker 2: is full of like a whole bunch of European cash.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that means, but I like it.
Speaker 2: It sounds like it means something. Yeah, so basically I'm
Speaker 2: to understand. So again, this was a multinational production here,
Speaker 2: and she was the only person who was intentionally cast
Speaker 2: for the picture. Everyone else was provided. I believe Harry
Speaker 2: Kumbo's words were sight unseen by the various international producers.
Speaker 2: So Canada sent somebody, the US sent somebody, Germany sent
Speaker 2: a couple of people, and then it had to come together,
Speaker 2: you know. I believe it's the I believe John Carlin,
Speaker 2: who plays stuff in the commentary track with him, he
Speaker 2: pointed out that like the cast here was kind of
Speaker 2: an accident, but then again it works, And he made
Speaker 2: a great point. He said, like any good movie is
Speaker 2: kind of an accident, like if it comes together and works,
Speaker 2: like there's so many forces just completely out of anybody's control.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: A film is pretty much always a collaboration, so there
Speaker 3: there's more chaos in how it comes together. And also
Speaker 3: i'd say, because of that, a little bit more magic
Speaker 3: than something that is an art project created by just
Speaker 3: one person.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Now, as far as I can tell, everyone
Speaker 2: was excited to work with sarac on this, and everyone
Speaker 2: just had really nice things to say about working with her.
Speaker 2: By all accounts, she brought note on not only her
Speaker 2: own sheer talent, and effortless charisma to the production. But
Speaker 2: she was one of those actors that helped elevate everyone's craft,
Speaker 2: you know, like in people she had scenes with, she
Speaker 2: would go out of her way to improve their performance
Speaker 2: and make them feel at ease. And then she would
Speaker 2: even improve upon things, improve upon the direction that was
Speaker 2: given her in ways where the director was like, well,
Speaker 2: that was obviously the right choice because you made it work.
Speaker 3: There are so many things about her performance that really
Speaker 3: work very well. But one of them, again that I
Speaker 3: have to emphasize, is the way that she is so
Speaker 3: flawlessly threatening in a subtle way. There's like a subtext
Speaker 3: of threat in the way that she is overtly passive.
Speaker 3: She will make a little kind of plea or a bid,
Speaker 3: so she says multiple times to a character be nice
Speaker 3: to me, or says like please about something, in a
Speaker 3: way that has this kind of like undercurrent of violence
Speaker 3: running through it.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, absolutely, all right. So we'll have more to
Speaker 2: say about this performance as we roll on through the episode.
Speaker 2: But you can't have a vampire without a vampire thrall,
Speaker 2: and the Countess's thrall is in the form of Ilona,
Speaker 2: played by Andrea Rau born nineteen forty seven, German actress
Speaker 2: and former ballerina and model. Prior to this, she'd mostly
Speaker 2: acted I believe in comedies and some like sexy comedies
Speaker 2: in Germany. But this was one of a couple of
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy one films that saw her branch out into
Speaker 2: more serious work. Subsequent films included nineteen seventy fives than Net.
Speaker 2: We not the one with Sandra Bolla. No, No, this
Speaker 2: is woman had clothskin skin. It's so different net. I
Speaker 2: think it's metaphorical. I don't think it involves the Internet
Speaker 2: or an actual rope. Net a couple of notes from
Speaker 2: interviews that I watched with her. She points out that
Speaker 2: she ended up really liking her hair, so she kept
Speaker 2: his hairstyle pretty you know, has kept it for the
Speaker 2: rest of her life. It's kind of a.
Speaker 3: Strange haircut, but it looks cool. It's like it's like
Speaker 3: a sloped bob. I don't know what you call that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And her performance here is very physical, and I
Speaker 2: can see where her dance background probably became useful, you know.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, she was one of the
Speaker 2: greener performers here, and so there's kind of an awkwardness
Speaker 2: to her performance, but I don't know, I feel like
Speaker 2: it kind of works well because this is kind of
Speaker 2: a I mean, she's a vampire's thrall, She's in a
Speaker 2: very unnatural place in her life, and therefore I feel
Speaker 2: like a certain amount of the unnatural to the performance
Speaker 2: is fitting.
Speaker 3: She's a very sad and pitiable character, especially not just
Speaker 3: in the fact that she is enslaved to a vampire queen,
Speaker 3: but that the vampire queen insists on kind of treating
Speaker 3: her like a little friend. Yeah, the way that that
Speaker 3: makes it so much more cruel and the and so
Speaker 3: in these little moments where she has she has these
Speaker 3: great moments of a posture in her performance that like
Speaker 3: diminish her in various ways and render her more pitiable.
Speaker 3: Like there's a way that she kind of hugs up
Speaker 3: against walls and furniture the way like a kid does
Speaker 3: when they're ashamed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think she mentioned that the director told
Speaker 2: her to be a spider in some of these scenes,
Speaker 2: and so she's trying to be kind of like spidery,
Speaker 2: clinging to the walls and all. Oh yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 2: can see that.
Speaker 3: But also she's quite scary in one moment where she
Speaker 3: like surprises Valerie out on the balcony. We just see
Speaker 3: like a flash of her, and she's like she's like
Speaker 3: naked with her arms raised almost like a like vampire
Speaker 3: kind of claw hands, but also like a ballet pose.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and also I don't know, it feels like
Speaker 2: it's something out of like a silent German expressionist film
Speaker 2: as well. It has that kind of severity to it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, so those are that's our vampire queen and
Speaker 2: her vampiric thrall. But we also have to have our
Speaker 2: doomed honeymoon couple, and so let's get into them a
Speaker 2: bit here.
Speaker 3: They've got their own issues before the vampire even gets there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as others have pointed out, like even if the
Speaker 2: vampires never showed up, this was not going to end
Speaker 2: well and it could have easily still been a very
Speaker 2: dramatic horror picture in its own right.
Speaker 3: Okay, but this couple is Valerie and Stephan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's start with Valorie. Valerie is played by Danielle
Speaker 2: we Met born nineteen forty seven, Canadian actress who got
Speaker 2: her start in a pair of notable Canadian erotic films
Speaker 2: from sixty nine and seventy, and then she also did
Speaker 2: some mainstream television work in Quebec before filming this, which
Speaker 2: I believe it turned out to be her most iconic role.
Speaker 2: She continued to work through the nineteen seventies and then
Speaker 2: return to acting in the early two thousands. Other credits
Speaker 2: of note include nineteen seventy two's The Possession of Virginia.
Speaker 2: Never seen it. This is, I think for the only
Speaker 2: thing I've seen her in. She's done a lot of
Speaker 2: interviews over the years and has spoken very highly of
Speaker 2: the film itself and certainly of her work with Sarreg,
Speaker 2: But I believe her onset relationship with the director was
Speaker 2: not great. Her performance here is certainly greener. I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's unfair to even compare to someone like Sarreg,
Speaker 2: who was a seasoned actress of the stage and the screen.
Speaker 2: But again, I think it ends up largely working here,
Speaker 2: because it ends up we end up with this. There's
Speaker 2: a strong sense of naivety about Valerie. You know, she
Speaker 2: is being controlled and manipulated to varying degrees by two
Speaker 2: different characters in the picture before you know, arguably truly
Speaker 2: coming into her own.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I alluded to this earlier in our intro,
Speaker 3: but the movie is to a large extent about sort
Speaker 3: of different pathological ways that anxiety can present in romantic relationships.
Speaker 3: And so the character we're about to talk about in
Speaker 3: a minute, Stephan, like he has a kind of like
Speaker 3: externalizing anxiety which turns into violence and rage and fascination
Speaker 3: with violence and all that. Meanwhile, Valerie's anxiety manifests as
Speaker 3: a kind of passivity and insecurity that like she she's
Speaker 3: always like trying to reconnect with the man that she
Speaker 3: loves and trying to find ways of making the connection stronger,
Speaker 3: even as he gives her just more and more reason
Speaker 3: to doubt that he's really worthy of her at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean I think as viewers are, like,
Speaker 2: we're watching this, who we're saying, girl, you need to
Speaker 2: get out of this relationship. You've known a guy like
Speaker 2: two days, I don't think you should have married him.
Speaker 2: But but no, you're absolutely correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the red flags really stack up with Stefan. But
Speaker 3: the the way Valerie comes through I think is quite real.
Speaker 3: I Mean, this is a way sometimes people can deal
Speaker 3: with stress and anxiety and relationships is just is to
Speaker 3: be increasingly kind of placating and increasingly trying to make
Speaker 3: amends when it wasn't your fault to begin with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, Now playing Stephan, we have John Carlin who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen thirty three through twenty twenty American actor best
Speaker 2: known for his American TV roles. He played Harvey Lacy
Speaker 2: on Cagney and Lacy in the nineteen eighties. That would
Speaker 2: be the husband of one of the title characters. Not
Speaker 2: a show I ever watched, but I believe it was
Speaker 2: a big hit during its day, and he also played
Speaker 2: a number of different roles on Dark Shadows. I think
Speaker 2: initially and mainly a character named Willie Loomis, who I
Speaker 2: think is kind of like a con man who is
Speaker 2: involved with accidentally bringing or maybe intentionally bringing Barnabas Collins
Speaker 2: back from the grave, Barnabas Collins being a vampire. If
Speaker 2: anyone out there is not aware, I don't know what
Speaker 2: you're talking about, Oh, Barnabas Collins. I mean, I mean
Speaker 2: I watched maybe one or two episodes of Dark Shadows
Speaker 2: back in the day when it was aired on like
Speaker 2: Sci Fi Channel, But you know, Gothic horror as a
Speaker 2: soap opera as a concept, I'm totally on board with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm here for that. I've never seen it though.
Speaker 2: They did a couple of movies and he's in those
Speaker 2: as well, So maybe we can come back to some
Speaker 2: Barnabas Collins in the future. Okay. Carlin also did a
Speaker 2: number of other TV credits going back to the late
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties. He pops up on Night Gallery, He's in
Speaker 2: seventy five's Trilogy of Terror, He's in Super Train and
Speaker 2: then later Matt about You Murder, she wrote. He was
Speaker 2: also in the nineteen ninety three movie Surf Ninjas.
Speaker 3: Now it's easy to confuse that with a couple of
Speaker 3: other things. Yeah, Surf Ninjas is neither Surf Nazis Must Die,
Speaker 3: nor is it the Three Ninjas of the nineties is
Speaker 3: a separate thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I don't think there's a shared universe here.
Speaker 2: I checked out a couple of interviews with him as
Speaker 2: well part of his commentary track, and like everyone else,
Speaker 2: had nothing but praise for Sarah had a lot of
Speaker 2: great things to say about the finished product of the
Speaker 2: film and various interesting stories about its production, though he
Speaker 2: does point out that like he did, have to deal
Speaker 2: with the fact that the director was obviously disappointed that
Speaker 2: he was older than he looked in his head shots.
Speaker 2: And this is something I didn't even think about, but
Speaker 2: like he's I think the character is supposed to be
Speaker 2: in his twenties and the actor was in his late thirties.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, Oh, and so there was some tension there,
Speaker 2: at least initially where the directors like, they sent me
Speaker 2: this older guy, and he's too old for the part.
Speaker 2: But I don't know. I'd always felt it seemed to
Speaker 2: work for me as a viewer, So I don't know
Speaker 2: that there was really an issue here.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. Yeah, I wouldn't I would not have complained
Speaker 3: about this about the movie, But now that you say it,
Speaker 3: he does look a bit older than the part seems
Speaker 3: to be written. It has written as like a role
Speaker 3: for a young man I'm imagining like that Stephan is
Speaker 3: supposed to be I don't know, twenty three or so,
Speaker 3: but yeah, he is a good bit older than that.
Speaker 3: But I wouldn't have I don't know if I would
Speaker 3: have called that out without knowing that fact.
Speaker 2: I mean, part of it is that films do tend
Speaker 2: to condition us to not question the male in a
Speaker 2: relate on screen relationship. Being significantly older than a female counterpart.
Speaker 2: But also we'll get into some of the details we
Speaker 2: learn about Stephan, and I don't know, it felt kind
Speaker 2: of in keeping that maybe he was a little older,
Speaker 2: you know, while sort of being locked into this younger
Speaker 2: phase of life, you know, like he's he's older than
Speaker 2: someone should be to suddenly go off and marry somebody
Speaker 2: on the fly that's sort on vacation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but now that you mentioned that it was written younger,
Speaker 3: yeat would make sense if Stephan was supposed to be
Speaker 3: like a guy in his early twenties who's traveling continental Europe.
Speaker 3: He's a young, rich guy who's just out on holiday.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, So yeah, we'll get into more about this character.
Speaker 2: But on the whole, I really liked his performance. I
Speaker 2: thought it's pretty strong here there could because again, this
Speaker 2: is not just your typical, oh, honeymooning couple, but they're
Speaker 2: doomed because of some external force. They're like double doomed
Speaker 2: the external force, but also a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of red flags in the relationship and some you know,
Speaker 2: some some deep trauma and an anxiety that's going on
Speaker 2: in both of them. So those are all the beautiful
Speaker 2: people in the picture. Do you want to mention just
Speaker 2: there aren't very many humans in this, not counting some
Speaker 2: of the like extras in the background. But there's a
Speaker 2: hotel clerk at the hotel, the po Yeah, and he
Speaker 2: is played by Paul Esser, who lived nineteen thirteen through
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight, German actor of stage and screen, who
Speaker 2: also acted in the original Swedish West German Pippy long
Speaker 2: Stalking TV series. I've not seen. I feel like the
Speaker 2: Pippy long Stocking I can I consumed was maybe like
Speaker 2: like later work, like the US of British production. But
Speaker 2: it's been a long time since I've watched any Pippy
Speaker 2: long Stocking. Same here. I don't know the provenance of
Speaker 2: my Pippy. According to the director on this picture, he's
Speaker 2: supposed to play, you know, an old man who's been
Speaker 2: at the hotel for a long time, and Harry asked
Speaker 2: him to if he would wear gray hair for it,
Speaker 2: and he like flatly refused, perhaps out of vanity. I
Speaker 2: don't know that he insisted no, I will play gray,
Speaker 2: and he does. He plays old and tired very well. Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's also a retired policeman who shows up and this
Speaker 2: is this is a Belgian actor by the name of
Speaker 2: George Gemmen who lived nineteen oh six through nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: It's a minor part, but nice, very sweaty monologue. As
Speaker 2: I recall, he's supposed to be soaked with rain. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: it's supposed to be rain. But he looks sweaty.
Speaker 3: He's over say rig with just like wetness pouring down
Speaker 3: his face.
Speaker 2: It looks gross. But he is supposed to have come
Speaker 2: out of the rain. Yeah, a retired policeman who's still
Speaker 2: working cases in a kind of unsavory way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then he has a really ignominious end in
Speaker 3: the film.
Speaker 2: We'll explain that later. All right. The director of photography
Speaker 2: on this, because I mean, the look at the picture
Speaker 2: is so great we have to call him out. Edward
Speaker 2: van der Enden who lived nineteen twenty eight through twenty eleven.
Speaker 2: Dutch cinematographer whose other other credits include Lifespan and nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two's Fake Out. He also worked in some capacity
Speaker 2: on nineteen ninety three's Gettysburg I believe, credited with additional photography.
Speaker 2: Oh and we don't always mention costuming, but Bernard Paris
Speaker 2: is called out, who lived nineteen thirty six through twenty ten.
Speaker 2: His credit is costumer Miss Syrih's gowns. Again, the gowns
Speaker 2: in this picture are amazing, each more style eye catching
Speaker 2: them the last until you were almost literally blinded by them.
Speaker 2: Paris was apparently a notable name in French fashion back
Speaker 2: in the day. And then finally, the music. The music
Speaker 2: here was by composer of Francois de Robai, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine through nineteen seventy five. French musician and composer.
Speaker 2: Really splendid score on this one that is fortunately widely
Speaker 2: available on digital and physical formats, including I learned a
Speaker 2: vinyl edition that came out via Music on Vinyl. They
Speaker 2: put out only six hundred and sixty six copies, so
Speaker 2: you know that's fun. But anyway, it's a bleak, eerie
Speaker 2: score that resonates with like antique European flair, like a
Speaker 2: little bit of folk music, seventies weirdness, elements of jazz
Speaker 2: and synthesizer, just amazing stuff. I was listening to this
Speaker 2: one on its own a bit while working on notes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a good score and it the music incorporates the
Speaker 3: themes like it sounds like.
Speaker 2: Luxury.
Speaker 3: It sounds like the idol rich and it sounds like danger.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but it's like, yeah, it's like the it's
Speaker 2: like the decadence on top, but turning the sludge underneath,
Speaker 2: turning into like melting into unsavory sludge at like the
Speaker 2: base level. Yeah. Yeah, so great work. This guy died
Speaker 2: way too young, but his work is notable for its
Speaker 2: synthesis of jazz, synth and folk elements. And I was
Speaker 2: reading that he's sometimes held up as a forerunner of
Speaker 2: French electronic music. And the score was apparently sampled by
Speaker 2: Lil Wayne on a track called President Carter. I haven't
Speaker 2: listened to any of Lil Wayne's music that I know of,
Speaker 2: but you know, I always appreciate a good sample. All right,
Speaker 2: You ready to talk about the plot? Yeah, let's get
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 3: So the action opens on a landscape after sunset, with
Speaker 3: a deep blue twilight sky and a black tree limb
Speaker 3: hanging in the foreground, and we can hear dogs barking
Speaker 3: and a train approaching in the distance, and then the
Speaker 3: train overtakes the camera and it becomes very loud as
Speaker 3: it passes by. We cut inside the train to a
Speaker 3: private passenger compartment where we see close ups of objects
Speaker 3: that set the scene. You've got white flowers with drooping petals,
Speaker 3: cream colored silk sheets, champagne flutes half full and no
Speaker 3: longer bubbling. You got the champagne bottle dunked in a
Speaker 3: silver ice bucket, a white leather purse spathed in red
Speaker 3: light from the window, and then kind of some lace
Speaker 3: garments heaped on the floor, so you get an idea
Speaker 3: of the room. We can hear the train rattling on
Speaker 3: the tracks, and the wine glasses clinking against one another
Speaker 3: on a.
Speaker 2: Table beside the bed. We hear a woman's voice say Sta,
Speaker 2: and a man's voice say Valerie.
Speaker 3: So here are our main characters, Stephan and Valerie. They
Speaker 3: are newlyweds. They're here on their honeymoon. I think about
Speaker 3: three hours after they got married, they say, and they're
Speaker 3: having sex in the dark in their train compartment. And
Speaker 3: I would say a combination of kind of the sharp
Speaker 3: and ominous music and some staging in the sex scene
Speaker 3: immediately makes Stephan maybe come off as a little bit
Speaker 3: aggressive and perhaps dangerous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's kind of a firal, almost loopine quality to
Speaker 2: him here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now there's some interesting things about the colors in
Speaker 3: the scene, Rob, I don't know if you know what
Speaker 3: I'm talking about. A few times in the movie, I
Speaker 3: would say, especially here in the train car, the air
Speaker 3: somehow feels purple, not smoky. Sometimes air looks purple if
Speaker 3: they're smoking, it doesn't look like there's any smoke. It's
Speaker 3: like the air is thick with purpleness itself, and the
Speaker 3: purple coolness kind of envelops the naked bodies of Stepan
Speaker 3: and Valerie here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it almost gives it a kind of I don't know,
Speaker 2: it feels more voyeuristic in a way, like I'm somehow
Speaker 2: like seeing things through some sort of a purple limbs,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know, Like, yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 2: an interesting color choice for this sequence.
Speaker 3: But at the same time, a lot of the little
Speaker 3: items we see, like on the table beside the bed here,
Speaker 3: have these color themes of white, gold, and pink that
Speaker 3: are kind of associated with Valerie throughout the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and I think some of these are, like
Speaker 2: they're flowers and so forth here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, later we see Stephan and Valerie lying in bed,
Speaker 3: half asleep, and their first dialogue exchange apart from saying
Speaker 3: each other's names.
Speaker 2: Goes like this.
Speaker 3: Valerie says, Stephan, tell me, do you love me? And
Speaker 3: he kind of lazily mumbles, don't you know? But she
Speaker 3: pleads with him to say it, and he takes a moment,
Speaker 3: and then he says no. Then he asks her do
Speaker 3: you love me? And she says, in a more playful tone,
Speaker 3: what me? Of course I don't. And then Stephan says,
Speaker 3: that's good, you don't love me. I don't love you.
Speaker 3: We were made for each other. And I think this
Speaker 3: is such an interesting, complex little moment, especially given what
Speaker 3: we learn about the characters as the story progresses, we
Speaker 3: get a little glimpse here of this subsurface drama about
Speaker 3: power and dominance between them. And what I mean by
Speaker 3: that is when she says she doesn't love him, it's
Speaker 3: clear in her voice that she's just joking, like she
Speaker 3: says it in a kind of sing songy voice, like
Speaker 3: she's playing around. But is he only joking when he
Speaker 3: says he doesn't love her? I'm not sure. And Valerie
Speaker 3: does not laugh or even smile when he says no,
Speaker 3: he doesn't love her. Her expression is totally blank. It
Speaker 3: feels to me, especially watching it the second time, like
Speaker 3: he might be denying he loves her. Maybe not because
Speaker 3: he doesn't love her. I'm not sure what it means
Speaker 3: for him to love her, but denying he loves her
Speaker 3: as an expression of subtle sadism hidden behind a mask
Speaker 3: of irony, Like he says it in part to undermine
Speaker 3: her confidence and to make himself feel powerful. But of
Speaker 3: course it's plausible that he's just kidding. She says it back,
Speaker 3: and she's obviously kidding, and he could retreat to that
Speaker 3: explanation if pressed on it. And then this even greater
Speaker 3: feeling of dominance seems to accrue to him because Valerie's
Speaker 3: anxiety forces her to interpret it as a joke and
Speaker 3: respond in kind, like she doesn't have the confidence to
Speaker 3: kind of get serious and press him on what he means.
Speaker 3: And yet this is all while they're in this dreamy,
Speaker 3: half awake, blissful state, very weird mood. And I think
Speaker 3: this is illustrative of the kind of psychological drama that
Speaker 3: continues throughout the movie that you can kind of zero
Speaker 3: in on these little exchanges like this and then in
Speaker 3: up reading a lot into them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, especially on second viewing. This is also I
Speaker 2: went back and rewatched this part of the film as well,
Speaker 2: and yeah, I think at the first time through, I
Speaker 2: was more sort of like, I wasn't sure that this
Speaker 2: was going to be a film where this stuff mattered,
Speaker 2: because the doomed couple on a honeymoon is so much
Speaker 2: a cliche in the horror genre. I wasn't really sure
Speaker 2: that their relationship mattered in a meaningful sense. But it is,
Speaker 2: you know, it is very central to the plot of
Speaker 2: the film. Like it it's not just window dressing for
Speaker 2: the horrors to come, it is. It is interwoven with
Speaker 2: the hors to come. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Anyway, the train stops unexpectedly while they're here in
Speaker 3: the compartment, and they haven't gone far. They say they
Speaker 3: are only a few hours from their departure in Switzerland,
Speaker 3: and Stefan gets up to go find out what's happening.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: When he flips on the light, we suddenly exit the
Speaker 3: purple twilight world and we come into the world of
Speaker 3: harsh electric light. And when the light comes on, we
Speaker 3: see Valerie physically recoil like when it falls over her,
Speaker 3: which I thought was nice because nobody's a vampire yet.
Speaker 3: But she does she almost kind of hisses. You know,
Speaker 3: she like puts her hand up to shield herself, like ah.
Speaker 3: But Stepan Stephan takes a look outside the train window
Speaker 3: and he sees a flat, muddy field lined with skeletal
Speaker 3: trees and half melted drifts of snow.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And this might be another good place. We alluded to
Speaker 3: this earlier, but I just want to emphasize again that
Speaker 3: the exterior landscape shots in this movie are generally not beautiful.
Speaker 3: They are bleak, cold, dark, unlovely, drained of color.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And that's interesting because Daughters of Darkness is not a
Speaker 3: movie unconcerned with beauty. It is highly concerned with beauty,
Speaker 3: but not much with natural beauty. It's like beauty it
Speaker 3: doesn't feel good the way that outdoor settings and landscapes do.
Speaker 3: The beauty in this movie is all things that like
Speaker 3: die and decay. It's all like human bodies, of course,
Speaker 3: you know, they're beautiful people in the movie, but also
Speaker 3: like decadent old world luxury items made by humans, you know,
Speaker 3: fancy clothes and jewelry and furniture and cocktails and expensive
Speaker 3: hotel rooms and lobbies and the outside world or the
Speaker 3: natural world. Here is just a place of darkness and
Speaker 3: cold wind where dead bodies are dumped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: Anyway, so Stephan he leaves the train the compartment and
Speaker 3: he gets the scoop. He finds out that a train
Speaker 3: has gone off the tracks up ahead and they are
Speaker 3: stuck behind it, and this means they are going to
Speaker 3: miss the boat that they were going to take to England,
Speaker 3: where Stephan's family lives. And the backstory, as we gather
Speaker 3: is that Stephan is the sun of a wealthy aristocratic family.
Speaker 3: I think they're supposed to be Americans but living in
Speaker 3: England there the chilterns of Chilton manor uh and that
Speaker 3: I rob Did you interpret it the same way? That
Speaker 3: Stephan met Valerie while traveling and they had a very
Speaker 3: brief romance and then got married in Switzerland basically right
Speaker 3: after they met.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's what I got here. In a way,
Speaker 2: this is kind of like a sequel to a non
Speaker 2: existent rom com. Yes, that's good.
Speaker 3: Oh, you often don't get to see what happens after
Speaker 3: the wrong, after the meat cute wears off, and then
Speaker 3: you know, you really got to actually get to know
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you really start figuring out what each other's
Speaker 2: sense of humor is or isn't, And then the red
Speaker 2: flags become more apparent.
Speaker 3: Now Stephan has promised to take Valerie back to England
Speaker 3: to meet his family, primarily his mother, whom is repeatedly
Speaker 3: mentioned in a kind of ominous tone. But they have
Speaker 3: missed the boat because of the delay on the rail,
Speaker 3: and so Stephan suggests that they stay in a hotel
Speaker 3: in Hostan, which is a coastal city in Belgium, until
Speaker 3: they can catch another boat.
Speaker 2: And the exterior locations that we see in certainly concerning
Speaker 2: the hotel itself is in fact in Austin, and this
Speaker 2: place is a legit cy side vacation destination during summer months.
Speaker 2: The interiors of the hotel that we see, though, are
Speaker 2: the Hotel Astoria in Brussels.
Speaker 3: Now Here on the train, Stephan and Valerie have a conversation.
Speaker 3: It's clear that Stephan has not yet broken the news
Speaker 3: about Valerie to his mother, and there is an understanding
Speaker 3: that his mother would not approve either of the speed
Speaker 3: of their courtship or implicitly of who Valerie is. On
Speaker 3: first watch, I was wondering, It was like, is there
Speaker 3: something unsavory about Valerie? But I don't think so. I
Speaker 3: think the understanding is that Stephan is rich and he's
Speaker 3: supposed to marry some wealthy heiress or something, keep to
Speaker 3: his class, and Valerie is just a regular person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you get the impression like that he's marrying
Speaker 2: for fun here, and he shouldn't just be marrying based
Speaker 2: on fun or love or something like that. It should
Speaker 2: be some sort of yeah, some sort of proper connection.
Speaker 3: Valerie is uncomfortable that Stefan's mother doesn't know about her.
Speaker 3: She sort of gently presses him to break the news
Speaker 3: to his mother, but Stephan keeps making excuses. You know,
Speaker 3: it's not the right time to call. She has a
Speaker 3: heart condition. The surprise could kill her, and it seems
Speaker 3: like missing the boat to England was a great relief
Speaker 3: to Stefan. Yeah, Valerie says to him, You'll have to
Speaker 3: tell her eventually, and he says in reply, quote every
Speaker 3: year she's been telling me, Stephan, we are different. That
Speaker 3: is God's gift to us. We must never debase it.
Speaker 3: The implication being that Valerie is not worthy of Stefan,
Speaker 3: and she will she will reduce the precious metal within him,
Speaker 3: clipping the silver, so to speak. So at the end
Speaker 3: of the conversation, she asks Stepan if he is truly
Speaker 3: afraid of his mother, and he seems to be genuinely
Speaker 3: a little threatened by the accusation that he is afraid,
Speaker 3: so he promises to call his mother on the telephone.
Speaker 3: When they reach Ostan, the arrival here in the city
Speaker 3: is marked by an establishing shot of the shore. I
Speaker 3: talked about this earlier, but it's horrifyingly bleak. It's an
Speaker 3: off season. The beach is empty, and the water washing
Speaker 3: up on the sand is just gray on gray shadows
Speaker 3: and beige building facades and dark window glass.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, frequent shots that really drive home this kind
Speaker 2: of like low tide, off season vibe. And yeah, it
Speaker 2: leads us to They show us enough of it, and
Speaker 2: they show it to us frequently enough that we are
Speaker 2: left to ruminate on the meaning of these beautiful, dreary shots,
Speaker 2: you know, like seasonal isolation, seasonal withdrawal of life from
Speaker 2: a region, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: So they arrive at their seaside luxury hotel, and so
Speaker 3: the hotel is completely empty apart from them, and they
Speaker 3: enter in style. They're kind of dressed like celebrities. He's
Speaker 3: wearing this cool leather trench coat and he has the
Speaker 3: fashion shaggy Hares nineteen seventy one and Valeries, all dressed
Speaker 3: in white with a long coat lined with pale fur,
Speaker 3: and her face is kind of hidden behind big movie
Speaker 3: star sunglasses, and Stephan even picks her up to carry
Speaker 3: her across the threshold into the lobby. This is one
Speaker 3: of those scenes where like, the last time we saw them,
Speaker 3: there was like there was some strain now and now
Speaker 3: they're just like happily coming over the threshold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they pushed through it somehow, but yeah, they look
Speaker 2: quite fetching here. They're very mad, very fashionable.
Speaker 3: At check in, we meet an interesting character, the hotel
Speaker 3: Concierge Pierre. He is a large, soft spoken man in
Speaker 3: late middle age. I think this is the character the
Speaker 3: director was expecting to be somebody even older, but he's like,
Speaker 3: I will play.
Speaker 2: Gray, and so he does play gray.
Speaker 3: I would say Pierre has an interesting sadness about him,
Speaker 3: almost as if it's kind of connected to his role
Speaker 3: here at the hotel. He sees the careless rich come
Speaker 3: and go every season, year after year, but he's always here,
Speaker 3: and in fact, we learned that he has worked at
Speaker 3: the same hotel since he was a boy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there is an inherent sadness to him. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like he almost he haunts this place totally. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So, while they're checking in, Pierre mentions that the hotel
Speaker 3: is mostly empty. Actually, he says, the quote is it
Speaker 3: is dead due to the season. But Valerie smiles and she,
Speaker 3: in her kind of agreeable way, she says, actually she
Speaker 3: loves the seaside in winter, and Pierre says, Madame is
Speaker 3: quite right.
Speaker 2: It is much.
Speaker 3: Quieter, with probably some amount of back pain. Pierre lifts
Speaker 3: their luggage up and begins to carry it up to
Speaker 3: the room. No so, no bell, hop, no cart. It
Speaker 3: is all raw Pierre muscle at this hotel. He's got
Speaker 3: like five suitcases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we see the stairs right there. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: this location is tremendous and this stairway is very dramatic,
Speaker 2: at least if you're fashionably walking down those stairs and
Speaker 2: not lugging all of this luggage up those stairs. I
Speaker 2: don't think there's an elevator in this hotel, or is there.
Speaker 2: I don't know. We don't see it.
Speaker 3: Do Anyway, While Pierre has taken the bags up a
Speaker 3: Valerie reminds Stephan that he promised to phone his mother
Speaker 3: when they arrived. Stephan first tries to make an excuse,
Speaker 3: but then he reluctantly agrees. So he chases down Pierre,
Speaker 3: who's in the middle of going up the staircase with
Speaker 3: the bags, and he interrupts him while he's holding all
Speaker 3: of this weight. And here's Stefan pulls a trick. He writes,
Speaker 3: he writes on a piece of paper and hands it
Speaker 3: to Pierre, and he asks him to call this number
Speaker 3: and put him through at the room. But the slip
Speaker 3: of paper, we can see it, and it actually says
Speaker 3: say there is no reply, and he hands Pierre some
Speaker 3: money with it. So there are kind of two levels
Speaker 3: of drama here, Like the main one is between Stefan,
Speaker 3: Stephan and Valerie. We're seeing Stefan pull a trick to
Speaker 3: deceive the woman he just got married to, and wonder
Speaker 3: We're wondering why is he lying? What's going to happen
Speaker 3: if Valerie finds out? But the second level of drama
Speaker 3: is more subtle. It's that you've got this creaky old
Speaker 3: concierge carrying like five suitcases at once. He's going up
Speaker 3: the stairs for the millionth time in his life, and
Speaker 3: the young strong Stefan is just carelessly making him stop
Speaker 3: in the middle of this climb holding his bags to
Speaker 3: enlist him against his will in a plot to deceive
Speaker 3: his wife.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There, this was many years before The White Lotus. But
Speaker 3: I feel some thematic kinship here. Yeah, that that sort
Speaker 3: of theme I guess is more certain top level or
Speaker 3: primary in White Lotus. Kind of a subtext here, But
Speaker 3: I don't know. I was getting some overlap.
Speaker 2: No, no, that's a good call.
Speaker 3: In their room, Stefan gets the call and he feigns surprised.
Speaker 3: What do you mean you can't connect? Well, keep trying.
Speaker 3: He orders Pierre to keep it up. And then later
Speaker 3: we see Valerie and Stephan having supper in an otherwise deserted,
Speaker 3: white tablecloth dining room. And despite the luxury, I'm sure
Speaker 3: this is supposed to be like a Michelin Star kitchen,
Speaker 3: something is just rather cursed in this room.
Speaker 2: I would hate to be in this room. It's awful. Now,
Speaker 2: this dining room, I believe is one off, if not
Speaker 2: the only interior location that is at the hotel. And
Speaker 2: I'll stend Oh, okay, so but it I mean it
Speaker 2: has a beautiful windows, but uh yeah, it is very depopulated,
Speaker 2: and so there is an inherent kind of sadness to it.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's it's just that it's empty, and I don't know.
Speaker 3: Something about the the emptiness and the combination of colors
Speaker 3: and the lighting.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's like they've come to stay at
Speaker 2: the Overlook Hotel during the office. Yes, yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: Food somehow never looks good in European movies from the seventies.
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly why this is, no matter how
Speaker 3: good it must have looked in real life. This film
Speaker 3: grain or something just makes it look like wretched mush.
Speaker 3: And there is a scene later where Valerie is she's
Speaker 3: cutting up a roll or a bun of some kind
Speaker 3: in bed, and I despise this bun. It looks hard
Speaker 3: and dense and awful, just some kind of disgusting like
Speaker 3: pretzel brick as big as a fist.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I could never really make out what they're eating.
Speaker 2: Even in this scene. It's like they're in tearing into
Speaker 2: a fish and I'm not sure if it's breakfast or dinner.
Speaker 2: And then the scene in bed, I feel like a
Speaker 2: bowl of shrimp and I was like, are they having
Speaker 2: shrimp for breakfast? I don't know what's going on here.
Speaker 2: We definitely see some gray lobsters later. It's just it
Speaker 2: doesn't look good.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the foods, the foods on the platters are
Speaker 3: nicely covered by these crystal domes. I'm sure that keeps
Speaker 3: it real nice and warm.
Speaker 2: Remember that. Oh.
Speaker 3: Also at the dinner scene, more questions about Chilton man or.
Speaker 3: Valeriees like, don't you think it's odd that no one's
Speaker 3: answering the phone at your house? And he's like, taste
Speaker 3: my gray fish.
Speaker 2: You know, he holds the fish up, and he's living
Speaker 2: in the moment in like the least healthy way possible
Speaker 2: this whole time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Stephan says, I don't see why you make
Speaker 3: such a fuss about my mother's opinion. The fact is
Speaker 3: she already hates you without knowing you exist. And eventually
Speaker 3: Valerie gets him to promise that he's going to go
Speaker 3: ahead of her to England to prepare his mother to
Speaker 3: meet her, and he's going to leave tomorrow or maybe
Speaker 3: the day after or maybe the day after that.
Speaker 2: But soon also sounds problematic, sounds a little bit like
Speaker 2: I'm going to leave you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but of course into their life. A storm is
Speaker 3: about to blow, because here we get to the arrival
Speaker 3: of Countess Bathory. She arrives at speed, driven in this
Speaker 3: old fashioned European luxury sedan rob I don't know if
Speaker 3: you know anything about cars or what kind of car
Speaker 3: this is, but it seems like a kind of fancy,
Speaker 3: old old style car, like it's from a different age.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks sporty.
Speaker 3: It's being driven by a young woman named Ilona, whom
Speaker 3: the Countess calls her assistant or secretary. We first see
Speaker 3: the Countess as a dark silhouette in the car, and
Speaker 3: then as she's getting out, we see just these gleaming
Speaker 3: strips of polished black leather. That's her tall boots, and
Speaker 3: she's climbing out of the car one leg at a time.
Speaker 3: We pan up across her body. She's dressed mostly in
Speaker 3: black with furs leather, I think some feathers in there too,
Speaker 3: And then when we get to her face, we don't
Speaker 3: see her eyes at all. It's just pale skin and
Speaker 3: cherry red lips behind a black mesh veil, and it's
Speaker 3: just a mouth. The top half of her face is
Speaker 3: hidden in shadow. There's just the red mouth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what a presentation. I think. Towards the end of
Speaker 2: this shot we see like the glistening of her eyes
Speaker 2: and they almost look black. Yeah, both the filmmakers and
Speaker 2: sarag here apparently took inspiration like direct homage to German
Speaker 2: and American actress and icon Marlene Dietrich. So that's, you know,
Speaker 2: interwoven throughout the picture, you know, very overt shades of
Speaker 2: Marlene Dietrich. Here.
Speaker 3: Elona is also, by the way, pale and dressed in black,
Speaker 3: but with an energy of perpetual anxiety. She's got a
Speaker 3: kind of learned helplessness. And the first thing she says
Speaker 3: is something kind of desperate about how she hopes this
Speaker 3: place will prove acceptable so they can stop traveling, And
Speaker 3: the Countess is exactly the opposite. She just oozes confidence
Speaker 3: and domination. She tells Ilona to unpack their luggage and
Speaker 3: she goes inside, and then once she's inside the hotel,
Speaker 3: we really get a good look at her where she's
Speaker 3: like hidden behind this meshure veil, and she she looks
Speaker 3: at people with this little smile like she could just
Speaker 3: like disassemble them and like make make furniture out of
Speaker 3: their organs.
Speaker 2: It is just such a like a pitch perfect you know,
Speaker 2: iconic fem fatale presentation. Here, I mean the look, but
Speaker 2: also her performance of this character is just so pitch perfect. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So she meets Pierre, the concierge, and asks him for
Speaker 3: the royal suite. It's the best, the best suite in
Speaker 3: the place. Unfortunately he has already rented it out to
Speaker 3: the only other couple in the hotel, pointing them out
Speaker 3: in the dining room. And when the Countess looks in
Speaker 3: through the glass at Stefan and Valerie, uh, they're well,
Speaker 3: they're I think they're biting pieces of fruit. If that's
Speaker 3: some Garden of Eden imagery or not.
Speaker 2: He has a green apple, yes, yes, uh.
Speaker 3: But the Countess's eyes like turn into laser beams, like
Speaker 3: she sees what she wants. But is it Valerie or
Speaker 3: is it Stefan. Well we'll have to learn later. But
Speaker 3: the Countess says to Pierre like, oh, no matter that
Speaker 3: I can't have the royal suite, I just want the
Speaker 3: suite adjoining theirs. And I have to say that is
Speaker 3: bad manners.
Speaker 2: But as we're about to learn, she gets what she
Speaker 2: wants here. That is true.
Speaker 3: I think there's similar rules about like bathroom stalls and
Speaker 3: urinals and stuff like, you don't if there are a
Speaker 3: bunch of empty ones, you don't go to the one
Speaker 3: right next to the occupied one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can space things out a little bit sweet
Speaker 2: wise in this place. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, Pierre is shaken in this scene. He because he
Speaker 3: says he remembers the Countess. He says he's seen her before.
Speaker 3: She stayed at the hotel once many years ago when
Speaker 3: he was a boy. But that doesn't make any sense
Speaker 3: because he was a boy then and now he is old,
Speaker 3: and she looks the same as she did when he
Speaker 3: first saw her.
Speaker 2: But she is unmoved.
Speaker 3: She says, my mother, Perhaps Pierre is freaked out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I thought it was a very convincing free cap,
Speaker 2: Like there's a he seems to be not only confronting
Speaker 2: the supernatural in this, but confronting his own mortality, you know,
Speaker 2: Like it's really I mean, he's really shaken here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, later, Ilona comes in with their bags and the
Speaker 3: Countess points out the couple to hers. She says, look
Speaker 3: how perfect they are. And then Valerie looks up and
Speaker 3: catches the two creeps just staring straight at her.
Speaker 2: But later that night, Valerie.
Speaker 3: And Stephan talked to Pierre. They learned the countess's name.
Speaker 3: Why it is the Countess Elizabeth Battori, and Stefan seems
Speaker 3: to make something of this. Now we do get a
Speaker 3: scene of the Countess and Elona together in their room.
Speaker 3: Elona is staring at the window and Valerie is. They're
Speaker 3: actually outside walking on the beach in the dark down below,
Speaker 3: and Elona says she can't wait another day. She is
Speaker 3: in need right now, in need for what. I think
Speaker 3: we're going to assume blood, But the Countess says no,
Speaker 3: they will wait, and then she keeps talking about how
Speaker 3: perfect Valerie is. She's maybe not interested in Stepan quite
Speaker 3: as much as Valerie, and Elona is jealous and again
Speaker 3: mirroring the kind of the flashes of sadism we saw
Speaker 3: in Stephan earlier, with like enjoying the situations of power
Speaker 3: he could create over Valerie, there seems to be something
Speaker 3: similar going on with the Countess here. I detect that
Speaker 3: the Countess is taking pleasure in Elona's jealousy, that's like
Speaker 3: making her happy. And then Elona says, I wish I
Speaker 3: could die, and the Countess just replied does not address
Speaker 3: this and just says the light. The light hurts my eyes.
Speaker 3: So Elona takes her off her red scarf from her
Speaker 3: neck and droops it over the lamp, tinting the room red.
Speaker 2: Beautiful.
Speaker 3: So there are curious emerging symmetries in these two relationships.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely neat, But both are very unhealthy relationships and
Speaker 2: in very similar mirroring ways. Absolutely so.
Speaker 3: I was thinking, maybe this is a good place. This
Speaker 3: is sort of the end of act one here, Maybe
Speaker 3: this is a good place to break and now recount
Speaker 3: things in a little bit less chronological scene by seeing
Speaker 3: detail and instead give a broader summary of the rest
Speaker 3: of the plot, and then maybe we can come back
Speaker 3: and talk about individual scenes that stand out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 3: From here, while Valerie and Stephan continue their stay at
Speaker 3: the hotel, the Countess and Ilona insinuate themselves into Valerie
Speaker 3: and Stephan's lives. There's a scene where they have a
Speaker 3: long conversation in the hotel lobby that we can come
Speaker 3: back and revisit. But they talk while enjoying some bizarre
Speaker 3: looking cocktails, some green stuff, and I don't know what
Speaker 3: all this is, but the Countess explains that she is
Speaker 3: the descendant of the Blood Countess Ershabette Battori of the
Speaker 3: sixteenth century. I think I was saying that right Erzhabet,
Speaker 3: meaning the same as Elizabeth, just happens to have the
Speaker 3: exact same name as her descendant here, who is famous
Speaker 3: for kidnapping and murdering young girls in a bizarre ritual
Speaker 3: that involved torture, mutilation, and bathing in her victim's blood.
Speaker 3: Valerie is more than a little distressed that Stefan is
Speaker 3: visibly sexually excited by this conversation about murder and mutilation,
Speaker 3: and then also that he and the Countess start, I
Speaker 3: don't know what they're doing, some kind of like murder
Speaker 3: lore foreplay right in front of everybody in the middle
Speaker 3: of the lobby in.
Speaker 2: A very like, physically believable and yet outrageous way. The
Speaker 2: Countess is basic like, let me touch your nipples whilst
Speaker 2: I tell you about the many crimes of my ancestor
Speaker 2: aka myself.
Speaker 3: Yes, and Stephan is like he is having an out
Speaker 3: of body experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Valerie is understandably creeped out by Yeah.
Speaker 3: So after this, Valerie convinces Stepan to call his mother
Speaker 3: on the phone for real, but the call does not
Speaker 3: go very well, and there is a big twist, a
Speaker 3: big revelation here. The person that Stepan calls is in
Speaker 3: fact an older man lounging in this lavish conservatory in
Speaker 3: Chilton manner as this place filled with plants, who kind
Speaker 3: of reacts with a raised eyebrow at the news that
Speaker 3: Stefan is married and sort of mocks him for it.
Speaker 3: I believe a lot has been made of this scene
Speaker 3: with the phone call, and there are questions about how
Speaker 3: to interpret it. Robert, I wonder if you read it
Speaker 3: the same way I did. Did you take it that
Speaker 3: this character is actually not supposed to be Stephan's parent
Speaker 3: in any way, but is being called mother, but is
Speaker 3: actually Stefan's former lover and financial benefactor.
Speaker 2: Yes, I believe that's the interpretation that most have made,
Speaker 2: and that's that's what I read to hear. It's just
Speaker 2: one scene and the character that we don't even know
Speaker 2: what this character's actual name is. The code named mother
Speaker 2: is played by the male actor Fonz Rademachers, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty through two thousand and seven, notable Dutch actor
Speaker 2: and director. As an actor, his other credits include nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five lifespan with Kloskinsky, which I think I referenced earlier,
Speaker 2: and as a director, his most notable achievement was nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty six Is the Assault, which won an Oscar for
Speaker 2: Best Foreign Language Film. His performance is quite interesting, not
Speaker 2: only because of this twist, but because even though I
Speaker 2: think there's supposed to be nothing at all supernatural about
Speaker 2: this character, he also kind of has vampire energy. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 2: I believe it was. Yeah. I was reading about this
Speaker 2: in the book V for Vampire by David J. Skall,
Speaker 2: and he describes this character as an androgynist amalgam of
Speaker 2: Oscar Wilde and Bella Lagosi. Yeah, I'd say that's about right.
Speaker 2: Though to be clear, this character is not and is
Speaker 2: not implied to be a vampire right right. Interestingly, this
Speaker 2: this whole scene with the reveal of who Mother is
Speaker 2: is you know, it's just a phone call. This character
Speaker 2: shares no actual physical scenes with any other actor in
Speaker 2: the film, and John Carlin has has pointed out that
Speaker 2: that the director intentionally didn't want him to know the
Speaker 2: identity of Mother and kept it from him, but one
Speaker 2: of the producers got in touch with Carlin and told
Speaker 2: him because he's like you know, because like, hey, you're
Speaker 2: an actor, you need to know like your actual role.
Speaker 2: But also he's like he didn't want it there to
Speaker 2: be any like any like weird feelings, like after the
Speaker 2: fact of the movie comes out and then and then
Speaker 2: he finds out the twist. So he actually played this
Speaker 2: scene knowing what the twist was.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, Well, so I think this scene is very
Speaker 3: open to interpretation and there are a lot of unanswered
Speaker 3: questions about it. Maybe we can address that a little
Speaker 3: bit more in a few minutes, but it's clear that
Speaker 3: it does. It's a source of kind of like unresolved
Speaker 3: anxiety and pain for the character of Stepan, like that
Speaker 3: he is he is not happy with this conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd definitely get the feeling that everything that he
Speaker 2: is doing right now is in response to problems with
Speaker 2: his relationship with this individual, with the person we're referring
Speaker 2: to his mother.
Speaker 3: And but Stephan he does not deal with this pain well. Instead,
Speaker 3: he has some kind of emotional episode which turns into
Speaker 3: rage and then violence directed toward Valerie, and he beats
Speaker 3: and rapes her. The rape happens off screen, but it's
Speaker 3: he turns violent toward her after the scene, Valerie wakes
Speaker 3: up while steph And is still sleeping and tries to
Speaker 3: leave town by herself to escape the situation, but the
Speaker 3: Countess then intervenes, meets her at the train station and
Speaker 3: prevents her from leaving. She's trying to talk her into staying,
Speaker 3: not into staying with Stephan, but into staying maybe with
Speaker 3: her Yeah, and they spend time together at some kind
Speaker 3: of spa or mineral spring, where they discuss Valerie's relationship
Speaker 3: with Stefan and the many dangers he presents, but it's
Speaker 3: increasingly clear over time that the Countess wants Valerie for herself. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: at the Hotel, Ilona, on the Countess's instruction she's been
Speaker 3: told to do this, goes to Stephan and seduces him.
Speaker 2: And after this.
Speaker 3: They're they're in the bathroom and they're sort of messing
Speaker 3: around and Stephan sort of he's he thinks he's being playful,
Speaker 3: but once again there's this blurred line between kind of
Speaker 3: flirtation and aggression with him, where he's like being playful
Speaker 3: but he's actually being violent. And he's trying to put
Speaker 3: Ilona in the shower and he's laughing while he's doing it.
Speaker 3: And she's screaming no, seemingly in this case because the
Speaker 3: shower water actually might harm her. They mentioned earlier that
Speaker 3: vampires shrink from clear running water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yah yah. Running moving water is sometimes like the
Speaker 2: deeper cut of a vampire weakness that isn't always employed
Speaker 2: because I don't think storytellers often know what to do
Speaker 2: with it, or it seems like too potent of a weakness.
Speaker 2: But it's nicely used here.
Speaker 3: But in the struggle, Ilona falls on his shaving razor
Speaker 3: and she is killed. The Countess and Valerie arrive back
Speaker 3: at the hotel room just in time to see this,
Speaker 3: to see the body. This seems to be going almost
Speaker 3: exactly as the count has planned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I kind of I was thinking about this.
Speaker 2: You can easily imagine that they were supposed to walk
Speaker 2: in on the two of them in bed together or
Speaker 2: showering together or something. But ope, surprise, she's managed to
Speaker 2: get herself killed by him, and the Countess is probably like, well,
Speaker 2: this is even better. This has worked out even better
Speaker 2: than I planned.
Speaker 3: So now the Countess takes control, She takes control of
Speaker 3: the situation. We get the sense that she's probably disposed
Speaker 3: of a body.
Speaker 2: Or two before, I think so.
Speaker 3: And she instructs Valerie and Stephan in how to clean
Speaker 3: up the crime scene and how to get Alonea's body
Speaker 3: into her car, and then they drive out to this
Speaker 3: desolate beach.
Speaker 2: Far from town.
Speaker 3: Again, all the locations that should be beautiful are actually
Speaker 3: just horrible and bleak.
Speaker 2: This is one of them.
Speaker 3: They go out to this horrible beach and they bury
Speaker 3: her body in the sand. By the way, here, they're
Speaker 3: being watched by this older detective character we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: who's he shows up in the scene where they're having
Speaker 3: the conversation and the lobby also maybe we can talk
Speaker 3: about that, but he's sort of been on the case
Speaker 3: of the countess, we are led to believe. And then
Speaker 3: on the way back from this, the countess just like
Speaker 3: runs him down with her car while he's on a bicycle.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there's no nobody's coming to save them. The
Speaker 2: beach you mentioned, like the desolate beach sequence here, I
Speaker 2: mean tremendous in many ways. I love, like you see
Speaker 2: the big concrete reinforcements of the beach. So even the
Speaker 2: beach here is like reinforced by domination and man made violence. Yea.
Speaker 2: And then and then the burying of the body is
Speaker 2: just really perfectly executed, like the harshness of her body
Speaker 2: being thrown in on top of Steph and it almost
Speaker 2: seems that for a moment there that they're intending to
Speaker 2: bury him alive with her.
Speaker 3: I think they're considering it, and they kind of back away,
Speaker 3: but I don't know. I think they'll get there eventually.
Speaker 3: So the three of them go back to the Countess's
Speaker 3: room after this. Actually first I think Stefan and Valerie
Speaker 3: go back.
Speaker 2: To their room, but Valerie.
Speaker 3: Is beginning to fall under the sway of the Countess,
Speaker 3: and I think there are interesting questions, Rob, I don't
Speaker 3: know if this is a good place to talk about
Speaker 3: it might as well. To what extent do you think
Speaker 3: Valerie's submission to the Countess is supposed to be like
Speaker 3: magical vampire hypnotism in nature, or what part of it
Speaker 3: is just a kind of like a kind of helplessness
Speaker 3: and expression, further expression of what she's already shown but
Speaker 3: from her personality, but taken to the extreme.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of ambiguity to this, like is
Speaker 2: this just further domination? Is it to some degree liberation
Speaker 2: in a way?
Speaker 3: I mean liberation, yes, from Stephan, who is she needs
Speaker 3: liberating from, but also it seems to be putting her
Speaker 3: under the control of a new oppressor.
Speaker 2: Right, and we've already seen the end result of the
Speaker 2: of oppression by the Countess, you know, like she has
Speaker 2: she has clearly disposed of many thralls over the years,
Speaker 2: and they eventually just become tools and not darlings to her.
Speaker 3: But anyway, well, so Valerie is in this state while
Speaker 3: where she's becoming increasingly entrall to the Countess, and you know,
Speaker 3: she and Stephan in some way also they're both seemingly
Speaker 3: having their wills kind of reduced, and Stephan wants to
Speaker 3: reassert control over Valerie and commands her to leave with him,
Speaker 3: but she won't go, so they end up in the
Speaker 3: Countess's room having another horrible hotel room service dinner, and
Speaker 3: a fight erupts and Stephan is killed after the two
Speaker 3: women smash a crystal bowl on his face and cut
Speaker 3: him up with the shards, and then they just both
Speaker 3: drink the blood from his wounds.
Speaker 2: This sequence here, the killing slash sacrificing of Stefan. It's
Speaker 2: a scene that is both ridiculed, like when it happened.
Speaker 2: I think my job dropped and I kind of laughed
Speaker 2: a little because, Yeah, they push it down on his face.
Speaker 2: It even the crystal plate cover like cleanly snaps in two.
Speaker 2: The two snapped sides flip around and land on his risks,
Speaker 2: slicing them open, and then they both begin to feed.
Speaker 2: But it's so perfect in its execution too. It feels
Speaker 2: like it feels like a sacred symbol. It feels like
Speaker 2: there's a there's a there's a structural completeness to it
Speaker 2: that I really liked.
Speaker 3: A very similar thing happened when when Ilona fell on
Speaker 3: the razor in the earlier scene, there was a kind
Speaker 3: of almost a magical hand guiding it through the scene.
Speaker 3: It just like perfectly happens that it slices her wrists
Speaker 3: and then she falls on it in this kind of
Speaker 3: implausible way. But it's all kind of done in a
Speaker 3: slow motion with these short close up shots. Uh yeah,
Speaker 3: a similar thing going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the and these and these implausible, possibly implausible deaths
Speaker 2: are not not through and when they do it right,
Speaker 2: they do feel like destiny.
Speaker 3: I thought it was interesting the absolutely unceremonious dumping of
Speaker 3: Stephan's corpse where they just like throw them over a
Speaker 3: wall under the road.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they're just done with him. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So after this, Valerie and the Countess escape the scene
Speaker 3: of the crime in the Countess's car, with Valerie driving,
Speaker 3: and the Countess is becoming desperate that they've they've got
Speaker 3: to get to safety before daylight. But they don't make it.
Speaker 3: And so here we get to the ending where where
Speaker 3: I think the sun is rising and coming through the trees.
Speaker 3: They're like driving along a road that's lined by trees,
Speaker 3: and as the sun comes in, Valerie is blinded and
Speaker 3: wrecks the car. Questionable whether she meant to wreck the
Speaker 3: car or not, I couldn't quite tell. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you have thoughts about that.
Speaker 2: I interpreted it as accidental, but I think this is
Speaker 2: an unacceptable read as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, either way, Valerie is I think she was wearing
Speaker 3: her seat belt and she is okay. But the Countess
Speaker 3: is thrown through the windshield and impaled through the heart
Speaker 3: on a branch from a fallen tree, and then she
Speaker 3: catches fire and explodes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's pretty stunning and again improbable in one sense,
Speaker 2: but also it feels like destiny. And there are some
Speaker 2: dialogue lines from the Countess earlier kind of allude to this.
Speaker 2: She talks about about like death following her, like death
Speaker 2: is always coming for her, and like this is a
Speaker 2: scene where death catches up and claims her, and so
Speaker 2: she seems like a little shocked, but also you know,
Speaker 2: realizing as well that like this, this was always going
Speaker 2: to happen, and here it is.
Speaker 3: She's been living on credit from the balance of death
Speaker 3: for centuries now, and it's it's been coming. It's finally
Speaker 3: come to collect.
Speaker 2: But for Valerie though, that's right, son.
Speaker 3: Yes, there is also a coda where Valerie has now
Speaker 3: become a vampire queen and we see her essentially repeating,
Speaker 3: repeating what the Countess did to them. We see her
Speaker 3: making friends with a young man and a young woman
Speaker 3: at a luxury resort, these nice hot people dressed up
Speaker 3: in like tennis clothes, the tennis rackets, and she she
Speaker 3: is recruiting them.
Speaker 2: It seems like she's the new bathroom. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: it leaves us and this is the end of the picture,
Speaker 2: and it leads us to contemplate, like so many things,
Speaker 2: but one thing I kept wondering about is like what
Speaker 2: is the like what did the countess see as her mission,
Speaker 2: and what is Valorie seeing as her mission here when
Speaker 2: she sees two young people, like is is she identifying
Speaker 2: like a woman that she wants to free from from
Speaker 2: a dominating relationship? Is it like a you know, an
Speaker 2: unending war against patriarchy? Is it? But is it? Or
Speaker 2: is it something else? It's just like here is just
Speaker 2: there is here's an attractive person that I want to
Speaker 2: dominate with my will, Like, you know, where where is
Speaker 2: the domination? Where is the liberation? How does it all
Speaker 2: come together in this picture?
Speaker 3: Good question. I think that is somewhat left open mm
Speaker 3: hm to talk about a few individual scenes. I wanted
Speaker 3: to dwell for just a moment on the trip to Bruges. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so there's this time when they like read some articles
Speaker 3: in the newspaper about ooh, there have been horrible murders
Speaker 3: in Bruges, girls getting their throats slashed. Uh, And then
Speaker 3: what do you know, It's time to do a little
Speaker 3: day trip. Let's go to Bruges. So they go there,
Speaker 3: they do a boat ride on the canals, and then
Speaker 3: they just stop to look at a murder scene, like
Speaker 3: the police are around a house and a body is
Speaker 3: being brought out, and Stephan is just obsessed. He's like
Speaker 3: insatiably curious to get up close and see the flesh
Speaker 3: of the corpse. There's this older man there who's telling
Speaker 3: him the details of the crimes, and it turns out
Speaker 3: this is the inspector guy who's been on the trail
Speaker 3: of the countess. Are we to understand I think that
Speaker 3: the countess is responsible for these murders?
Speaker 2: I believe, so yeah, there's some illusion later on to
Speaker 2: the fact that she has been in bruses recently and
Speaker 2: was clearly feasting.
Speaker 3: So Stephan is he gets really absorbed as the girl's
Speaker 3: body is taken by under a sheet, though her hand
Speaker 3: keeps falling out and then they keep stuffing it back
Speaker 3: under the sheet. But he's so wrapped up that he
Speaker 3: like freaks out and he hits Valerie when she interferes
Speaker 3: with him. And so when they're on the bus on
Speaker 3: the way back, Valerie says to him, Stephan, I'm frightened,
Speaker 3: and he says, of what she says of you, and
Speaker 3: he's dismissive. He says, don't be ridiculous. I was just
Speaker 3: looking like everyone else, and Valerie says, don't lie to yourself.
Speaker 3: You were pleased. It gave you pleasure. You actually enjoyed
Speaker 3: to see that dead girl's body, And Stephan says, and
Speaker 3: you enjoyed telling me. We're getting to know each other,
Speaker 3: which is interesting because it's this dark dynamic where I
Speaker 3: think he's sort of right there. There's something that's she's
Speaker 3: getting fulfillment out of, like recognizing this about him in
Speaker 3: some way. And then after this conversation, she kind of
Speaker 3: leans into him and then starts trying to get frisky
Speaker 3: on the bus, I think, but Stepan like pushes her
Speaker 3: hand away. And this is one of those scenes where
Speaker 3: there's like it cuts there, and then the next time
Speaker 3: we see them, they're like coming in out of the
Speaker 3: rain and they're like laughing and everything's good again. But
Speaker 3: the next scene, by the way, we should also mention
Speaker 3: because this is the meeting in the lobby where where
Speaker 3: the Countess and our young couple first get to know
Speaker 3: each other. And the Countess when we first meet her here,
Speaker 3: she's sitting in a red velvet chair and she's knitting.
Speaker 3: She has two arn balls with knitting needles, and she's
Speaker 3: going to town.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I love the implied I mean, in a way,
Speaker 2: they're like two vampire fangs. I guess right, Oh I
Speaker 2: didn't think about that. Yeah, now is this also refreshed
Speaker 2: my memories? This also the scene with the bright green drink.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, yes, we're not there yet, so like at first, first,
Speaker 3: she has a little exchange with the loona a Lona
Speaker 3: comes out and she's like, you know, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: leave you, Countess.
Speaker 2: I'm going to leave you and I'm going to go away.
Speaker 3: She says, let me go away, and the Countess says,
Speaker 3: I never would and you never could. And Alona is like,
Speaker 3: but you can have them, the new ones, the beautiful ones.
Speaker 3: With them, you don't need me anymore. And the Countess says,
Speaker 3: without me, you'd have no life. And Delna says, you
Speaker 3: call this a life. But the Countess again is just
Speaker 3: kind of cold to her, unfeeling to her needs. And
Speaker 3: the Countess meets Stefan and Valerie as they come in
Speaker 3: from Bruges and invites them for drinks in the lounge.
Speaker 3: I like the part where she kind of fusses over
Speaker 3: them being wet from the rain. She's like, oh no, no,
Speaker 3: you must go up and get yourselves dry clothes. If
Speaker 3: you came down with the slightest bit of a cold
Speaker 3: I'd never be able to forgive myself. She also demands
Speaker 3: that Pierre bring them hot rum.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, so they get hot rum, and yeah, she
Speaker 2: gets this bright green drink that I think a lot
Speaker 2: of you would recognize as a grasshopper. But in one
Speaker 2: of the extras where they were talking about this, they
Speaker 2: referred to it as an Alexander, and I was looking
Speaker 2: it up, and they're different like Alexander drinks, not all
Speaker 2: of which are green summer green, and I get the
Speaker 2: impression it's essentially the same as a grasshopper. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Once that much cream dement is in something, I think
Speaker 2: we're all these drinks are the same, equally undrinkable by
Speaker 2: humans or vampires.
Speaker 3: I considered trying to make myself one of these this week,
Speaker 3: but I was not it. I didn't have time to
Speaker 3: go out to the store and get the ingredients needed.
Speaker 2: No shame on anyone who enjoys a good grasshopper, but
Speaker 2: it's it's never been my beverage of choice.
Speaker 3: I don't know what I would do with the rest
Speaker 3: of the bottle of a crim dement.
Speaker 2: It would it would outlive you. That's the tragedy of
Speaker 2: getting a bottle of crim dementth is like you know
Speaker 2: that this will have to be passed on to another generation,
Speaker 2: and there's you know, it's it's like seeing an ancient
Speaker 2: vampire queen walk into your parlor.
Speaker 3: It's like having a vampire lover. They'll be around when
Speaker 3: you're gone.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But I also love how she never drinks this
Speaker 2: beverage and then eventually just hands it to Alona, who
Speaker 2: just dumps it into a potted plant, which seemed even
Speaker 2: worse right because like other drinks, you can dump dump
Speaker 2: into a plant and it's like, Okay, that plant probably
Speaker 2: doesn't need a gin and tonic, but very well. But
Speaker 2: this is like a bright green, clumpy beverage.
Speaker 3: It's made with heavy cream. Yeah, but oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: So they have this whole conversation and it goes to
Speaker 3: a bunch of different places. She's she's so kind of
Speaker 3: coy and coquettish in a way, Like she she's talking
Speaker 3: about how, you know, oh, I have to say whatever
Speaker 3: I'm thinking.
Speaker 2: I just can't keep it to myself. You know.
Speaker 3: The Archduke said to me, Elizabeth, you are an innocent.
Speaker 2: And yeah.
Speaker 3: She also talks about how she hates it when there's
Speaker 3: no one around. It's so lonely. She's the opposite of Pierre.
Speaker 3: But let's see. Oh, this scene eventually works it up
Speaker 3: to the spot where Valerie storms out. Well well, like
Speaker 3: the Countess and Steffan are going wild about the mutilation stories.
Speaker 3: But this also leads up to that moment I mentioned
Speaker 3: earlier that is so such a good horror moment where
Speaker 3: Valerie goes back to her room alone because you know,
Speaker 3: her husband's like getting busy with the Countess about talking
Speaker 3: about getting cutting people's fingers off, and she goes up
Speaker 3: to her room alone and suddenly Alona comes in at
Speaker 3: the balcony, I think, wanting to drink her blood, but
Speaker 3: she's like naked and doing this weird ballerina pose and
Speaker 3: we hear Valerie scream. But then when we come to
Speaker 3: her later, she's like in bed and you don't know
Speaker 3: what happened in between. Also, when we see Alona later,
Speaker 3: she's like leaning naked over a toilet and vomiting. I think,
Speaker 3: so it's like, what is what happened? While while they
Speaker 3: were off screen it's not quite clear, it seems like
Speaker 3: something happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe alone is just
Speaker 2: sick from not feeding something to that. Maybe. But then yeah,
Speaker 2: the countess comes in chastises and like tells her like,
Speaker 2: oh you couldn't wait, could you? And so forth, let's
Speaker 2: see anything.
Speaker 3: Oh we said we were going to say a little
Speaker 3: bit more about the call with quote mother this character.
Speaker 3: One thing I had to say about the scene is
Speaker 3: not at all about the themes. I was curious how
Speaker 3: the phone call was gonna work. Is the butler brings
Speaker 3: the telephone out to the conservatory on a platter, like it's.
Speaker 2: Almost not slunged into anything.
Speaker 3: It's not plugged into anything, And I was like, where's
Speaker 3: the cord? I was like, this is unrealistic. But then
Speaker 3: it all came around because the butler kneels down, gives
Speaker 3: the phone, hands the phone over, and then plugs the
Speaker 3: phone into a jack in the floor. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: that's how they do it. They're just jacks everywhere. You
Speaker 3: plug it in, wherever you bring it. That's smart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it took so much work to have a phone
Speaker 2: call in those days. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But anyway, seriously, when the conversation begins, the surprise is
Speaker 3: it shows this this older middle aged man who's like
Speaker 3: you know, he's in a hammock in the conservatory, surrounded
Speaker 3: by beautiful plants and flowers, and he's like on a
Speaker 3: pink and purple pillow and he's wearing a scarf, and
Speaker 3: he says on the phone, he's like, Steffan, I hope
Speaker 3: you didn't do anything foolish in Switzerland, and Stefan breaks
Speaker 3: the news that he got married, and there is kind
Speaker 3: of derision and cruel amuse meant in the response it's
Speaker 3: just kind of like, oh, what a nice surprise. What
Speaker 3: you did wasn't foolish, it was merely unrealistic.
Speaker 2: What in the world would we do with her?
Speaker 3: And he, you know, he says, he says, like when
Speaker 3: she hears about us, oh, I hate to think about that,
Speaker 3: kind of seemingly threatening him or or something. But it's
Speaker 3: never made fully explicit what he means here. You just
Speaker 3: have to kind of read the scene and make your
Speaker 3: own interpretation. But he ends saying, be sure to tell
Speaker 3: that young woman that mother sends regards. And then after
Speaker 3: the call of course, this is when we see Stephan
Speaker 3: first turn really violent with Valerie. And it's interesting, like,
Speaker 3: before the violence actually starts, you see these kind of
Speaker 3: two waves come over him that I think are interesting
Speaker 3: in the performance, like you see you see him by
Speaker 3: turns internalize his feelings and then a change happens, and
Speaker 3: then he externalizes them and then that's when he becomes violent.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's very interesting here that again
Speaker 2: mother is portrayed as a male character, and yet the
Speaker 2: actors were originally not told this detail. In fact, we're
Speaker 2: left to to infer that it was a female character,
Speaker 2: perhaps the character's mother, that he actual mother that he
Speaker 2: was on the phone with. So, you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's an interesting exercise to try and figure out, like
Speaker 2: why did they make this choice? And my read on
Speaker 2: this is that part of it might be, you know,
Speaker 2: it might come back again to this theme of victimization
Speaker 2: and patriarchal rule. So, you know, we we have our
Speaker 2: character Stephan here who is seemingly like both a perpetrator
Speaker 2: and a victim of patriarchal power, Like there is this
Speaker 2: older man in his life that he is he at
Speaker 2: least feels control by and is rebelling against and has
Speaker 2: gone out into the world and sort of like found
Speaker 2: someone that maybe on some you know, on some level,
Speaker 2: definitely felt liberating and freeing to be around. But then
Speaker 2: it comes back around to how can I control this
Speaker 2: person and in doing so feel free from how I
Speaker 2: was being control Yeah, and I guess like, like, clearly
Speaker 2: the gender divide is was important to this film's vision,
Speaker 2: with the Countest being kind of like this female force
Speaker 2: of liberation or another form of domination, and therefore they
Speaker 2: that they thought it was important to have the figure
Speaker 2: that it was controlling Stephan to be you know, equally
Speaker 2: a male force. And therefore, you know, beating into this idea.
Speaker 2: You know that it is patriarchal oppression, that is, that
Speaker 2: is you know, weaving its its roots through everything. But
Speaker 2: at the same time, it's definitely worth noting that there
Speaker 2: are there, definitely do seem to be some homophobic tropes
Speaker 2: wound up in this mother Stephan relationship that were presented
Speaker 2: with and you know, this could have quite possibly been
Speaker 2: incorporated indirectly for a number of reasons, but David J.
Speaker 2: Skall does call it out en VFA vampire. The late
Speaker 2: David Jay Skull was himself openly gay and often wrote
Speaker 2: about the intersect of homophobia, gay culture, and vampire media,
Speaker 2: with observations based on everything from homo eroticism in mainstream
Speaker 2: Dracula films to its overt treatment in counterculture art house
Speaker 2: or even pornographic films that had vampire characters in them.
Speaker 2: And he describes Daughters of Darkness as by saying that quote,
Speaker 2: the politics are ambiguous, if suspiciously homophobic, But the film
Speaker 2: contains a sufficient number of stylish set pieces to have
Speaker 2: earned it the reputation of a minor classic. So again,
Speaker 2: I do tend to agree with schol here. I think
Speaker 2: there are some homophobic tropes wound up in the portrayal
Speaker 2: of this character. I don't know how meant much of
Speaker 2: it was itself directly intentional or kind of a bypropu
Speaker 2: of other things the film was trying to say, and
Speaker 2: maybe just incorporating tropes that were just present everywhere anyway
Speaker 2: in the in the early nineteen seventies and a lot
Speaker 2: of films and storytelling. I think it would have been.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to try to imagine different versions of this
Speaker 2: film where the reveal here of mother was a little different,
Speaker 2: Like what if the scene had him talking to an
Speaker 2: older woman that was that was his actual mother, or
Speaker 2: an older woman or even a woman his own age.
Speaker 2: That seems to be a past romantic partner who is
Speaker 2: domineering and he's trying to escape from. Like, what would
Speaker 2: it have changed that much? Would it have had that
Speaker 2: much of an impact or what if regardless, what if
Speaker 2: there was like some element of tenderness to the relationship
Speaker 2: implied as well, because what we see here is just
Speaker 2: a relationship of domination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you could imagine a version of the
Speaker 3: scene where he makes the call and the character is
Speaker 3: the same, but the character is like anger, you know,
Speaker 3: is like showing like real like a sense of having
Speaker 3: been betrayed or something that Stephan went and married somebody else.
Speaker 3: But you don't get that. There's just kind of a
Speaker 3: confident dismissal of him, you know, just like kind of
Speaker 3: like this, this is silly. I'm disappointed in you. You'll
Speaker 3: be back under my thumb soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, things like this have happened before. This may be
Speaker 2: more severe, but I'm not surprised. Yeah, you'll be back
Speaker 2: next week.
Speaker 3: And it's in fact, it's kind of like the exchange
Speaker 3: with Alona and the Countess.
Speaker 2: Yes, when Alona, I mean there are.
Speaker 3: Multiple things like that, like when she threatens to leave
Speaker 3: and the Countess almost completely ignores her, it's just like, yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 3: you need me, You're not going anywhere, Or in the
Speaker 3: scene where she says I want to die and the
Speaker 3: Countess just says, the light's hurting my eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There's so many ways that the relationships that these
Speaker 2: characters have mirror each other, the living and the undead.
Speaker 3: Another kind of interesting mirrorring that's worth talking about is
Speaker 3: how Valerie's romance in a way with the Countess, though
Speaker 3: it seems to be a kind of maybe magically controlled romance,
Speaker 3: because when the Countess is first like trying to seduce Valerie,
Speaker 3: the Countess says what she says many times. She says,
Speaker 3: you must be nice to me. Soon you will love
Speaker 3: me as I love you now, and Valerie says, I
Speaker 3: despise you. You're disgusting now. Maybe you could think that Valerie
Speaker 3: is I don't know, maybe covering up her feelings. Maybe
Speaker 3: that's not really how she feels, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: I take it as that there is some amount of
Speaker 3: magical coercion of some kind going on as she continues.
Speaker 3: She falls for the Countess after this, but there's like
Speaker 3: a similar arc to how she seems to fall for
Speaker 3: Stefan in the first place, and then there's a similarity
Speaker 3: when like by the end of the movie, Valerie first
Speaker 3: becomes the countess's new Ilona, and then she kills the
Speaker 3: countess becomes the new Countess herself. Yeah, so yeah, it
Speaker 3: almost it's kind of the sith lord thing right there.
Speaker 3: There are always two and then one kills the other. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it makes you wonder how many times this has happened
Speaker 3: as well. We since that the countess has killed many Elona's,
Speaker 3: but was the countess once some other countesses Ilona.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. And
Speaker 2: the magical coersion. I do want to come back to
Speaker 2: that scene where where they end up finally killing and
Speaker 2: feasting on stuff, and again we have the crystal the
Speaker 2: crystal glass that they press over his face. But also
Speaker 2: this is the sequence I believe where she's wearing that
Speaker 2: just magnificent sequin gown. It's like a disco ball and
Speaker 2: the light like they the way they lit this scene,
Speaker 2: like the light is just it's just just bouncing off
Speaker 2: of her, and you really get this sense that she
Speaker 2: is like this bewildering lamp. She is like a lighthouse
Speaker 2: that has completely and sore both of them. But also
Speaker 2: the movie is packed with mirrors.
Speaker 3: Almost almost every scene or every other scene has a mirror,
Speaker 3: and its constantly characters looking in mirrors or being across
Speaker 3: from mirrors. And in this final scene here with the
Speaker 3: three of them, the Countess becomes a mirror. It's like
Speaker 3: she her body is a disco ball mirror from top
Speaker 3: to bottom. It's reflecting all of delight, and it's reflecting them,
Speaker 3: And it's kind of that that she shows them what
Speaker 3: they are in a way.
Speaker 2: It's fabulous. Yeah, it's it is a great movie to
Speaker 2: read and reread. It has so many you know, like
Speaker 2: I say, it feels like it's speaking to you in
Speaker 2: some sort of a code and you're left to decipher
Speaker 2: it in your subsequent viewings and reviewings.
Speaker 3: Also, just I gotta throw it out there, the shot
Speaker 3: where they show her after her body gets thrown out
Speaker 3: of the car in the wreck and she's just hanging
Speaker 3: on that branch.
Speaker 2: It looks amazing. Yeah, yeahs as does that shot that
Speaker 2: we alluded to much earlier in the episode where she
Speaker 2: finally raises up her cape there on the beach. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's like she has bat wings, revealing her vampiric nature,
Speaker 2: at least to us the viewer, and it's just so
Speaker 2: splendid and yet to be clear. She's one of the
Speaker 2: villains of the piece, but you can't help but love
Speaker 2: her style. Is everybody a villain by the end? I
Speaker 2: think Valerie.
Speaker 3: Seems to be up to no good by the end.
Speaker 3: So the characters that don't start off villains become villains everyone.
Speaker 3: All four of our main characters have killed or tried
Speaker 3: to kill somebody. So yeah, nobody's completely squeaky clean here,
Speaker 3: are they? Just Pierre, Pierre, poor Pierre. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 3: like Pierre. Okay, well, I guess that's Daughters of Darkness.
Speaker 2: All right, we're gonna go and close it out here,
Speaker 2: but we'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on this picture.
Speaker 2: If you have the story about your history with Daughters
Speaker 2: of Darkness, if you have thoughts and some of the
Speaker 2: themes we've discussed here right in, we would love to
Speaker 2: hear from you. Let's see, just to remind her that stuff.
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