Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: We have a fun one here for you today. This
Speaker 1: is our eleven ten, twenty twenty three episode on the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one Yugoslavchak co production Visitors from the Arkana Galaxy,
Speaker 1: fabulous film. I urge you to see it if you
Speaker 1: can find it somewhere, and I hope you enjoyed this
Speaker 1: episode in which we discuss it.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 3: today we are going to be talking about the nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty one science fiction film Visitors from the Arcana Galaxy.
Speaker 4: Rob. I just finished watching this one moments before we
Speaker 4: sat down to record here, and wow, this is in
Speaker 4: our It's got to be on the top ten list
Speaker 4: of weirdest movies we have ever done on the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one was a real pleasure. This one's a
Speaker 1: real treat, This one's worth hunting down. And I have
Speaker 1: to say also thanks to listener Eric for recommending this
Speaker 1: one to us. He pointed out some months ago that
Speaker 1: the excellent restoration label Deaf Crocodile was going to be
Speaker 1: putting this one out, and I looked at the cover art,
Speaker 1: I looked at some of the stills from the film,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Okay, I think I need to
Speaker 1: buy this one. So I put in the pre order,
Speaker 1: set it aside during Halloween with the intention of coming
Speaker 1: back to it in November, and here we are.
Speaker 4: Yes, thank you for the recommendation. So Rob, this was
Speaker 4: your pick. I really didn't know anything at all about
Speaker 4: it going in except you handed the disc off to
Speaker 4: me said here's what we're watching. I put it in,
Speaker 4: and wow, this is the movie where you really do
Speaker 4: not know where this is going. Some of the weird
Speaker 4: movies we talk about have a weird texture to them,
Speaker 4: but they might be kind of formula in terms of
Speaker 4: plot structure. A lot of the you know, horror movies
Speaker 4: we look at or like that you can kind of
Speaker 4: tell where they're going to go. This one, I had
Speaker 4: no idea where it was going, and it felt at
Speaker 4: times like a child, you know, trying to make up
Speaker 4: a story as they go along, adding in just bizarre
Speaker 4: details like I really didn't expect there was going to
Speaker 4: be a major subplot where the main character of this
Speaker 4: movie's girlfriend is turned into a metallic cube. And I
Speaker 4: also did not expect, especially given how some earlier parts
Speaker 4: of the movie feel very broad and whimsical and almost childlikes,
Speaker 4: like they might be intended for like a younger audience.
Speaker 4: I really did not expect that later in this movie
Speaker 4: there would just be a gory monster rampage carried out
Speaker 4: by like the Axis bold as Love cover version of
Speaker 4: like a cross between Alf and Mickey Mouse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mumu the monster. It's going to be fun to
Speaker 1: talk about. Yeah, this is a move. It's like so
Speaker 1: many films, like you're saying, they're on the tracks of genre,
Speaker 1: they're on the tracks of formula, and this one, with
Speaker 1: this film, it may seem at first like it's going
Speaker 1: to be on the tracks, but no, the train lifts
Speaker 1: off the tracks, and then you're flying off to who
Speaker 1: knows where, And we'll get into some of the reasons
Speaker 1: for that, like the different elements and inspirations that came
Speaker 1: together the alchemy of this picture. So this movie was
Speaker 1: a nineteen eighty one co production of Yugoslav and Czechoslovakian cinema,
Speaker 1: involving four different studios, Zagreb Film which is now in Croatia,
Speaker 1: jad Run Film also now in Croatia, Kenny Montografi Zagreb,
Speaker 1: which is also now in Croatia, and then film Ski
Speaker 1: Studio Barrundov, now in the Czech Republic.
Speaker 4: An international co production.
Speaker 1: An international co production of two countries that no longer
Speaker 1: exists in the form they existed in at the time
Speaker 1: of this film's release, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia in particular.
Speaker 4: I don't know exactly where this was shot, but I
Speaker 4: would guess it was along the Croatian coastline because the
Speaker 4: movie has a much more I don't know, it's just
Speaker 4: kind of scenic Mediterranean feel than I was expecting as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's my understanding that this was filmed in Croatia,
Speaker 1: and yeah, you do have that texture of these like
Speaker 1: Croatian vacation towns, and they touch on that more than once.
Speaker 1: It's an important part of the background setting for the
Speaker 1: whole picture, and I was reading some of the background
Speaker 1: material for this particular film. The Deaf Crocodile release has
Speaker 1: a nice little booklet with information about the picture and
Speaker 1: the filmmakers by film professor Jennifer Lynde. Barker, and she
Speaker 1: points out that a lot of the locations used from
Speaker 1: this film might look familiar to people who watch Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones because a lot of scenes from Game of
Speaker 1: three were filmed in the exact same locations.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, that would make sense.
Speaker 1: I think King's Landing. I'm not sure I'm remembering that correctly,
Speaker 1: but I think the King's Landing scenes were filmed in Croatia.
Speaker 1: But I could have that mixed around in my head.
Speaker 1: And it's another place in the Game of Thrones TV
Speaker 1: show that was filmed in Croatia.
Speaker 4: You absolutely on Game of Thrones. I think we'll see
Speaker 4: multiple locations that are, you know, coastal areas on the Adriatic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. Well, my elevator pitch for this movie is,
Speaker 1: if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss
Speaker 1: will physically manifest, move into your flat, and turn your
Speaker 1: girlfriend into a cube.
Speaker 4: I think that's dead on that. Yeah, that's exactly how
Speaker 4: I describe it. You know, I haven't had as much
Speaker 4: time to process this one as I sometimes do when
Speaker 4: we watch these movies, because I just now finished watching it.
Speaker 4: But I was trying to think, So, this is a
Speaker 4: story about a writer and a dreamer, a creative person.
Speaker 4: Of course, a lot of writers end up writing stories
Speaker 4: that are about writing. It's kind of it's a very
Speaker 4: tempting subject if you know, to write about what you
Speaker 4: are doing right now, which is writing, if you're writing.
Speaker 4: But I was wondering to what extent the themes of
Speaker 4: this movie are supposed to be about writing specifically, or
Speaker 4: if it's incidental that the main character is a sort
Speaker 4: of dreamy science fiction storyteller and really it's supposed to
Speaker 4: be more about relationships or just obsession or whatever. The
Speaker 4: main character often describes his own problem not so much
Speaker 4: in direct terms of like creativity or writing, but as
Speaker 4: an obsession.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think multiple reads on it
Speaker 1: are of course valid. But yeah, it is fascinating that
Speaker 1: it is. It's not alone in being a picture about
Speaker 1: sort of the conflict between a creative obsession and the
Speaker 1: responsibilities of real life and just sort of the texture
Speaker 1: and nature of real life versus fantasy and what happens
Speaker 1: when these two worlds come into conflict. But as we'll discuss,
Speaker 1: like one of the interesting things about Robert, the main
Speaker 1: character in this the writer, is he doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: get a lot of writing accomplished. There's this strong sense
Speaker 1: that the book is nowhere near any state of completion,
Speaker 1: and it like physically manifests later on, is a blank book.
Speaker 1: So it's almost really more about the conflict between the
Speaker 1: inner world of imagination and the outer world, you know,
Speaker 1: with something that's been tackled in so many works, including
Speaker 1: the Never Ending Story. I mean, that's part of the
Speaker 1: whole scenario there, except with this whole childhood versus adult
Speaker 1: sort of scenario cobbled into it as well.
Speaker 4: That's a very good point. I think I was going
Speaker 4: to say something right along those lines that the writing
Speaker 4: in this movie is there's never any indication that it
Speaker 4: involves language at all. Like you don't see him crafting
Speaker 4: sentences or paragraphs or like working on his fiction. It's
Speaker 4: purely about coming up with ideas. And you can tell
Speaker 4: because he likes to talk them into a handheld tape recorder.
Speaker 4: He's got like a cassette based voice memo thing, and
Speaker 4: so it and this is I think we will all recognize.
Speaker 4: In fact, I think most writers will recognize some part
Speaker 4: of themselves that is like this, that likes to just
Speaker 4: come up with ideas for things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and part of the whole conflict in the story too,
Speaker 1: is that when he dreams up things, when there are
Speaker 1: things that he wants, he has this peculiar paranormal ability
Speaker 1: to manifest them in reality, which that's kind of makes one,
Speaker 1: I guess, a crappy writer in the end, because you
Speaker 1: don't have to write it down right, because it's already
Speaker 1: so you're already making it real through some supernatural ability.
Speaker 1: And I think you could compare that to sort of
Speaker 1: like the pure idea dreamscape of creative endeavor. Like you know,
Speaker 1: you can set around and create whole worlds in your head,
Speaker 1: and you know that can be the end of it,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing wrong with that. You don't have to,
Speaker 1: you know, to bring your rich inner life life, you know,
Speaker 1: into a literary creation. You don't have to share it
Speaker 1: with the world. You don't have to market it and
Speaker 1: get a price tag slapped on it and so forth
Speaker 1: and try and fill out some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: a capitalist dream of what you should be. But but, but,
Speaker 1: but Robert in the film, like he still wants to
Speaker 1: be a writer, and he still has this this aspiration
Speaker 1: that that is what he's going to be in reality
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's all like top level dream dream based.
Speaker 4: It's all just the pure imagination point. And that is
Speaker 4: an interesting comment on writing, because I think it's very
Speaker 4: much the case, at least in my opinion, that almost
Speaker 4: always part of the magic of good writing arises from
Speaker 4: the conflict between like your initial imagine imagination of a
Speaker 4: story and then the process of putting that into language
Speaker 4: and getting it on the page, which fights back against
Speaker 4: your original imagination and makes you change things, often for
Speaker 4: the better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, well we'll continue this thread as we
Speaker 1: discussed the movie further here, but let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: hear a little bit of audio from the film. I
Speaker 1: could not find a video clip of like an original
Speaker 1: trailer for the film, so we're gonna hear just a
Speaker 1: little bit from the Deaf Crocodile restoration trailer. So just
Speaker 1: just a little bit of this JJ if you would,
Speaker 1: and Robot.
Speaker 4: Robertstigli.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, if you want to watch Visitors from
Speaker 1: the Arcana Alexy before continuing on with this episode. Currently,
Speaker 1: the main way to see it is to buy the
Speaker 1: excellent restoration from Deaf Crocodile. You can look them up
Speaker 1: at Deafcrocodile dot com. But the disc is also sold
Speaker 1: through various other online retailers like Vinegar Syndrome and so forth,
Speaker 1: wherever you can get it. I recommend picking it up
Speaker 1: if this is the sort of film that interests you.
Speaker 1: As far as I know, it's not available like streaming
Speaker 1: wise anywhere else right now, But a lot of these
Speaker 1: releases often wind up like that later on, so I
Speaker 1: keep an eye open for it just in case. But
Speaker 1: deaf crocodiles put out the likes of films like The
Speaker 1: Sun of the Stars, Sampo, and Delta Space Mission. Their
Speaker 1: Blu ray releases look awesome, and this one in particular
Speaker 1: has a number of cool extras on it, which we'll
Speaker 1: get into. Any Atlanta locals out there, you should be
Speaker 1: advised that Videodrome does have a copy. I checked with them,
Speaker 1: so they do have a copy of this movie for rent.
Speaker 4: But the first one to get there gets it.
Speaker 1: That's right. And then you gotta wait. Tell them. You
Speaker 1: know how it works. You know a video rental works.
Speaker 1: If you don't just ask them, Go in and ask
Speaker 1: them how does this work? They'll tell you.
Speaker 4: Two film geeks enter, one film geek leaves.
Speaker 1: Yes. All right, let's get into the people behind this film.
Speaker 1: Let's start right at the top with the director and
Speaker 1: one of two writers on this Dusan Vukotic born nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty seven died nineteen ninety eight, born in what is
Speaker 1: now Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to Jennifer Lynde Barker in
Speaker 1: the excellent booklet that came with the Deaf Crocodile release,
Speaker 1: he started off as a political and satirical cartoonist in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties, but then became involved in film during
Speaker 1: the fifties, right as animation was beginning to thrive in
Speaker 1: Croatia for the first time, so he was one of
Speaker 1: the early innovators there. In addition to animated shorts, he
Speaker 1: also did advertisements for her Jardin Film before founding Zagreb
Speaker 1: Film Studio. His animation work continued through the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: And I have to stress too, this disc is also
Speaker 1: awesome the Deaf Crocodile release in that it has a
Speaker 1: number of his animated shorts included in excellent quality and
Speaker 1: these were really fun to check out as well to see. Well,
Speaker 1: what was his animated work like before he turned to
Speaker 1: live action.
Speaker 4: I would say this is a live action film where
Speaker 4: the set pieces in costumes and makeup effects and all
Speaker 4: that are very reminiscent of animation. Somehow, there are not
Speaker 4: really animated elements. I mean, I guess there's sort of
Speaker 4: like some laser effects on the screen, but there's not
Speaker 4: any straight animation. It's all live to film, but it
Speaker 4: does kind of look like a cartoon similar to I'm
Speaker 4: trying to think of another movie we've done that was
Speaker 4: like this, Return to Oz kind of has this quality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this kind of sense that even though it is
Speaker 1: live action, there is a basic animation absurdity to things,
Speaker 1: and I feel like you also see do you see
Speaker 1: this element? And other filmmakers as well, like Tim Burton,
Speaker 1: I think is an example of this. Like many of
Speaker 1: Tim Burton's live action films, they still have that kind
Speaker 1: of animated cartoon energy in them.
Speaker 4: But it's also just there are certain visual qualities that
Speaker 4: seem similar to animation to me, like a lot of
Speaker 4: bold lines and costume designs that just feel drawn as
Speaker 4: opposed to put together out of cloth.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, Well, he started doing live action stuff,
Speaker 1: I believe in the nineteen eighties, and like through the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties did a mix of animation and live action.
Speaker 1: He was also a professor and film theorist. According to Barker,
Speaker 1: he also co founded the second oldest animation film festival
Speaker 1: in the world, currently known as Anomyfest Zagreb. His animation
Speaker 1: style on its own in these shorts that are included
Speaker 1: on this disc are wonderful. They're absurd, They're full of
Speaker 1: abstract shapes and possessed of a perky energy, but also
Speaker 1: like a genuine comedy like these are not like crazy
Speaker 1: experimental Film Board of Canada sort of fair where it's
Speaker 1: not to say that you know that all Film Board
Speaker 1: of Canada animation shorts are the same, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like super serious stuff. It's about obviously about
Speaker 1: making people laugh. And I feel like you see this
Speaker 1: kind of energy reflected in some of the retro animation
Speaker 1: projects you've seen in recent decades, such as the Pixar
Speaker 1: short Day and Night from twenty ten, the videos from
Speaker 1: the Fallout games. Also the MCU Loki series has a
Speaker 1: little video about the time variance authority that I mean,
Speaker 1: I have no idea if they were inspired by Vukotic,
Speaker 1: but I feel like there's a lot of comparisons to
Speaker 1: be made here between the two works. Barker also describes
Speaker 1: his animation style as being bouncy, and the animation is
Speaker 1: certainly bouncy. But he was a big success with these.
Speaker 1: The nineteen sixty one short Surrogat won the Academy Award
Speaker 1: for Short Subjects Cartoons the following year in nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: This is one about a guy who goes to the beach.
Speaker 1: He's kind of like, I guess if you were a
Speaker 1: real person, who would be kind of like a rotunda fella.
Speaker 1: But everything's made out of abstract shapes, so he's kind
Speaker 1: of a triangle. And he gets there to the beach
Speaker 1: and he starts blowing up things like he blows up afloat,
Speaker 1: but then he's blowing up things like a table and food,
Speaker 1: and then he blows up a female to hang out
Speaker 1: with him, and the first one he doesn't like, so
Speaker 1: he deflates her, and then he blows up another one.
Speaker 1: But then it just escalates from there and just gets ridiculous.
Speaker 4: Okay, is she also a triangle?
Speaker 1: She's very Yeah, They're all everybody's very geometric. This one
Speaker 1: is available. You can find it on YouTube. If you
Speaker 1: search for surro God s u Rogat you'll find the
Speaker 1: short it's pretty fun. So Barker points out that Vukatak
Speaker 1: and his colleagues were initially influenced by Western animation like
Speaker 1: Looney Tunes she mentioned specifically, but they were also influenced
Speaker 1: by Check animation, and they steadily developed their own styles.
Speaker 1: And then as far as this film goes, Barker cites
Speaker 1: several key influences. So, first of all international sci fi
Speaker 1: and horror films of the sixties and seventies, which I
Speaker 1: think we see that here. Like I think she mentions
Speaker 1: Children of the Damned as having an influence. Can't help
Speaker 1: but compare it to other sort of practical effects monsters
Speaker 1: of the nineteen eighties like The Thing. But also he
Speaker 1: was influenced by nineteen sixties camp by Check, new wave absurdity,
Speaker 1: by magical realism. And then also just in sort of
Speaker 1: the visual texture of the film, especially there's this sense
Speaker 1: of like the banal, everyday world versus the colorful, explosive
Speaker 1: world of fantasy. It's pointed out that we see Robert
Speaker 1: he's almost always wearing like really drab tones. Most of
Speaker 1: the settings have kind not I wouldn't say cheerless, but
Speaker 1: a very lived in kind of feel like it's comfortable,
Speaker 1: but it is every day, whereas the world of his
Speaker 1: imagination is like glowing lights and strange textures and so forth.
Speaker 4: Yes, a theme obviously that he wanted to hit over
Speaker 4: and over in this movie is just the fantastical versus
Speaker 4: the mundane, sometimes literally like the fantastic fighting the mundane.
Speaker 1: Yes. Now, the other writer on the piece is Milos Maccorik,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen twenty six through two thousand and two,
Speaker 1: a check writer who wrote, I believe mostly children's books,
Speaker 1: but also screenplays, comics and so forth. Now, getting into
Speaker 1: the cast playing Robert, we have Zarko Potognak who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six through twenty twenty one. As always, my
Speaker 1: apologies if I am grew up any of these names here,
Speaker 1: but he was a Croatian actor of stage, screen and TV.
Speaker 1: He has a small part in the nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: movie The Rat Savior, credited as participant in the Rat Party.
Speaker 1: This is a movie that you and I've been interested
Speaker 1: in for a while, but if memory serves it's hard
Speaker 1: to find right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I haven't seen it, but it's on the list
Speaker 4: due to its premise, which has something to do with
Speaker 4: the man discovering, I think he can communicate with like
Speaker 4: a culture of sentient rats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the actor here, I think this. I think
Speaker 1: this is his most well known film, both internationally and
Speaker 1: in Croatian centiment and so forth. But I have to
Speaker 1: say he's very enjoyable as this kind of bumbling head
Speaker 1: in the clouds would be sci fi writer with this
Speaker 1: amazing supernatural gift. It's quite a fun and funny performance.
Speaker 1: But also you also feel for him, you know, like
Speaker 1: you can't help it but sympathize with this character.
Speaker 4: I have no idea why I think this, truly, I
Speaker 4: don't know what was bringing this to mind, but I
Speaker 4: kept seeing him in scenes in the movie as a
Speaker 4: lost extra member of the crew of the Nostromo from Alien.
Speaker 4: He just looked like a hapless mechanic who would be
Speaker 4: working alongside Harry Dean Stanton in Alien and wander off
Speaker 4: and get cocooned. And I don't know why it brought
Speaker 4: to him. And maybe it's like his clothes kind of
Speaker 4: seemed sort of like a sci fi jumpsuit from the Nostromo.
Speaker 4: I really don't know what it was, but that just
Speaker 4: kept coming to mind.
Speaker 1: He's very mild mannered, and there's a sense that he's
Speaker 1: just doing his job. He's doing the bare minimum. He
Speaker 1: would rather not be here. He's not going to put
Speaker 1: a lot of effort into things that have to do
Speaker 1: with this world, because there is another world inside his
Speaker 1: head and that's where most of his focus is.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I do think there's an interesting tension in his performance,
Speaker 4: which is the fact that the whole movie is about
Speaker 4: his creativity. Like he the whole premise is that he
Speaker 4: is willing troublesome circumstances into reality with his imagination, and
Speaker 4: yet he seems almost completely hapless, you know, he has
Speaker 4: extremely little will or volition, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Over things in this world or the imagined world as
Speaker 1: we'll see.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, Robert has a girlfriend, and this is Beebee, played
Speaker 1: by Lucy Zolova born nineteen fifty two, checkborn actress whose
Speaker 1: credits include nineteen seventy five's Darling, Are We a Good Match?
Speaker 1: And How To Drown Mister Marasek The Lawyer. These are
Speaker 1: not films I'm familiar with that I don't, but she's
Speaker 1: very good in this. I think it's a solid performance
Speaker 1: as his loving but almost done with it girlfriend.
Speaker 4: Yes, she has very little patience for his initial even
Speaker 4: for his writing career, when he's just like talking into
Speaker 4: a tape recorder about his ideas for novels. Much less
Speaker 4: so when aliens start showing up and turning her into
Speaker 4: a cube and she's an interesting foil to his. Like
Speaker 4: I was just saying, very a drift and non agentic personality.
Speaker 4: She is very like forceful and willful and has a
Speaker 4: strong personality and is the one who's like pushing back
Speaker 4: against all of this like fantastical stuff from the Arcana
Speaker 4: galaxy invading their world.
Speaker 1: So these are like our two main human real world characters.
Speaker 1: But we also have one of Robert's friends who has
Speaker 1: a minor but fun role. This is photo Tony. Photo Tony.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think, wait, his name's just Tony, right,
Speaker 4: But he's a photographer, so his door is a partner door,
Speaker 4: says photo Tony.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So my wife watched part of the film
Speaker 1: with me and and she s got to see she's
Speaker 1: a photographer. So I was like, you got to come
Speaker 1: see there's a photographer in this movie.
Speaker 4: And oh yeah, what was her race?
Speaker 1: She had some thoughts about it. Well, she was like,
Speaker 1: he's not going to get a good shot, trying to
Speaker 1: shoot through a window at night and so forth. But
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, I don't think photo Tony
Speaker 1: is necessarily at the top of his game here either.
Speaker 1: He's just more ambitious than Robert. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, Photo Tony seems strange in that his ambition
Speaker 4: seems to be to break through from like tourism photography
Speaker 4: into journalism. Is that how you understood it?
Speaker 1: Yes, but he wants to take that shortcut to the
Speaker 1: top of journalism by getting that one picture that's going
Speaker 1: to change the world, namely of aliens visiting the Earth exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I think he like hangs out around this
Speaker 4: beach resort taking photos of people for money, but he
Speaker 4: thinks if he can just snap a picture of an alien,
Speaker 4: then he'll be the most famous photojournalist in the world.
Speaker 1: Yes. So, Photo Tony is played by Lubashaw Samardzik, who
Speaker 1: lived nineteen thirty six through twenty seventeen. Actually a pretty
Speaker 1: faint I'm a Serbian actor. I read also a director
Speaker 1: and a producer. He was very popular during the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties in various films. He was a popular TV actor
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, and he directed the internationally acclaimed
Speaker 1: two thousand film Skyhook. So it's a fun supporting role,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely one of these cases where you can
Speaker 1: see how this guy might go on to have a
Speaker 1: great deal of success. Like if this were a traditional
Speaker 1: genre film, this would be our hero. Photo Tony would
Speaker 1: be the one to stand up and save the girl
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in the same way that Biba is contrasted to
Speaker 4: Robert because she has more will and agency, I would
Speaker 4: say that Photo Tony also has more concrete will and
Speaker 4: agency than Robert, like he's got a goal. Well you know, actually, though,
Speaker 4: I guess Robert does have a goal, but it's just
Speaker 4: not a concrete goal. He just wants to live in
Speaker 4: his imagination.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also worth noting that Lubasha was on a twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen Serbian stamp. I included an image of it here
Speaker 1: for you. Joe looks great, great looking stamp. But I
Speaker 1: would add just about anything from this movie belongs on
Speaker 1: a stamp in any country.
Speaker 4: He looks like Kirk Douglas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we see him like earlier in life
Speaker 1: and then later in life. He does have kind of
Speaker 1: a Kirk Douglas kind of a vibe. All Right, This
Speaker 1: movie notably has a female android in it by the
Speaker 1: name of Andra. If you've seen any covers for this film,
Speaker 1: any posters, or certainly any footage, you've probably seen a
Speaker 1: glimpse of this entity. And this entity is played by
Speaker 1: the actor Cassinia Prohaska born nineteen fifty three, Croatian born
Speaker 1: actress who also pops up in some American films. She
Speaker 1: played a mummy. I don't know if it's the Mummy,
Speaker 1: but she played a mummy in the I guess kind of.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's infamous. It's definitely said to
Speaker 1: be bad. But the nineteen eighty five film Transylvania six
Speaker 1: five thousand, movie that's mostly known for being a film
Speaker 1: project funded by Dow Chemical because Dow Chemical had money
Speaker 1: in Yugoslavia that they could not get out, and so
Speaker 1: they instead said, well, let's make a movie. Then let's
Speaker 1: funnel those those funds into a film project. And Transylvania
Speaker 1: six five thousand was that film project that has a
Speaker 1: pretty good cast, but nothing. I've never heard anything nice
Speaker 1: said about it. Have you?
Speaker 4: Have you seen it?
Speaker 1: I have not seen it, have you?
Speaker 4: I tried to watch it one time and did not
Speaker 4: get to the end. It it has a very low energy,
Speaker 4: improvised sketch comedy feel.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, which is a shame because again, fun cast,
Speaker 1: it's got a let's see, who's an Ed Begley Junior.
Speaker 4: Is the Jeff Goldblum.
Speaker 1: I think Jeff Goldblum, Gina Davis.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well, I don't know. Maybe it gets really
Speaker 4: good in the second half. I remember, I remember something
Speaker 4: about the first few minutes kind of drew me in.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, okay, yeah, sure, but then it
Speaker 4: just it got incredibly tedious.
Speaker 1: Reviews I was looking at seem to indicate it does
Speaker 1: not get good. But if listeners have differing thoughts right in,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. Prohaska also plays Marlene
Speaker 1: Dietrich and Barry Levinson's Bugsy in nineteen ninety one. I
Speaker 1: have not seen Bugsy, but I assume this is like
Speaker 1: maybe a small background kind of a role. So anyway,
Speaker 1: hard to comment too much on her acting ability, but
Speaker 1: this because his performance is again an android, a female android,
Speaker 1: but it is a memorable presence. So I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and say she's great in it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally mean, well, she doesn't have to do much acting.
Speaker 4: She just like says a few lines in a robot voice.
Speaker 4: The costume and the makeup do more of the work.
Speaker 4: Thinking about this this character design, I was wondering, is
Speaker 4: the board Queen based on this character here? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, yeah, you look at this, this character,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it makes you think of like the Board Queen.
Speaker 1: I thought of cinnabytes bit as well, because there is
Speaker 1: this mixture of sexuality and like dominant female power, but
Speaker 1: on the other hand, like clearly an uncanny inhuman quality
Speaker 1: to the being as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's a cool character design. I think
Speaker 4: she looks great. She looks creepy, which is funny because
Speaker 4: a lot of the characters are like commenting on how
Speaker 4: beautiful she is.
Speaker 1: Yes, and of.
Speaker 4: Course she was to make of that.
Speaker 1: She is frequently accompanied by two space children who also
Speaker 1: have like gold space jumpsuits on bright blonde hair that
Speaker 1: is cut in kind of like a medieval night haircut,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a medieval bowl cut going on there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's kind of gray and Nigel tough mel hair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these children, one of them is played by a
Speaker 1: child actor by the name of Jasminka Alec. But this
Speaker 1: is one of those cases where this is their only credit,
Speaker 1: so presumably she was in nothing else but the the
Speaker 1: other one, Targo, we'll mention, was played by Renee Bittora
Speaker 1: Jack born nineteen seventy two, Croatian actor of note, seen
Speaker 1: here in his very first role, so he's worked rather
Speaker 1: extensively in Croatian and Bosnian projects. I believe he was
Speaker 1: one of the stars of two thousand and one's No
Speaker 1: Man's Land, a film about the Bosnian War that won
Speaker 1: an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two.
Speaker 4: I would say also about the kids, it's hard to
Speaker 4: comment much on their performance because they're not doing a
Speaker 4: lot of human style acting. They're just like standing there
Speaker 4: and saying weird lines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and like you said with the Android, the makeup
Speaker 1: is key. And I did note that the makeup artist
Speaker 1: on this, or one of the two makeup artists, is
Speaker 1: Yeri Hurrich born nineteen thirty two, a Zech makeup artist
Speaker 1: who also worked on nineteen seventy eight Beauty and the Beast,
Speaker 1: which we previously discussed under Your House No One had
Speaker 1: some great Avian Beast makeup, Yes, totally, so I'm assuming
Speaker 1: he had a hand in the android effects here, but
Speaker 1: there's also someone else. Evo Strong Muller born nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: four is also credited on makeup, and he worked on
Speaker 1: some big productions later on as well, including the two
Speaker 1: thousand Doom mini series Alien Versus Predator in two thousand
Speaker 1: and four and The Chronicles of Narnia Prince Caspian in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight as a prosthetic makeup artist.
Speaker 4: Hmmm, oh wait, but you didn't mention fair out vampire,
Speaker 4: did you.
Speaker 1: Oh No, I didn't mention fair out Vampire. That's another
Speaker 1: one that he worked on, a film that we haven't seen,
Speaker 1: but we've mentioned before because it's come up in connections
Speaker 1: on particularly check films. This is like the vampire car movie, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't know if there's a good way to
Speaker 4: watch this one. Last time I checked, I didn't find
Speaker 4: one but it and it may not be good at all.
Speaker 4: Some of the reviews are pretty middling, but the premise
Speaker 4: is it's a vampire car, so I kind of have
Speaker 4: to see it even if it's bad.
Speaker 1: Now we've mentioned that this movie has a monster in it.
Speaker 1: The monster's name is Mumu and been a fair amount
Speaker 1: of time discussing him. But the really fun thing here
Speaker 1: is that the monster designer here, the person who created
Speaker 1: Mumu and helped bring him to life, is none other
Speaker 1: than Yon S. Funk Meyer born nineteen thirty four. So
Speaker 1: this is the check stop motion animation master himself.
Speaker 4: I think while I was out on parental leave last year,
Speaker 4: you and Seth covered a Yan S. Funk Meyer film,
Speaker 4: didn't you.
Speaker 1: We did. We talked about nineteen eighty eight's Alice. So
Speaker 1: if you want to hear more about spunk Meyer, go
Speaker 1: back and listen to that episode, because we spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time talking about the man in his work
Speaker 1: and how influential he was and still is in the
Speaker 1: world of stop motion animation. But I'll sum it all
Speaker 1: up by stressing that he's just a master of the
Speaker 1: medium and if he has anything to do with the
Speaker 1: look of a film, you're probably in good hands. And indeed,
Speaker 1: Mumu is just insane. It's amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is one of the weirdest things I've ever
Speaker 4: seen on film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I should stress like Spunk Myers is part of
Speaker 1: huge part of that world of like strange stop motion animation,
Speaker 1: perhaps creepy stop motion animation that some of you might
Speaker 1: not be that familiar with, but it's out there, it's
Speaker 1: waiting for you. And then finally, the music for this
Speaker 1: film is really good too. I really enjoyed it. It
Speaker 1: is a score by a Croatian born composer by the
Speaker 1: name of Thomas love Simovic, who lived nineteen thirty one
Speaker 1: through twenty fourteen. He worked on multiple films and shorts
Speaker 1: for Fukotic, including sixty one's The Substitute, seventy three's Man
Speaker 1: the Polluter, and seventy seven's Operation Stadium. Other films of
Speaker 1: note include sixty seven's The Fourth Companion and sixty eight
Speaker 1: So I Have Two Mothers and Two fathers.
Speaker 4: I agree with your assessment. Really good music in this one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's full of like cascading synth and all the
Speaker 1: sort of sci fi motifs you'd expect from a movie
Speaker 1: like this. And I'm happy to say that it is available.
Speaker 1: It was put up by the Croatian label Fox and
Speaker 1: his Friends, and it's actually available to stream in all
Speaker 1: the usual places. Just look up Visitors from the Arcana Galaxy.
Speaker 4: I don't know if this makes any sense, but the
Speaker 4: music that plays over the opening credits, I was listening
Speaker 4: with headphones while I watch the movie, and the music
Speaker 4: created a sensation like a kind of bubble of heat
Speaker 4: expanding through the inside of my cranium. Just soft, strange, enveloping,
Speaker 4: sonic texture, a very strong mood, really really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's this kind of I mean, today
Speaker 1: we would think of it as this kind of like
Speaker 1: retro electronic sound, and I guess at the time it
Speaker 1: was maybe slightly retro, but also sounded like the future.
Speaker 1: And it still sounds like the future as far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned.
Speaker 4: Also, I love the visuals that went with it. In
Speaker 4: the opening credits, there's this nice mix of concrete and
Speaker 4: abstract imagery, so like, while that music is playing, you
Speaker 4: see something abstract act that looks like these blooming flowers
Speaker 4: of blue paint, but represented on what looks like an
Speaker 4: ultrasound display ye. And then there are also these slow
Speaker 4: pans over physical objects. One thing looks like the bolts
Speaker 4: around the glass face plate of an EVA helmet, and
Speaker 4: then you just see you know, space imagery, like these
Speaker 4: blue rivers flowing through space into a green sun, and
Speaker 4: droplets that look like the you know, the bits of
Speaker 4: splatter flying out of a lava lake. But that's like
Speaker 4: going just passing between the stars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean this is this is a film
Speaker 1: that portrays space as being a place of color and
Speaker 1: wonder and mystery. It's not a dark void of death
Speaker 1: and in emptiness.
Speaker 4: And maybe so maybe we should get right into the
Speaker 4: plot then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're already here. Let's keep going.
Speaker 4: Okay, So we begin with some narration after we see
Speaker 4: you know, space and the credits. The narrator says, one
Speaker 4: of the rare populated planets and the cold, uninviting universe
Speaker 4: is the small planet Ugador. Not the most elegant sounding
Speaker 4: planet name I've ever heard, but Tugador located in the
Speaker 4: depths of the Arkonic Galaxy. Its inhabitants look a lot
Speaker 4: like humans, but their abilities are almost godlike. Their spaceships
Speaker 4: move at such speed that they can travel and explore
Speaker 4: even the most remote galaxies. It was one of those
Speaker 4: journeys that Targo and Ulu embarked on, followed by Andra,
Speaker 4: and the whole time this narration is going on, we're
Speaker 4: watching stars flashing in space, and then we cut to
Speaker 4: a totally different scene. A voice memo recorder with like
Speaker 4: a cassette tape in it, held in a man's hand.
Speaker 4: He's talking into the microphone, and the narration continues. The
Speaker 4: inhabitants of Tugador had perfect maps of space. They knew
Speaker 4: all of the other inhabited planets. And now we see
Speaker 4: on the screen that the man speaking, Robert, is wearing
Speaker 4: what appears to be a space helmet, and he goes
Speaker 4: on talking. He says, and Earth, a planet revolving around
Speaker 4: a great shining star, has peaked their interest since the
Speaker 4: dawn of time. Andra, the she robot, Targo, and Ulu
Speaker 4: are now approaching the surface of this unknown and mysterious planet.
Speaker 4: And then suddenly this is interrupted when a woman's hand
Speaker 4: just like wraps on the faceplate of the space helmet,
Speaker 4: and a woman's voice says, Robert, your coffee is ready,
Speaker 4: and so we're not in space at all. Robert is
Speaker 4: just a regular guy in his apartment. He is sitting
Speaker 4: at his desk narrating his own science fiction story into
Speaker 4: a voice recorder and his office. In his office, we
Speaker 4: see all these like books on shelves, presumably a lot
Speaker 4: of science fiction books, kind of gadgets and sci fi
Speaker 4: toys and gizmos, posters scattered all around of NASA and
Speaker 4: the Moon landings and things like that. And the woman
Speaker 4: who was wrapping on his face plate is his girlfriend, Biba,
Speaker 4: who clearly has very little patience for his writing or
Speaker 4: his astronomical obsessions.
Speaker 1: It's a great scene because, yeah, the whole like writing
Speaker 1: environment is very convincing and cozy and there's nothing, you know,
Speaker 1: there's nothing too weird about it. But yeah, his insistence
Speaker 1: on setting there, dictating his notes while wearing the space
Speaker 1: helmet really drives on this comic understanding that yeah, he's
Speaker 1: maybe not getting that much done and it's more about
Speaker 1: shutting himself off from the rest of the world and
Speaker 1: living in fantasy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, she says, clearly annoyed. She says, are you
Speaker 4: gonna sit around all day with this bucket on your head?
Speaker 4: And then the narrator the narration goes on. Robert says
Speaker 4: time didn't matter for the three space visitors. They manage
Speaker 4: their time like we handle water faucets. And then Biba
Speaker 4: is like, we don't handle water fauces. Return them.
Speaker 1: She's like, Robert, that's not even good writing.
Speaker 4: But like I was saying earlier, the writings as writing
Speaker 4: does not seem to be the point. Robert is not
Speaker 4: in love with language. He is not a word smith.
Speaker 4: He is an ideas guy.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. It's more like if he could write, then it
Speaker 1: would balance things out. But it's all it's all like
Speaker 1: trapped in there, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But we see Robert has a very frustrated life
Speaker 4: because he wants to be just spending his days wrapped
Speaker 4: up in I guess, talking this story into his tape recorder.
Speaker 4: But Biba does not like him spending his time that way.
Speaker 4: She gets annoyed with him. Also, his neighbors bother him.
Speaker 4: Like his neighbors come over and start having conflict. So
Speaker 4: his neighbor is photo Tony, and photo Tony's mother's dog Vicky,
Speaker 4: keeps causing problems and they're trying to get Robert to
Speaker 4: sort this out for some reason. It is a cute dog,
Speaker 4: by the way, But they bring the dog over and
Speaker 4: they put it on Robert's desk and it peas on
Speaker 4: his manuscript.
Speaker 1: At first, I thought Robert was maybe like the super
Speaker 1: or something, but I think it's just like the supposed
Speaker 1: to give us an idea of the close knit commune
Speaker 1: unity of this particular apartment building. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, for some reason, they want Robert to solve their problems.
Speaker 4: But I don't know why they'd be going to Robert
Speaker 4: displays throughout the film no ability whatsoever to mediate or
Speaker 4: solve other people's problems. That not that I can remember.
Speaker 1: He's just so checked out. He seems neutral, like yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess so, yeah, like Robert doesn't have a bone
Speaker 1: to pick, let him solve this problem.
Speaker 4: That's a good point. Yes, it's like he's a disinterested party. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so he just wants time to write, but he can
Speaker 4: never have a moment's piece. No one respects his ambitions.
Speaker 4: And also, this was really funny. He just keeps trying
Speaker 4: to put the space helmet back on while everybody's bothering him.
Speaker 4: But so we see that Biba is actually jealous of
Speaker 4: Robert's characters. She She's literally like, if you care about
Speaker 4: this she robot Andra so much, why don't you marry
Speaker 4: her instead of me?
Speaker 1: And we'll come back to that theme.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So they go to visit Biba's family. I think it,
Speaker 4: did you understand it the same way that Biba's sister
Speaker 4: is getting married, and so her whole family is there
Speaker 4: in the house trying to get ready for the wedding.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's a big wedding coming up, and I
Speaker 1: believe the individual that Robert ends up talking to next
Speaker 1: is the fiance the groom.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, so yeah. Robert goes along with Biba to
Speaker 4: the house she's meeting with her family. Her family seems
Speaker 4: to look down on Robert and they're like, I don't
Speaker 4: know what you're doing with this guy. And Robert he's
Speaker 4: just there to he obviously he wants to talk to
Speaker 4: the fiance of the sister about science fiction novels. They're like, oh, boy,
Speaker 4: you know, did you read this one. It's about a
Speaker 4: monster from space. And so this other guy is like, look,
Speaker 4: you can't call it Visitors from the Arcanic Galaxy. That's
Speaker 4: what Robert wants to call his novel. He says, you've
Speaker 4: got to call it the Monster from Marcana Galaxy. And
Speaker 4: Robert says there's no monster in the story. But the
Speaker 4: other guy's like, look, you're not writing Hansel and Gretel.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 4: He explains that you've got to have a monster, and
Speaker 4: he talks about another sci fi novel that has a
Speaker 4: monster that bites off people's heads. Yeah, sounds good. So
Speaker 4: the quote is, he says, you got to a quote.
Speaker 4: You have to scare people that's the secret to success.
Speaker 1: I love how he brings up Hansel and Gretel as
Speaker 1: if Hansel and Gretel does not have horrifying elements to it,
Speaker 1: and it's purest telling.
Speaker 4: I think it's interesting that he's giving Robert these very
Speaker 4: mercenary kind of pieces of advice about what the reading
Speaker 4: public wants about, like what makes a book marketable. But
Speaker 4: Robert doesn't seem to have written anything yet. It's not
Speaker 4: like he has a manuscript that's been rejected by a
Speaker 4: bunch of publishers. It's like he's he's like, I'm going
Speaker 4: to write a novel right.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's so unformed that he basically is like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, okay, I can add a monster. It really
Speaker 1: doesn't rack anything at all because nothing has been written yet.
Speaker 4: Apparent that's right. So Robert ultimately decides his monster should
Speaker 4: be a toy belonging to the children in the story.
Speaker 4: And he also briefly says, you know what, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: cut out Targo, the boy from space or else. That'll
Speaker 4: just be too many characters. So four characters would be
Speaker 4: too many if he as the monster, He's got to
Speaker 4: get rid of Targo, So he goes back home, gets
Speaker 4: back to writing, and now the tone of the story
Speaker 4: is a little bit different. He talks into his tape
Speaker 4: recorder and he says Andra and Ulu, visitors with power
Speaker 4: from the Arcana Galaxy, are a menace to human life,
Speaker 4: and they are approaching the Earth and they're not alone.
Speaker 4: The monster of the Arcana Galaxy is with them. Are
Speaker 4: we ready for that encounter? But while he's talking, we
Speaker 4: see out the window behind Robert and he lives in
Speaker 4: an apartment building that's like right on the water. It's
Speaker 4: on the coast looking out over I guess the Adriatic.
Speaker 4: We see a bright object fall from the sky and
Speaker 4: land on an island across the water. Oh and by
Speaker 4: the way, yes, he is wearing his space helmet in
Speaker 4: this scene. And he goes to the kitchen to get
Speaker 4: a glass of milk, when suddenly his voice memo recorder
Speaker 4: starts talking back to him. It's a woman's voice, very
Speaker 4: tiny and robotic, saying, Robert, we have arrived. This is Andra,
Speaker 4: come find us on the island. And he gets very,
Speaker 4: very freaked out. He checks the tape to see if
Speaker 4: their voices were recorded, but there's only the hiss of static.
Speaker 4: The tape is blank after he stopped talking into it,
Speaker 4: so he doesn't know what to think. But Robert borrows
Speaker 4: a boat from photo Tony photo Tony's got a boat.
Speaker 4: Photo Tony's doing okay, and he motors out to the
Speaker 4: island in photo Tony's boat. He docks, climbs ashore and
Speaker 4: he goes wandering through the forest and then whoa, suddenly
Speaker 4: they are here. So he follows a flashing blue light
Speaker 4: through the courtyard of this building. I think the building
Speaker 4: is part of a like a tourist resort area on
Speaker 4: the island. And then he goes through the trees and
Speaker 4: then over this rocky landscape and down a ravine until
Speaker 4: he meets the three alien beings. And when he meets them,
Speaker 4: one of the two children starts trying to zap him
Speaker 4: with eye lasers.
Speaker 1: I love the eye lasers. They're they're quite destructive, as
Speaker 1: we'll see later on.
Speaker 4: That's Targo who tries to to eyelaser him, but Andra
Speaker 4: stops him. So again they introduce themselves there, Andra, Ulu
Speaker 4: and Targo and Rob How would you describe exactly what
Speaker 4: you what they look like. They're wearing like gold suits,
Speaker 4: and I guess you already mentioned they're like the children
Speaker 4: having the long white hair, metal band hair that Andra
Speaker 4: kind of has these gold ridges along her large pale head.
Speaker 4: I don't know what else there is to say. I
Speaker 4: mean they look strange.
Speaker 1: Yeah, their gold space suits could also be robot bodies,
Speaker 1: especially in the case of Andre. And yeah, she has
Speaker 1: this this big head like a like a like a
Speaker 1: heightened forehead situation going on, which is of course used
Speaker 1: a lot of times, especially with you aliens of like
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties science fiction. But here it is it's
Speaker 1: done so well. Like it doesn't it doesn't look fake
Speaker 1: it it's just it. It just looks exceptional. I loved it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, is there a Missus Exeter maybe maybe right here?
Speaker 1: And they must have I mean, this makeup job must
Speaker 1: have really taxed the artist behind it, because she has
Speaker 1: these tubes as well that come out of the side
Speaker 1: of her head and go into her jaw line.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And granted she's not doing a lot of like emoting
Speaker 1: with her face, but she is speaking lines. And like
Speaker 1: you never see a shot where it looks like anything's
Speaker 1: cracking or coming apart. It looks great every time it's
Speaker 1: on the screen.
Speaker 4: When we first meet the kids, Targo says to Robert,
Speaker 4: you wanted to remove me from the story, but you
Speaker 4: were unsuccessful. There's something so threatening about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, already we see that he doesn't have control over
Speaker 1: what he's creating. He doesn't have control over his imagination.
Speaker 1: He tried to prune it a little bit, and his
Speaker 1: imagined world rejected the change.
Speaker 4: That's right, and Targo seemingly upset by this, he throws
Speaker 4: out his toy, a little toy he has with him,
Speaker 4: which grows to a giant size, and this is Mumoo
Speaker 4: the monster. But at this moment we only get a glimpse,
Speaker 4: so maybe we won't fully describe it yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at this point we can just tell that it's
Speaker 1: roughly bipedal, has kind of a snout or a trunk
Speaker 1: going on. But you don't really get much more than that.
Speaker 4: Right, So Robert is chased by the monster. He runs away.
Speaker 4: Then he's chased by what looks like a glowing blue
Speaker 4: Christmas ornament that floats in the air. It's like a
Speaker 4: sky blue ball with these greebles on it. He gets
Speaker 4: in the boat he tries to drive away. He wields
Speaker 4: it I think a beer bottle and self defense against
Speaker 4: the thing, and the ship just keeps chasing him. He
Speaker 4: jumps out of the boat. Somehow, I don't know, somehow
Speaker 4: he ends up back back home.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, rather freaked out by the whole encounter.
Speaker 4: Right, So the next day, Robert goes to speak to
Speaker 4: a professor. It's just a character just called the professor
Speaker 4: about whether he is having a psychotic episode. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: here's what I saw, doc. And the doctor is like,
Speaker 4: do you use drugs? And he says no, And he's like, oh, well,
Speaker 4: it seems all right then. But he explains a bit
Speaker 4: about his personal history. Robert says that sadly, his mother
Speaker 4: died when he was born, but when he was a baby,
Speaker 4: he wanted milk, and he psychically made his father grow
Speaker 4: breasts so that his dad could breastfeed him. That's the story.
Speaker 1: You might ask, well, how would he remember that, Well,
Speaker 1: he probably he would not remember that. I think if
Speaker 1: you go back to some of our stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind episodes on this. But luckily the movie depicts
Speaker 1: this entire scene. We see his father grow breast and
Speaker 1: then breastfeed the young baby Robert. And already, you know,
Speaker 1: there's been plenty of weird stuff already in the film,
Speaker 1: but this was a scene that really lets you know, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this movie is going to continue to take some sharp
Speaker 1: turns that you were not anticipating.
Speaker 4: Yes, psychic powers making Yeah, yeah. So the professor listens
Speaker 4: to the story kind of nods. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's called tellergy, he said. The professor says, this concept
Speaker 4: is not yet proven, but it's under intense study in parapsychology,
Speaker 4: and it's a condition where a person of intense willpower
Speaker 4: can make their desires manifest as physical reality. And Robert's like,
Speaker 4: oh cool. And the professors like, do you have a
Speaker 4: problem or an obsession that is bothering you? And of
Speaker 4: course Robert does. It's the book he wants to write.
Speaker 4: But you know, he's like it's always on his mind,
Speaker 4: but he's being bothered all the time. He's not really
Speaker 4: able to write it. And while they're sitting there, Robert
Speaker 4: psychically manifests a book on the professor's desk. It just
Speaker 4: like appears out of thin air. And the professor's like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's interesting. You just made a book appear. So he's like, okay,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna write you a prescription for chilling out. You
Speaker 4: need to relax, and Robert says, okay, this is a
Speaker 4: good scene. And then after this, Robert he picks up
Speaker 4: the book that he psychically manifested in the desk and
Speaker 4: he takes it to his sci fi buddy from earlier,
Speaker 4: who I think. He's working at a bookstore, and when
Speaker 4: going into the store, the guy is talking to another
Speaker 4: customer and he's like, ah, yes, it's an alien beast
Speaker 4: from another galaxy. You know, it eats everyone. And Robert
Speaker 4: interrupts him to be like, hey, I just made this
Speaker 4: book appear. Do you have another copy of it? I think,
Speaker 4: is what he asks, and the guy's like, no, this
Speaker 4: book says it's by you, and Robert says that's right.
Speaker 4: And then the owner of the shop I think comes
Speaker 4: in and looks at the book and says, all the
Speaker 4: pages are blank. This isn't a book, you know, come
Speaker 4: back when it's got words in it. So we get
Speaker 4: some a little more seeing into Robert's mundane day to
Speaker 4: day life. He's doing a pretty crummy job at work.
Speaker 4: His day job is he's a desk clerk at like
Speaker 4: a hotel or resort on the coast here, and he
Speaker 4: gets in trouble with his boss for having a beard.
Speaker 4: His boss is like, shave that thing off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't look like a great work environment. His
Speaker 1: boss does seem like a bit of a meanie, but
Speaker 1: Robert's could clearly not putting a lot of effort into
Speaker 1: the whole endeavor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is bad on every end. I think his
Speaker 4: boss would be mean even if he was a good employee.
Speaker 4: But he's not really trying.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: But later that night, the voice contacts Robert again through
Speaker 4: the recorder, and Andrew is there. She tells him that
Speaker 4: she and the space aliens, all three of them, belonged
Speaker 4: to him because he created them, and he's got to
Speaker 4: come back to the island. Oh but before he goes
Speaker 4: back to the island, it shows more reallylationship problems between
Speaker 4: Robert and Biba. Her family is mad at him for
Speaker 4: acting strangely and being a bad boyfriend. But Robert knows
Speaker 4: how to fix it. He's going to take Biba out
Speaker 4: to the island and show her that his alien robot
Speaker 4: characters have physically manifested and come to life, which is
Speaker 4: the perfect way to save any relationship that's on the rocks.
Speaker 1: That's right, totally the right move.
Speaker 4: So they go out, they explore the island. They see
Speaker 4: the giant glowing blue Christmas ornament going inside a cave.
Speaker 4: And you know what, I'm surprised here because what I
Speaker 4: expected to happen would be that he could see them
Speaker 4: and she couldn't, you know. That seems like what would
Speaker 4: happen in another movie. But no, she immediately sees it too,
Speaker 4: and so it's like totally physically externally real for her
Speaker 4: as well. And she sees Andra and Targo and Ulu
Speaker 4: and they are having quote an anatomy class where they
Speaker 4: have captured a guard from the resort on the island
Speaker 4: and they are dissecting him and removing his heart.
Speaker 1: Yes, which then this scene I have to stretch. It
Speaker 1: is not anywhere near as graphic as that may sound,
Speaker 1: but it is like one hundred percent weirder than we
Speaker 1: made it sound, too, because it's like floating and they've
Speaker 1: like bloodlessly removed his heart and he's and also the
Speaker 1: guard is seemingly like a wake during the whole process.
Speaker 1: He just kind of like, uh, and it's wonderful.
Speaker 4: So Robert then sees the blue sphere floating around and
Speaker 4: he's like, I'm going to touch it. I want to
Speaker 4: touch the blue sphere, so he reaches out, he touches
Speaker 4: it and this destroys it. It like it explodes and disappears,
Speaker 4: and then Andra is furious with him. She says, you know,
Speaker 4: this is our ship. How are we going to get
Speaker 4: home now? But she has a solution. She says, in
Speaker 4: situations like this, the only thing to do is to
Speaker 4: go back in time. So Andra opens up her torso
Speaker 4: and shows us her mechanical guts and then winds back
Speaker 4: the clock to the time before Robert touched the ship,
Speaker 4: and this time she interrupts him before he does it.
Speaker 1: This insight to the inner workings of Android are are
Speaker 1: very well done as well. It's varies glowing and mechanical,
Speaker 1: and in a later scene we see I believe Robert
Speaker 1: like look through from the other side, which reminded me
Speaker 1: specifically of a scene in Tobor the Great.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I wonder if that was inspiration or if
Speaker 1: this was like maybe a common trope of sort of
Speaker 1: old robot movies that inspired it.
Speaker 4: Wow, if this movie was inspired by Towbor, that would
Speaker 4: be something.
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 4: That would mean two degrees of separation from the Christmas
Speaker 4: Carol sponsored by the Magnavox Corporation to visitors from the
Speaker 4: Arcanic Galaxy.
Speaker 1: Now, this is a lot for Biba to take in here,
Speaker 1: and I think we should not be shocked to see
Speaker 1: that she freaks out a little bit.
Speaker 4: That's right. She gets scared, tries to run away, Andrew
Speaker 4: says she cannot escape, and then zaps her with some
Speaker 4: kind of energy beam, which transforms Biba into a cube.
Speaker 4: Shrinks her into a metallic cube, first, a larger I
Speaker 4: don't know, like maybe foot cube, metallic cube with a
Speaker 4: hand sticking out of it. And then they shrink her
Speaker 4: into an even smaller cube that can fit into the
Speaker 4: palm of Robert's hand.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think one of the children initially zaps her,
Speaker 1: and then Andre has to finish it. She says, so
Speaker 1: you can't do that yet. Yeah, you haven't worked out
Speaker 1: the art.
Speaker 4: Your skill at shrinking people into metallic cubes is not
Speaker 4: yet perfected. This is another classic way to heal a
Speaker 4: struggling relationship. One of you at least has to temporarily
Speaker 4: transform into a cube.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 4: And the aliens start talking to Robert. They're like, are
Speaker 4: you a mammal? And he says yeah, and They're like
Speaker 4: gross and the children marvel at the fact of how
Speaker 4: primitive an undeveloped Robert is and the paradox that he
Speaker 4: created them. They are the much more advanced beings with
Speaker 4: all this technology and intelligence and everything, and they were
Speaker 4: creating by this being that is far less complex than
Speaker 4: they are, which is kind of an interesting theme. Like Targo,
Speaker 4: as this character from a sci fi planet, knows about
Speaker 4: ways that he could have been imagined that Robert doesn't
Speaker 4: know about. So Targo is like, if our creator had
Speaker 4: been more advanced, we could have had para lasers in
Speaker 4: our eyes. They don't specify how para lasers are better
Speaker 4: or more advanced than the regular eye lasers Targo already has,
Speaker 4: but that's to be understood. And so the kids are
Speaker 4: kind of like, they're kind of bummed out. They're like,
Speaker 4: if only Robert had been from a more advanced planet,
Speaker 4: then we could have been imagined with more advanced capabilities
Speaker 4: of our own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Targo, I think, still has a grudge about
Speaker 1: the whole attempted pruning from the Fantastic narrative.
Speaker 4: That's right, Targo never really gets over it. He's got
Speaker 4: to chip on his shoulder. The whole time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you tried to cut me from the story, and
Speaker 1: I refuse to go.
Speaker 4: But and is more interested in what Robert has imagined
Speaker 4: for their future. She's like, what's in the next chapter
Speaker 4: of the story. And Robert doesn't really have an answer
Speaker 4: for that, because you know, he's not he's not really
Speaker 4: into the details the plot mechanics. He's a big ideas guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Oh. But then in one of the funniest scenes in
Speaker 4: the movie, even though it does involve corporal punishment of children,
Speaker 4: not usually funny, but funny in this case, Andra disciplines
Speaker 4: the children after they eye laser her fingers off, so
Speaker 4: I think Targo shoots her fingers off with beams of
Speaker 4: light from his eyes, and then she whips the children
Speaker 4: with a lightsaber.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she grows the missing finger back and then yeah,
Speaker 1: one of her fingers extends into a lightsaber and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen next? Just she starts spanking the knuckles,
Speaker 1: lashing the knuckles of the children and they're like ou ow,
Speaker 1: which again, normally maybe wouldn't be funny, but in this
Speaker 1: scene is hilarious.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Great.
Speaker 4: So back on Land, Robert has to explain to Beba's
Speaker 4: that she's been transformed into a cube, and Beba's sister
Speaker 4: she doesn't like. She gets mad, she knocks the cube
Speaker 4: into the water and then he's like, oh.
Speaker 1: No, she's down to the water.
Speaker 4: So they have to get a diver to find the cube,
Speaker 4: and they taste great.
Speaker 1: Because Beba's sister too, it's like, she doesn't outright say
Speaker 1: I think he killed my sister, but it's heavily implied,
Speaker 1: like what on earth has happened here? But then he
Speaker 1: keeps going on about this cube and she's like, okay,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll listen to him.
Speaker 4: Yes, And then but well, actually, Biba's got multiple sisters,
Speaker 4: so Biba's I think her older sister is the one
Speaker 4: who's skeptical. Biba's little sister seems to believe it, but
Speaker 4: she's like, okay, we got to cut the cube open
Speaker 4: to get her out, but Robert has to explain no, no, no,
Speaker 4: she's not in the cube. She is the cube, so
Speaker 4: you can't cut it. Eventually, the cube spontaneously transforms back
Speaker 4: into Beba, proving him right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think the children or Andre had said
Speaker 1: that it was only temporary, so it's well timed. Before
Speaker 1: anyone could freak out any longer, or anyone could be
Speaker 1: char with murder.
Speaker 4: Now, if you thought things were weird so far, it
Speaker 4: is going to get so much stranger. On the island,
Speaker 4: there's a sequence of events where like a tourist child, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: the child of the cook in the resort there, finds
Speaker 4: the severed andra finger, so like the severed alien robot finger,
Speaker 4: and takes it into the restaurant kitchen at the resort
Speaker 4: and is like, Dad, look a finger, and he's holding
Speaker 4: it right there next to a meat grinder, and all
Speaker 4: these tourists come into the kitchen, including photo Tony who's
Speaker 4: standing there with his camera, and they're all watching as
Speaker 4: they're holding this finger over the meat grinder. The finger
Speaker 4: falls in, it gets ground up with the other meat,
Speaker 4: which they do. They do explain what the meat is
Speaker 4: going to be used for. It's going to be to
Speaker 4: make stuffed peppers. And then the finger gets ground into
Speaker 4: a metallic powder. And there is a large man with
Speaker 4: a red beard who just keeps appearing and sort of
Speaker 4: like issuing authoritative state. I don't know who this guy
Speaker 4: is or where he comes from, the big guy with
Speaker 4: the beard, and he just looks at the bowl of
Speaker 4: ground meat. He says, that's not a human finger.
Speaker 1: This guy, I think must I think he's the town crackpot.
Speaker 1: I think we glimpse him earlier in the sci fi bookstore.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Oh, and I think the actor who
Speaker 1: plays him who I looked him up and he's rather tall.
Speaker 1: I think he plays Frankenstein in the Transylvania film we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier.
Speaker 4: Oh that's funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's like he's the town crackpot and now
Speaker 1: it is his time to shine. And I love how
Speaker 1: people start listening to him. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Wait a minute, when you say he played he plays
Speaker 4: Victor Frankenstein. He plays the creature.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, you know Frankenstein, the monster.
Speaker 4: Yes, oh, okay, I'm not trying to be pedantic. I
Speaker 4: just didn't know for sure.
Speaker 1: Is Victor Frankenstein in They had Begley Junior translvant idea.
Speaker 4: I don't remember.
Speaker 1: There's some sort of Frankenstein's monster in it. And I
Speaker 1: believe this is the gentleman who so plays.
Speaker 4: So everybody on this island. Now it's full of tourists.
Speaker 4: They all been hanging out of the beach, and I
Speaker 4: guess they're bored and they want to see aliens. Now
Speaker 4: they're like, all right, that wasn't a human finger, so
Speaker 4: there must be aliens on the island. So they start
Speaker 4: like running all around trying to find the aliens. There
Speaker 4: are dudes in wetsuits with spear guns who say they're
Speaker 4: gonna hunt the aliens, and they go to the cave
Speaker 4: where the aliens are hanging out and shoot spear guns
Speaker 4: at them. And there's like a laser battle where the
Speaker 4: aliens are shooting you know, cyclops I beams at them
Speaker 4: and Ulu Zap's one of the spear gun men on
Speaker 4: the butt with a laser.
Speaker 1: Oh. This seems great because it's like they're trying to
Speaker 1: make this aquatic landing. It's like the battle of the
Speaker 1: the Alien cave, and the I beams are just causing
Speaker 1: enormous explosions in the water, which I guess it's due
Speaker 1: to like like the rapid thermal heating of the of
Speaker 1: the water. That probably, Yeah, the effect is explosives in
Speaker 1: the water. But it's great. It's like, wow, it's like
Speaker 1: this is this is it. It's like the children are
Speaker 1: artillery in a battle. It's wonderful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so this causes tourists from the beach. Now
Speaker 4: they know the aliens are in the caves, so like
Speaker 4: hundreds of tourists flood into the caves to find the aliens.
Speaker 4: And I don't even know where this comes from. A
Speaker 4: bunch of them start yelling and they're like, come out
Speaker 4: and meet us, and they decide to get naked to
Speaker 4: prove to the aliens they are harmless. So a bunch
Speaker 4: of the tourists just like take all their clothes off,
Speaker 4: except they still got shoes on, and they're running around
Speaker 4: in the cave naked but with shoes. And then the
Speaker 4: big guy with the beard is there and he's like,
Speaker 4: if you see them, don't make any sudden moves.
Speaker 1: Yes, they adn't say something about just smile, just smile
Speaker 1: and look peaceful or something. Yeah, I love this. Barker
Speaker 1: in her notes points out that it's like this inversion
Speaker 1: of the Frankenstein scenario where the villagers instead of grabbing
Speaker 1: pitchforks and going up there and like let's get him.
Speaker 1: Though I guess we do see that initially with the
Speaker 1: first phase of the assault, but here with the villagers,
Speaker 1: it's more of like, no, let's just take all our
Speaker 1: clothes off. So they know that we're we're just soft
Speaker 1: and harmless. Yeah, and we don't wish them any harm,
Speaker 1: though we are still rapidly invading their space.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maximum disarmament of just getting completely naked.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But they go looking around in the caves, they don't
Speaker 4: find him. It's like, where are they? It turns out
Speaker 4: the aliens have moved into Robert's apartment.
Speaker 1: So he comes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Robert comes home and he finds Andra operating her
Speaker 4: own hand as a magical vacuum cleaner on the floors
Speaker 4: and she's like vacuuming. He drops his groceries when he
Speaker 4: sees her, and her vacuum cleaner sucks up objects as
Speaker 4: large as an apple and a baguette.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some nice stop motion work here, And yeah, I
Speaker 1: love that her arm is extended into a vacuum cleaner
Speaker 1: and when she's done with it, like it glows and
Speaker 1: then shrinks back down to a normal hand again.
Speaker 4: So he says he's hungry, and she offers to cook
Speaker 4: for him. She's like, you know, what do you want?
Speaker 4: And he says, you know what, I would like a
Speaker 4: steak Pomfrey and a salad, And so she makes him
Speaker 4: a steak pomfreys and a salad out of her, this
Speaker 4: like weird magnet in her guts. But it's tiny. It's
Speaker 4: like a little tiny blade. It's one bite of each thing.
Speaker 1: It's like he says, it pills like in Santa versus
Speaker 1: the Martians.
Speaker 4: That's right. He says that it's the best beef steak
Speaker 4: he's ever had, but portions are kind of small, and
Speaker 4: she's like, no, no, no, you don't need any more
Speaker 4: than this. Oh, and then it just Andrew starts demanding
Speaker 4: that Robert touch her. She's like, touch me, and he
Speaker 4: wants to, but he's very afraid. And then Targo interrupts
Speaker 4: by he comes into the room, the kid, and he
Speaker 4: has his little a monster toy with him, mum mum,
Speaker 4: and he like makes it turn into a big monster
Speaker 4: and sends it after Robert. H and so for a
Speaker 4: moment it's menacing, but Andre shows him how to defend
Speaker 4: himself by pressing a button on this little remote control.
Speaker 1: Now we only get a really a quick look at
Speaker 1: the full size Mumu here, but already we can see
Speaker 1: that this is an incredible creation. I have to say,
Speaker 1: Mumu is unlike anything I've ever seen before. In a
Speaker 1: monster film. The basic concept I think does remind me
Speaker 1: a bit of what we talked about in Terror Vision,
Speaker 1: which of course came later, the idea that you wanted
Speaker 1: to create a practical effects monster that was at once
Speaker 1: incredibly terrifying if the context was right, but also looked
Speaker 1: really dumb. So Muma is an absurd monstrosity with parts
Speaker 1: of him seemed to be He seems to be cobbled
Speaker 1: together from oversized and misplaced bits of human anatomy, Like
Speaker 1: a lot of him, Like, he seems to have sort
Speaker 1: of wing like appendages or features that seem to be
Speaker 1: big human ears that are part of his body.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but they're also kind of they're kind of mouse
Speaker 4: ears at a distance, but they're also a curled up
Speaker 4: appendage making it look like a rams horn.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh oh you're talking about on his head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he does.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I miss you.
Speaker 1: Then no, yeah, because on his head he has these
Speaker 1: things that are like ears or horns, but are also
Speaker 1: like tentacles. But then on his torso it's like he
Speaker 1: has giant human ear low part of him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So if you're right, it's really weird, like the
Speaker 4: outer fleshy part of a of a human ear on
Speaker 4: as as wings almost.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, we'll see a lot more from Mumu.
Speaker 1: And there's never any wasteed see with Mummum's terrific. It's
Speaker 1: because it's either you're getting like a bumbling rubber monster
Speaker 1: suit kind of an effect and in all the best ways,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it certainly allows you to lean
Speaker 1: into the comedy and the absurdity, but also he's like
Speaker 1: legitimately terrifying in scenes as well, especially given the context
Speaker 1: of the film and the sort of thematic ambiguity of
Speaker 1: the film, where at least for me anyway watching it
Speaker 1: as someone who's you know, not there as part of
Speaker 1: its original time period and original release audience, like I
Speaker 1: don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what
Speaker 1: to expect to this movie, and therefore the monster's a
Speaker 1: little more dangerous because of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what, I would actually compare it to though,
Speaker 4: this design is one hundred times weirder and more interesting
Speaker 4: and better. But it has a similar dual nature and
Speaker 4: appearance to Trumpy from Pod People.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, similar morphology. This is like the nightmare version,
Speaker 1: like the extra nightmare version of it, and of course
Speaker 1: later on we see stop motion and puppetry effects added
Speaker 1: into the overall moomoo effect and it just works wonderfully.
Speaker 4: All right. So after this next thing that happens is
Speaker 4: Biba comes home to Robert's apartment only to catch Robert
Speaker 4: caressing Andra, the alien android, and Biba is very angry
Speaker 4: about this. Robert tries to defend himself by saying, but Biba,
Speaker 4: every part of her body makes a different beeping noise
Speaker 4: when you touch it. She is perfection. And Biba is
Speaker 4: not swayed by this, like this doesn't make her less angry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And this scene is great because on the one hand,
Speaker 1: this is very much a trope, you know, the whole
Speaker 1: you know, one character catches the other two in the
Speaker 1: act and there's a confrontation. But it's all the more
Speaker 1: ridiculous here. It's not even the first time this has
Speaker 1: been done with a human in a robot being caught
Speaker 1: by another human, or the last time. But it's just
Speaker 1: it has such absurdity to it, like the whole, like,
Speaker 1: like her body makes a different beep you know, wherever
Speaker 1: you touch it, and Biba's like, I bet it dies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So Biba gets very angry, she directs a lot
Speaker 4: of her anger at Andra. She calls her an erotic
Speaker 4: bucket of bolts and compares her to a laundry machine.
Speaker 4: And then at one point, Andra shocks Biba with blue
Speaker 4: light to like, I don't know, I guess, in reaction
Speaker 4: to her touching her, and Biba then begs Robert to
Speaker 4: send them back to the Arcana galaxy. She says, make
Speaker 4: them go away forever if she's like, if you love me,
Speaker 4: make them disappear. And he tries. He you know, he
Speaker 4: cares about Biba, so he does want to do that.
Speaker 4: He tries to make them disappear, but he is unable to.
Speaker 4: He doesn't know how to get rid of them. Mentally,
Speaker 4: They're just stuck here now. Yeah, so Biba storms out
Speaker 4: and somehow, I think, does Targo put the mumoo doll
Speaker 4: in Biba's purse? Is that what happens?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he does, that, mean spirited little scamp. He puts
Speaker 1: that moumou doll right into her purse.
Speaker 4: And so she goes back to her family's house where
Speaker 4: I think she was coming to get Robert to go
Speaker 4: to her sister's weddings. So the wedding celebration is going on.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it's like a rehearsal dinner the
Speaker 4: night before or if it's the wedding itself. I don't know.
Speaker 4: There are a bunch of people at the house, gathered
Speaker 4: for a big meal. She goes back to the house,
Speaker 4: takes the Mumoo doll with her, and unfortunately it transforms
Speaker 4: back at her family's house into its full size mode
Speaker 4: and just it just goes wild. It starts attacking people.
Speaker 4: Somebody cuts off it's like weird snout, snake tongue thing,
Speaker 4: anteater tongue, and it sprays green blood all over everybody,
Speaker 4: ruins the wedding. There is this giant scene that goes
Speaker 4: on forever of Mumu, just like attacking the wedding and
Speaker 4: ruining the feast and like shooting weird tentacles everywhere and
Speaker 4: maybe being defeated, like oh, Dad gets it, like shoots
Speaker 4: the monster and then it falls down, but then it
Speaker 4: gets back up. And then the professor is there at
Speaker 4: the wedding for some reason, and he's like, you are
Speaker 4: witnesses to the first ever visitor from another galaxy, and
Speaker 4: he goes and tries to touch the thing. No, this
Speaker 4: he later goes and tries to touch it after he decides
Speaker 4: instead that it's a collective hallucination, and it bites his
Speaker 4: hand off. It twists the grandpa's head off. This other
Speaker 4: grandpa is playing accordion wedding music the entire time. It
Speaker 4: like hacks some family member with this puff of green gash.
Speaker 4: And then at the end, the monster's alf trunk turns
Speaker 4: into a flame thrower and it's just like torching everything
Speaker 4: and like spits out a glowing hot fork into a
Speaker 4: slice of cake and the cake hisses, which is a
Speaker 4: nice touch.
Speaker 1: This is a lot to try and handle. I realize,
Speaker 1: especially if you haven't if you haven't seen the film
Speaker 1: and you're just hearing all this, because it's like, on
Speaker 1: one hand, like the flame thrower is terrifying. It's like
Speaker 1: a lot of these fire effects more nowadays than ever.
Speaker 1: I'm just like, oh my god, it's just terrifying. It's
Speaker 1: real flame. This is not a computer effect. The head
Speaker 1: ripping off, and I think a leg gets ripped off
Speaker 1: as well. These are not bloody scenes. It's more of
Speaker 1: like a surrealistic, like absurd dismembering where he pulls people apart,
Speaker 1: like their dolls, like when he pulls the head off
Speaker 1: and he throws it lands in the punch bowl, and
Speaker 1: then in there in the poet punch bowl, the head
Speaker 1: is bobbing around and still speaking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it keeps talking. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the effect they did on that is great.
Speaker 4: There's a cartoonishness, a kind of non reality to it.
Speaker 4: And Robert arrives just in time to save Biba by
Speaker 4: pressing the button on the remote to make the monster disappear.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, before the monster disappears, I also have to
Speaker 1: mention this is pure synchronicity, but the monster also manifests
Speaker 1: a belly mouth and nipple eyes.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, which.
Speaker 1: We just finished talking about on our core stuff to
Speaker 1: blow your mind episodes. But yes, swank Meyer didn't hold back.
Speaker 1: This monster Mumu is just a buffet of just absurd monstrosity.
Speaker 4: So Robert goes back and complains to Andra. He's like,
Speaker 4: this monster from your planet attacked Biba's family's wedding guests,
Speaker 4: and Andrew says, you can't be mad at a toy.
Speaker 4: She's like weirdly unsympathetic at first, but then she says,
Speaker 4: you know what, we can go back in time and
Speaker 4: fix it, so she rewinds the clock on reality goes
Speaker 4: back to before Biba walked in on them earlier. And
Speaker 4: so now Biba comes into the apartment and does not
Speaker 4: find Robert caressing Andra, but instead she finds the blue
Speaker 4: ball floating around the apartment the alien spaceship, and from here, Andra, Targo, Ulu, Mumu,
Speaker 4: and Robert all fly away together in the spaceship into
Speaker 4: space to go back to the Arcanic Galaxy. And then
Speaker 4: there's an interesting twist in space. He's like sitting there
Speaker 4: sort of at a desk, kid, just floating in space.
Speaker 4: It's like their spaceship doesn't have really like a metal
Speaker 4: interior hull. It's just like they're floating through the stars.
Speaker 4: And he's sitting at his desk and Andra comes up
Speaker 4: to him and says, your coffee's on the table, which
Speaker 4: is what Biba said to him at the very beginning
Speaker 4: of the movie when interrupting his writing and not letting
Speaker 4: him concentrate. So it kind of makes you wonder that
Speaker 4: like in a way, he's like, oh, have I been
Speaker 4: free from all of these distractions? Now? Can I just
Speaker 4: like dream and imagine forever? Because I'm floating off to
Speaker 4: this other galaxy with my alien friends. Maybe not really,
Speaker 4: maybe they're just going to keep interrupting him.
Speaker 1: Now, this is also a callback to when Andre pours
Speaker 1: in coffee to go with his meal. I don't know
Speaker 1: if we mentioned this or not, but she pours coffee
Speaker 1: out of her fingertip and then and then pours cream
Speaker 1: out of the other fingertip. She's just like a Swiss
Speaker 1: army knife of gadgets and features.
Speaker 4: I wonder what you made of the ending, rob Is
Speaker 4: it a more straightforward, sentimental, happy ending where Robert is
Speaker 4: finally getting to live the life of the imagination now
Speaker 4: that the people are back on Earth unharmed, like you know,
Speaker 4: they wound back the clock so the monster didn't actually
Speaker 4: hurt anybody. Everybody's okay, and now he just gets to
Speaker 4: you know, dream and imagine forever. Or is it a
Speaker 4: more satirical thing where it's kind of like Robert's problems
Speaker 4: are not solved.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess it's kind of both, right, because I
Speaker 1: mean it comes back to that confrontation earlier, like where
Speaker 1: Baba walks in and there's the you know, a big
Speaker 1: argument and you know, this is like like the final
Speaker 1: straw of your fantasy versus your reality. You have to choose,
Speaker 1: and of course he's he's not really able to muster
Speaker 1: enough will to choose, and it leads to this whole
Speaker 1: catastrophic set of events with Mumu the monster, rampaging and
Speaker 1: killing people. But then they solve it by just turning
Speaker 1: back the clock and removing that point of confrontation, by
Speaker 1: just going ahead and removing any choice from him, and
Speaker 1: so he just gets whisked away into that world of fantasy.
Speaker 1: But at the same time he seems happy. I guess
Speaker 1: he's happy, And I mean an argument could be made
Speaker 1: that everyone off else is better off without him, especially
Speaker 1: if he's just gonna manifest rampaging monsters if left to
Speaker 1: his own designs.
Speaker 4: I want I don't know if it's consciously getting at this,
Speaker 4: but I wonder if another thing is, well, these are
Speaker 4: the creatures that he is imagining, so in some way
Speaker 4: he is kind of responsible for what they do. So
Speaker 4: I wonder if the whole thing of her now saying
Speaker 4: you know, Robert, your coffee is on the table and
Speaker 4: interrupting him while he's trying to dream on the ship
Speaker 4: is a way of showing that he's like creating the
Speaker 4: situations where he is constantly being interrupted to sort of
Speaker 4: like prevent himself from ever having to follow through on
Speaker 4: the full creative work. You know, I think we all
Speaker 4: know creative people, or probably in some sense creative people
Speaker 4: know a part of yourself that's like this, where like
Speaker 4: you can you know, if you fear that you're not
Speaker 4: going to be able to create the thing you want
Speaker 4: to create in the way that you want to create it,
Speaker 4: you might sometimes subconsciously put obstacles in your own path
Speaker 4: that kind of obviate that that problem, like that prevent
Speaker 4: you from ever failing on your own terms.
Speaker 1: Honestly, Yeah, I mean, especially if you know like you have,
Speaker 1: you haven't sort of embraced the reality that that any
Speaker 1: creative endeavor is going to kind of have those two phases,
Speaker 1: right or more or certainly more than one phase. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have that initial phase of sort of free form creativity.
Speaker 1: But then you have to make the stuff work. You
Speaker 1: have to you have to to turn it into language,
Speaker 1: you have to turn it into cinema, you have to
Speaker 1: break it down into a script, et cetera. And a
Speaker 1: lot of times you are going to lose stuff and
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to like the dream is not going
Speaker 1: to come willingly into reality. Uh, you know, coming back
Speaker 1: to that, the whole idea of reality and fantasy budding
Speaker 1: heads Uh. And you know, Robert, I guess, is just
Speaker 1: fundamentally unable to to to deal with this transference. You know,
Speaker 1: he's not able to muster the will to control the
Speaker 1: fantasy or to like control its entry possible entry into
Speaker 1: reality in either a fantastic sense or a realistic sense,
Speaker 1: like writing the book.
Speaker 4: How much of it do you think he ever actually
Speaker 4: did write? We see some of a menuscript at the beginning,
Speaker 4: like with the dog peas on some pages. At another part,
Speaker 4: we see him wad up some pages and throw them
Speaker 4: in the trash. So he's writing something, but I never
Speaker 4: get the feeling that he's getting very far.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming he has a bunch of notes, like sort
Speaker 1: of D and D setting notes about characters and factions
Speaker 1: and planets, though again not more than four characters, because
Speaker 1: that's plenty. And then he probably has like five to
Speaker 1: ten pages that he is just constantly rewriting and tinkering with,
Speaker 1: but never getting much much further than five or ten pages.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, this dude's drawn maps, you know, what
Speaker 4: I mean, he's drawing maps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Trugidour. That's the planet, right, Trugidoor is fully mapped,
Speaker 1: all the continents everything, all right?
Speaker 4: Should we call it there?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should go and call it here. We could
Speaker 1: keep talking about this movie. Yeah, it's a great one.
Speaker 1: Highly recommend it. Check it out wherever you can get it,
Speaker 1: rented at video drone by it from Deaf Crocodile. Just
Speaker 1: see it if you can. Just a reminder that Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind is primarily a science podcast, with
Speaker 1: more episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 1: weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you want to
Speaker 1: see a list of all the movies we've covered on
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema, well, you can go to letterboxed dot com.
Speaker 1: It's l A T T E r boxd dot com.
Speaker 1: We are Weird House on there, and we have a
Speaker 1: list of all the movies we've covered over the years,
Speaker 1: sometimes a glimpse ahead at what's coming up next. I
Speaker 1: also blog about these films at some immutomusic dot com.
Speaker 1: Don't always put a lot on those blog posts, but
Speaker 1: on this one I'll make sure to throw in some
Speaker 1: of those short films and also some of the music
Speaker 1: so you can check those out as well as and
Speaker 1: also some links to where you can obtain the picture
Speaker 1: huge things.
Speaker 4: As always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. If you
Speaker 4: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 4: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 4: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 4: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 4: dot com.
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