Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: Listener mail. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and we're bringing you some of the messages that you've
Speaker 1: sent in over the past few weeks. Uh. I guess
Speaker 1: we don't have any business right here at the top, Rob,
Speaker 1: do you want to jump right in with this message
Speaker 1: from me? How responding to our episodes on The Holy Undead? Certainly? Uh?
Speaker 1: So me? How? Rights? Hello Joe and Robert. I hope
Speaker 1: you're both doing well. I'm writing to you from Poland,
Speaker 1: where all the trees are now beautifully colored, winds are
Speaker 1: getting cold, and nights are longer and longer. I love autumn,
Speaker 1: with its atmosphere that suits horror and folk tales so well.
Speaker 1: I was very impressed with your two partner on the
Speaker 1: Holy Undead, and hearing those tales and stories reminded me
Speaker 1: of one that searched elated around my hometown. I grew
Speaker 1: up in a reasonably small town in the south of Poland,
Speaker 1: where you have mostly forests, hills, bogs and meadows. It's
Speaker 1: rather picturesque, but can also get a bit spooky. My
Speaker 1: town has a population of ten thousand people and it's
Speaker 1: rather old. Oldest written record that mentions it dates back
Speaker 1: to the fourteenth century, where it's called by its current name,
Speaker 1: though in Latin. We have a few local legends around,
Speaker 1: but one always creep me out more than the others.
Speaker 1: You see, my town has two parishes. The older one
Speaker 1: was established in eighteen seventy and the other around the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. Here comes the twist. It's not the old
Speaker 1: parish that has a creepy tail attached to it, Smiley face,
Speaker 1: and I assumed like sinister Smiley face. The church from
Speaker 1: the eighties. For a long time was simply a wooden
Speaker 1: bungalow with a cross mounted on the roof. It's been
Speaker 1: that way until the priest that was in charge of
Speaker 1: it raised enough money to build a new, proper temple.
Speaker 1: He oversaw the construction and with the money that was left,
Speaker 1: he ordered a graveyard to be built in the proximity
Speaker 1: of the church. He was a standout man. I actually
Speaker 1: met him as a kid. He was harsh and very devoted,
Speaker 1: but just and good with children. But he also had
Speaker 1: crippling diabetes and eventually he died because of it, I
Speaker 1: will never forget his last mass, where he mumbled prayers
Speaker 1: and could barely stand behind the altar. Like I said,
Speaker 1: he was devoted and wouldn't let anyone talk him out
Speaker 1: of doing his job as long as he could. Due
Speaker 1: to reasons unknown to me, he did not consecrate the
Speaker 1: graveyard that he built. It's widely known across my town
Speaker 1: that he wanted to, and the fact that he didn't
Speaker 1: was one of his biggest regrets. So the tale that
Speaker 1: I wanted to tell you, but I felt compelled to
Speaker 1: make into an intro to is that his restless spirit
Speaker 1: haunted the graveyard demanding it be consecrated. His body was
Speaker 1: actually the first one to be laid to the ground
Speaker 1: over there, which I always found to be quite something.
Speaker 1: So legend says that if you'd venture into the yard
Speaker 1: at night, you could have met with the ghost of
Speaker 1: a priest asking you to do all you can to
Speaker 1: consecrate the land. The ghost would go on and say
Speaker 1: that no soul will ever leave the place until it's
Speaker 1: properly consecrated. Eventually, the new priest came over and the
Speaker 1: first thing he did was he went to the graveyard
Speaker 1: with a bucket of Holy Water smiley faith. Uh, it
Speaker 1: must have laid the old priest spirit to rest, because
Speaker 1: all the accounts of him haunting the place ended there.
Speaker 1: I've never seen the ghost nor went to the cemetery
Speaker 1: at night, but I know a lot of folks who
Speaker 1: swear they've seen the apparition. When I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I believed it without asking any questions. Now, though, I
Speaker 1: think of it as a creepy and wholesome tale from
Speaker 1: an otherwise quite boring corner of the world. I hope
Speaker 1: this email wasn't too long and you've found some entertainment
Speaker 1: reading it. Stay spooky and happy Halloween. Me. How wow,
Speaker 1: So a a thoroughly authentic modern story of the pious undead.
Speaker 1: This is quite similar to the to the tales we
Speaker 1: were talking about in the episodes. Yeah, this is quite
Speaker 1: a treat. Uh. The one thing I like in this
Speaker 1: one is that it's one of those ghost stories that
Speaker 1: involves the ghosts specifically asking the living to do something
Speaker 1: on behalf of the ghost. I don't think any of
Speaker 1: the other tales had that, or maybe I'm forgetting one
Speaker 1: and the other ones were just like get out of here,
Speaker 1: this is it's ghost time. Now you know Nimes, Yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: no humans allowed, but this one it seems to suggest
Speaker 1: a supernatural set of rules, including the idea that a
Speaker 1: graveyard that is not yet consecrated is like a prison
Speaker 1: for ghosts, that the spirits cannot leave until it's consecrated,
Speaker 1: and he needs the new priest to throw the holy
Speaker 1: water on. Yeah. This is neat because it also ligns
Speaker 1: up with a lot of modern ghost stories and ghost
Speaker 1: media where ghost is doing something and it's and it
Speaker 1: leads to the question, well, what can we do to
Speaker 1: fix this? Let's fix this? And I feel like some
Speaker 1: of the better ghost stories, like something say The Ring,
Speaker 1: subvert this by ultimately the answer of being nothing like you.
Speaker 1: You You may think you can reason with the undead,
Speaker 1: that you cannot. Uh. This reminds me a lot of
Speaker 1: some of the stuff we talked about in the Least,
Speaker 1: the episode from last year that I believe we recently
Speaker 1: re ran, where we talked about the idea of the wilderness,
Speaker 1: like the older idea of the wilderness often being one
Speaker 1: where it's it's wild out there. It maybe it has rules,
Speaker 1: but it's not rules you can understand, um, And we
Speaker 1: get into a more modern understand where it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we know them basically how they the wild work, and
Speaker 1: we can we can you know, try and do things
Speaker 1: to to follow those laws or fix things, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if we see a similar thing here with
Speaker 1: the with the idea of the wild world of the Spirits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, And you mentioned the Ring. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think there are a few stories I can think of.
Speaker 1: They're sort of like this where um, where if there
Speaker 1: is a logic to the wild World of the Spirits
Speaker 1: and there are rules there, the extent to which you
Speaker 1: can grasp the rules and leverage them is only enough
Speaker 1: to sort of like get you personally out of trouble,
Speaker 1: not to sort of make everything right eight, which ultimately
Speaker 1: is the resolution in the Ring. Right, it's the you know,
Speaker 1: you can't really like fix the problem. You can only
Speaker 1: sort of help the help the evil spread, and that
Speaker 1: will at least save your skin for the time being.
Speaker 1: All Right. This next message comes from Matt. This is
Speaker 1: on our pair of episodes on the invention of the chainsaw.
Speaker 1: Matt says, good day, Fellas regarding your sawe adjacent chainsaw episodes,
Speaker 1: which were excellent. I thought you'd be interested to hear
Speaker 1: about a particularly interesting and potentially deadly chainsaw slash logging
Speaker 1: related phenomenon known as the barber chair. The name alone
Speaker 1: falls in line with the seasonal theme. I think a
Speaker 1: barber chair refers to a particular result of improperly cutting
Speaker 1: the front hinge point of a tree, causing unintended pressure
Speaker 1: in the middle of the trunk elsewhere. I'm not a professional,
Speaker 1: so please take this description with a large pinch of salt.
Speaker 1: The result is that the tree splits upwards and falls
Speaker 1: somewhere overhead of the intended felling notch, and not necessarily
Speaker 1: in the direction intended. I've seen it happen on smaller
Speaker 1: trees while cutting trails through the bush. Even small ones
Speaker 1: can still be dangerous, but I imagine it's quite scary.
Speaker 1: On larger ones. It can also ruin what would otherwise
Speaker 1: be good lumber. There are many reasons professional arborists warn
Speaker 1: people about the dangers of an improperly cut hinge. Maybe
Speaker 1: someday a horror director will utilize the barber's chair on film.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the episode, Matt, uh and so, Matt, I
Speaker 1: had no idea about this. Thank you for letting us know,
Speaker 1: because I looked this up and it is astonishing and scary.
Speaker 1: So it is as Matt describes, for in some cases,
Speaker 1: you can be sawing horizontally into the trunk of a tree,
Speaker 1: and if the circumstances are right, the tree can start
Speaker 1: to fall over before you have cut all the way through,
Speaker 1: and this leads to the the trunk splitting vertically, so
Speaker 1: like part of the trunk peels off of the rest
Speaker 1: of the trunk and flips up like a like a
Speaker 1: hinge or like a like a trap lever, sort of
Speaker 1: springing up out of nowhere. And I've seen I've watched
Speaker 1: some videos of this happening in real time while people
Speaker 1: are taping themselves sawing through trees, which I guess is
Speaker 1: you have to be lucky enough to be recording the
Speaker 1: sawing through anyway, which would normally not be something that
Speaker 1: people would think to film. But uh yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: really scary when it happens suddenly, like the tree starts
Speaker 1: kind of twisting in a way that isn't expected. And
Speaker 1: in both of the cases I saw the the sawyer
Speaker 1: who's working the chainsaw gets out of the way fast
Speaker 1: enough to not be harmed. But I've also seen illustrations
Speaker 1: of how loggers could be killed by this. For example,
Speaker 1: if the hinge that pops up when the trunk splits
Speaker 1: up the vertical axis, it can basically pop up like
Speaker 1: a big you know, a big smacking arm and like
Speaker 1: hit you in the head and kill you. Yeah, I hope.
Speaker 1: One of the big takeaways from our chainsaw episodes and
Speaker 1: these are I think things that were that either I
Speaker 1: kind of learned or were you know, strengthened for me.
Speaker 1: Is that Okay? In our culture, we might think that
Speaker 1: that the saw the chainsaw is kind of our right,
Speaker 1: you know that it's like, of course I need a chainsaw,
Speaker 1: or I should get a chainsaw, or something needs sawing
Speaker 1: in my backyard. I should just go get one, and
Speaker 1: I can do this. But you know, regardless of what
Speaker 1: your decision happens to be on a matter like that, like,
Speaker 1: respect the saw. Respect the fact that it is a
Speaker 1: tool that can can potentially be dangerous or put you
Speaker 1: in a dangerous position, and uh, you know you should
Speaker 1: you should absolutely take it seriously. Yeah, the saw and
Speaker 1: the tree. Respect the tree. Yeah, yeah, because the tree
Speaker 1: too is one of those things where when the tree
Speaker 1: is is healthy and standing up still as they do
Speaker 1: most of the time, it's easy to forget, like how
Speaker 1: dangerous they can be if they are suddenly in motion. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And and especially in this case, if they're in motion
Speaker 1: in a way that you didn't expect. So you may
Speaker 1: be taking proper safety p cautions in in terms of
Speaker 1: no one being down line of the tree in the
Speaker 1: direction that you're expecting it to fall. But if you
Speaker 1: have one of these barber chair incidents, the tree could
Speaker 1: be exerting sudden violent force and directions that you did
Speaker 1: not plan. Yeah. Now, as for seeing the barber chair
Speaker 1: in a horror movie, I I don't really want to
Speaker 1: see that. I think if you were to tell me, yes,
Speaker 1: we finally we've made a chainsaw horror movie and it's
Speaker 1: about realistic chainsaw injuries and chainsaw related fatalities, I feel like, no,
Speaker 1: that does not sound good. You keep your final destination chainsaw.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm trying to imagine how that would be used
Speaker 1: in a plot. I mean, like, is there a pivotal
Speaker 1: tree cutting down scene, Like his leather face chasing somebody
Speaker 1: and he has to cut down a tree to get
Speaker 1: to them, but then the barber chair smacks him and
Speaker 1: defeats him. Um, you know, I'll tell you what if
Speaker 1: someone his heart set on creating a film like this,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that Michael Shay wrote a short story
Speaker 1: I think it's called Uncle Tugs that had some some
Speaker 1: chainsaw mishaps in it because the plot had to do
Speaker 1: with like loggers in northern California, and there was like
Speaker 1: a grow house and also some sort of vengeful ghost,
Speaker 1: and I believe the vengeful ghost was causing some accidents
Speaker 1: to occur, and so that would actually be a pretty
Speaker 1: decent story if someone wanted to find some sort of
Speaker 1: narrative structure in which to fit a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: chainsaw accidents. Well, speaking of chainsaw accidents, the next message
Speaker 1: that we're going to read also does mention these, so
Speaker 1: before warned. All right, this is from Kenneth Hi Robin Joe.
Speaker 1: Excellent episode on the invention and history of the chainsaw.
Speaker 1: I had been planning to write in a few days ago,
Speaker 1: but the unexpectedly early birth of our first child put
Speaker 1: thoughts of an email on the back burner. Congratulations. Kenneth continues,
Speaker 1: I had a couple of thoughts regarding chainsaws, the first
Speaker 1: of which was the dramatic and near fatal experience of
Speaker 1: a friend's husband, a tree surgeon by trade, he was
Speaker 1: at work removing heavy, overhanging bows from a large urban oak.
Speaker 1: The section who was working on was high above the streets,
Speaker 1: so he ascended using a cherry picker, then made his
Speaker 1: way through the branches and secured himself to the trunk
Speaker 1: with a harness. Unfortunately, at some point in the tree's
Speaker 1: long history something substantial had been secured to the branch.
Speaker 1: As it grew, It had entirely absorbed a thick steel bolt.
Speaker 1: When his chainsaw reached the hidden metal, it kicked back violently,
Speaker 1: biting deep into his thigh and nicking the femoral artery.
Speaker 1: It was only through the quick thinking of his colleague,
Speaker 1: the speedy arrival of the fire service, and close proximity
Speaker 1: to a hospital that his life was saved. Oh, this
Speaker 1: gets right into something you mentioned in the episodes that
Speaker 1: the one of the main sources of direct injuries from
Speaker 1: chainsaws being kicked back. Yeah. And here, yeah, this sound,
Speaker 1: this unseen metal hidden within the tree branch. And yeah,
Speaker 1: you do see plenty of this in a not only
Speaker 1: in an urban environment, even rural environment. You see you
Speaker 1: see trees growing around metal be it. Uh, you know weird.
Speaker 1: I've certainly seen weird poles position near trees and on trees,
Speaker 1: and you see trees growing in and around fencing. So
Speaker 1: that's that's interesting and terrifying. I'm glad they turned out Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the tree just swallows stuff. So yes, like Rob said,
Speaker 1: very glad to hear your your friend's husband was all right?
Speaker 1: Can it continues my second thoughts since the Texas chainsaw
Speaker 1: massacre and the Evil Dead were so central to the episode,
Speaker 1: uh was about chainsaws as weapons? I know Rob has
Speaker 1: a bit of a soft spot for games workshop models,
Speaker 1: and it's impossible to talk about Warhammer forty thousand without
Speaker 1: considering a space marine welding a chain sword. I've included
Speaker 1: a photograph of a space marine apothecary, basically a battlefield medic,
Speaker 1: bearing one of these weapons. If you look closely at
Speaker 1: his wrist, you'll notice he's also equipped with a smaller
Speaker 1: medical chainsaw, though I'm assuming this is for on the
Speaker 1: spot amputations rather than obstetric I'm assuming that the space
Speaker 1: marine apothecary is not strongly informed by real life medical science. No.
Speaker 1: I think if memory serves, one of his primary jobs
Speaker 1: is to remove the gene seed from a corpse. I
Speaker 1: don't know that the real lore masters out there. We'll
Speaker 1: have to uh tell me if I'm correct on that.
Speaker 1: So I'm not even sure he's supposed to save lives
Speaker 1: as much as like, let's get that important uh gene
Speaker 1: thinging out of the dead body. Um. Anyways, the space
Speaker 1: Marine apothecary does not have a Hippocratic oath. Probably not,
Speaker 1: Kenneth continues, I'm not sure a chain sword would be
Speaker 1: a particularly effective weapon. You probably couldn't use it like
Speaker 1: a traditional sword, as pairing and violent striking attacks would
Speaker 1: cause damage to the mechanism. It would probably have to
Speaker 1: be brought to bear on vulnerable points without great chopping swings.
Speaker 1: I do enjoy the idea of the chain sword as
Speaker 1: a futuristic melee weapon. It's in the vein of the
Speaker 1: viral blade, lightsaber and monofilament edges of other sci fi weapons,
Speaker 1: but it is typically over the top, fitting the brutality
Speaker 1: of the grim Dark setting better. It brims with the
Speaker 1: implication you alluded to that the weapon itself is hungry,
Speaker 1: that the only the slightest touch can cause catastrophic damage,
Speaker 1: even getting away from the user. In its eagerness to
Speaker 1: be about its purpose. It is a brutal weapon, unlike
Speaker 1: the more civilized lightsaber, even though the latter would be
Speaker 1: even more devastating. Anyway, Thanks for the amazing show. Keep
Speaker 1: up the great work, Kenneth. It sounds like Kenneth throwing
Speaker 1: cold water on my Texas lightsaber massacre idea. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it would be uh well, it would be
Speaker 1: a lot of clean cuts, that's the thing. As for
Speaker 1: the chain swords, I actually did have a note about
Speaker 1: chain swords in the notes for our chainsall episodes, but
Speaker 1: then I decided not to say anything about it because
Speaker 1: I'm like, God, they don't want to hear anything about
Speaker 1: Warhammer in this episode. But but not true enough. There
Speaker 1: there are a lot of chain swords in there. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. Surely chain swords pop up another fiction, um,
Speaker 1: but this is the main in place you see them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think they would particularly be practical weapons, even
Speaker 1: if you try to explain them away with a bunch
Speaker 1: of like, you know, high tech materials and you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, super well designed um uh you know, chain
Speaker 1: and so forth. But it does fit this sort of
Speaker 1: this grim you know, at times overly macho vibe that
Speaker 1: that Warhammer forty has going for it and probably ties
Speaker 1: in well to a lot of the you know, the satire.
Speaker 1: I think that was originally intended by the world. But anyway, Kenneth,
Speaker 1: thanks for writing in, and once more, congrats on the kiddo. Okay, Rob,
Speaker 1: you ready for a couple of messages having to do
Speaker 1: with weird house cinema, or at least adjacent to it.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Okay, let's see how about this one
Speaker 1: from Nathan Nathan says Hi, Joe, Robert, and Seth. I
Speaker 1: was recently watching the cinematic masterpiece Christine. Not long after
Speaker 1: re listening to your episode on The Ship of Theseus,
Speaker 1: which is one of my favorites, I started wondering about
Speaker 1: the lore of the movie. And if you're not familiar,
Speaker 1: this is a movie about I don't know, a demonic car.
Speaker 1: That guy, a guy has a kind of unhealthy obsessive
Speaker 1: relationship with Okay, moving on. If the car had been
Speaker 1: completely restored every single part, would it still be so murderous?
Speaker 1: Or is the car possessed on a deeper level? We're
Speaker 1: asking the tough questions here, uh, Nathan Nathan then says,
Speaker 1: I also really enjoyed your recent episodes on the invention
Speaker 1: of the chainsaw. However, I can't believe you didn't mention
Speaker 1: Paul Bunyan. The nineteen fifty eight Disney short is a classic,
Speaker 1: even for someone like me who isn't the biggest Disney fan. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you guys do a great job, and again, thanks for
Speaker 1: keeping me entertained on my boring overnight grocery job. Nathan. Well, Nathan,
Speaker 1: I did not have time to watch the whole short
Speaker 1: before we uh we started recording here, but I clicked
Speaker 1: around and saw some moments of it. One of the
Speaker 1: things that really got me is it starts off by
Speaker 1: and I love the animation style, by the way, so
Speaker 1: it does look great. But it starts off by showing
Speaker 1: a shadow of the title hero, Paul Bunyan, looming over
Speaker 1: a map of North America, and I noticed something I
Speaker 1: thought was really interesting. I was like, Wow, they chose
Speaker 1: to depict Paul Bunyan with long hair that he wears
Speaker 1: in a bun And I was like, could that be
Speaker 1: a choice connected to the name Bunyan. But then I
Speaker 1: realized I had simply been misled by the silhouette he's
Speaker 1: actually wearing some kind of wool cap that has like
Speaker 1: a pom pom or a gathered up section on the top,
Speaker 1: so he doesn't have a bun. But I thought that
Speaker 1: would have been cool. Um, And I guess, you know,
Speaker 1: in the broader sense, not that unusual. Tons of kinds
Speaker 1: of like bun and topknot hairstyles have been common for
Speaker 1: men and plenty of cultures throughout history. But would it
Speaker 1: would have been interesting to see Paul Bunyan in a
Speaker 1: cartoon from the fifties with a bun alas I vaguely
Speaker 1: remember this cartoon looking at these stills, but I guess
Speaker 1: it's not one that I watched a lot, or maybe
Speaker 1: we didn't have on VHS. Yeah, I think it's like
Speaker 1: seventeen minutes long, So I don't know what was the
Speaker 1: venue for showing things like this in the fifties. It's
Speaker 1: like shorter than I obviously much shorter than a feature
Speaker 1: length movie. Would this like play in a movie theater
Speaker 1: or play like before a feature film? I don't know.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a question for our producer, Seth, what
Speaker 1: do you know? Reporting from from a few minutes later,
Speaker 1: Seth did have the answer Seth knows everything about animation. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to put too much pressure on him,
Speaker 1: but he does often have the answer here. Uh so,
Speaker 1: apparently these shorts were originally compiled into feature films and
Speaker 1: uh so, you know you'd have Paul Bunyan alongside some
Speaker 1: other shorts of a similar type and and that would
Speaker 1: be shown as a feature in theaters. But then later
Speaker 1: I guess they were split up and shown in other ways.
Speaker 1: But also, like I said, I did not have time
Speaker 1: to watch this whole thing. But skipping around, there is
Speaker 1: a fun scene where Paul Bunyan walks through a four
Speaker 1: and he's just mowing down trees by swinging his axe
Speaker 1: back and forth like it's a weed eater, and then
Speaker 1: he walks back over the ground he has cut down,
Speaker 1: stomping on all of the stumps to to sink them
Speaker 1: down into the earth. And uh and also Nathan doesn't
Speaker 1: mention it, but I assume this is part of what
Speaker 1: he's referring to as saying that this would have been
Speaker 1: a good thing to fit into our episode on the Chainsaw,
Speaker 1: because there's a part where Paul Bunyan it looks like
Speaker 1: he has to compete against a guy who shows up
Speaker 1: with a steam powered saw. So it's like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the war against the machines, though shot not make a
Speaker 1: saw in the likeness of man now. As for his
Speaker 1: Christine question, I don't know. That's that's always a fun one.
Speaker 1: At what point if you were to totally strip the
Speaker 1: car apart for parts, you know, would would those parts
Speaker 1: make other cars haunted? I don't know. You could also
Speaker 1: apply this to a haunted house story. So if you
Speaker 1: were to tear down the house and rebuild the house
Speaker 1: in the same spot, is it still haunted? Often I
Speaker 1: think movies would say yes, just maybe, like the ground
Speaker 1: is haunted. What if you dug up all the ground
Speaker 1: and moved to the earth away, is it still the
Speaker 1: geographical coordinance or haunted? Yeah? I don't know. I guess
Speaker 1: the idea is there's gotta be something that latches onto
Speaker 1: the idea of the ghost. You know, it's there's gotta
Speaker 1: be some something where there's a forge connection. So if
Speaker 1: you took the car apart, like the ghost would have
Speaker 1: to in a sense choose the thing that he wanted
Speaker 1: to continue to haunt, because that's our a call. In
Speaker 1: the book, it's more about like there's a dude, a
Speaker 1: dead dude who haunts the car. And then in the
Speaker 1: movie they kind of made the choice to make it
Speaker 1: be more like the Cars Is Alive, which I think
Speaker 1: I ultimately liked more. Um but uh but yeah, so
Speaker 1: like the ghost has to choose, like what are you
Speaker 1: gonna be? Uh? Do you want to be the tires?
Speaker 1: You want to be probably the steering wheel, you know,
Speaker 1: or the or some like the engine block. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Steering wheel gets a lot of love. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to be the hood ornament. That would be good too,
Speaker 1: you know, it's very symbolic. All right, here's another one.
Speaker 1: Lion comes to us from Brian, Hey, Robert, and Joe.
Speaker 1: I'm a longtime fan of your podcasts, and after hearing
Speaker 1: Rob mentioned that he watched Black Sabbath on AMC Plus,
Speaker 1: I signed up for a trial, which led me to
Speaker 1: then watching House by the Cemetery. I was obviously pretty
Speaker 1: excited that you chose it for your next episode of
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. While you both did a great job
Speaker 1: of describing the surreal weirdness of that movie, I assume
Speaker 1: he means House by the Cemetery. I believe you left
Speaker 1: out mentioning two incidents that were so jarring to my
Speaker 1: girlfriend and me that we had to rewind just to
Speaker 1: confirm we hadn't misunderstood them. The first was that, despite
Speaker 1: Norman and his family having had no previous relationship to
Speaker 1: the titular house, there was a quite large photo of
Speaker 1: that very house in their apartment in Manhattan. It's the
Speaker 1: one Bob is looking at while his mother packs in
Speaker 1: the beginning. It is rare for a family to have
Speaker 1: a twelve by twelve photo of a house they've never
Speaker 1: seen before hanging in their living and then subsequently move
Speaker 1: into the house and never wants address it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: also that that photo has Bob explicitly tells his mother
Speaker 1: that the photo was talking to him, and she seems
Speaker 1: interested in this fact. Yeah, there's there's absolutely no way
Speaker 1: to answer this question in a way that makes sense,
Speaker 1: Like like no matter like what sort of mental hoops
Speaker 1: you jumped through to to try and make it work,
Speaker 1: It just gets it just gets more confused, but Brian continues.
Speaker 1: The second was when the realtor says to Norman, as
Speaker 1: they are arranging to rent the house, quote, of course
Speaker 1: you've been there before, haven't you. Dr Boyle. Norman gets
Speaker 1: a guilty look on his face while Lucy gives him
Speaker 1: a suspicious eye. He halfheartedly denies the allegation and moves on.
Speaker 1: We took the meaning of this to be that doctor
Speaker 1: Boyle had had sexual trysts in the home like his
Speaker 1: former colleague, and the realtor was accidentally exposing this in
Speaker 1: front of his wife. We were laughing pretty hard, because
Speaker 1: what sort of realtors says, I, if you've had an
Speaker 1: affair in this home, No to prospective client who knows
Speaker 1: it's never addressed again. I just thought you might enjoy
Speaker 1: knowing that the movie made even less sense than you
Speaker 1: had already believed. Wow, I did not even notice that
Speaker 1: second one. Um, I remember the second one. I didn't
Speaker 1: even think about the idea of it being like an
Speaker 1: affair situation. I was just confused by it, like because
Speaker 1: they're like, you've been there before, right, you came with
Speaker 1: your your daughter? Because this was another thing. He said,
Speaker 1: you came here with your daughter, write and he's like, no,
Speaker 1: I have a son. So I was. I was thinking
Speaker 1: it had something to do with the ghosts and the
Speaker 1: idea that like, not only are they like another family
Speaker 1: to come to the house where they're kind of like
Speaker 1: an echo of the family that had been there previously,
Speaker 1: Like the house attracts a certain type. You've always been
Speaker 1: the caretaker here. Yeah, that kind of that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I guess it kind and that may indeed be the
Speaker 1: true origin is like looking to sort of, um, you know,
Speaker 1: inspiration for from other films that that FULTI might have
Speaker 1: been looking at. But I guess I'll stand by what
Speaker 1: I said earlier. If there's something that doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: in a Fulgi movie, um, very little is going to
Speaker 1: be revealed by trying. You can't make it makes sense.
Speaker 1: The nonsense is baked into the DNA of the thing.
Speaker 1: I think another way to put that is a lot
Speaker 1: of times I don't even get the feeling that Folgi
Speaker 1: is trying to make it makes sense and failing. He's
Speaker 1: just not even trying, right, Yeah, and so it's not Yeah.
Speaker 1: So sometimes because in other movies you can sort of
Speaker 1: you can go through that mental exercise and you can
Speaker 1: I can make it makes sense because the the creator
Speaker 1: was trying to make something makes sense. Um, But but
Speaker 1: not necessarily the case with Folgi. Oh and we have
Speaker 1: another little bit from Brian has a ps attached, Uh,
Speaker 1: quote an ad for J and B Scotch on an
Speaker 1: on a New York City bus in the beginning of
Speaker 1: the movie reminded me of what a staple it is
Speaker 1: in Jallow films. I feel like y'all could run up
Speaker 1: a pretty high acount of all the J and B
Speaker 1: bottles or ads you see in weird how Cinema movies.
Speaker 1: Just a thought, uh and then uh. He includes a
Speaker 1: link that is J and B in the movies dot
Speaker 1: Com and says loving the episodes, Thanks, Brian. Have have
Speaker 1: we not talked about this on the show before? I
Speaker 1: know that this is something I've talked about a lot,
Speaker 1: but maybe not on Mike. So J and B is
Speaker 1: in every Italian horror movie. There's almost always a bottle
Speaker 1: that shows up somewhere. Rachel and I point these out
Speaker 1: to each other every time when we watch a Jallow movie,
Speaker 1: or just any Italian horror movie. I can scarcely remember
Speaker 1: having watched one where a J and B bottle doesn't appear.
Speaker 1: At some point. I this might have been off my
Speaker 1: but I remember this popping up with Return of the
Speaker 1: Blind Dead, because there's the scene where they're all gonna
Speaker 1: the new fireworks man is in town. They're gonna all
Speaker 1: have a drink, and I was thinking, Oh, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of interested in where are they going to drink? Is
Speaker 1: it's something you know, um, something kind of Spanish or something. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's going to be really fitting of the
Speaker 1: location or where it's supposed to take place, a nice
Speaker 1: spin sherry or something. Yeah, but it wasn't. It was
Speaker 1: J and B. Right, I seem to recall it. Well, No,
Speaker 1: actually I wonder if that might have come up because
Speaker 1: I was expecting it to be J and B and
Speaker 1: then it wasn't. Okay, but Brian, in any case, you
Speaker 1: are absolutely correct. There almost every Italian horror movie I've
Speaker 1: ever seen has J and B in it. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know why that is. I don't know if
Speaker 1: they had like a their National Film Board had a
Speaker 1: had a like ad relationship or something, or maybe it
Speaker 1: was just a perfectly spontaneous replication phenomenon. I really don't know,
Speaker 1: now that I'm thinking about it. I think Return of
Speaker 1: the Living Dead just had some sort of I think
Speaker 1: maybe it's British whiskey of some sort. Okay, Return of
Speaker 1: the Blind, Yeah, return Return of the Blind Dad. So
Speaker 1: it was it was not Spanish, it was. It was
Speaker 1: something less exciting. I mean, nothing against J and B.
Speaker 1: But yeah, no thoughts one way or another. Really, But
Speaker 1: if somebody out there is like an Italian film historian
Speaker 1: who wants to tell us why J and B is
Speaker 1: an all these movies, I would I would love to know.
Speaker 1: But that that website is pretty amusing because it is
Speaker 1: just movie after movie and like you can see there
Speaker 1: it is there's J m B in the background. All right,
Speaker 1: there's a bottle on the table. Yep, yep, they're pouring
Speaker 1: some JMB in that scene. Oh man. One of the
Speaker 1: top entries on the blog right now is beyond the Door.
Speaker 1: That's one that I know has come up on Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema before. That's the Italian Exorcist rip off where
Speaker 1: they're discussing baby names and and a lady quite hilariously goes,
Speaker 1: what about Steve? No knock on people named Steve? But
Speaker 1: I don't know it's funny. All right, Well, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and close the mail bag for today, but hey,
Speaker 1: certainly keep the the Halloween related listener mails coming in.
Speaker 1: We'll continue to address those obviously, and uh yeah, so
Speaker 1: so just right in with thoughts on past episodes, current episodes,
Speaker 1: potential future episodes, UM of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: the core episodes of our our Friday Weird half Cinema episodes,
Speaker 1: UM you know anything related to the artifacts on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: or just you know other listener mails that we read
Speaker 1: on Monday's Huge Things. As always to our wonderful audio
Speaker 1: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
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