Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House
Speaker 3: Cinema we are going to be talking about the nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty one Italian slasher movie Absurd, directed by Joe Demato
Speaker 3: and starring George Eastman. Now, Rob, I understand you wanted
Speaker 3: to talk about how this movie typifies a movie subgenre,
Speaker 3: maybe not defined within the movie itself, but the sort
Speaker 3: of meta subgenre of the video nasty.
Speaker 2: That's right. We've referred to video nasties before on the show,
Speaker 2: and those of you know what we're talking about, you know,
Speaker 2: probably not in your head. And if you don't know
Speaker 2: what a video nasty is, you might have just you know,
Speaker 2: picked up on context and on. But basically, it's essentially
Speaker 2: you can slang for films, usually low budget horror and
Speaker 2: exploitation films that were highly controversial during the nineteen eighties
Speaker 2: as they were able to enter the UK distribution market
Speaker 2: through a loophole that allowed the distributors to avoid official classification,
Speaker 2: part of a video gold rush that came with VHS technology.
Speaker 2: At the time. This is the description given by David
Speaker 2: Coreki's and David Slater in the twenty twenty three book
Speaker 2: Cannibal Error, Anti Film Propaganda and the Video Nasties Panic
Speaker 2: of the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: So this would be sort of an informal list of
Speaker 3: films that what were not necessarily illegal, but were singled
Speaker 3: out for being obscene or terrible or just worthy of
Speaker 3: moral approbate, approbation in some way.
Speaker 2: Well you kind of get both things. There's like it
Speaker 2: does become formalized, but then there's also kind of like
Speaker 2: an informal list as well. So basically the short version
Speaker 2: of how this went down as you had and again
Speaker 2: this is a you're involving like new technology, new distribution patterns,
Speaker 2: and also changes in you know, what the public wants,
Speaker 2: and then public anxiety about obscenity. So basically you haven't
Speaker 2: had an advocacy group called the National Viewers and Listeners Association,
Speaker 2: and it made a big outcry about these these films
Speaker 2: that we're making it into the UK on VHS, and
Speaker 2: it led to just a whole saga of politics, moral panic,
Speaker 2: censorship discussion, and the end result was the imposition of
Speaker 2: state video censorship in the UK in nineteen eighty four
Speaker 2: and the creation of a Director of Public Prosecutions DPP
Speaker 2: list of films that would come to be known as
Speaker 2: video nasties. Though I think this term also ends up
Speaker 2: becoming especially outside of the UK and in just sort
Speaker 2: of VHS horror exploitation film circles, it becomes something of
Speaker 2: a you know, a loose term that is you for
Speaker 2: various sort of grimy, low budget often euro films of
Speaker 2: the time period.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, So thus my confusion. So some of the
Speaker 3: things referred to as video nasties were actually targeted by
Speaker 3: the law in the UK and other things just sort
Speaker 3: of informally get that title as a kind of descriptor
Speaker 3: of what these movies tend to be.
Speaker 2: Like, Yeah, because you definitely had a list, you had
Speaker 2: like section one. Prosecuted films included actually a few different
Speaker 2: films we've discussed on Weird House, nineteen eighty's Cannibal Apocalypse,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one's The House by the Cemetery, and today's
Speaker 2: film Absurd, which is also from nineteen eighty one as
Speaker 2: His House by the Cemetery. Now, naturally there's some really
Speaker 2: grimy exploitation fodder in that list as well, But there's
Speaker 2: also plenty of stuff that I don't know. It's all subjective,
Speaker 2: but it feels, at least to me, kind of tame
Speaker 2: by today's standards. But naturally, the line between art and
Speaker 2: obscenity is always going to be subjective to a certain extent,
Speaker 2: and there's gonna be a point of disagree in figuring
Speaker 2: out what is what. But apart from these official classifications
Speaker 2: and uproars in the UK, the term video nasty again
Speaker 2: kind of becomes kind of comes to be a badge
Speaker 2: of honor for many horror films from this time period,
Speaker 2: especially in later decades. By the time many of us
Speaker 2: were looking these up in books like the Psychotronic Film Guide,
Speaker 2: or buying bootleg VHS tapes off of eBay back in
Speaker 2: the day, or learning about them online, you know, browsing
Speaker 2: Internet movie data base, looking at various blogs forums, or
Speaker 2: today venturing around on letterbox dot com. You know, it
Speaker 2: adds that extra bit of intrigue to a title. This
Speaker 2: is a video nasty, this is a curse tape. You know,
Speaker 2: watch at your own risk.
Speaker 3: Now that might lead you to wonder, okay, if this
Speaker 3: is one of those films that was considered so bad
Speaker 3: as to be you know, targeted by the law in
Speaker 3: the UK. Is there like, what's it about? What goes on?
Speaker 3: Is you know, is it a Texas chainsaw massacre kind
Speaker 3: of thing? I think the best way to describe obs
Speaker 3: third is that it must have been pitched as a
Speaker 3: Halloween clone. Halloween came out in nineteen seventy eight, Is
Speaker 3: that right? Yeah, just checked, it was seventy eight, So
Speaker 3: this is a few years after that, and there were many,
Speaker 3: many Halloween clones. Halloween was a big hit, and so
Speaker 3: a lot of movies tried to copy it. In fact,
Speaker 3: some of the big slasher franchises in the American market.
Speaker 3: I think you could argue began as Halloween clones. One
Speaker 3: might sing, one might point to like Friday the thirteenth,
Speaker 3: and so forth. You know, it even picks like a
Speaker 3: day of the Years as the title. But anyway, so
Speaker 3: I think absurd. It was imagined as a kind of
Speaker 3: Halloween clone, but much more gory and disgusting. Halloween is
Speaker 3: actually fairly light on the blood and gore. You don't
Speaker 3: see a lot of explicit consequences of violence in it.
Speaker 3: It's more, you know, Halloween is much more focused on
Speaker 3: the building of tension through proximity and terror and perspective
Speaker 3: and all that kind of stuff. Absurd gets into a
Speaker 3: lot more just gross, explicit sort of meat exercises, but
Speaker 3: it has very similar plot dynamics. So both movies are
Speaker 3: about a seemingly indestructible killer who escapes from a facility
Speaker 3: of some kind and strikes out with random murders in
Speaker 3: a nearby neighborhood. Well, actually no, in Absurd it's not
Speaker 3: a nearby neighborhood for some reason. He goes to a
Speaker 3: different country. But in both cases strikes out with random
Speaker 3: murders in a neighborhood with no discernible motive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just random killings.
Speaker 3: Both movies follow babysitters as the sort of the victims
Speaker 3: and protagonists in a way. Both movies have a kid
Speaker 3: who refers to the killer as the Boogeyman. You remember
Speaker 3: that's in Halloween, and they really emphasize that in Absurd
Speaker 3: as well. And in both cases the killer is pursued
Speaker 3: by a sort of eccentric, obsessive foreign cleric, and in
Speaker 3: the case of Halloween that's Donald Pleasant, says Doctor Loomis
Speaker 3: in this movie, it is a Greek priest. So you
Speaker 3: can see a lot of similarities, but you can see
Speaker 3: differences as well. And one that I think is interesting
Speaker 3: is exactly what makes Halloween so so effective as horror
Speaker 3: in a way is its restraint, the way in which
Speaker 3: it really like takes its time, the way in which
Speaker 3: you know, it plays with as I was saying, distance
Speaker 3: and perspective, you know, showing things in the background of
Speaker 3: shots instead of just going for immediate jump scares and
Speaker 3: so forth. Absurd is the exact opposite. It does not
Speaker 3: play with restraint. It plays to excess.
Speaker 2: Though it does take its time in some of the sites.
Speaker 2: That's true, yeah, but not necessarily in a good way.
Speaker 3: I mean, it'll like really take its time showing how
Speaker 3: long a murder takes to complete. Yeah, but no, it
Speaker 3: also does take its time. I mean, yeah, it does
Speaker 3: have the killer lurking in the background sometimes as well,
Speaker 3: so in some ways you've got that element going on.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a Halloween clone, but with Italian excess sensibilities.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, I would say this is an
Speaker 3: Italian horror movie of the early nineteen eighties. And while
Speaker 3: Absurd does earn a number of superlatives, I'm not trying
Speaker 3: to put it down here. One thing I do think
Speaker 3: it kind of makes it stand out is it does
Speaker 3: not manage to be as visually exciting as a lot
Speaker 3: of the Italian horror movies of this period that we love.
Speaker 3: In fact, I would say it almost has a pointedly
Speaker 3: intentionally drab, lifeless and colorless visual style. The sets all
Speaker 3: seem to be various shades of white, brown, yellow, and tan.
Speaker 3: There's not much, really any use of colored lighting that
Speaker 3: I can recall. There aren't any beautiful vistas or stained
Speaker 3: glass effects or anything like that. It is an almost
Speaker 3: intentionally quite drab looking film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean de Motto gets into he gets into
Speaker 2: some creative territory with some of the shots, and he
Speaker 2: makes I think he makes pretty good use of the
Speaker 2: location in some scenes. But yeah, this is not a
Speaker 2: movie you seek out for its rich colors or its
Speaker 2: amazing production design. There's not even any monster makeup, just
Speaker 2: no grimy gore. And I think most people who seek
Speaker 2: it out aren't going to seek it out for its
Speaker 2: reputation as a low budget video nasty and stick with
Speaker 2: it for some of its well absurd choices. You know,
Speaker 2: because despite its reputation. It's not the gorious film from
Speaker 2: this time period, nor is it the most disturbing by
Speaker 2: any stretch. It's worth noting, especially with Dematto here, that
Speaker 2: there's no nudity in this film at all, virtually no
Speaker 2: sexual content of any kind. So it's amazingly tame on
Speaker 2: that side of the exploitation scales, I would say. Yeah. Also,
Speaker 2: despite the American title, it's worth noting that it's I
Speaker 2: don't know, you could make a strong argument that this
Speaker 2: film is not really absurd. It's not a surrealistic film,
Speaker 2: it's not psychedel But again, I think three things help
Speaker 2: it to stand out from a lot of the other
Speaker 2: slot films of the time period. It's got a fun score,
Speaker 2: there are some weird choices that are made, I think
Speaker 2: some deliberately and some just via the speed of the production.
Speaker 2: And then you've got the screen presence, near constant screen
Speaker 2: presence of George Eastman.
Speaker 3: Which alone puts this film in a kind of rare category.
Speaker 3: I mean, everybody, even if you don't know anything about
Speaker 3: like these Italian exploitation movies and you don't know who
Speaker 3: George Eastman is, I think if you see a movie
Speaker 3: with George Eastman in it. You're gonna remember him. You're
Speaker 3: gonna be like, who was that guy?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, A lot of times it's a small role.
Speaker 2: He's come up in films before. He pops up, for instance,
Speaker 2: in The Hands of Steel that we watched a while back,
Speaker 2: and here he gets a chance to shine.
Speaker 3: Now, regarding the question you said, the movie is not
Speaker 3: even that absurd, I was wondering if maybe the absurd
Speaker 3: title refers not to the more common usage like you
Speaker 3: were saying there, comparing it to something that is psychedelic
Speaker 3: or surreal. Maybe we often use the word just to
Speaker 3: mean like weird, illogical, or unreasonable. I was wondering if
Speaker 3: it is not that usage of absurd, but the philosophical
Speaker 3: usage a lah absurdism, the core tenets of which are
Speaker 3: that the universe is meaningless and our lives are meaningless,
Speaker 3: and that much of the struggle of human life and
Speaker 3: so many of our conflicts and contradictions arise because people
Speaker 3: are trying to find the meaning in meaningless things.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, I hear what you're laying down.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, so I think the movie Absurd is quite
Speaker 3: The plot is quite compatible with the view that life
Speaker 3: is meaningless. You know, the attacks are completely random. And
Speaker 3: I wonder if George Eastman's problem as a character is
Speaker 3: that he is engaged in a futile search for the
Speaker 3: meaning of life, and that search involves power drills and
Speaker 3: bandsaws and so forth.
Speaker 2: It is interesting that he does not have a signature weapon.
Speaker 2: He just makes use of what is immediately around him
Speaker 2: and doesn't carry anything with him.
Speaker 3: It's usually powered mechanisms, isn't it Not in every case,
Speaker 3: but that's kind of strange. He likes like a he
Speaker 3: likes a weapon you can plug into the wall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he'll drag you through the house to get
Speaker 2: to it. It's not just a matter of like what's
Speaker 2: immediately around me. It's like did I see an oven earlier? Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's got to be a kitchen around here somewhere. We'll
Speaker 2: spend five minutes searching for it.
Speaker 3: So if we haven't warned you enough already, do be
Speaker 3: warned that this movie does have some really gross violence
Speaker 3: in it. So if you're going to watch it, be prepared.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I also, I don't want to oversell this
Speaker 2: movie like sometimes, you know, I'm big on really championing
Speaker 2: a film and saying like there's this is a hidden gym,
Speaker 2: or there's some there are some diamonds in this one.
Speaker 2: This is a film that a lot of people don't like.
Speaker 2: Even we're into into horror, you know, we'll give it
Speaker 2: maybe like mediocre reviews. So if you're on the fence
Speaker 2: about seeing absurd there's a very strong chance you're not
Speaker 2: going to like it. So fair warning. This might be
Speaker 2: a case where you just want to hear us talk
Speaker 2: about it. But if if you're into this sort of thing, well,
Speaker 2: you know, dive in because there's there is some absurdity.
Speaker 2: There is some weirdness here that I thought was pretty fun.
Speaker 3: Speaking of the absurdity and the weirdness, just a few
Speaker 3: things I want to call out at the beginnings, these
Speaker 3: these strange contradictions in the movie, where there are things
Speaker 3: where I don't even know how to characterize them really
Speaker 3: because they contain contradictions. One of them is the sets
Speaker 3: in this film which have this They are simultaneously opulent
Speaker 3: and squalid, do you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like the one of the key, the key
Speaker 2: set in the film, the key location is this obvious
Speaker 2: Italian villa, you know, and it's clearly has old bone
Speaker 2: spacious interiors, but the way that the space is decorated
Speaker 2: at times feels very sparse and slapped together. And it's
Speaker 2: also we'll get back to this more, but this is
Speaker 2: essentially presented to us as an American home where Americans
Speaker 2: live and are ready for some American football. And i've
Speaker 2: this with suits of armor inside that. Yes, yes, so
Speaker 2: it's it's a weird missmash And I think this is
Speaker 2: ultimately one of its charms, you know, you know, at
Speaker 2: least watching it as an American, you know, it is
Speaker 2: seeing the sort of mismatch of things.
Speaker 3: Another thing, what is going on with people's accents in
Speaker 3: this movie. The babysitter is a great example. She seems
Speaker 3: to go from I've heard I hear English accent at
Speaker 3: some point, like a very a very formal kind of
Speaker 3: received pronunciation accent. Sometimes I hear Irish, sometimes I hear Italian,
Speaker 3: sometimes I hear American. It is all over the place.
Speaker 2: Well, you have to remember Absurd as a prestige picture
Speaker 2: with an international cast, so you know it was you know,
Speaker 2: it's not, but it was conceived and produced not so
Speaker 2: much for native Italian audiences, but to be shipped out
Speaker 2: to various international markets, each of their own particular and
Speaker 2: shifting censorship standards, And so we have a predominantly Italian cast,
Speaker 2: but with some like UK and I guess, and I
Speaker 2: guess largely UK talent thrown in there as well as
Speaker 2: this American setting, though again everything was filmed in Italy. Okay.
Speaker 3: I was just thinking before we get to the elevator pitch,
Speaker 3: I was thinking of like three different ways of categorizing
Speaker 3: mad slasher villains in movies like this. One is the
Speaker 3: question we already addressed of is there a motive or not?
Speaker 3: Sometimes the motive of the slasher is like revenge or something,
Speaker 3: and other times there is no motive. This is a
Speaker 3: case of no motive, firmly on the random violence into
Speaker 3: the scale.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is on the Halloween end of the spectrum,
Speaker 2: as opposed to say the burning or Nightmare on Elm Street,
Speaker 2: where there is some symbolans of vengeance bound up in
Speaker 2: the motives of the killer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or the original Friday the thirteenth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, that's right. I kind of forget
Speaker 2: because he kind of becomes just a mindless killing machine
Speaker 2: and the franchise later on, certainly by the time he
Speaker 2: takes Manhattan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. Okay, that's criteria number one. Criterion number two
Speaker 3: is the form, the form and costuming of the slasher villain.
Speaker 3: Do they wear a mask or are they physically altered
Speaker 3: in some way this case, no, he's just Georgie Sman. No,
Speaker 3: no makeup, no mask, no nothing. He's just a guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean an interesting looking guy, but just a guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. For much of it, Like he's just wearing like
Speaker 2: jeans and a shirt. Like, he's just wearing like and
Speaker 2: I'd assume he's just normal clothes. Okay.
Speaker 3: Third distinction I would make is is this mad slasher
Speaker 3: the beneficiary of any kind of supernatural intervention or magic?
Speaker 3: And in this case, I would say, once again, no,
Speaker 3: this is a super powered slasher. But it's not like
Speaker 3: in the later Halloween sequels where we discover that Michael
Speaker 3: Myers is some kind of like reincarnated Celtic deity or something. No,
Speaker 3: he's just a guy, except we get a science fiction
Speaker 3: explanation for why he is so strong and why bullets
Speaker 3: do not stop him. It's it's because he was the
Speaker 3: result of some experiment in a lab or. I think
Speaker 3: they say there was a contamination. They don't get deep
Speaker 3: into the explanation. But he is a product of science,
Speaker 3: not magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, The explanation is a little garble. There's some
Speaker 2: contradictions there we'll get into, but essentially it's like a
Speaker 2: weapons X program. He has a mutant healing factor. It's
Speaker 2: explicitly stated. He's kind of like the Italian or I
Speaker 2: guess the Greek saber tooth here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So I feel like all three of these distinctions push
Speaker 3: it more into the philosophical absurdism side of the scale, right,
Speaker 3: that he is just a man like he's not physically
Speaker 3: represented in any unusual way, that his motives are non existent,
Speaker 3: it's just random, and that there is no magic or
Speaker 3: supernatural intervention of any kind. He's just a product of
Speaker 3: a science experiment gone wrong.
Speaker 2: Well, building on that and in lieu of an actual
Speaker 2: elevator pitch, I'm going to read a quote from Albert
Speaker 2: Camu the myth of Sisyphus. Thus, I draw from the
Speaker 2: absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and
Speaker 2: my passion. Bravo wow, I mean it is revolting. So,
Speaker 2: and I think we're gonna we're gonna skip trailer audio
Speaker 2: on this one. In part because the trailer is just
Speaker 2: music and screaming. I believe, oh yeah, I would be
Speaker 2: inclined to include it if we had a narrator saying absurd,
Speaker 2: but they don't.
Speaker 3: I'm going to go on record here and say, even
Speaker 3: for horror movies, I do not like trailers that are
Speaker 3: just full of screaming. Not a fan. I like a
Speaker 3: narrator or at least some clips of dialogue and ominous music.
Speaker 3: This is the screaming. Save it for the climax of
Speaker 3: the film. I'm I'm not interested in hearing just three
Speaker 3: minutes of screaming to preview a movie.
Speaker 2: Absolutely all right. So if at this point you're like, okay,
Speaker 2: and I do actually want to watch Absurd before finishing
Speaker 2: this episode, well, then more power to you. Now. The
Speaker 2: thing is Absurd has circulated under various titles and with
Speaker 2: various cuts for a long time. The region free severin
Speaker 2: Films BLU ray is hard to beat, though, featuring both
Speaker 2: the original Italian cut that comes in at eighty eight
Speaker 2: minutes and the uncensored US cut, which comes in at
Speaker 2: ninety four minutes. The discs also features a handful of
Speaker 2: informative interviews which I'll refer back to, and it has
Speaker 2: the whole the entire score on CD as a bonus disc. Now,
Speaker 2: if you are not into the physical media, you don't
Speaker 2: have access to it, don't have time, and so forth.
Speaker 2: You can also stream the US cut and it has
Speaker 2: the box art for the Severeign release, so I guess
Speaker 2: it's connected to that. You can stream it on TOV currently,
Speaker 2: at least in the United States. I own the disc.
Speaker 2: It's great. I think once I'm done with it, I'm
Speaker 2: going to be donating it to Videodrome here in Atlanta,
Speaker 2: so if you're local, you can rent the disc there.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into the folks who made this film,
Speaker 2: starting at the top with the director, the producer, and
Speaker 2: the cinematographer. It's Joe Tomato, who lived nineteen thirty six
Speaker 2: through nineteen ninety nine, a truly legendary name in the
Speaker 2: realm of Italian exploitation and trash cinema. We have mentioned
Speaker 2: him numerous times on the show, often in connection to
Speaker 2: other actors who are working in eurocinema or in Italian cinema,
Speaker 2: sometimes also for things that he did besides directing. For instance,
Speaker 2: he was at least one of the producers on troll Too.
Speaker 3: Was he involved at all in Shocking Dark?
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think he was, but we will
Speaker 2: have a Shocking Dark connection here in just a bit. Okay. So,
Speaker 2: Joe Tomato is one of the many monikers that he
Speaker 2: used for his directorial work over the years. It's just
Speaker 2: the one that seemed to stick the most. But his
Speaker 2: birth name was Artista day Masa Chesi. We're going to
Speaker 2: keep referring to him as Joe Tomato though. So Joe
Speaker 2: Tomano did everything in film at one point or another,
Speaker 2: in part because, you know, based on an interview, the
Speaker 2: interviews that I've seen with him, in interviews with George Eastman,
Speaker 2: who worked with him multiple times, he's a guy who
Speaker 2: loves cinema and you know, love the craft of cinema. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I think he often said that he was not an
Speaker 2: artist and did not see himself as an artist, but
Speaker 2: he clearly, like you know it, was really into the
Speaker 2: craft of making films and all. But also he was
Speaker 2: notoriously cheap and was generally operating on a shoe string budget.
Speaker 2: You know, make it fast, make it cheap. Eastman has
Speaker 2: pointed out in interviews that like if they could do
Speaker 2: it with one take. They would do it with one take,
Speaker 2: you know. And he wasn't the type of director to
Speaker 2: instruct the actors at all. So if it was a
Speaker 2: good actor, you know, you might get a good performance.
Speaker 2: If they were green, it was going to be as
Speaker 2: green as it came out, you know. It just wasn't
Speaker 2: his thing, Eastman says, And to instruct and build upon
Speaker 2: the performance.
Speaker 3: One take, that's what I love that. That's like the
Speaker 3: ed would rule, right, you know, why do it again
Speaker 3: when it's perfect?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, And we've got to We've got to crank
Speaker 2: this out, you know. Yea. So yeah. These were the
Speaker 2: defining qualities of his work, you know, is that he
Speaker 2: really loved the craft. He wanted to do everything, and
Speaker 2: he wanted to do it cheap. But he was also
Speaker 2: said to be pretty easy going, humorous about his productions,
Speaker 2: gave collaborators room to do their thing, but would, as
Speaker 2: Eastman put it, far, rather do ten cheap films than
Speaker 2: one film with a bigger budget. De Motto himself for Variety,
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean demto himself would say, like the
Speaker 2: pay is the same, Why would I do that one
Speaker 2: big film and put all that work into it. I'll
Speaker 2: just do ten cheap films and it'll be the same
Speaker 2: for me at the end of the day. Wow. Now
Speaker 2: he's been observed that this this also really held him
Speaker 2: back because he thinks that Dematto could have had more
Speaker 2: success if he'd specialized as a producer and as a
Speaker 2: cinematographer and like let other people direct. But he kept
Speaker 2: on directing, and when the demand for Italian genre films
Speaker 2: went south, he worked on what was internationally marketable, and
Speaker 2: that's something to keep mine with a lot of these
Speaker 2: films like this, this film in particular, it was not
Speaker 2: really made for Italian audiences. I think it did, you know,
Speaker 2: show in theaters very briefly. It was mostly to be
Speaker 2: shipped out to other markets in various cuts, And when
Speaker 2: the demand for those sorts of films went away, it meant,
Speaker 2: you know, he had to turn to other things that
Speaker 2: were internationally marketable, which meant mostly adult films. But during
Speaker 2: his prime he shot pretty much everything, like every type
Speaker 2: of B movie anyway, from you know, from gladiator flicks
Speaker 2: to post apocalyptic gladiator flicks. And there's a lot of
Speaker 2: garbage in there, to be sure, But if the various
Speaker 2: video nasties and cult classics worth mentioning. Here you have
Speaker 2: the likes of seventy three's Death Smiles and a Murderer
Speaker 2: seventy nine Beyond the Darkness. Oh and also there's a
Speaker 2: tour the Fighting Eagle that one. I believe that that
Speaker 2: or one of the a tour films was featured on
Speaker 2: the Mystery Science Theater three thousand, twenty twenty Texas. Gladiators
Speaker 2: and Endgame from eighty three also very Emmanuel films in
Speaker 2: the erotic genre. In nineteen eighty he collaborated with George
Speaker 2: Eastman on the film and Throwpophagus, the predecessor to this film,
Speaker 2: and it was enough of a hit internationally that they
Speaker 2: came back for a kind of spiritual sequel, spiritual successor,
Speaker 2: and that is this film absurd.
Speaker 3: That is one I've heard warnings about, even from people
Speaker 3: who are like hardened low budget gory horror movie fans.
Speaker 3: They're like, that one is disgusting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's gross, it's you know, it's it's shot
Speaker 2: in grease. That it's very really grimy. So it does
Speaker 2: have Eastman as the villain, as the cannibalistic monster, though
Speaker 2: in that film he has like a bald cap and
Speaker 2: some monster makeup on, and that film famously ends with
Speaker 2: the monster being like partially disemboweled, and then Eastman's character
Speaker 2: pulls out his own guts and takes a big bite
Speaker 2: out of them and dies. So that's that's the kind
Speaker 2: of film it is. And it had various titles as
Speaker 2: where like like the Grim Reaper.
Speaker 3: And so forth, and they're like, for absurd, what if
Speaker 3: you take the ending of that movie and start there exactly?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's essentially what they do. We have a fun,
Speaker 2: fun callback to that disemboweling sequence, all right. Yeah, getting
Speaker 2: to the star, we lveray talked about him a little bit,
Speaker 2: but Georgie'sman born nineteen forty two still with us as
Speaker 2: of this recording. Not only does he play our central
Speaker 2: monster who this is one of those films where this
Speaker 2: character has both a first and last name in the credits,
Speaker 2: which is ridiculous. Mikos Stinopolis. Never is I think either
Speaker 2: name referred to?
Speaker 3: No, they do?
Speaker 2: They do? Do they? When they refer to Mikos Stanopolis,
Speaker 2: where the.
Speaker 3: Detective is, oh, I can't wait to talk about him.
Speaker 3: But the detective is interviewing the Greek priest who you
Speaker 3: don't know was a priest at this point, and they're
Speaker 3: talking about the killer. They say his name is whatever,
Speaker 3: Mikos or Nicos, Stenopolis, whichever it is, and so they
Speaker 3: say his last name. But it's not the only time
Speaker 3: we have a slasher movie villain with the first and
Speaker 3: last name. I admit it also did sound funny here,
Speaker 3: But then I thought, wait a minute, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees,
Speaker 3: Freddy Krueger, we know their first and last names. Why
Speaker 3: does it feel weird here? I'm not sure, but it
Speaker 3: did feel really funny when we got his whole name.
Speaker 3: It just seems like a character who should not have
Speaker 3: a name or something, or you wouldn't know what his
Speaker 3: name was. They would just call him the being or something.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it also I think is especially funny because
Speaker 3: it's George Eastman, and something about the way George Eastman
Speaker 3: looks in this movie is corrupted by knowing that he
Speaker 3: has a full name. Does that make any sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, so obviously the name George Eastman is also
Speaker 2: a moniker. This is the stage name, one of many
Speaker 2: stage names about ultimately the one that's stuck for Luigi Montefiori,
Speaker 2: and he is but He's always going to be George Eastman.
Speaker 2: This is the name that's going to be written in
Speaker 2: b movie lore forever. And you just have to see
Speaker 2: him to know what we're talking about. He pops up
Speaker 2: in a lot of things, Spaghetti western, certainly at first,
Speaker 2: horror films, post apocalyptic pictures. At least in his prime
Speaker 2: he was he was at least six ' six, but
Speaker 2: I've also seen him promoted as six ' nine. It's
Speaker 2: sometimes hard to tell and show business how tall someone
Speaker 2: actually is, but very tall. Man looks very tall on
Speaker 2: the screen, lean but muscular, you know, handsome guy. But
Speaker 2: also there's like a fairal you know, like in quality.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a lean and hungry look to him
Speaker 2: that he's that allows him to like naturally lean into
Speaker 2: villain and heavy rolls.
Speaker 3: He does not look trustworthy. He has a face that
Speaker 3: looks like a like a predatory mammal kind of wolfin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so you know that's what you get Oodlezov
Speaker 2: in this film. But he was in a lot of stuff.
Speaker 2: We already mentioned eighty six's Hand of Steel, Hands of Steel.
Speaker 2: He was also in let's see nineteen ninety The Bronx Warriors.
Speaker 2: Then there's twenty nineteen, after the fall of New York
Speaker 2: Blast Fighter Rabid Dogs. He had attended film school and
Speaker 2: his acting credits go back at least in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: but he also wrote screenplays, and if I remember correctly
Speaker 2: from past interviews I've watched, he was sometimes asked to
Speaker 2: work over bad scripts and make them like at least
Speaker 2: less bad. And De Motto and Eastman first worked together
Speaker 2: on Cormac of the Mounties from nineteen seventy five. This
Speaker 2: is a film where the lead actor apparently rejected the
Speaker 2: existing screenplay, but it was but after they had already
Speaker 2: set the shooting schedule for the picture based on the
Speaker 2: old script, and so Eastman had to be brought in
Speaker 2: to write a brand new script to please the lead
Speaker 2: but also appease the shooting schedule that was already agreed upon,
Speaker 2: and it ended up at least working to some degree.
Speaker 2: So this led to an extended writer director partnership on
Speaker 2: various exploitation films, some of them really grimy in various countries,
Speaker 2: including the aforementioned Greek cannibal film, in which Eastman starred
Speaker 2: and also was the writer. And yeah, that was enough
Speaker 2: of a success. They came back and made this film.
Speaker 2: Eastman went on to direct the nineteen ninety film Metamorphosis,
Speaker 2: but quit acting around the same time to focus on
Speaker 2: his screenwriting, and apparently enjoyed a fair amount of success
Speaker 2: writing for higher budget Italian television projects. He also had
Speaker 2: a couple of There are also a couple of non
Speaker 2: exploitation acting credits worth mentioning in his filmography. He played
Speaker 2: the minotaur in nineteen sixty nine's Fellini Satirricon, and he
Speaker 2: plays the giant Goliath in the nineteen eighty five Biblical
Speaker 2: epic King David, starring Richard gear.
Speaker 3: Hmm, I wonder if they reused because David's got a
Speaker 3: Chopcali It's head off. I wonder if they reused the
Speaker 3: head prop from absurd in.
Speaker 2: That I don't know. I was wondering whatever happened to
Speaker 2: the head prop from here, Like, I hope somebody has it.
Speaker 2: It could go for a pretty penny on the open,
Speaker 2: you know, exploitation fan cinema market.
Speaker 3: So we already mentioned earlier that this is a slasher
Speaker 3: movie villain who does not wear a mask or any
Speaker 3: special makeup. He's just a guy. And I think it
Speaker 3: was before we started recording that we were talking about
Speaker 3: actors who can actors who can pull this off where
Speaker 3: just their their unmodified look is enough to be a
Speaker 3: movie monster. You know, you got Tour Johnson, And of
Speaker 3: course sometimes they would give him like contacts in his
Speaker 3: eyes or something, but you know, mostly unmodified look can
Speaker 3: be a monster. You got Tour, you got George Eastman.
Speaker 3: I know there are other people like this, but I,
Speaker 3: you know, I sometimes I kind of wonder, like, what
Speaker 3: did that feel like for these actors like tor and that,
Speaker 3: Like I can be a movie monster without changing the
Speaker 3: way I look.
Speaker 2: It's interesting, you know. One, this is a a very
Speaker 2: strange comparison to make because we're talking about just an
Speaker 2: entirely different stratosphere of acting ability. But I also can't
Speaker 2: help but think of Anthony Hopkins in the Silence of
Speaker 2: the Lambs. You know, they definitely, you know, they definitely
Speaker 2: use makeup on him, but it's not monster makeup, and
Speaker 2: a whole lot of it. Of course, hinges on Hopkins'
Speaker 2: fabulous performance in that film. Yeah, he is a tremendous actor,
Speaker 2: but he is just he is a monster, and you
Speaker 2: buy it completely in that film with minimal I would
Speaker 2: say as far as monster makeup goes minimal makeup effects
Speaker 2: to make it come of the life.
Speaker 3: I also realized there's a fairly i think famous image
Speaker 3: of George Eastman doing this absolutely satanic grin as he
Speaker 3: like looks down at something, and that comes from this movie,
Speaker 3: in the scene where he is putting a bandsaw to
Speaker 3: illicit use.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he doesn't maintain this energy throughout the entire performance,
Speaker 2: but in key moments it really pops. Yeah. All right,
Speaker 2: let's get into the church and state elements of the picture,
Speaker 2: because we got it. We already mentioned the claret who
Speaker 2: is chasing after our killer, and then of course we
Speaker 2: also have to have some local law enforcement. The priest
Speaker 2: who's discredited as father is played by Edmund Perdome, who
Speaker 2: of nineteen twenty six through two thousand and nine English
Speaker 2: born Italian actor with extensive stage credits on Broadway and
Speaker 2: in the Royal Shakespeare Theater. Apparently, he had a leading
Speaker 2: role in the nineteen fifty four twentieth century Fox epic
Speaker 2: The Egyptian and was also in fifty three's Julius Caesar.
Speaker 2: He worked steadily in various Italian and euro genre pictures,
Speaker 2: including Pieces twenty nineteen. After the Fall of New York,
Speaker 2: a tour night Child from seventy five, and in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four he directed and starred in the British horror
Speaker 2: film Don't Open Till Christmas.
Speaker 3: I think what they were going for with this guy
Speaker 3: in Absurd is Greek Gregory Peck. Yeah, so he's playing
Speaker 3: a Greek priest character. And certainly I think there are
Speaker 3: elements of Doctor Loomis from Halloween in the here too,
Speaker 3: but I think they're also trying to get a bit
Speaker 3: of the the Gregory Peck vibe from the Omen and
Speaker 3: it helps that Edmund Purdham looks a decent amount like
Speaker 3: Gregory Peck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he does. And this is I think probably
Speaker 2: the best actor in the picture. I don't know how
Speaker 2: much evidence of that we see. I don't see if
Speaker 2: this is not a picture that really asked much of
Speaker 2: the actors present, But you know, he does bring a
Speaker 2: silent dignity to his scenes as much as is as
Speaker 2: possible in a Joe Tomato picture. And in interviews, Eastman
Speaker 2: spoke highly of him, saying that you know, they were
Speaker 2: surprised they were able to get him for the picture,
Speaker 2: for a picture like this, and they pointed out that
Speaker 2: he's one of those actors that took his craft so
Speaker 2: so seriously and was so professional that you know, he
Speaker 2: was just super professional on set, even in a low
Speaker 2: budget genre piece like this. Like we've heard similar things
Speaker 2: about like say Peter Cushing for example.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, almost nobody in this movie has really given
Speaker 3: much of a chance to actually act. He may get
Speaker 3: the most opportunity of anyone. There are other actors who
Speaker 3: get the idea that if they had a role to
Speaker 3: do something with, they might be quite good. I kind
Speaker 3: of felt that about Hanya Kochansky, but she who plays
Speaker 3: the mom in the family. But again, you know, this
Speaker 3: is not a movie that's written for dramatic performances, right.
Speaker 2: Right, Oh yeah, the law end of the spectrum here.
Speaker 2: Charles Burromo plays Sergeant Ben Engelman. He lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: three through two thousand and seven. Scottish actor who worked extensively,
Speaker 2: if not exclusively, in Italian cinema and in Italy based productions.
Speaker 2: He also did English voice dubbing. He does appear in
Speaker 2: Lady Hawk as insane prisoner.
Speaker 3: I thought this guy was and this sort of is
Speaker 3: a class of actor, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Rob the kind of actor who reminds you of about
Speaker 3: fifteen other different actors, you know, who keeps giving you
Speaker 3: notes of like, oh here, he's kind of reminding me
Speaker 3: of so and so. I would say the two most
Speaker 3: prominent likenesses for me were Robin Williams and Darren McGavin.
Speaker 3: But like a haggard Robin Williams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that works. Yeah, Yeah, he is very haggard.
Speaker 2: He's one of the stereotypical horror film police chief type
Speaker 2: character who is just really tired, but also only devoted
Speaker 2: to clearing cases. That's all he cares about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, though I think he's also prone to
Speaker 3: taking it too personal.
Speaker 2: If you know what you mean. Yeah. Now you mentioned
Speaker 2: Hanya Kochanski playing the mom. She plays Carol Bennett. So
Speaker 2: the Bennetts are like the key threatened family in the picture. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So she plays Carol Bennett, the mom and her two
Speaker 2: of her real life children play the daughter Katya and
Speaker 2: the son Willie. So it's really interesting when I was
Speaker 2: looking into this. So she is a former like Croatian singer,
Speaker 2: model and actress, just a handful of credits, but she
Speaker 2: was married at one point to American actor who worked
Speaker 2: extensively in europroductions. William Berger. We talked about him in
Speaker 2: our discussion of the nineteen eighty three Hercules film. He
Speaker 2: plays King Minos in that. And so the two kids
Speaker 2: in this, one of them is is Burger's biological son
Speaker 2: with Kochanski, and the other child, the older child, he
Speaker 2: was her stepfather. So yeah, the children Katya Berger and
Speaker 2: Kazimir Berger. Katya born nineteen sixty six, Kazimir born nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy four. And as I was looking, I saw that, okay,
Speaker 2: she's apparently a singer. Maybe I can find some information
Speaker 2: about her singing career. So I was doing some searches
Speaker 2: on her name and I ended up running across something
Speaker 2: on the UK's National Portrait Gallery. And it turns out
Speaker 2: there are a series of nude portraits that photographs that
Speaker 2: were taken by Russian born fine art photographer Idakar, who
Speaker 2: have nineteen oh eight through nineteen seventy four. And in
Speaker 2: these photos, which you know, very tasteful, you know, art photography,
Speaker 2: here we have Hanya and she is pregnant with her son, Kasimir,
Speaker 2: the boy in this film at the time, and in
Speaker 2: one of the pictures Katya is also present.
Speaker 3: I would not have expected absurd to have, you know,
Speaker 3: like one degree connections to fine art photography.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then on Getty Images, I found some images
Speaker 2: from the opening of a presentation of these images, and
Speaker 2: here we are. There's Hanya and her son Kazimir from
Speaker 2: twenty eleven. So here's the little boy from this picture
Speaker 2: as a grown man.
Speaker 3: Well, this is so sweet. Mother and son here pictured
Speaker 3: in twenty eleven. They both look very proud stand by
Speaker 3: the photos. I guess this is it some kind of
Speaker 3: gallery showing or something. Yeah, yeah, so that's great. But
Speaker 3: I have to say this is the case always pretty
Speaker 3: much in Italian movies of this period, if they have
Speaker 3: a child character, the dubbing is so creepy. And the
Speaker 3: same thing here, the dubbing of this kid's voice, the
Speaker 3: son Willie, the character in the movie, it's so unwholesome.
Speaker 3: I don't know how to explain. I don't know in
Speaker 3: this case if it was dubbed by an adult. It
Speaker 3: may have actually been dubbed by a child voice actor.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was Casimir himself. But why
Speaker 3: is it that the dubbed voices of children in these
Speaker 3: movies just always sounds so wrong?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think they are often done by
Speaker 2: like adult women, as is the case of the House
Speaker 2: by the Cemetery, so similar vibe here. Also generally, you know,
Speaker 2: with child actors in general, I mean there's sometimes a
Speaker 2: certain there's they are children. Yeah, sometimes there's just kind
Speaker 2: of a wild element too. So you know, you have
Speaker 2: a kid in this picture, you're maybe getting one or
Speaker 2: two takes and then you're having somebody dub the voice.
Speaker 2: So the boy does feel a little bit almost fair
Speaker 2: all at times in this picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to watch the game. Oh we haven't
Speaker 3: even talked about the game yet.
Speaker 2: They can't wait to get to the case about the game.
Speaker 2: The dad, Ian Bennett is played by not William Berger,
Speaker 2: but an actor by the name of William of Ian Dandy.
Speaker 2: And yeah, he just had some minor parts in a
Speaker 2: few different Italian productions and did some English language translation
Speaker 2: on some pictures.
Speaker 3: So the actor is named Ian, the character is named Ian,
Speaker 3: but in this movie he is referred to by at
Speaker 3: least one other character as Ion.
Speaker 2: All right, three victims to profile here really quickly. I'll
Speaker 2: try and streamline these a bit. We have Annie Bella
Speaker 2: playing Emily, the nurse she lived nineteen fifty six through
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four French actress with a at the time
Speaker 2: distinctive shortcut blonde hair style that work and a lot
Speaker 2: of Italian erotic and exploitation films before I believe if
Speaker 2: I'm reading correctly, earned a degree and ended up going
Speaker 2: into social work. Her films include nineteen eighty's House on
Speaker 2: the Edge of the Park in nineteen seventy six Is
Speaker 2: Black Velvet. Then we also have Peggy the Babysitter, played
Speaker 2: by Cindy Leadbetter, American model and actress whose credits include
Speaker 2: seventy eight, Star Crash, nineteen eighty four's Rats, Night of Terror,
Speaker 2: and The Adventures of Hercules.
Speaker 3: Wait, was was George Eastman in Star Crash? If not?
Speaker 3: Why not? They could have used him?
Speaker 2: I know, yeah, if he's not in there, a missed opportunity.
Speaker 2: And then finally, I'm not going to go into the
Speaker 2: depth lines. We'll come back to this guy when we
Speaker 2: look at one of his pictures. But Mikaelay Suave born
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty seven plays a biker in this, a biker
Speaker 2: who is brutally murdered by George Eaestman. This is the
Speaker 2: man who would go on to direct such films as
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine's The Church and nineteen ninety four Cemetery Man.
Speaker 2: At this time, he was just an up and coming
Speaker 2: a young man who just wanted to be involved in films.
Speaker 2: And if you were, if you had this kind of
Speaker 2: enthusiasm and you didn't mind not being paid, Joe Tomato
Speaker 2: was here for you. And so Joe Tomato is one
Speaker 2: of several different directors that he worked with early on,
Speaker 2: including others included like Dario Argento and the Burgo Bava,
Speaker 2: And of course he'd also gone to work some with
Speaker 2: Terry Gilliam. So just kind of a fun little ultimately
Speaker 2: a cameo. We get to see Suave and his motorbike
Speaker 2: in this picture.
Speaker 3: He's one of a gang of motorcycling youths that feel
Speaker 3: almost quite lightly directed.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, and then finally the music here is.
Speaker 2: It's another score by Carlo Maria Cordillo born nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 2: We talked about him recently because he did the score
Speaker 2: for Shocking Dark.
Speaker 3: Ah. Okay, there you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I'm not going to go into the full
Speaker 2: profile on him, but I will say that the I
Speaker 2: think the score for Absurd is a lot of fun,
Speaker 2: you got some synth, you got some prog rock elements.
Speaker 2: You can find the track Absurd on streaming currently. This
Speaker 2: one starts off with kind of like a wonderful, atmospheric
Speaker 2: kind of vibe and you know it very ambient, but
Speaker 2: then you know, get some organs thrown in there before
Speaker 2: transitioning into this heavy, overly dramatic prog rock build towards
Speaker 2: obvious on screen violence.
Speaker 3: The use of music in the movie is occasionally funny
Speaker 3: because of the way it pairs this soft, melancholy melody
Speaker 3: with George Eastman just wandering around at night looking for victims. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like it makes it almost kind of like, oh the sadness,
Speaker 3: he's so lonely.
Speaker 2: The sever in Blu Ray, as I mentioned, includes the
Speaker 2: whole score as a CD bonus disc, and then the
Speaker 2: excellent Death Waltz Record Company put the score out on
Speaker 2: a beautiful double vinyl back in twenty fifteen, with this
Speaker 2: really grotesque and beautiful bit of cover art by Wes
Speaker 2: ben Scotter, combining two of the grisliest moments in the film.
Speaker 2: Oh You're right.
Speaker 3: So here we have George Eastman with his guts hanging
Speaker 3: out and he his intestines are spelling the word absurd.
Speaker 2: Beautiful. Wait beautiful?
Speaker 3: Did we look at the I think Severn Films also
Speaker 3: puts out a sticker of George Eastman with his guts
Speaker 3: hanging out, but in the sticker they're spelling chow.
Speaker 2: Also brilliant. Also brilliant.
Speaker 3: All right, you ready to talk about the plot, let's
Speaker 3: do it. So after the credits we get a montage
Speaker 3: of different opening images. First of all, we see some
Speaker 3: action inside a house. There is a young woman tracing
Speaker 3: out circles on drafting paper with a compass tool. So
Speaker 3: she you know, she's got one of those, it's like
Speaker 3: the spike and the pencil attaches, so she's she's making
Speaker 3: perfect circles on paper. But she's actually lying in a
Speaker 3: hospital bed, and so she what she's drawing on is
Speaker 3: like this pad that sort of set up over her
Speaker 3: hospital bed. And she's in a room in a large house,
Speaker 3: restrained to the cot with straps and some kind of
Speaker 3: brace around her neck, jaw and chin. I guess we
Speaker 3: could go ahead and mention the house and the other
Speaker 3: people present.
Speaker 2: So this is sort of.
Speaker 3: The house the villa that we were alluding to earlier.
Speaker 3: That is big full of open spaces. I think is
Speaker 3: supposed to be an American home, but it's this strange,
Speaker 3: huge Italian mansion with suits of armor and roaring fireplaces
Speaker 3: and stuff, but also just weird, as I said, kind
Speaker 3: of squalid touches.
Speaker 2: Like the.
Speaker 3: Dad's liquor collection we see later is like up on
Speaker 3: a mantle over a fireplace, and it just looks like
Speaker 3: a dorm room stash. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, I haven't seen this before. Am
Speaker 2: I supposed to be doing it like this? Should I
Speaker 2: have a mantle for my liquor bottles?
Speaker 3: So anyway, the girl in the hospital is named Katya.
Speaker 3: She is in traction to treat a spinal disorder. Her
Speaker 3: mother is Carol, her little brother is Willie, and their
Speaker 3: babysitter is Peggy. Now, meanwhile, somewhere else outdoors, someone is
Speaker 3: running in the woods. Why that's George Eastman running through
Speaker 3: the woods. He's looking massive, shaggy, covered in sweat. He's
Speaker 3: got the beard, long hair and with the beard in
Speaker 3: the mop like haircut, he looks kind of like a
Speaker 3: giant seventies era beetle or maybe one of the begs.
Speaker 2: Do you see that? Yeah, he looks like like the
Speaker 2: scariest dude in the disco.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, killer Beji, And he is being chased through
Speaker 3: the forest by an older man in a black trench coat.
Speaker 3: They're going to play up a mid story reveal that
Speaker 3: the guy chasing George Eastman is actually done Dundune a priest.
Speaker 3: They show that by ripping open his coat and revealing
Speaker 3: the clerical collar. But I got that he was a
Speaker 3: priest from the very first time we saw him. I
Speaker 3: don't know, He's like he's dressed in all black and
Speaker 3: his collar is hidden. There's like, you know, coming up
Speaker 3: his neck. This was never in doubt for me. Did
Speaker 3: you feel the same?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And plus he also he doesn't pull out a
Speaker 2: gun or anything, right, So yeah, he doesn't seem like
Speaker 2: he's law enforcement. Why are you chasing an adman?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So, but also the priest, he sort of he
Speaker 3: clutches at his chest as he runs, so it's like
Speaker 3: he's not cut out. He's not cut out for this. Now,
Speaker 3: back at the house, the mom comes into Kachia's room
Speaker 3: and sees her drawing circles upon circles with her compass
Speaker 3: and encourages her to do something else. It's like, oh, Katya,
Speaker 3: you're you're making drawing hundreds of circles? Again, wouldn't you
Speaker 3: rather watch television or something? And I was wondering, does
Speaker 3: this ever pay off in any way or do we
Speaker 3: get any kind of explanation about it? I know there
Speaker 3: is a payoff with the compass tool, like a something
Speaker 3: is done with that later, But I mean the drawing
Speaker 3: circles part. Is there a reason she's drawing hundreds of
Speaker 3: circles on top of each other? Or do the circle
Speaker 3: patterns ever connect to anything?
Speaker 2: No? I don't think. I don't think the circles actually do.
Speaker 2: It made me think about that moment in The Simpsons
Speaker 2: about kids being obsessed with spirographs or how they should
Speaker 2: be obsessed with spier graphs and they're not anymore. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, this doesn't quite come I guess it kind of.
Speaker 2: I guess the idea is maybe it connects to other
Speaker 2: moments and other films where children drawing things does connect
Speaker 2: into the plot. But I kind of liked it as
Speaker 2: texture even if it doesn't go anywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well it just made me think, wait
Speaker 3: a minute, is Katya is she into geometry or is
Speaker 3: she obsessed with I don't know. I don't know why
Speaker 3: she's doing this. She likes circus, I guess so, well,
Speaker 3: who doesn't.
Speaker 2: One of the best.
Speaker 3: I agree. Back outside, the chase is still happening, but
Speaker 3: eventually the crypto priest chases George Eastman onto the wrought
Speaker 3: iron gate surrounding a big mansion, and this is the
Speaker 3: house with the people we just saw inside it. George
Speaker 3: Eastman seems to be frantic escape. I don't exactly know
Speaker 3: why he's running from the priest because, as we come
Speaker 3: to see, he's basically invulnerable, so he should I don't know.
Speaker 3: It seems like he would be doing the chasing, not
Speaker 3: the running away. But he runs away. He climbs the gate,
Speaker 3: but he falls and ends up impaling his midsection on
Speaker 3: the cold iron spikes of this gate. After this, George
Speaker 3: Eastman what we see inside the house and there's a
Speaker 3: knock on the door and the little boy goes. He's
Speaker 3: like hanging out with his babysitter. I think they're eating breakfast.
Speaker 3: And it's sort of confusing because in this interior shot
Speaker 3: we see out the window and it's pitch black outside,
Speaker 3: totally dark, but it was just daylight when we were
Speaker 3: so it doesn't match. But anyway, the little boy goes
Speaker 3: to answer the door, opens it up, and oh no,
Speaker 3: here's George Eastman standing here with his intestines hanging out
Speaker 3: of his stomach.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with eyes wide, Yeah, sweaty. It's wonderful. This is
Speaker 2: our shocking callback to the disembowment scene at the end
Speaker 2: of the previous film. That is again just this is
Speaker 2: just a spiritual successor. I don't think we're to connect
Speaker 2: these characters in any other real sense.
Speaker 3: Now, after this, we go to a surgery scene, a
Speaker 3: long surgery scene, one of multiple and George Eastman is
Speaker 3: on a hospital. He's on a hospital bed being operated on.
Speaker 3: His intestines are still hanging out. And this scene is
Speaker 3: an interesting mix of what feels realistic and what does not.
Speaker 3: So it's a full surgical setup that has a lot
Speaker 3: of authentic looking props and apparatus. But then whenever they
Speaker 3: show a close up of the surgical action, which they're
Speaker 3: going to show quite a few, the doctors and nurses
Speaker 3: just appear to be like poking and tossing the guts
Speaker 3: around like they're moving food in a frying pan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're essentially just pushing around pig flesh and calentestines
Speaker 2: here on Georgie Sman's stomach, I believe. So wow. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it is a mix of of something that looks real
Speaker 2: and is reel and in some respects, but yeah, it's
Speaker 2: also like fake.
Speaker 3: Oh and Eastman wakes up during the procedure and they
Speaker 3: get him to go back to sleep. I think they,
Speaker 3: you know, give him give him higher dose.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, elsewhere and now it's nighttime. So this is one
Speaker 3: of those movies just cuts back and forth between day
Speaker 3: and night all the time. Uh, it's nighttime and we
Speaker 3: see bikers harassing an old man named Shaughnessy. There's this
Speaker 3: old man like wandering in the middle of the street,
Speaker 3: swigging from a giant green bottle. These these young bikers
Speaker 3: circle around him and yell at him and then motor away,
Speaker 3: and then the cops come. Have a turn. A police
Speaker 3: car pulls up and we first meet our police detective
Speaker 3: Sergeant Engelman. Engleman, leaning out of a car window, says,
Speaker 3: if I catch you drunk just once more, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: have to lock you up. And Shaughnessy, in a quite
Speaker 3: unconvincing way, says, I'm not drunk, and then takes a
Speaker 3: big swig of his green bottle. But before this situation
Speaker 3: can resolve, Ingleman gets a call on the radio that
Speaker 3: there is a badly wounded man at the hospital, so
Speaker 3: he has to go check that out. This leads back
Speaker 3: to more surgery. I hope you like this, there's plenty
Speaker 3: of it. And then after the surgery is done, one
Speaker 3: of the nurses who is assisting with the procedure talks
Speaker 3: to the doctor. This is Emily, who we will meet
Speaker 3: again later in the movie because she moonlights as a
Speaker 3: home care nurse for the main family, taking care of
Speaker 3: Kacia and helping with her attraction. Emily and the doctor
Speaker 3: talk about this dude they were operating on. It's one
Speaker 3: of those I've never seen anything like it conversations. Apparently
Speaker 3: the issue is that quote his blood coagulated while I
Speaker 3: was in the middle of operating on him. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know. His blood's clotten up really fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of mumbo jumbo as they're describing
Speaker 2: what's up with his mutant healing factor. But it's either
Speaker 2: this scene or a subsequent scene where the doctor gives
Speaker 2: us the official medical diagnosis of absurd.
Speaker 3: That's right, now next, we have a scene where Sergeant
Speaker 3: Engleman is interviewing He's back at the house and he's
Speaker 3: interviewing Carol the mom about the guts incident at her
Speaker 3: home earlier. He's smoking a cigarette in her living room
Speaker 3: with Willie on the couch next to him and gruffly
Speaker 3: explaining his guts were all destroyed. They don't think he'll
Speaker 3: pull through with the kids right there, and the mom
Speaker 3: says she thinks that he was a thief intent on
Speaker 3: robbing the house. Engleman doesn't seem sold on that, but
Speaker 3: she also explains their plans.
Speaker 2: For the night.
Speaker 3: This is, oh boy, this is exciting. She and her
Speaker 3: husband are going to go to a neighbor's house to
Speaker 3: watch the game, the first of many references, and we
Speaker 3: get evil glares from Willie during this conversation. But they're
Speaker 3: going to Yeah, they're going to go over to the
Speaker 3: forest's house to watch the game. And they don't say
Speaker 3: here that they're going to eat spaghetti and watch the game,
Speaker 3: but that is the plan.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, Oh my god. This is one of my
Speaker 2: favorite elements of the film. And we get this scene
Speaker 2: later on of Americans in this American home, which is
Speaker 2: actually an Italian villa, watching American football, actual American football
Speaker 2: on the telly and chowing down on spaghetti. And it's
Speaker 2: either one of these things that is like a fun
Speaker 2: little bit of humor that he's been in the motto
Speaker 2: slid into the picture, or it's a complete accident it
Speaker 2: just happenstance. In either case, it's amazing. I am not
Speaker 2: really a football watcher a football fan, but if there
Speaker 2: was the prospect of absurd style spaghetti and football parties,
Speaker 2: I would be interested. Oh.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, this is an amazing party. It takes place in
Speaker 3: this another weird interior. There's a couch that Ian ends
Speaker 3: up sitting on later when he's brooding about the fact
Speaker 3: that he ran over George Eastman with his car and
Speaker 3: didn't tell anybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: He's sitting there brooding on this couch. That is the
Speaker 3: pattern on the couch. It's more ornate than any picture
Speaker 3: frame in the louver. And they're just all wolfing down
Speaker 3: spaghetti with these plates. They're standing around holding plates of
Speaker 3: spaghetti in their hands, not sitting at a table watching
Speaker 3: football and shoveling the spaghetti. It's so good. Anyway, that's later.
Speaker 3: The next thing that happens in the movie is that
Speaker 3: the police find the priest, right, so you got Engleman
Speaker 3: finds the priest who was chasing Eastman at the beginning.
Speaker 3: He's wandering along a dark road in the night, and
Speaker 3: Engleman pulls up and questions him. The priest, who we're
Speaker 3: not supposed to know as a priest yet, claims his
Speaker 3: car broke down, and Engleman says, it's a good thing
Speaker 3: you ran into me. Everyone else is watching the game tonight, oh,
Speaker 3: and he says it's Rams versus Steelers. Is that a
Speaker 3: good game? I don't know. Is that an especially compelling game?
Speaker 2: I don't know in the early eighties, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Football fans let us know.
Speaker 3: So next, Engleman goes to the hospital and he finds
Speaker 3: Greek Drakmas in George Eastman's pants. They just bring him
Speaker 3: Eastman's pants and he's going through the pockets and he's
Speaker 3: like Drakmas and he connects that to the dude he
Speaker 3: just ran into who was Greek as well. It's all
Speaker 3: coming together now, and don't know what it means, but
Speaker 3: he thinks this is significant. So Engelman is talking to
Speaker 3: a nurse and he asks to see Eastman he can't,
Speaker 3: not until he's recovered, and then he asks the nurse
Speaker 3: for a description, to which she replies, he's huge, not
Speaker 3: my type at all. What that's some writing. And then
Speaker 3: also there's an incredibly awkward flirting scene between the cop
Speaker 3: and the nurse some inappropriate comments. He hands back George
Speaker 3: Eastman's pants and then leaves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I love the handling of the pants. Here,
Speaker 2: these gross pants that were worn by this psychopath here
Speaker 2: that maybe they've been longered, hopefully they've been lunder.
Speaker 3: So the nurse goes back to the operating room where
Speaker 3: Eastman is still on the table, and like another nurse
Speaker 3: comes in to check on Eastman and he says, they
Speaker 3: indicate his blood is reproducing itself at triple the normal rate. Wow,
Speaker 3: that's that's a lot of blood.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Exactly, And then you know it's safe somehow. Now the
Speaker 3: Greek guy, the other Greek guy is here at the hospital,
Speaker 3: and he makes his way to the room that the
Speaker 3: cop wasn't allowed to go to, and he's looking in
Speaker 3: through a window in the door at Eastman and Eastman
Speaker 3: wakes up, sees the dude and starts raging and has
Speaker 3: to be restrained by hospital staff until they can get
Speaker 3: him sedated, and this leads to two simultaneous scenes. One
Speaker 3: of them is the scene where Sergeant Engleman gets the
Speaker 3: Greek priest into a room and he interviews him about
Speaker 3: what's going on. He's like, so you decided to come
Speaker 3: to the hospital to get your car fixed?
Speaker 2: Is that it?
Speaker 3: What are you up to, mister? Are you responsible for
Speaker 3: the wounds? He's got some great delivery in here, and
Speaker 3: so the beginning of the explanation is coming out here.
Speaker 3: But meanwhile there is nurse murder going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a grizzly sequence, quite disturbing, with the
Speaker 2: shirtless Eastman emerging from the table here with the white
Speaker 2: sheet following off of him, grabs a surgical drill and
Speaker 2: uses it to slowly drill through the nurse's head, killing her,
Speaker 2: skewering her brain with a drill coming out on the
Speaker 2: other side of the head. Right.
Speaker 3: So the cops hear the commotion, they come running, but
Speaker 3: by the time they get there, the east Man is
Speaker 3: already gone, and instead there's just like a nurse hanging
Speaker 3: out dead with a drill through her head. So here
Speaker 3: we get the first of many scenes of George Eastman
Speaker 3: just wandering through this village in the dark, and he's
Speaker 3: back in his original clothes somehow, so he got his
Speaker 3: jeans and Charity's not in his hospital scrubs anymore. He
Speaker 3: walks the streets and we get this melancholy music, and
Speaker 3: there's more interrogation between the police and the Greek priest.
Speaker 3: So Engelman tries to intimidate him by he does this
Speaker 3: whole routine with I'm just a dumb small town cop.
Speaker 3: You better make me understand, and the priest explains. First
Speaker 3: of all, he says there is a reality we do
Speaker 3: not see that. This does not really satisfy the cop,
Speaker 3: and so eventually they call in the doctor who operated
Speaker 3: on George Eastman to help explain. So we get a
Speaker 3: scene of the doctor putting up putting up X rays
Speaker 3: of George Eastman's brain and saying it's extraordinary. I've never
Speaker 3: seen such an extensive cerebral mass.
Speaker 2: And yeah.
Speaker 3: So we learn his name is Nico Stenopolis or Miko Stonopolis,
Speaker 3: whichever it is, and he is functionally immortal. His body
Speaker 3: can regenerate dead cells, and his blood coagulates quickly to
Speaker 3: heal any wounds. We also this is the scene where
Speaker 3: the cop rips open the priest's coat to reveal his
Speaker 3: priestly collar. But the priest says, I serve God with
Speaker 3: biochemistry more than with rights and sermons. And apparently George
Speaker 3: Eastman escaped from his laboratory quote after the contamination, so
Speaker 3: they organized a great hunt, and that's how we got
Speaker 3: to where we are now. But the one piece of evidence,
Speaker 3: the one piece of useful information that the priest has
Speaker 3: is it is his brain that is his weak point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this of course makes very little sense because like
Speaker 2: we're looking at scans at the brain and was like, oh,
Speaker 2: look at that cerebral mass, Like his brain is doing stuff,
Speaker 2: his brain's healing or he's healed wrong. But the brain
Speaker 2: is also the weak point. He destroyed the brain, you
Speaker 2: destroy the creature, which of course is true of everything.
Speaker 3: All right, well, this reduces very much to ramiro zombie logic.
Speaker 2: Yeah no.
Speaker 3: And also the priest says he is a creature of evil.
Speaker 3: The spark of God was smothered the moment the devil
Speaker 3: took possession of him. I think this is just metaphorical though,
Speaker 3: because there's no indication of devil magic in the movie.
Speaker 3: It's more like saying when I did these experiments on
Speaker 3: him and he was contaminated, that also the devil took
Speaker 3: possession of him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, also probably you know, a less effective shadow
Speaker 2: of some of the dialogue that we get in in
Speaker 2: Halloween from.
Speaker 3: Loomis Yes, exactly. The evil has escaped, so we get
Speaker 3: more of the Eastman walk about the slow music, and
Speaker 3: eventually this leads up to him wandering into I believe,
Speaker 3: an abattoir where there is a guy here who's some
Speaker 3: kind of night janitor at the slaughterhouse, cleaning the floors,
Speaker 3: and Eastman first tries to attack him with a butcher knife,
Speaker 3: but then this slaughterhouse janitor runs and retrieves a gun
Speaker 3: from his apron at work and tries to shoot Eastman
Speaker 3: but that doesn't work, and then there's a long set
Speaker 3: up to Eastman like putting this guy on a big
Speaker 3: butcher block, and then he's like, yep, gonna get you
Speaker 3: with the band saw right through the top of the head,
Speaker 3: and he does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, eventually does. This is a scene that manages to
Speaker 2: be boring and gross at the same time, but we
Speaker 2: do get that iconic smile.
Speaker 3: Oh I just made a connection. It's the Aphex Twin
Speaker 3: album cover. It's the George Eastman smile is quite similar.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he loves his work. Then the next thing
Speaker 2: we get, of course, is that the biker murder that
Speaker 2: I think we alluded to earlier. And then so this
Speaker 2: is when one one of the biker gang members gets
Speaker 2: killed by Eastman. And then pretty much right away we
Speaker 2: get the hit and run out of nowhere where the
Speaker 2: dad accidentally clips Eastman with his car and just keep throwing.
Speaker 3: So eventually the dad is going to come back to
Speaker 3: the house that Ian or Eon will come back, and
Speaker 3: he's preoccupied by the fact that he did a hit
Speaker 3: and run on east Man, and that leads to the
Speaker 3: scene where he goes to his liquor collection on the mantle.
Speaker 3: But eventually the mom and the dad are going to
Speaker 3: go out to the friend's house to watch the game
Speaker 3: and have spaghetti, and so that leaves the kids home
Speaker 3: alone with first the babysitter and later the nurse, who
Speaker 3: will huge surprise, become the next victims of east Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because Georgie Spen is for some reason drawn back
Speaker 2: to this house. There's no lot reason for him to
Speaker 2: come back here, but he's back here to get inside
Speaker 2: and do murders, and I mean then and again. That's
Speaker 2: pretty much what the rest of the film consists of.
Speaker 2: Let's see some one fun little There's a scene where
Speaker 2: the boy is watching television. There's some really boring looking
Speaker 2: like living room dialogue scene that he really wants to watch,
Speaker 2: and the babysitter likes is done. You're done, and he
Speaker 2: gets a little upset.
Speaker 3: I thought the boy wanted to watch the game.
Speaker 2: Oh, really wants to watch the game. Is at some
Speaker 2: point watching some drama on TV and it's actually tame
Speaker 2: scenes from a really grimy nineteen eighty Dematto film, which
Speaker 2: is not a family movie. So I guess this is
Speaker 2: another sort of in joke from Dematto.
Speaker 3: So it's not an explicit scene that we're watching, but
Speaker 3: the joke is that this is from a Demato porn film.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's see from there. Yeah, we get so basically,
Speaker 2: we're gonna get a babysitter murder, and we're then we're
Speaker 2: gonna get the nurse murder. The babysitter murder is one
Speaker 2: of these what's that sound outside? Oh, the dog got outside. Peggy,
Speaker 2: the babysitter goes outside and gets a pickax to the head.
Speaker 3: Now, this is one of those movies that would absolutely
Speaker 3: grotesquely violate the Gene Siskel test for movies, which is
Speaker 3: he could not stand movies that ever depicted children being
Speaker 3: in danger. For the second half of this whole movie,
Speaker 3: just children are constantly in danger. Fortunately, neither of the
Speaker 3: kids in the movie are ever harmed. They both make
Speaker 3: it to the end, but it's just George Eastman running
Speaker 3: around the house ominously threatening both of them and killing
Speaker 3: babysitters and nurses until the end.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean de Cisco's the whole thing was like,
Speaker 2: it's a cheap trick. Yeah, and yes, of course, yeah,
Speaker 2: de Motto is going to use cheap tricks. He's cheap. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so yeah, it's it's it would be a solid criticism
Speaker 2: of this film.
Speaker 3: But the kids get away. Who does not escape is Emily,
Speaker 3: the nurse we met earlier. There's a weird scene of
Speaker 3: she's like wandering in the woods on the what she
Speaker 3: has an encounter with somebody in the woods on the way. Oh,
Speaker 3: it's with Shaughnessy, the drunk guy.
Speaker 2: Ye. Yes, he's like you drop this back there.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so she wait do I actually I don't
Speaker 3: remember now does anything happen to Shaughnessy. Does he get
Speaker 3: killed by Eastman?
Speaker 2: If he does, I don't remember it.
Speaker 3: I don't remember it either. If he doesn't, that would
Speaker 3: be an unusual choice for a film of this kind.
Speaker 3: I mean, the old drunk man wandering around singing in
Speaker 3: the dark. Is the is your classic you know murder
Speaker 3: victim in these slasher movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like the sort of thing that might
Speaker 2: have been in the script, but they didn't have time
Speaker 2: to film it, or gotten left on the cunning room
Speaker 2: floor for some reason because you needed more surgery scenes.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: So anyway, there is a there's a whole setup to
Speaker 3: another big murder scene where Eastman kills Emily, the nurse.
Speaker 3: This scene, this scene is so gross and dumb.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it takes forever, and it had it's it generally
Speaker 2: walks that line between just padded tedium and legitimate shock,
Speaker 2: like it's it's disturbing, but also it's like, man, we're
Speaker 2: still doing this. Let's let's get it over with here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: This, So the short version is that Eastman decides to
Speaker 3: cook her in the oven while she's still alive, but
Speaker 3: she somehow survives this process. And then comes back and
Speaker 3: saves the kid from from Eastman. She like she's all
Speaker 3: burned up as she runs out and saves the kid,
Speaker 3: and then Eastman, I guess, kills her a second time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you can't just stab him in the neck
Speaker 2: and expect to seal the deal. You've got to destroy
Speaker 2: the brain.
Speaker 3: But the final showdown is between Katcha who has been
Speaker 3: in traction in this hospital bed and an Eastman who
Speaker 3: finally you know, he comes in there. He's still raging,
Speaker 3: but we get a great payoff with the compass tool,
Speaker 3: right because she jams it into George Eastman's eyes, and
Speaker 3: then we get the blinded cyclops sequence.
Speaker 2: That's right, yeah, yeah, and this, you know, I have
Speaker 2: to say, I feel like this big sequence here is
Speaker 2: actually quite tense because you end up with the scenario
Speaker 2: where the playing field has been largely leveled, though George
Speaker 2: Eastman's killer is still very much an overwhelming threat. So
Speaker 2: he's were like in the living room, this big, expansive
Speaker 2: Italian villa living room with a suit of armor and
Speaker 2: all the furniture, and he is blinded, you know, bloody
Speaker 2: eye sockets, and he's listening for her and grasping around
Speaker 2: at the slightest sound, and she is on her feet now,
Speaker 2: but is you know, not one hundred percent like she's
Speaker 2: been in traction this whole time. And she is trying
Speaker 2: to stay out of his grasp but get away from him.
Speaker 2: And he's hurting her by sound. Yeah, he's hunting her
Speaker 2: by sound in some very tense moments.
Speaker 3: And she she does clever things like turning on music
Speaker 3: really loud.
Speaker 2: But also inevitably trips, inevitably makes an accidental sound and
Speaker 2: he gets closer.
Speaker 3: Okay, but then the payoff, if you want to know
Speaker 3: the very ending, uh you know, spoiler alert, is they
Speaker 3: somehow they like fall into this suit of armor that
Speaker 3: has a battle axe and caughtya she gets the battle out.
Speaker 2: Oh wait wait, but first the father shows up.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, yes, well the parents arrive.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, well yeah, and the priest. The priest does
Speaker 2: a run in and bites it when he tries to
Speaker 2: start the killer.
Speaker 3: So Eastman, well it's like the ending of Halloween, except
Speaker 3: if Michael Myers killed Donald Pleasance.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes, So the.
Speaker 3: Priest shows up and he saves her momentarily, and he
Speaker 3: is killed by George Eastman. But then while that's going on.
Speaker 3: She retrieves the battle axe from the suit of armor
Speaker 3: and then goes to work on him. We don't see
Speaker 3: exactly what happened until her parents arrive home. And her
Speaker 3: parents arrive home with the cops, and Willie's there and
Speaker 3: everybody's there, and Katya's standing in the doorway, and we
Speaker 3: pull back to reveal that she is holding the severed
Speaker 3: head of Eastman.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, she holds it up. And this is just
Speaker 2: this is great, this is just grade a shlock as young,
Speaker 2: bloodied Katya healed by violence here lifts up the decapitated,
Speaker 2: overtly fake head of the blinded monster and then we
Speaker 2: close and that's the end of absurd.
Speaker 3: So now I've got to know if that had problem,
Speaker 3: I mean, it would be a shame, a historical filmmaking shame.
Speaker 3: If that head prop was not reused in the biblical
Speaker 3: film where he plays Goliath, it had.
Speaker 2: Be Yeah, I hope. I mean, if not that film,
Speaker 2: surely it shows up in another film. Because they've gone
Speaker 2: to the trouble to make it. There's gonna be some
Speaker 2: other film where you might want to cut Eastman's head
Speaker 2: off or just reuse it. I mean, there are examples of,
Speaker 2: you know, from other I think there was a whole
Speaker 2: kind of a minor stink on Game of Thrones at
Speaker 2: some point, right, because they were reusing heads or something.
Speaker 2: And then sometimes, yeah, sometimes head cast get reused for
Speaker 2: different things. I mean, actually, we go back to John
Speaker 2: Carpenter's Halloween and we have a pretty classic example of
Speaker 2: the reuse of head molds. Right.
Speaker 3: Oh, do you mean that it's a Shatner mask.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Michael Myers wears a Captain Kirk mask spray painted white,
Speaker 3: which is you can't unsee it once you see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's become iconic. Mm hmm. All right, so
Speaker 2: there you have it. Absurd I think probably the only
Speaker 2: Joe Tomato film we're going to do on Weird House.
Speaker 2: But I'm sure George Eastman will pop up again in
Speaker 2: some form or another, but there probably won't be as
Speaker 2: much George Eastman as there was in this picture. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: we'll close it out there, but we'd love to hear
Speaker 2: from everyone out there. If you have thoughts on Absurd
Speaker 2: or other, or the video nasties of phenomena in general,
Speaker 2: write in. We would love to hear from you. Just
Speaker 2: a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
Speaker 2: a science and culture podcasts with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious
Speaker 2: concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema. And you can get the full list of
Speaker 2: films that we've covered on Weird House Cinema if you
Speaker 2: look us up on letterbox dot com. That's l E
Speaker 2: T E r boxd dot com our handle there is
Speaker 2: weird House. You can find the whole list there. And yeah,
Speaker 2: with this episode, we're kind of launching into the Halloween season.
Speaker 2: Halloween is always a big, big month for us, a
Speaker 2: little month and some change often, so look you can
Speaker 2: look forward in the month ahead to a lot of
Speaker 2: seasonally appropriate core episodes, short form episodes, and of course
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema selections.
Speaker 3: Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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