Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're entering
Speaker 1: door if Topia because today's film is the ninety fire
Speaker 1: themed horror movie Spontaneous Combustion, directed by Toby Hooper. And
Speaker 1: I'm so excited about this one because this is one
Speaker 1: that that I watched a long time ago, back when
Speaker 1: we were doing those live stream of the trailer talk videos.
Speaker 1: And I don't remember what the context was. We were
Speaker 1: talking about Pyrokinesis movies or something. We end up watching
Speaker 1: fire Starter too. Ah yeah, I don't. I don't remember
Speaker 1: exactly how we happened upon it. Maybe we were celebrating
Speaker 1: Toby Hooper in general. I'm not sure. That might have
Speaker 1: been around the time that he had passed. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but but but yeah, it was. It's it's fun to
Speaker 1: come back to this one. My my inspiration for this
Speaker 1: was I just I just got it really excited about
Speaker 1: Brad Dorrith Pictures, and so I came to you and
Speaker 1: I said, Hey, what what do you think we could
Speaker 1: do Graveyard Shift, We could do Wise Blood, we could
Speaker 1: do spontaneous combustion. We ended up deciding on some spontaneous combustion.
Speaker 1: But I watched all three this week anyway, so I'll
Speaker 1: refer back to those since those are those are fresh
Speaker 1: on my mind. But yeah, I'm excited to revisit this
Speaker 1: one and just to talk about Brad Dorriff in general,
Speaker 1: because I think he's he's one of the more amazing
Speaker 1: weird actors, uh, of earlier of that we have today
Speaker 1: that's still working today, of certainly of of recent decades.
Speaker 1: I think I would I would be tempted to compare
Speaker 1: him to Peter lorii uh to a certain extent. I
Speaker 1: mean they're not, you know, not not a similar physical presence,
Speaker 1: but in terms of actors who were capable of creating
Speaker 1: a certain weird aura, were drawn to weird parts and
Speaker 1: we're able to really bring them alive on screen. But
Speaker 1: so you've watched all three of these movies and what
Speaker 1: the last like forty eight hours, so you're you're grail
Speaker 1: overflow with with dorif juice right now. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: pretty lucky to have to take my automobile to the
Speaker 1: shop two days in a row, and for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: the lounge there was just the perfect place to watch
Speaker 1: Brad Dorriff movies as opposed to doing any kind of
Speaker 1: like rigorous research instead of reading what kind of magazines
Speaker 1: they gotten there? They don't have any magazines. It's all.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a brand new facility, so this is
Speaker 1: it was like being in a brand new airport. I
Speaker 1: just had TV screens and stack machines and no magazines. Well,
Speaker 1: that sounds like a barren waste. I'm glad you were
Speaker 1: able to bring Brad Doriff with you. But but we
Speaker 1: should also not ignore the fact that once again, this
Speaker 1: is a film that was directed by Toby Hooper, and
Speaker 1: yet most people, probably even most horror fans, have never
Speaker 1: heard of this movie. Uh and so this is actually
Speaker 1: one of my favorite kinds of movies to talk about
Speaker 1: the bizarre, lesser known works of somebody who is amos
Speaker 1: for other stuff. Now, I think it's undeniable that Toby
Speaker 1: Hooper was one of the most revered and influential horror
Speaker 1: filmmakers of all time. You know you've got He made
Speaker 1: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which the influence of that movie
Speaker 1: on the generation of horror movies that followed really cannot
Speaker 1: be overstated, but he was also very versatile as a filmmaker,
Speaker 1: so he made that, But he also made Poultergeist. And
Speaker 1: it's really hard to think of two horror movies more
Speaker 1: different in style and tone than those two. But they
Speaker 1: were certainly very, very influential, and I feel like each
Speaker 1: one had its its impact generationally. You know, like people
Speaker 1: older than me, we're very much in the blast zone
Speaker 1: of of the original TCM, whereas I I was just
Speaker 1: old enough to be in the blast zone of Poultergeist.
Speaker 1: So so I was I was more scarred by poulter
Speaker 1: Geist and then came to appreciate a Texas chainsaw massacre
Speaker 1: at a later point. But it's funny because I think
Speaker 1: this movie combines elements of both. So Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Speaker 1: is shocking, brutal, disgusting. In terms of cinematography, it's very
Speaker 1: cold and detached. People often compare it cinematography to documentary filmmaking,
Speaker 1: while Poultergeist is is almost in the Spielberg ea zone.
Speaker 1: It's warm, familiar, lived in almost kind of sentimental um.
Speaker 1: It has that that suburban you know, bikes on the
Speaker 1: sidewalks at dusk, kind of Spielberg thing. Going on, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Craig T. Nelson throwing his TV out to the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: But so you've got those two movies and then you've
Speaker 1: got Spontaneous Combustion released in nineteen nine, so this would
Speaker 1: have been eight years after Poultergeist, starring the Wild Eyed
Speaker 1: jack Rabbit virtuoso Brad Dorriff as a man who cannot
Speaker 1: stop setting things on fire with his brain. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about about Dora that length, because I
Speaker 1: think one of the great things about this film is
Speaker 1: that it it does present something of a showcase for
Speaker 1: Brad Dorriff. That's not to say that that this is
Speaker 1: a perfect film or that his character arc is perfectly structured,
Speaker 1: but you get to see a fair amount of range
Speaker 1: from him in this. You get to see him play
Speaker 1: a serious and relatable human being. You get to see
Speaker 1: him dealing with just extreme outbursts of emotion and by
Speaker 1: the end of the film essentially becoming a movie monster
Speaker 1: as well. These are all things that he that he
Speaker 1: has done, uh, you know sometimes in Isolation and other pictures,
Speaker 1: but in this, yeah, he gets to do the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I think it might be good to introduce this one
Speaker 1: if you're cool with this by reading a short review
Speaker 1: of the movie from film critic Tie Burr in Spin
Speaker 1: in Okay. Burr writes, quote, no one makes bad movies
Speaker 1: as deliriously entertaining as Toby Hooper, whose career continues at
Speaker 1: spectacular downhill slide with spontaneous combustion. The man who reached
Speaker 1: a genre peak with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a
Speaker 1: commercial peak with Poltergeist now offers this completely incoherent tale
Speaker 1: of David Bell twitchingly play by Brad Duriff, the son
Speaker 1: of a couple subjected to radiation experiments in the fifties.
Speaker 1: Apparently the tests lower the human bodies immunity to perfectly
Speaker 1: natural spontaneous combustion, or, in the words of the German
Speaker 1: scientist with an eye patch, the human body is the
Speaker 1: most complex electrically spoked combustion engine Vinov, and that is
Speaker 1: a quote directly from the film I checked. Burr continues
Speaker 1: that means that whenever things get tense, Brad spouts flames
Speaker 1: from his elbow. He can also make enemies burn up
Speaker 1: over the phone. Spontaneous combustion is a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: It's got far too many subplots, a nice sense of
Speaker 1: paranoia effects that are both ikey and ridiculous, and it
Speaker 1: moves too fast for logic beat that trauma. I gotta say,
Speaker 1: I think I think Burr's kind of dead on here.
Speaker 1: Um this I don't know, he manages to I. I
Speaker 1: agree with him completely, and I also disagree with him. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'll cut Tie some slack because he's he's not
Speaker 1: the kind of critic who is you know, just about
Speaker 1: the art films. I looked. I looked into, like, well,
Speaker 1: what he admires, and he does list Reanimator as as
Speaker 1: one of his favorite films, quote one of the secret
Speaker 1: best films in the nineties. So I can't I can't
Speaker 1: argue with that. Like he he does have an appreciation
Speaker 1: for the weird. But um, I mean, on one hand,
Speaker 1: as I've said before, I feel like we've we've kind
Speaker 1: of reached the point where I think we have to
Speaker 1: rethink what we mean when we say bad movie. Um.
Speaker 1: And then and then also, I've seen this this critique
Speaker 1: a few different times. That's that spontaneous combustion doesn't make
Speaker 1: any sense. Um, you know where that is, you know,
Speaker 1: completely illogical. I don't think that's the case at all.
Speaker 1: I I think it has Oh well, I can explain
Speaker 1: the first I can explain aspects of it. It's just
Speaker 1: not completely confusing. It has a kind of a train
Speaker 1: wreck of of of a third act. But um, you know, um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe maybe part of it is I'm
Speaker 1: used to watching films that are, I don't know, logically challenged,
Speaker 1: and I know that I need to bring my own
Speaker 1: logic into it. I need to help unravel it a bit.
Speaker 1: So I mean, it's it's it's basically one of these
Speaker 1: stories of of a of an individual looking at his
Speaker 1: own his own past, his own upbringing, and then on on,
Speaker 1: you know, revealing the conspiracy of it all, and and
Speaker 1: it will get into into what all that means in
Speaker 1: the plot of this this film. But yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's completely illogical, um well, nor incoherent. I mean
Speaker 1: it it's it's got its problems, but but complete incoherency
Speaker 1: is is not one of them. Okay, well, I'm ready
Speaker 1: to hear you preach its virtues. I have an open heart,
Speaker 1: in an open mind. And by the way, no, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm with Burr on the fact that this movie,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think in some conventional senses my reaction was, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a bad movie, and that it has some uh,
Speaker 1: elements of the plot just don't really gel together, and
Speaker 1: it feels like multiple different movies sort of crammed together
Speaker 1: as one, and it doesn't really embrace in of the
Speaker 1: directions fully and I think there was a strange mismatch,
Speaker 1: and just in terms of the raw sort of mechanics
Speaker 1: of filmmaking, Like, in some ways this movie has some
Speaker 1: like really good and effective set pieces and and special effects,
Speaker 1: and in other cases it looks really cheap, like daytime
Speaker 1: TV kind of stuff. Yeah, I guess here's my criteria
Speaker 1: for for truly bad film in the in the sense
Speaker 1: that it is bad and we're not just saying, oh
Speaker 1: I love bad movies. Is can I drive it off
Speaker 1: the lot? Does it? Does it function enough? Is there
Speaker 1: something that is that is actually going to bring this
Speaker 1: baby to a stop? Um? And you know, like for
Speaker 1: an example, that would be something like like Trouble in Mind,
Speaker 1: which is a film I watched in recent months, and
Speaker 1: it has so many wonderful aspects of it, uh to it,
Speaker 1: some some great performances in it, some great style, some
Speaker 1: great music, but it has what was for me as
Speaker 1: a viewer like a real tragic flaw and in the
Speaker 1: establishment of one of its characters in his motivations, just
Speaker 1: left me unable to drive this picture off the lot.
Speaker 1: You know, this one's easy to drive. I mean, this
Speaker 1: one will drive for you. This is a self driving car. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I guess that's how I tend. I tend to
Speaker 1: look at things. Um. Likewise, there's some there's some perfectly
Speaker 1: fine cinematic automobiles out there, and you know that there
Speaker 1: they have all the parts, but they just they have
Speaker 1: no momentum. For me. I can't drive him off the lot. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's where I fall in the matter. Fair enough now,
Speaker 1: um it was to be fair though when it comes
Speaker 1: to criticism, all this picture it's critics do include Brad
Speaker 1: Dorriff himself. Um and and I like the way he
Speaker 1: looked at it. Sometimes it's I think a little uh,
Speaker 1: it can be a little more authentic, I guess to
Speaker 1: you know, to look at from the inside out, you know.
Speaker 1: Um and Uh. Dora apparently wasn't pleased with the final results.
Speaker 1: He spoke about it in the edition of Fan Gloria.
Speaker 1: There's an interview in that he cited on the IMDb page,
Speaker 1: but we looked up the full interview as well, which
Speaker 1: can be found at archive dot org. Uh, but but
Speaker 1: I want to read what he had to say. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: you see me playing my heart out and scenes that
Speaker 1: are not working, and the reason they're not working is
Speaker 1: that movie doesn't make sense. Okay, So so he would
Speaker 1: agree that it does make it. I I disagree. I
Speaker 1: think it makes a certain amount of sense. He says,
Speaker 1: it's almost funny. As a matter of fact, the better
Speaker 1: my acting was in some of the later scenes, the
Speaker 1: funnier of the film was I found myself at the
Speaker 1: mercy of people who didn't know what they were doing.
Speaker 1: I probably shouldn't be saying this, but my feeling is
Speaker 1: the producers destroyed it. Toby could have made three different
Speaker 1: movies with the material he had, and each one would
Speaker 1: have worked. But by the time he got it, it
Speaker 1: had changed from a love story to a suspense thriller
Speaker 1: about my character's paranoid fantasy, to a guy goes crazy
Speaker 1: film about this insane killer who becomes a destructive force.
Speaker 1: It's going to wipe out mankind. We went back and
Speaker 1: kind of restructured it as a love story, but it
Speaker 1: didn't really help. The beginning of the film was great,
Speaker 1: and a certain portion of my stuff was fine, but
Speaker 1: then it became stupid when all the stuff started out
Speaker 1: and all the flame stuff. But uh, so I think
Speaker 1: he's too hard on him on himself certainly, I think
Speaker 1: I think Brad Dorff is great in parts of this
Speaker 1: film and and is able to to do far more
Speaker 1: with this part and tries far harder with this part
Speaker 1: than a lot of other actors would have been capable of. Um.
Speaker 1: But but he's also he's also right. The beginning is
Speaker 1: is really really good, and I wonder what it might
Speaker 1: have looked like had they actually had a coherent vision
Speaker 1: for the picture, if they had like stuck to the
Speaker 1: love story aspect. You know, well, to whatever extent there's
Speaker 1: anything wrong with spontaneous combustion, it is not Brad Dorriff.
Speaker 1: So I I don't I don't think anybody would say
Speaker 1: that the problem with this movie is that Brad is
Speaker 1: not up to par. Right, Like my elevator pitch for
Speaker 1: this is it's a conspiracy movie, it's a love story,
Speaker 1: it's a rage flick. It's it's all over the place,
Speaker 1: and it has these extreme pivots and Brad Dorriff is
Speaker 1: able to keep the car on the road at those pivots,
Speaker 1: at those those extreme you know, turns uh to an
Speaker 1: amazing degree. There's a towards the end, it's it's very difficult.
Speaker 1: I think he probably you know, he does as well
Speaker 1: as he can. But but yeah, the plot really veers
Speaker 1: in the final act of this film. Can I give
Speaker 1: my alternate elevator pitch? Okay, go for it. It's The
Speaker 1: Incredible Hulk, except instead of green muscles, it's just fire. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's good. And you know what, I think
Speaker 1: this is the concept here is ultimately better than The
Speaker 1: Incredible Hulk because with with Hulk, his rage is both
Speaker 1: a curse and uh in a in a superpower. It's
Speaker 1: literally the way he defeats his enemies. And I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that does work in this film
Speaker 1: is that you have you do have some really terrifying
Speaker 1: pyrotechnic u effects with with fire shooting out of people
Speaker 1: and being digitally placed people. And then you have Dorris
Speaker 1: performance which is as as he often isn't in films,
Speaker 1: just very explosive and emotional. And so there is the
Speaker 1: combined there is this element of just um, you know,
Speaker 1: extreme emotional outburst. Um, in a way that is that
Speaker 1: is uncontrollable, that is that is not beneficial, that cannot
Speaker 1: be utilized, that can't be claimed as a positive attribute
Speaker 1: of himself or controlled by other people. And um, and
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's something about that that feels more authentic.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like, this is the extreme emotion as
Speaker 1: as a pure detriment as opposed to something that you
Speaker 1: know is bad, but also is the way you defeat
Speaker 1: the enemy like that the there is no defeating the
Speaker 1: adversary using this superpower. Well, yeah, I agree with you
Speaker 1: in spirit and the but he does in fact use
Speaker 1: his his pyrokinesis to defeat the villains at the end
Speaker 1: of the movie. Well, but not the way that doesn't
Speaker 1: feel meaningful. I mean, not in a way that feels
Speaker 1: meaningful and not in a way that it really redeems
Speaker 1: his character, him and everyone around him. Yeah, should we
Speaker 1: hit some trailer audio? Yeah, let's hear the trailer. Toby Hooper,
Speaker 1: the director of Poltergeist, Toby Hooper, the modern master of
Speaker 1: the maccabre, now brings you his greatest achievement In the
Speaker 1: Spring of n Okay. Bryan Peggy very soon, Ready Ready,
Speaker 1: A secret experiment began, an experiment that left one survivor perfect.
Speaker 1: There's no size of radiation. Now the child has become
Speaker 1: a man can live a slight favor a man who
Speaker 1: doesn't know the secret of his pasked Spontaneous Combustion starring
Speaker 1: Academy Award nominee Brad do Reef, Melinda Dylon, and Cynthia
Speaker 1: Baine Damiel. Spontaneous Combustion wait to Actually haven't listened to
Speaker 1: this thing? Does it have a good narrator voice? I
Speaker 1: think it has a pretty good narrator voice. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: a world where a man can call you on the
Speaker 1: phone and make fire come out of your nose, it
Speaker 1: does have some pretty good phone sequences right right up
Speaker 1: there with which Freddie movie had the phone in it.
Speaker 1: Freddie the first movie. I think a tongue comes out
Speaker 1: of the phone. Okay, that was the original original nightmare
Speaker 1: then okay, but it also this movie has a few
Speaker 1: things in common with scanners, you know, and scanners. When
Speaker 1: there's the part where he calls the computer on the
Speaker 1: telephone and then reads the computer's mind. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's something we have to keep in mind
Speaker 1: with with psychic pictures is that, Yeah, we we often
Speaker 1: hold Scanners up as a as a great example, but
Speaker 1: I always always had a problem with with that, like cool,
Speaker 1: why is his mind working on the computer? Why is
Speaker 1: he able to psychically do computer things? But yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: I mean Scanners is great, but it also has parts
Speaker 1: that do not make any sense. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about the people involved in this, so we'll get
Speaker 1: back to door in a second, but first let's just
Speaker 1: briefly discussed Toby Hooper, one more time director screenwriter on
Speaker 1: this who live nine through and uh, yeah, he's probably
Speaker 1: best remembered for ninety four is the Texas Chainsaw massacre. Um.
Speaker 1: You often see this argument that his subsequent work like
Speaker 1: never achieve that level, that even though even Poulter Guys
Speaker 1: being a commercial hit was like was part of an
Speaker 1: artistic descent. But you know, he he worked a lot.
Speaker 1: He did a lot of TV and film projects, and
Speaker 1: I think the quality is maybe up and down. I
Speaker 1: think that's fair to say. But he put out stuff like, Uh,
Speaker 1: in addition to Poulter guyst and TCMI did Life Force
Speaker 1: Invaders from mars Um, Texas Chainsaw Masker, Too, which I
Speaker 1: would argue is pretty close to pure genius. Texas Chainsaw
Speaker 1: Masker two is a disgusting horror comedy. It's almost a
Speaker 1: satirical reimagining of the first movie, kind of in the
Speaker 1: way that, um, have you ever seen Evil Dead and
Speaker 1: Evil Dead Too? You know, the similar relationship with Texas
Speaker 1: Chainsaw and Texas Chainsaw Too. Yeah, I mean, I I
Speaker 1: ultimately think t c M Too was was a great direction.
Speaker 1: He seemed on some level to realize, Okay, we we
Speaker 1: can't just reproduce what we did before, we need to
Speaker 1: lean more into the grim gallows humor aspects of the
Speaker 1: first film and creates something that takes on old really
Speaker 1: a more comedic um air. Uh So yeah, TC him
Speaker 1: is a lot of fun. That's one we could come
Speaker 1: back to on the show because it's certainly weird now. Um.
Speaker 1: The co screenwriter and this was Howard Goldberg born in
Speaker 1: n not a ton of film writing credits. He'd written
Speaker 1: apple Pie in Nive in a series of this is
Speaker 1: kind of a series of vignettes I'm to understand with
Speaker 1: kind of a secret wild life of Walter Middy kind
Speaker 1: of vibe. Um. He wrote and directed it, and I
Speaker 1: was looking at the people involved in it, and I
Speaker 1: did notice it. Brother Theodore was in it. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: your gods are dead and the rats are screaming. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if that comes that just virtue
Speaker 1: of it being like a New York picture of that day,
Speaker 1: or if you were filming out in the open in
Speaker 1: New York, brother Theodore would just appear and start screaming.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which. He went on to write and
Speaker 1: direct two more films, Eden in nineteen six and Jake
Speaker 1: Squared and Eaton was part of a Sun Dance Institute fellowship.
Speaker 1: Uh So, Goldberg's done quite a bit of work, some
Speaker 1: commercial work, but also off Broadway musicals. So this, you know,
Speaker 1: he did a lot more, but this seems to be
Speaker 1: his only foray into paranormal thriller screenwriting. Okay, but I
Speaker 1: think we need to get to the main attraction here.
Speaker 1: What's the reason to watch spontaneous Combustion? It's Brad Dorriff baby, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Brad Dorriff born nineteen fifty. Still still very active. It
Speaker 1: seems like a guy who who works a lot. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's too much, that's that's not for
Speaker 1: me to judge, but but he works a lot. He's
Speaker 1: been in a lot of projects over the years. Um,
Speaker 1: and he is. He is openly. I've seen him describe
Speaker 1: himself in interviews as an odd duck who often gravitates
Speaker 1: to disturbed and strange characters. Uh, and into a certain extent.
Speaker 1: Is also you know, he's been so successful in certain
Speaker 1: roles that people keep coming back and offering him those
Speaker 1: parts too. Uh. But uh, he's able to bring these
Speaker 1: weird characters to life in an amazing way. So he's
Speaker 1: been in, He's been in great films and TV products.
Speaker 1: He's been in he's been in heavily flawed films. Um,
Speaker 1: he's been certainly been in worse films than this. You'll
Speaker 1: find him an independent and international motion pictures. You'll find
Speaker 1: him in major blockbusters. You'll find him in various horror
Speaker 1: and sci fi films of just about every caliber. Did
Speaker 1: you realize that this came out the same year as
Speaker 1: The Exorcist three? Um? I think I didn't realize it
Speaker 1: until I was reading that Fangoria interview, because I think
Speaker 1: that was to promote Exorcist. And then they also asked
Speaker 1: him about this picture. Oh okay, yeah, he now he
Speaker 1: placed the Gemini killer right, and he's captivating in in
Speaker 1: Exorcist three. Exorcist three is a movie that, um, you
Speaker 1: might just assume if you haven't seen it, well, it's
Speaker 1: the third sequel to a movie that did not need
Speaker 1: a sequel at all, how could it be good? But actually,
Speaker 1: I mean I haven't seen it in several years, but
Speaker 1: I remember the Exorcist three actually being quite good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think if I was to rewatch an Exorcist film,
Speaker 1: it would be three. I think I think I've I've
Speaker 1: I've done Exorcist Part one enough I would probably come
Speaker 1: back for three. But yeah, Doriff is great in it
Speaker 1: and is captivating. I would say that he is often
Speaker 1: one off, if not the most captivating things about any
Speaker 1: picture he's in, you know. I mean, sometimes he's in
Speaker 1: there with a lot of talented and or weird actors
Speaker 1: that are you know, competing for that that honor. But
Speaker 1: there are numerous examples that come to mind where it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: Brad Dorriff's in it. He will make you he will
Speaker 1: make you remember his part if you forget everything else.
Speaker 1: For the past couple of days, I just haven't been
Speaker 1: able to think about anything really except Brad Dorriff leaving
Speaker 1: the set of Lord of the Rings in character is
Speaker 1: Grima worm Tongue to get lunch at Subway or something.
Speaker 1: So he's going into the Starbucks and and they're writing
Speaker 1: worm Tongue on the cop and oh, man did they
Speaker 1: do that? Did they have to go to Starbucks? And no,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean that'd be Oh. I guess
Speaker 1: they probably had catering at the on the set, So
Speaker 1: that really ruins my fantasy here. No, No, I think
Speaker 1: the fantasy is still good if if it's like worm
Speaker 1: Tongue going to catering, it's still still pretty craft services.
Speaker 1: Oh did they have to address him as like, oh,
Speaker 1: would you like another you know, chicken leg, mr, worm Tongue?
Speaker 1: It would have been cool if if, if they if
Speaker 1: they made sure that they had Middle Earth appropriate craft
Speaker 1: services for everybody, So if you wanted to stay in character,
Speaker 1: you could. You know, you're not gonna have mac and cheese,
Speaker 1: You're gonna have traditional shire fair. I don't know. Wait
Speaker 1: a minute, worm Tongue. Would he eat savory pies that
Speaker 1: seems too warm and comforting to him? Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: be well, I think eel would be I don't know
Speaker 1: if they were you know, I I it's been a while.
Speaker 1: I don't remember what they were eating, and it was
Speaker 1: a gondour well no worm tongue was the advisor to
Speaker 1: King theoden Atas of the horse lords of Rohan. Okay,
Speaker 1: they were eating like horse cheese and stuff horse cheese?
Speaker 1: Is that really? Maybe? I don't know, I don't remember
Speaker 1: what they were eating it, and that it's been a
Speaker 1: long time since I've read The Two Towers, but every
Speaker 1: single meal surfeit of Lamprey's. Yeah, all right, well, let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about Brad Dorriff. So he what does he
Speaker 1: look like? He tends to have this rather gaunt look, um,
Speaker 1: often a kind of boyish quality about him, especially for
Speaker 1: I mean for really for the most of his career,
Speaker 1: he able to be retained this kind of unnatural youthful um,
Speaker 1: but also kind of sickly power at times. Um. And
Speaker 1: he uh, his eyes are are generally very earnest and intense. Uh.
Speaker 1: But but I don't want to limit it to just
Speaker 1: his eyes, because he tends to really embody a character
Speaker 1: when he plays it. Uh, you know, it's it's like
Speaker 1: a full body possession. And his natural voice is this
Speaker 1: kind of soft spoken um voice with a kind of
Speaker 1: a slight West Virginian accent to it. But but he's
Speaker 1: capable of taking on other other accents as well, and
Speaker 1: can really also ramp it up. He can. He has
Speaker 1: a has a lot of range in terms of his
Speaker 1: his vocal performance totally. There was a fun bio published
Speaker 1: in The Independent back in two thousand two titles Brad
Speaker 1: Dora of how Weird is Brad? Which is a wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful name, And it includes this wonderful quote he says, uh, quote,
Speaker 1: give me a camera and a paycheck, and I'm there.
Speaker 1: You start out reading the script and you say, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Then as you're making it, you think, no,
Speaker 1: this is really cool. I was wrong. Then you see
Speaker 1: the movie and you're like, oh, forget it. You were
Speaker 1: totally right at the start. This is a man after
Speaker 1: our own hearts. Yeah, but I think it's also revealing, revealing,
Speaker 1: like he seems to like when he when you're in
Speaker 1: the part, you're in the part, you know, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a different situation than the finished piece. And ultimately,
Speaker 1: I like, you're the actor. You don't have control over that.
Speaker 1: All you have control over, Uh, is your own performance,
Speaker 1: in your own interactions. I think this is actually key
Speaker 1: to what makes him such a great actor, and especially
Speaker 1: a lot of these sort of maybe lower grade genre movies,
Speaker 1: like you never get the sense like he feels he's
Speaker 1: too good for a part, even if the movie ends
Speaker 1: up being bad or heavily flawed in some way, even
Speaker 1: if the scenes he's acting out are ridiculous. He's commit
Speaker 1: did He's there, He's in character, and you don't he's
Speaker 1: not too cool to play the guy who's like elbows
Speaker 1: are on fire and who's calling into a radio show
Speaker 1: with like a psychic psychiatrist to make the call screener
Speaker 1: erupt in flames. Yeah, yeah, totally. So he has I think,
Speaker 1: uh a hundred and seventy three credits on IMDb right now,
Speaker 1: and he's again been just acting for decades. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna list all of his credits here, but I thought
Speaker 1: I might roll through some standouts and we can talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about some of them as the spirit
Speaker 1: hits us. So he was in One Flew Over the
Speaker 1: Cuckoo's Nest, all right, He was Billy in that one.
Speaker 1: YEA great great ensemble cast in that that picture for sure. Uh.
Speaker 1: He In nineteen seventy nine, he was in Wise Blood,
Speaker 1: playing the character Hazel Moats, which we were just talking about.
Speaker 1: I've never seen this one, but I've I've heard that
Speaker 1: it's great. So it's based on the Flannery O'Connor novel
Speaker 1: and it was directed by John Houston. Wasn't it yep?
Speaker 1: Directed by John Houston, and uh, yeah, it's I just
Speaker 1: finished watching it this morning. It's it's weird, dark, unpleasant,
Speaker 1: occasionally occasionally funny. It has some comedic scenes and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: Dora has just that great intensity in this. Coupled with this,
Speaker 1: you know, again he's very young and then I think
Speaker 1: he's twenty nine, and you know he looks even younger. Um,
Speaker 1: but he's a yeah, he's a real live wire in this.
Speaker 1: And on on top of that, you also have he
Speaker 1: has scenes with Harry Dean Stanton, uh, numerous scenes with
Speaker 1: Amy Right, who's wonderful in it, ned batty. William Hickey
Speaker 1: shows up, Um, a younger William Hickey than I'm I'm
Speaker 1: used to seeing, but but not youthful. I don't know
Speaker 1: if a youthful William Hickey actually ever existed. That defies physics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's a wise Blood is certainly a Brad
Speaker 1: Dorif picture that's often held up is a is a
Speaker 1: truly great film like a uh not like a genre
Speaker 1: film where you have a cool performance in it, but
Speaker 1: a but a really solid motion picture. Uh and and
Speaker 1: and I would agree with that with one caveat, and
Speaker 1: that is that the music is occasionally really distracting. It
Speaker 1: has this uh this kind of wacky semi electric hayseed
Speaker 1: music playing at times, but only in the comedics sections,
Speaker 1: not in the generally not in the dialogue driven interactions. Okay,
Speaker 1: now wait a minute before we we can't forget to
Speaker 1: mention Dune, right that the David Lynch Dune, the one
Speaker 1: with the pug. Yeah, that's right. He plays uh the
Speaker 1: twisted mint at Peter de Vry. Let's say, what is it,
Speaker 1: Devrise Devise. I can't remember, however, I think it's maybe
Speaker 1: Peter de Vries, but it looks like his name is
Speaker 1: spelled like piter. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he has
Speaker 1: the big bushy eyebrows like all the Mintet's and the
Speaker 1: Lynch version vision of Dune. Uh yeah, yeah, he's he's
Speaker 1: he's funny. It's not a huge part, he didn't last
Speaker 1: that long. And of course he is surrounded by so
Speaker 1: much weirdness and so many charismatic actors in that picture. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot to look at. And even
Speaker 1: if that picture is ultimately flawed as well, I don't
Speaker 1: know what flaws you're talking about. David Lynch is doing
Speaker 1: is a perfect film. T The pacing is incredible, perfect.
Speaker 1: So let's see six. He was in Blue Velvet. Um,
Speaker 1: we have to mention, of course, he was in almost
Speaker 1: all of the Child's Play movies. I mean, he is
Speaker 1: the voice of Chucky. Um. Oh, is he even in
Speaker 1: the weird recent ones they did? Um no, that's I think,
Speaker 1: um Mark Hamill jumped in to do that one. But
Speaker 1: he's been in everything else. And there's like an upcoming
Speaker 1: sci fi series of Child's Play and he's back in that.
Speaker 1: Brad Dorriff is back in that. So they gotten into
Speaker 1: time travel and that when the time Chucky, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. I don't think he's going to space either. Okay,
Speaker 1: holding out for the Old West Chucky. Now that that
Speaker 1: could be good. Uh, let's see. Um we already mentioned
Speaker 1: The Exorcist three in nineteen ninety, but also in nineteen
Speaker 1: nine Graveyard Shift. Wait wait, wait wait? Was it was
Speaker 1: a wait, Exorcist three, Spontaneous Combust and Graveyard Shift all
Speaker 1: in the same year. Yes, it would seem he's working,
Speaker 1: he's work, he's good to work. So Graveyard Shift, which
Speaker 1: is based on a Stephen King short story, really a
Speaker 1: terrific short story. Um, I I watched I rewatched this
Speaker 1: this week as well. That's basically a giant mutant rat picture.
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it a rat or a bat? What?
Speaker 1: It's been so long, but this was one of those
Speaker 1: I think I watched late at night on T and
Speaker 1: T when I was way too young to do that.
Speaker 1: And uh, did it have wings in the end or something? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like basically all the gross rodent type things you
Speaker 1: that fill your nightmares have like bread with each other
Speaker 1: in the darkness beneath the mill and the result or
Speaker 1: these is this this big, grotesque monstrosity that has elements
Speaker 1: of all the creatures. Okay, and um, and I think
Speaker 1: it was I can't. I don't recall a fan. I
Speaker 1: think it was more than just one creature, uh in
Speaker 1: the story, but in this it's like one big creature
Speaker 1: and it has a lot of rats. Working for it,
Speaker 1: but um, it's ah, it's pretty fun. It's a you know,
Speaker 1: it's a monster flick. It has um Stephen um Mocked
Speaker 1: in it, who is pretty good in it. He was
Speaker 1: in Transfers three through five as well. Uh. It also
Speaker 1: has Andrew Divoff who was in Wish Master. And I've
Speaker 1: seen Stephen King dismiss it as an exploitation flick, but
Speaker 1: I I feel like that's kind of the perfect zone
Speaker 1: for a giant monster rat movie. I mean, what are
Speaker 1: you what are you looking for? I wanted more character
Speaker 1: nuance in my giant rat movie. Yeah, but performance wise,
Speaker 1: Doraf is the most memorable thing he has this His
Speaker 1: character is really not that important. He basically is just
Speaker 1: a weird character. It comes along to, I think, take
Speaker 1: up space in the movie and have some interactions with
Speaker 1: their main characters. But he plays a Vietnam vet who's
Speaker 1: also an exterminator, who's quick to tell you that he's
Speaker 1: not some burnout like a character Bruce Dern would play,
Speaker 1: which is amazing. But yeah, he's he's just um, he's
Speaker 1: like chewing and spitting Tobacca and um, it's just in
Speaker 1: ranting uh and and killing rats. He's he's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun in that. Yep, it sounds like that would
Speaker 1: work better as in nineteen seventies style character studies starring
Speaker 1: John Kazaleah, let's see. Uh. Doroff was in Jungle Fever
Speaker 1: in Creators four. In um he was in that excellent
Speaker 1: episode of Tales from the Crypt with Bill Paxton, people
Speaker 1: who live in brass horses. I don't know this one.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. He was on He was on the X Files.
Speaker 1: Now you can speak to this. He was in an
Speaker 1: episode called Beyond the Sea. Do you remember this? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Beyond the Sea. Which one was this? Okay, I just
Speaker 1: looked it up. This one was in the first season, though.
Speaker 1: I honestly I don't recall this one. And maybe maybe
Speaker 1: if I saw a part of it. Uh man, it's
Speaker 1: got a it's got a big Wikipedia page. It looks
Speaker 1: like it's going have been an important episode. Oh I
Speaker 1: think this This one had some like character development where
Speaker 1: you learned about Molder and Scully's back stories. Okay, alright.
Speaker 1: He was in Death Machine in nineteen He was an
Speaker 1: alien resurrection And I like the way you just paused
Speaker 1: on this one, like you're you're waiting for me to Okay,
Speaker 1: Alien Resurrection, I have to admit, is a movie that
Speaker 1: I don't just hate, but it like literally makes me
Speaker 1: feel sick to think about. I'm not even kidding, just
Speaker 1: the concept of alien resurrection. Someone's a kind of like
Speaker 1: winding mountain road, backseat car sickness, h y asthma to
Speaker 1: come over my brain. I'm literally not joking. It is
Speaker 1: packed with weird actors. You have to give it that, Yeah, yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: Ron Pearlman, right yeah, Ron Pearlman, um uh, Michael Wincott, um,
Speaker 1: Dan Hidea. It's a it's gotta it has a fun cast. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's move on though. Okay, The Prophecy three, The Ascent.
Speaker 1: Didn't see that one in two thousand, but then of
Speaker 1: course the Lord of the Rings the Two Towers in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two. Right, yeah, there you go. He
Speaker 1: was on Deadwood, memorable role there. He's worked with Werner
Speaker 1: Herzog several times, including My Son, My Son, What have
Speaker 1: You Done? From two thousand and nine. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: that one, but this started to make me wonder is
Speaker 1: there any overlap with with Kinsky here? Does Doriff almost
Speaker 1: have some some very slight notes of Kinsky Barry about him. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean certainly insofar as Herzog worked with him on
Speaker 1: several times, and he does have that kind of natural intensity.
Speaker 1: But I don't think it's fair to compare anybody to
Speaker 1: to klas Kinsky. Um. No, I'm not, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: for I'm not suggesting a moral comparison or that or
Speaker 1: that Brad Douroff would have been known for, you know,
Speaker 1: bellowing freak outs about the catering or something, coming back
Speaker 1: to the catering once again. But an a right, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll stop the expansive list at this point.
Speaker 1: But basically, he's worked with a number of of of
Speaker 1: great actors and great directors, um and um, and it
Speaker 1: seems to continue to do so. Interestingly enough, the actor
Speaker 1: of Fiona Doroff is his daughter. She seems to be
Speaker 1: carrying on the tradition of playing both weird and serious roles. Um.
Speaker 1: She's been in the stand she played Uh. I'm to
Speaker 1: understand kind of a strange character in that she was
Speaker 1: in Tenant and she's also a part of the Chucky
Speaker 1: franchise now, so that's kind of cool keeping it in
Speaker 1: the family. Although I'm trying to look at who she
Speaker 1: was in Tenant. I haven't seen I have not seen
Speaker 1: it yet. Oh Tenant, Um, Okay, I don't recall which
Speaker 1: character she played, but Tenant. It's one of those movies
Speaker 1: I know. I've talked about ones like this on the
Speaker 1: show before that are almost everything that comes to mind
Speaker 1: to say about it is a criticism, and yet I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed it. It was. It's it's very fun. It
Speaker 1: has that great Christopher Nolan action style, just like each
Speaker 1: set piece is enormously enjoyable and attack till sense. But
Speaker 1: I think you could lever some quite legitimate criticisms against
Speaker 1: the coherence of the plot to revisit a theme from earlier. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I'll probably get to it at some point next time.
Speaker 1: I'm in the mood for a cerebral yet incoherent time
Speaker 1: travel adventure. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Now, Brat
Speaker 1: Dorriff is not the only actor in this picture. There
Speaker 1: are some other people of note. What if he was, though, Well,
Speaker 1: that would be something. Um. I mean, I think there's
Speaker 1: at least one Werner Herzog picture where he's the only actor,
Speaker 1: if I'm remembering correctly. It's more it's not a traditional
Speaker 1: narrative type thing. But he can go it alone. Okay,
Speaker 1: but who else? Is? One thing I gotta say before
Speaker 1: we get into the cast is this movie has way
Speaker 1: too many generals in it. This is overloaded with these
Speaker 1: like old men standing around, you know, scheming about whatever
Speaker 1: this this conspiracy is. Yeah, it's hard to keep track
Speaker 1: of of who the villain is, who the sub villain is. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: especially if it's like a conspiracy mad science yarn. You
Speaker 1: need that mad scientist like that, you need your central villain,
Speaker 1: and this this film is you can get lost trying
Speaker 1: to figure out who that is supposed to be. I agree.
Speaker 1: I think that could have been one way to significantly
Speaker 1: improve this film, just to lockdown who is the villain
Speaker 1: of like one central villain who maybe has a recognizable henchman,
Speaker 1: instead of this sort of gaggle of skunkworks dudes, who
Speaker 1: are you know showing up in various points and you're
Speaker 1: trying to remember is that the guy from earlier? Is
Speaker 1: that somebody different? Yeah? Yeah, And I guess the the
Speaker 1: counter argument would be, well, it's supposed to be about
Speaker 1: paranoia and conspiracy and that involves you know, it involves
Speaker 1: everyone in your life. But yeah, I I still think
Speaker 1: it would have. It would have been a smoother ride
Speaker 1: had we had it focused more on a single villain.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the first person of note is the love interest. Uh.
Speaker 1: The character is Lisa Wilcock, Sam's new girlfriend. Sam is
Speaker 1: um is Brad Dorrith's character played by Cynthia Bain who
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen sixty three. She played Tracy Pumpkinhead
Speaker 1: and she did a lot of TV work as well. Pumpkinhead.
Speaker 1: That's a movie with a creature that deserves a better
Speaker 1: movie to live in. Ultimately, it's not a great film,
Speaker 1: but a really beautiful monster design. Oh yeah, beautiful monster. Um.
Speaker 1: Now Cynthia Bayne, it's interesting. She eventually transitioned into into
Speaker 1: being an acting coach and she runs Cynthia Bayne's Young
Speaker 1: Actors Studio in Studio City, California. Uh so, yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems to be her. Her whole thing eventually became helping
Speaker 1: young actors improve their craft. Cool alright. Um. The first
Speaker 1: of the mini villains in this um we have the
Speaker 1: character Dr. John Marsh played by John Cipher for nWo
Speaker 1: veteran actor. I'd say the most the role that I
Speaker 1: knew him from previously was he played man at arms
Speaker 1: in the Seven Masters at the Universe movie, had a
Speaker 1: mustache in that. Do you remember him? Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I do remember him. He You know what, I was
Speaker 1: comparing him a little bit to Leslie Nielsen while I
Speaker 1: was watching this. He has notes of Nielsen Berry, he does,
Speaker 1: he does, because yeah, Leslie Nielsen, Um, especially if you
Speaker 1: think of Leslie Nielsen pre naked gun like, pre police squad. Uh.
Speaker 1: He had that that very serious tone that was maybe
Speaker 1: a little a little too dry, and that's why it
Speaker 1: ultimately lent itself so well to parody. All Right, we
Speaker 1: have d Young playing Rachel Sam's ex wife. Born nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty five, Multiple star trek Roles, a lot of TV work,
Speaker 1: played Dr Irene Shulman on melrose Place, so that means
Speaker 1: anything to anybody, But she was also She also had
Speaker 1: small parts in Spaceballs and The Running Man. Now this
Speaker 1: next guy, I was trying to remember what it was
Speaker 1: I recognized him from, and I couldn't figure it out
Speaker 1: unless I was just recognizing him from the last time
Speaker 1: I watched this movie. Yeah. William Prince, who plays lou
Speaker 1: Or Lander the father figure and his ex wife's grandfather.
Speaker 1: The thenections between the characters gets a little weird at times. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he lived nineteen thirteen. Uh, he's our shadowy conspiracy villain.
Speaker 1: I think he's supposed to be the top villain, but
Speaker 1: it takes us a while to get to that revelation.
Speaker 1: He was a character actor with roles on The Stepford
Speaker 1: Wives Network, a lot of TV across the decade. I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that was I was getting
Speaker 1: the same having the same lights come on from me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what if I seen this guy in And
Speaker 1: I don't think I had really seen him in anything else,
Speaker 1: remembered him from anything else. But he kind of has
Speaker 1: similar notes to William Hickey. He's like William Hickey light
Speaker 1: notes of Hicky Berry. Yeah, of course I've seen Network,
Speaker 1: so I might have seen him in that, but I
Speaker 1: just don't remember him from Network. You know, there are
Speaker 1: other other stars burn a lot brighter in Network. Right.
Speaker 1: So one of the funny things though about William Prince's
Speaker 1: character in this movie is that there's no there like,
Speaker 1: is no question at all when you first meet him
Speaker 1: whether he's going to end up being the villain of
Speaker 1: the film, because when you first meet him, they won't
Speaker 1: let you see his face. He's like he could be
Speaker 1: a Dick Tracy villain called shadow Face. He's just sitting
Speaker 1: in a room where every other actor is fully lit
Speaker 1: and perfectly visible, but he's covered in a complete shroud
Speaker 1: of darkness, which looked extremely funny to me. Alright, another character,
Speaker 1: and this is another scientist character, uh is Nina the
Speaker 1: German Scientists played by Melinda Dillon born nine probably most
Speaker 1: famous and visible as Ralphie's mom from the three film
Speaker 1: A Christmas Story. Yep, interesting casting decision, yeah, but she
Speaker 1: also had memorable roles in Close Encounters of the Third Kind,
Speaker 1: Magnolia and of course Harry and the Henderson's. Um, we
Speaker 1: have a general character show up? Yeah, this is probably
Speaker 1: by Dale Dy who was born nineteen four. Um. He
Speaker 1: should basically your gray haired mustachio general in this uh.
Speaker 1: In real life a former marine, so he played a
Speaker 1: lot of characters like this. Anytime you need like a
Speaker 1: stiff military authority figure year, you would often often turn
Speaker 1: to Dale Die, who was in Platoon Band of Brothers
Speaker 1: born on the fourth that you lie, Um, and you
Speaker 1: list platoon twice? Did I mentioned that? Did did I
Speaker 1: say it twice? Or just listed twice? So you just
Speaker 1: listed it twice, which is appropriate. Oh well, I mean
Speaker 1: it was. It was a big one though. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: He kicked off his his acting career in eighty six
Speaker 1: in both Platoon and Toby Hooper's Invaders from Mars, so
Speaker 1: like one foot in both both lanes. I guess Invaders
Speaker 1: from Mars is a little scene Toby Hooper movie. But
Speaker 1: if I recall, it's like a an alien invasion movie,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of for kids. It's like a you know,
Speaker 1: childhood adventure movie. I remember getting the vibe. It's been
Speaker 1: a long time since I watched it, but I got
Speaker 1: this sort of for kids vibe for it, like as
Speaker 1: a child watching it. I wasn't sure how how I
Speaker 1: was supposed to feel about it, And I don't know
Speaker 1: if that was intentional or if it was just miscalibrated. Um.
Speaker 1: But then again, that was also of a thing back
Speaker 1: in the day, right, I mean, I would I would
Speaker 1: classify Gremlins, um, even though it is often held up,
Speaker 1: I guess is a classic. I think that one is
Speaker 1: totally all over the place. Oh yeah, I actually I saw.
Speaker 1: I quite love Grimlins, but I absolutely agreed it's totally
Speaker 1: all over the place. But you know what I love, Rob,
Speaker 1: I love the fact that we're not out of generals yet. No. No,
Speaker 1: we have a lieutenant general and it's he has no name,
Speaker 1: but he's played by Dick Buckus Buds Yes, yep, yep,
Speaker 1: born two American football Edge and Dick Buckus of the Bears,
Speaker 1: um who was in Gremlins too, by the way, along
Speaker 1: with various other TV shows. I think he tends to
Speaker 1: sort of play himself, if not actually play himself. Is
Speaker 1: this the general who in the hospital scenes was just
Speaker 1: like eating a big play to Buffalo Wings. I don't
Speaker 1: remember him at all, but that sounds right, That sounds
Speaker 1: app like appropriate use of the actor Dick Buckus. So,
Speaker 1: Brian and Peggy are on fire and he's like, I
Speaker 1: need more blue cheese. All right, We're almost done with
Speaker 1: the cast here, but we have just a few essentially
Speaker 1: cameos to point out here. The first of all, we
Speaker 1: have John Landis of the director, who has a cameo
Speaker 1: as a radio technician who catches on fire. John Landis
Speaker 1: who who directed like American Werewolf in London and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he he spits fire out of his mouth because
Speaker 1: Brad Doorff calls him on the phone and gets mad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: though he's not even mad at Landis's character. He's mad
Speaker 1: in another it's at Landis. Landis's cameo character here is
Speaker 1: just the in the wrong place, at the wrong time,
Speaker 1: caught in the cross fire. This is also a Dick
Speaker 1: Warlock picture. By the way, God love Dick Warlock. Every
Speaker 1: time I see his name in the credits, I get excited. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He he plays Mr Fitzpatrick in this. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: who that is, but basically he's a stunt player. Um
Speaker 1: and you you do see him show up in films
Speaker 1: of the day of that period, and it's generally just
Speaker 1: notable because he has just such a fun name. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He was also part of the extended Carpenter hallo verse.
Speaker 1: He was in Halloween two. He may well have played
Speaker 1: Michael Myers in Halloween two. Um, I might be remembering
Speaker 1: that wrong, but he's definitely in Halloween three, in which
Speaker 1: he plays an ancient Druid robot assassin. Now this is
Speaker 1: an interesting because of the next cameo is another director,
Speaker 1: like like Landis, but this director's cameo serves as this
Speaker 1: director's only acting credit. Uh. And this is the director
Speaker 1: Andre de tof Um, who has it. It's Cameo playing
Speaker 1: doctor VanderMeer in this what I was supposed to I
Speaker 1: think he's supposed to be a European or a German
Speaker 1: scientist of some sort that shows up in the early
Speaker 1: stages of the picture. Um, but he has He has
Speaker 1: several lines like it's not just a walk on walk
Speaker 1: off situation. He has some really fun lines in this picture.
Speaker 1: He has the most ludicrous monologue in the film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was. He was not an actor. He's primarily
Speaker 1: right a director. He was. He was born in Hungary. Um,
Speaker 1: he's He directed various pictures, including nineteen fifty three's House
Speaker 1: of Wax starring Vincent Price. One thing I read about
Speaker 1: this was that so this was a very prominent three
Speaker 1: D movie. But I believe it's the case that he
Speaker 1: actually couldn't see He couldn't perceive three D films because
Speaker 1: he was missing one of his eyes. Right. He wore
Speaker 1: an iPad like he wears an eyepatch in this picture.
Speaker 1: And you if you didn't know anything about him, he
Speaker 1: might assume that's just part of the character. But I
Speaker 1: know that that was really war one. Um. He was.
Speaker 1: He was also a writer. He wrote the story that
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties The Gunfighter starring Gregory Peck was based on,
Speaker 1: and he served as second unit director on seventy eight, Superman,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, Thunderball in nineteen sixty two, Lawrence of Arabia.
Speaker 1: Wow Um. As far as music goes, Graham Revel did
Speaker 1: the music composer here born nineteen fifty five, an established
Speaker 1: film score come poser who I don't think I recognized
Speaker 1: his name, but I've seen plenty of pictures that he scored. Um.
Speaker 1: We briefly discussed him on the episode for Ghost in
Speaker 1: the Machine. That's right, Yeah, that was one Ghost in
Speaker 1: the Machine. I cannot remember what we even said about
Speaker 1: the score for Ghost of the Machine, if it was
Speaker 1: good or bad or just kind of you know, I
Speaker 1: think you were mostly unimpressed. I think you were like
Speaker 1: I would have liked it, Cynthia. Yeah, that's well, that's
Speaker 1: you know, that's often my note on things, And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's basically the same here that though he worked
Speaker 1: on films like The Crow, The Chronicles of Riddick, which
Speaker 1: is a picture I really enjoy, but I also don't
Speaker 1: remember it's um it's music at all, So not that
Speaker 1: you obviously need to notice the music so much in
Speaker 1: emotion picture. I guess there's an argument to be made
Speaker 1: for the music doing it's a job and not standing
Speaker 1: out too much, but I don't know. For me, I
Speaker 1: like it to stand out. The score that plays over
Speaker 1: the opening credits has a moment in it that reminds
Speaker 1: me of a moment from the score in Aliens. There's
Speaker 1: sort of a two beat pulse that like done Dune skittering. Alright,
Speaker 1: I'll mention one more person involved in this, and that's
Speaker 1: because it has a lot of This picture has a
Speaker 1: lot of fire special effects in it, and it's often
Speaker 1: pinpointed as being one of the more notable things about
Speaker 1: the picture. Michael Weldon in The Psychotronic Video Guide praises
Speaker 1: the fire effects. So it appears to be there was
Speaker 1: a whole crew here, but it appears to be. Uh
Speaker 1: in a large part of the work of Stephen David Brooks,
Speaker 1: who is optical and visual effects supervisor and second unit
Speaker 1: director on this film, and he went on to write uh.
Speaker 1: Toby Hooper's adaptation of Stephen King's The Mangler, m Okay,
Speaker 1: I've never seen that one, but that is about a
Speaker 1: killer industrial Laundry Machine. I think, yes, yeah, it has
Speaker 1: I think it has Robert England in it, and I
Speaker 1: think that one is Stephen King approved it. It gets
Speaker 1: kind of weird when you get into like which adaptation
Speaker 1: Stephen King likes and doesn't like. And granted it's totally
Speaker 1: his his place to to make those judgments, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: not not not saying it isn't, but sometimes it can
Speaker 1: feel a little uneven on us. Doesn't really correlate to
Speaker 1: how good the movies are. Yeah, yeah, Like sometimes I
Speaker 1: think it's like, to what degree he had input in it?
Speaker 1: And you know something, it's and it's It also comes
Speaker 1: back to what we're talking about with with Dora earlier.
Speaker 1: When you're on the inside of something, your your perspective
Speaker 1: is different. So the thing that isn't important to them
Speaker 1: may not actually come through to your experience of it,
Speaker 1: but it was important to their initial creation or their
Speaker 1: performance in the picture. Yeah. Uh, but I gotta say
Speaker 1: so this was made the effects budget doesn't appear to
Speaker 1: have been the the greatest of all time, but I'd
Speaker 1: say the effects are pretty strong. Like they are, even
Speaker 1: if they don't necessarily always look realistic, they are effective
Speaker 1: for the staginess of the story. Yeah. I one thing
Speaker 1: I'd forgotten about this picture was just how terrifying some
Speaker 1: of the fire effects are. Um Like, they feel dangerous,
Speaker 1: they feel unsafe. I mean not in a sense where
Speaker 1: I'm I'm second guessing the work of the stunt people,
Speaker 1: but just in like, within the context of the movie,
Speaker 1: fire feels like a dangerous thing. And a lot of
Speaker 1: times you can in pictures, you you get so used
Speaker 1: to seeing like a a burning burning man effect, a
Speaker 1: fire suit effect, you know, a man on fire, and
Speaker 1: at times if you're not familiar with what is involved
Speaker 1: in that, if you don't become like a connoisseur of
Speaker 1: the man on fire, you can forget like how impressive
Speaker 1: that stunt is, how dangerous that stunt is, and um
Speaker 1: and to a certain extent, you can lose respect for
Speaker 1: just how dangerous fire itself is. Sure. And then of
Speaker 1: course Brad Dorriff is often screaming and and fully emoting
Speaker 1: in these fire scenes, which I think adds to the effect. Right.
Speaker 1: That actually maybe the most blood curdling aspect of it.
Speaker 1: It is more so than the visual effects. Yeah, Brad
Speaker 1: dorf crossing the red line. Yeah, all right, Well, I
Speaker 1: guess it's high time to get into the plot on
Speaker 1: this one, all right. Well, in keeping with some of
Speaker 1: the recent episodes, I don't think we're gonna do like
Speaker 1: a scene by scene of the entire movie, but but
Speaker 1: I think it does help to uh look a little
Speaker 1: bit more closely at the beginning, which is one of
Speaker 1: the strongest parts of the film. So we we open
Speaker 1: in the fifties with some nuclear testing. Yeah, it has
Speaker 1: an extended prologue. Takes opens up in nineteen Nevada Desert
Speaker 1: hydrogen bomb testing site, and we have the classics song
Speaker 1: I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire by
Speaker 1: the ink spots hit playing in the background, which is
Speaker 1: a bit on the nose but also just perfect. Um.
Speaker 1: This would, of course, the same song would be utilized
Speaker 1: in a very similar way much later by the Fallout games.
Speaker 1: I think in the commercials are opening videos for for
Speaker 1: one of those games. Uh So, I don't know if
Speaker 1: this actually inspired them or if it's just pure coincidence,
Speaker 1: but it's it's well used in this picture that I
Speaker 1: was wondering the exact same thing, whether this movie might
Speaker 1: have somehow inspired the cheeky atomic age parody style of
Speaker 1: the fallout games. Yeah, yeah, because we see some of
Speaker 1: that here, Like they're establishing and a certain to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, you know, this idealized version of what the
Speaker 1: fifties were. Like. We have these these two love birds,
Speaker 1: Brian and Peggy Bell. They've been injected with a special
Speaker 1: serum serum. They're very much in love. Generals and German
Speaker 1: scientists are watching on there somehow connected to this um
Speaker 1: atomic detonation that's about to happen there in some sort
Speaker 1: of a bunker, and we see that this is the
Speaker 1: Samson Project. Yeah, this is the Samson Projects. So they're
Speaker 1: like in a fallout shelter underneath this this bomb test range.
Speaker 1: And uh and one thing that was funny here was
Speaker 1: they have to inject themselves with some kind of serum
Speaker 1: right before the bomb goes off while they're strapped to
Speaker 1: these chairs. And you see them just like jam in
Speaker 1: just a stabbing motion with the needles into their own arms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are multiple scenes with injection. This This is not
Speaker 1: a good film for people who have needle phobias, especially
Speaker 1: because some of the needles are full of glowing green goop. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well the green the green glow is how you know
Speaker 1: it works right. Another thing I wanted to mention though,
Speaker 1: which is I already alluded to the sort of wildly
Speaker 1: varying visual qualities of this film. Some things and it
Speaker 1: look really good, and some things in it look very cheap.
Speaker 1: And so some of the things in the early part
Speaker 1: of the movie, which overall the beginning I think is
Speaker 1: very effective and funny and works well, but it instantly
Speaker 1: also looks like a movie made in nine and I
Speaker 1: was wondering, like, what is that quality that so many
Speaker 1: movies even want a good movie vs of the early
Speaker 1: nineties have this look. It's almost kind of a TV
Speaker 1: style cinematography. I would compare it to some of the
Speaker 1: kind of velveta sets and camera behavior that we saw
Speaker 1: in those Charles Band movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it certainly
Speaker 1: does um that. But at the same time, they have
Speaker 1: this atomic age news short that that plays in this
Speaker 1: portion of the film where they yeah, where they create
Speaker 1: this uh, this kind of retro news vibe, you know,
Speaker 1: like like today we have Brian and Peggy involved in this,
Speaker 1: you know, with the you know, the the nice overdone narration,
Speaker 1: and it's like Starship Troopers. They're doing their part. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like you know, military propaganda, and it's really well done.
Speaker 1: It it feels more or less authentic to the fifties
Speaker 1: and less. But Okay, there's a nuclear test, bomb goes off.
Speaker 1: They've injected themselves with the serum man and Brian and
Speaker 1: Peggy survive. And then they find out, oh, after the
Speaker 1: after the test, they're going to have a son. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we we cut to them in the hospital with
Speaker 1: their with their newborn baby, and Brian brings in a
Speaker 1: plastic merry go round as a gift for the child,
Speaker 1: uh and and a little note that says, like to
Speaker 1: my son, and then it says, for my son on
Speaker 1: the day of his birth, may your life always be
Speaker 1: a merry go Round. And as he's like handing this
Speaker 1: to his wife, Brian's like, isn't it amazing what they're
Speaker 1: doing with plastic these days? A strange comment, I thought,
Speaker 1: But it's got doctors in the hospital like running a
Speaker 1: Geiger counter over the baby. Obviously they think, you know,
Speaker 1: something's up. I guess with all of the anti radiation
Speaker 1: serum that these people have been taking um and they're
Speaker 1: running a Geiger counter over the baby, and they're like, wow,
Speaker 1: normal as can be. But they note that there is
Speaker 1: a perfectly circular birthmark on the back of the baby's hand,
Speaker 1: and this will come into play as the movie goes
Speaker 1: later on. But so anyway, we're seeing the parents and
Speaker 1: and their baby interact. Baby baby do Iff is visiting
Speaker 1: with his mom, and then oh, the nurse comes to
Speaker 1: take the baby away, and then something happens. This is
Speaker 1: like the we get the inciting childhood trauma scene that
Speaker 1: you have to have in so many movies these days.
Speaker 1: So you know where Bruce Wayne's parents they're murdered with
Speaker 1: a gun in crime alley, and in this movie, Brad
Speaker 1: Douroff's parents are murdered by fire by a pyrokinetic baby.
Speaker 1: I will say that this is what it feels like
Speaker 1: the first time your child cries uncontrollably, though, it feels
Speaker 1: like like everybody's on fire. So since this this scene
Speaker 1: works really well. Well wait, actually, now now that I
Speaker 1: step back, I have a question because here's one of
Speaker 1: the things that maybe you can set me right on
Speaker 1: that I didn't understand about the movie. The the mechanics
Speaker 1: of how people were getting set on fire was unclear
Speaker 1: to me because at first I thought it was, oh no,
Speaker 1: the baby's upset the baby is crying, and because the
Speaker 1: baby's up that the baby uses its pyrokinesis powers to
Speaker 1: set its parents on fire. But also there's stuff about
Speaker 1: how people just naturally spontaneously combust and that the serum
Speaker 1: that the parents were taking might have made that happen
Speaker 1: to them. So could it be that actually the baby
Speaker 1: Brad Douriff, didn't do it, and they just spontaneously combusted
Speaker 1: because they had taken the injections. Um, I guess it's possible. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. The way I read it was that
Speaker 1: it's very much the baby, but but it's but it's
Speaker 1: like if you have some sort of like you know,
Speaker 1: firepower that is attached to your um emotional states. I mean,
Speaker 1: a baby is the exactly the wrong creature to have
Speaker 1: that power. You know. It's it's it's just going to
Speaker 1: experience its emotional states. It's just a maximum level with
Speaker 1: with with no regard for the safety of anyone else
Speaker 1: in the vicinity. Um So, it would be the kind
Speaker 1: of thing where it would just you know, catch everybody
Speaker 1: on fire. Um So. I mean, to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: I feel like this the film's extended metaphor of emotional
Speaker 1: outbursts as a fire, and um, you know, and and
Speaker 1: the idea that when we're engaging emotionally, you know, we're
Speaker 1: having an impact on other people, either visibly present or
Speaker 1: you know, even over the telephone. I think it to
Speaker 1: a certain extent makes sense, but I also realized that
Speaker 1: maybe reading too much into it. Sure. Uh so we're
Speaker 1: in a shadowy room now where the this this burning
Speaker 1: has happened, but Brian and Peggy have burned up, and
Speaker 1: they're just like charcoal bodies now, and you've got a
Speaker 1: circle of top brass and these and these skunkworks dudes
Speaker 1: all chatting. They're standing around chattering about the flame child.
Speaker 1: They're saying like it's unbelievable. All the boister is gone,
Speaker 1: even the mirrow. And then another one says, it would
Speaker 1: take a temperature of six thousand degrees syntegrade to do
Speaker 1: something like this. It's the cleanest kill I ever saw.
Speaker 1: And that line gets repeated in the movie, and I
Speaker 1: don't understand because it doesn't look clean at all. It
Speaker 1: looks like a total mess. Yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: weird it's a weird critique to have the whole scenario. Boy,
Speaker 1: that's a clean kill. But then again, we're not part
Speaker 1: of the military industrial complex, so maybe maybe maybe within
Speaker 1: that realm, it makes more sense to say this, I guess.
Speaker 1: But then so they're standing around doing this. But then
Speaker 1: the best possible thing happens. Andre to Toath comes in.
Speaker 1: They introduced him as Dr Vandermeir. He just comes kind
Speaker 1: of creeping into the room delivering this amazing monologue. He
Speaker 1: starts off saying, was there any plastic in the area
Speaker 1: this would affect it? And they were like, yes, it
Speaker 1: all melted. And they say how would you know? And
Speaker 1: they say, well, this is Dr Vandermeir, you know, like
Speaker 1: obviously that's how he knows he's Dr VanderMeer. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he has this wonderful line, one of my favorites. Way
Speaker 1: he says, the bodies burned from the inside with fury,
Speaker 1: and the sound the sound like an angel screen is
Speaker 1: like he typing it up in his report, Like that
Speaker 1: is that what when they declassify these documents from I
Speaker 1: don't know whatever kind of program Darper or whatever this
Speaker 1: is it is? Is he that how he's talking in them?
Speaker 1: I guess? So, yeah, Um, it's not the most unnatural
Speaker 1: thing I've heard in the movie this year, but it's
Speaker 1: it's but I like it. I like it, So he says,
Speaker 1: we get this amazing monologue. He says, the plastic melts,
Speaker 1: everything else remains with little or no damage. Bed covers,
Speaker 1: clothing articles made of cotton are particularly invulnerable. The human body,
Speaker 1: you see is the most complex electrically sparked combustion engine
Speaker 1: we know of. It is difficult for us to comprehend
Speaker 1: spontaneous combustion. We would not have the same reaction to
Speaker 1: a radio catching fire s c H. And he says
Speaker 1: s c H several times. S c H is a
Speaker 1: naturally occurring phenomenon, but the odds of its striking any
Speaker 1: particular individual are millions to one. I believe the complex
Speaker 1: series of vaccines your subjects were given, combined with radiation
Speaker 1: from the blast, dramatically reduced those odds to one to one.
Speaker 1: He's absolutely certain. Yes, it was just a hundred percent
Speaker 1: chance you will spontaneously combust which the way he's introducing
Speaker 1: it here, it's the The pseudoscience of the movie is that,
Speaker 1: like the body's natural tendency is towards spontaneous combustion, and
Speaker 1: if you don't always have some kind of process going
Speaker 1: on inside that prevents you from catching on fire. It's
Speaker 1: just going to happen. And so these injections to protect
Speaker 1: them from radiation, uh, suddenly changed all that got away
Speaker 1: with the body's natural defenses. But it's funny. After all,
Speaker 1: this one of the one of the skunk buddies standing
Speaker 1: around the bed. He just goes like yes, and then
Speaker 1: Dr Vandermere says, oh, you've got this line here, Oh
Speaker 1: the fire from heav and he's certainly here today. What
Speaker 1: does it mean? I don't know, but so he and
Speaker 1: then he gets back on the acronym again. He's like
Speaker 1: so excited. He says s h c uh. And then
Speaker 1: he starts stabbing at one of the charcoal heads with
Speaker 1: a fountain pen and he kind of digs around in
Speaker 1: there a bit and then pulls out a skull, which
Speaker 1: I might add is really tiny, even though it is
Speaker 1: supposed to belong to an adult, and it's obviously like
Speaker 1: a toy skull of some kind. And he says like
Speaker 1: he's got this big you know, lotto ticket winner smile,
Speaker 1: and he says spontaneous human combustion. Yeah. The size of
Speaker 1: the skull freaked me out. When when I watched this
Speaker 1: both times, I think because it's like the baby may
Speaker 1: have burned the people up, and then he's like pulling
Speaker 1: a baby skull out of the like the mother's remains.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's it's very weird, and it takes took
Speaker 1: me a little while to figure out both times that oh,
Speaker 1: it's just supposed to be a normal human skull is
Speaker 1: just too small. Yeah. And then meanwhile you cut to
Speaker 1: the flame child himself. He's alone in a hospital bassonet,
Speaker 1: crying into the darkness. You feel for this child, but
Speaker 1: we immediately get one of those fade to adulthood transitions,
Speaker 1: and this flame child is now a grown man, complete
Speaker 1: with They show you his circular birthmark on the back
Speaker 1: of his hands, so you know it's him, and he
Speaker 1: has grown up to be Brad Douriff and he's auditioning
Speaker 1: to play in the Shakespeare Show. And this is this
Speaker 1: is a wonderful scene for for several reasons. First of all,
Speaker 1: you have you have Brad Dorriff, who who's a great actor,
Speaker 1: playing a guy who is maybe an okay actor right
Speaker 1: like he's or at least a guy who's like doing
Speaker 1: a read of a script. So It's always kind of
Speaker 1: interesting when you see that, like some like a really
Speaker 1: talented actor playing a scene where they are they're playing
Speaker 1: an actor who is not fully comfortable with the material yet,
Speaker 1: and also kind of like breaking up halfway through it
Speaker 1: and laughing. It's also a very humanizing scene. Like this film,
Speaker 1: more than a lot of horror pictures and thriller pictures
Speaker 1: I've seen, it introduced our protagonist, and I instantly care
Speaker 1: about him, like I'm instantly invested, Like this guy seems alright,
Speaker 1: he seems normal. Look at all this this this fun
Speaker 1: in life in him. Yeah. Sure, I mean I think
Speaker 1: we're supposed to understand that he is a bad actor,
Speaker 1: not just not as great as Brad Dorriff. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you're you're probably right. I think he's supposed to
Speaker 1: be a teacher right at this uh this college, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think. So they don't say what he teaches, or
Speaker 1: if they do, I missed it. Is he the theater
Speaker 1: teacher or is he just he's just gonna be no, no, no, no, okay.
Speaker 1: But so here's a question I had at this audition.
Speaker 1: There are five characters in the scene, and every single
Speaker 1: one of them is wearing an anti nuclear arm band,
Speaker 1: which is so it's an arm band that's like a
Speaker 1: no smoking sign, but with the radiation symbol instead of
Speaker 1: the cigarette. So is this a gathering of like the
Speaker 1: anti nuclear repertory company? Why is this an anti nuclear
Speaker 1: theater troupe? I mean, I guess it's just supposed to
Speaker 1: be the vibe on campus. I don't know. I know
Speaker 1: Toby Hooper taught at one point, Um, what in Austin?
Speaker 1: I think, so, I don't know if he's like pulling
Speaker 1: in some of that. I also had the feeling throughout
Speaker 1: the film, especially I think from this point on that
Speaker 1: this picture was trying to say something about nuclear energy,
Speaker 1: was trying to be to to to make a statement,
Speaker 1: like an anti nuke statement, in ways that never completely
Speaker 1: worked and maybe handicapped the script at times. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is supposed to be an anti nuclear movie,
Speaker 1: and not just against nuclear weapons, which you know, there's
Speaker 1: a very understandable point of view. Is also clearly against
Speaker 1: nuclear power as an energy source, which makes me think,
Speaker 1: what could this movie could could have got some funding
Speaker 1: from big coal. Um, but he's uh so he's bad
Speaker 1: at acting, and he fails the audition, and and oh
Speaker 1: and every like everybody associated with the nuclear power plant
Speaker 1: in this movie is evil. Um, but he's bad at acting.
Speaker 1: He fails the audition. His girlfriend tells him he's bad.
Speaker 1: This is this is Lisa uh. At some point he
Speaker 1: asks her about I think he's astrological charts and she's
Speaker 1: got some info for him. I think she also has
Speaker 1: pills for him that she gives him right right, She's
Speaker 1: really into astrology and he doesn't completely take it seriously.
Speaker 1: But they have a great chemistry these two. Like this
Speaker 1: is thinking back to Doris quote that we read earlier.
Speaker 1: I I wish this had stuck to the love story
Speaker 1: because they had these two had some nice chemistry together
Speaker 1: and and I'm instantly invested. I want them to succeed
Speaker 1: and overcome whatever, you know, kind of fire baby stuff
Speaker 1: is happening in the background. So to explain the situation
Speaker 1: of the film, like what's generally going on, I think
Speaker 1: we should probably try to describe this scene at the
Speaker 1: at the restaurant, and then the following the like the
Speaker 1: outside the limo thing, because this is where you sort
Speaker 1: of figure out the relationships between the characters. So Sam
Speaker 1: correct me if I get anything wrong here. Sam has
Speaker 1: an ex wife named Rachel, whose grandfather uh lu oh
Speaker 1: Lander and that's the prince character from the beginning is
Speaker 1: always asking about him, always asking about his headaches and
Speaker 1: his migraines. But also Lou Olander uh raised Sam? Is
Speaker 1: that right? Yeah, he's some sort of father figure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's I don't know, I don't recall to what degree
Speaker 1: he was involved in raising him, but he is. He
Speaker 1: seems to be the most important male figure in Sam's life, Okay,
Speaker 1: but it was hard to figure that out. So I
Speaker 1: think he was basically Sam's. Um, Yeah, some kind of
Speaker 1: mentor figure or father figure to him. And end he's
Speaker 1: and he's the grandfather of Sam's ex wife. But then
Speaker 1: when Sam gets to the restaurant, first of all they
Speaker 1: try they stick him with the bill. His ex wife
Speaker 1: is like, I have to leave, you'll pick up the
Speaker 1: tab um, and then Sam follows her outside. She gets
Speaker 1: in a limo with the grandfather with Lou and then um,
Speaker 1: they see a news story on a TV that's playing
Speaker 1: in the limo that talks about this woman named Amy
Speaker 1: who had died the previous night. She has some association
Speaker 1: with a nuclear power plant and she had died the
Speaker 1: previous night after an incident resulting from smoking in bed.
Speaker 1: And then uh, we find out and then he's like, what,
Speaker 1: but I just had a heated argument with her the
Speaker 1: previous night, so it's really kind of telegraphing. Um. But
Speaker 1: then he he gets stuck with the check after they leave,
Speaker 1: and he's very angry about this, and then his finger
Speaker 1: catches fire. Yes, uh and I should It's it's pretty effective,
Speaker 1: I thought, because it's not just like a like a
Speaker 1: you know, like, oh my inger's on fire, Like it's shocking,
Speaker 1: it's painful. There's this it's kind of like his his
Speaker 1: the tip of his finger becomes phosphorus for a second. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Doriff's all in and it's like yeah, it's like a
Speaker 1: quick match, you know. Fush. So here from here, he
Speaker 1: goes to his doctor's office, and we find out that
Speaker 1: his doctor is forgetful and incompetent. It doesn't really pay
Speaker 1: attention to ask him the same questions over and over again.
Speaker 1: He says that he tried. He says that the doctor
Speaker 1: told him he needed to get his tonsils removed, but
Speaker 1: he didn't have tonsils anymore because they'd already been removed. Um.
Speaker 1: And so he electrically shocks the doctor, apparently by accident
Speaker 1: while shaking his hand, a tribute to the static electricity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think they're setting up some recurring themes that
Speaker 1: will be happening throughout the rest of the plot, which
Speaker 1: is that Sam, first of all, keeps having little incidents
Speaker 1: in which like his fingers or parts of his body
Speaker 1: catch on fire, or he's in the vicinity of fire,
Speaker 1: like he lights a match or something and it blazes
Speaker 1: up into an inferno. And then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: there are repeatedly stories about somebody who Sam had a
Speaker 1: conflict with later turns up burned to death in their
Speaker 1: home right, And this this first incident of we don't
Speaker 1: see it, but that eventually we're seeing these sequences where yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're graphically burned alive, and then he learns about
Speaker 1: it after the fact. Now I don't know exactly how
Speaker 1: this connects to the concept of spontaneous combustion, because here
Speaker 1: it seems like he's pyrokinetically doing this to people unconsciously,
Speaker 1: like he's not trying to, but it's a result of
Speaker 1: him getting mad at people, I guess um. And and
Speaker 1: yet he's driving around in his car listening to like
Speaker 1: the radio that's talking about these spontaneous combustion conspiracies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like if it was two, if this took place today,
Speaker 1: he would be listening to conspiracy podcasts NonStop about things
Speaker 1: like spontaneous human combustion. But it's on the radio, which
Speaker 1: is I don't render what radio station that is. But
Speaker 1: also so the thing they're talking about is like they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know about spontaneous human combustion. You're
Speaker 1: not supposed to talk about it. If you know about it,
Speaker 1: they'll shut you up. But this is one of those
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories where like it doesn't even pass the uh
Speaker 1: okay as if plausibility test, Like what shadowy power would
Speaker 1: be trying to contain the secret of spontaneous combustion? Kui bono? Right?
Speaker 1: You know who's benefiting from keeping this a secret? Is
Speaker 1: this making somebody money? Or I don't know. I guess
Speaker 1: that if I'm being generous, I would say that, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I can't. I have nothing. No. It reminds
Speaker 1: me of like the people this is what I've actually
Speaker 1: heard before, like the people who say like flat earthers,
Speaker 1: who say, oh, the government wants you to think that
Speaker 1: the Earth is round, and it's like, oh wow, you know,
Speaker 1: if they can just convince us the earth is around,
Speaker 1: then they'll really what. I don't know, they were really powerful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. Part of it, I guess
Speaker 1: could be the film's trying to play into the idea
Speaker 1: that he is, like there's there's legitimate paranoia building, but
Speaker 1: I guess and anytime you're crafting a fiction way or
Speaker 1: you you want there to be paranoia but also a
Speaker 1: legitimate conspiracy going on at the same time. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a difficult thing to bounce, especially for the viewer,
Speaker 1: like where are we what are we supposed to? Where
Speaker 1: are we supposed to cut it off? You know? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: this movie is very much in the spirit of the
Speaker 1: Nirvana song. You know, just because you're paranoia, don't mean
Speaker 1: they're not after you. Yeah, yeah, So yeah, he quickly
Speaker 1: becomes he growing paranoia throughout the picture, growing realization that
Speaker 1: people are burning up, that he's had um you know,
Speaker 1: emotional flare ups about and uh and everything just escalates
Speaker 1: and Doris character Sam, at the center of this um
Speaker 1: is just having an increasingly difficult time holding it together.
Speaker 1: M And I like that this movie does uh sort
Speaker 1: of emphasize the role of media here. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is nine, but it doesn't seem coincidental that, like literally
Speaker 1: every piece of TV or radio media he consumes is
Speaker 1: either about spontaneous combustion, paranormal stuff, or an evil nuclear
Speaker 1: power or plant. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of ahead of
Speaker 1: its time in this picture. Then it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: forecasting the social media age. But eventually he ends up
Speaker 1: like trying to call into this radio show because Lisa
Speaker 1: wants him to. Lisa's like, oh, I know this guy
Speaker 1: who's got a radio show, dr persons. He is a
Speaker 1: radio call in psychic psychiatrist. Do I get that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I believe so okay, And she she has him call
Speaker 1: in because she specifies, She's like, you can call in.
Speaker 1: I'm a supporter. I donated seventy five dollars, which you
Speaker 1: know you have to give. You have to give otherwise
Speaker 1: the whole thing goes dark. But he calls in on
Speaker 1: this amazing like light up neon phone. Yeah, pink, I
Speaker 1: believe like it's an odd choice because it really dominates
Speaker 1: the whole scene. Now, this radio host is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can tell you got some You've got some evil
Speaker 1: spirits in you or something. But he wants he really
Speaker 1: wants to talk to the guy. Uh, and he gets
Speaker 1: cut off somehow, And this is how I think he
Speaker 1: accidentally sets John Landis on fire. What is it that
Speaker 1: happens here? He's like trying to call back and Landis,
Speaker 1: his character, answers the phone. He's like, he can't talk
Speaker 1: to you, he's on the air or something. And then
Speaker 1: like Landis is horrifically on fire, like it's a it's
Speaker 1: an intense fire scene. He literally breathes fire like a
Speaker 1: dragon shoots out of his mouth. Well yeah, well that
Speaker 1: part is is ludicrous. But then but then after that,
Speaker 1: there's a scene where he's just this like a man
Speaker 1: on fire in the room, like bashing into the walls
Speaker 1: and into the glass, And that's rather frightful, especially since
Speaker 1: I think there's no sound in that scene. It makes
Speaker 1: it even more disturbing for some reason. Now, from here,
Speaker 1: there's sort of a progressing revelation of the fact that
Speaker 1: every single person in Sam's life is like a plant
Speaker 1: by this conspiracy, that he really doesn't have any genuine relationships.
Speaker 1: Like he finds out that Lisa, his girlfriend, is a plant.
Speaker 1: She was like put in service as his girlfriend by
Speaker 1: lou Lander to like, I guess, monitor him and give
Speaker 1: him these pills, these homeopathic pills he's been taking. So
Speaker 1: there's clearly a conspiracy afoot, and it encompasses every single
Speaker 1: aspect of Sam's life, right, um, And I would say,
Speaker 1: like one of the flaws in the in the final
Speaker 1: portions of the film is that in a conspiracy film,
Speaker 1: this conspiracy story, I feel like there should be uh
Speaker 1: an impression of narrowing as you reach the end, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that, like the parent, the paranoid fantasies are real,
Speaker 1: the conspiracy is real, and therefore everything should take on
Speaker 1: this simpler form, at least to the mind of of
Speaker 1: the individual at the center of everything. And instead it
Speaker 1: I mean, things do streamline a little bit, but they're
Speaker 1: still kind of all over the place. You still don't
Speaker 1: know who is our central uh adversary for the longest Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. And in the last third of the movie
Speaker 1: really turns into a spiral into chaos, a kind of
Speaker 1: you know, a destructive spiral thing where he just Brad
Speaker 1: doorf just keeps like getting in raide to buy things
Speaker 1: and setting people and things on fire. And setting himself
Speaker 1: on fire, like it's also really hurting him, Like he'll
Speaker 1: get mad about something and and fire shoots out of
Speaker 1: his arm and there's like blood squirting everywhere and sparks
Speaker 1: coming out of his face and uh, like it's it's
Speaker 1: rough on him too. Yeah, And I think that's that's
Speaker 1: something I do like about the picture is that the
Speaker 1: firestarter in this is not untarnished by the flame. And
Speaker 1: and something about that works really well with the sort
Speaker 1: of loose metaphor of of unchecked emotions, you know, the
Speaker 1: idea that like all this is not just a matter
Speaker 1: of you hurting everyone else around you and having no control,
Speaker 1: you're also hurting yourself. You're destroying yourself in the process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that it can't be harnessed. He's not like, uh,
Speaker 1: he's not like the X Man guy who X Men
Speaker 1: guy who's got the firepower who can just like direct it,
Speaker 1: you know, like Magneto does. It's more like an uncontrolled
Speaker 1: outburst that just harms everything in its path. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the Pyro emotional breakdown here really begins on an hour
Speaker 1: into the picture. And yeah, this is where I think
Speaker 1: the wheels come off quite a bit. Um dorof carries
Speaker 1: his character remarkably well with these pivots, and he makes
Speaker 1: this transition is perhaps as believable as as humanly possible
Speaker 1: for an actor. But it's still a rough transition because
Speaker 1: up and until now, I feel like we've been rooting
Speaker 1: for him, you know, he Dorif presents a sympathetic character
Speaker 1: for the most part, the one who is really struggling,
Speaker 1: and then when the character goes off of the rails,
Speaker 1: it's uncertain, like who we should be pulling for here.
Speaker 1: It's also uncertain whose side Lisa is on. Like there,
Speaker 1: there's certainly been pictures that I've seen, stories that I've
Speaker 1: I've I've read where you have the character you're rooting
Speaker 1: for and then they become the villain and there's somebody
Speaker 1: else who you're hoping they don't hurt um, but they
Speaker 1: But I feel like Lisa for the most part, feels
Speaker 1: that that that role. But you're also unsure is she
Speaker 1: in on it? Is she part of the conspiracy or not?
Speaker 1: Is she is she an innocent or or is she
Speaker 1: part of it? Well? We do, I mean so we
Speaker 1: know she's a plant, like she was put in his
Speaker 1: life in order, you know, to help manipulate him in
Speaker 1: this way, but you also get the feeling that she
Speaker 1: didn't understand the full extent of what was going on
Speaker 1: and that she has grown to truly love him. I think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it gets a little nudey there. But but you know,
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things was I watched Wise Blood
Speaker 1: after this, and Wise Blood has a similar trajectory with
Speaker 1: with a Hazel character, Because I mean, you don't, okay,
Speaker 1: Hazel is not as as likable a character as Sam.
Speaker 1: Hazel is. U is an intense and in many ways
Speaker 1: awful character who is obsessed with with with various things,
Speaker 1: but you still are on some level rooting for him
Speaker 1: until he goes off the rails and murder somebody. So uh,
Speaker 1: in a way, I guess you know, this similar trajectory
Speaker 1: for both characters, but with with Sam, you really do
Speaker 1: care about him early on in the picture, so it
Speaker 1: makes that pivot all the worse. I did enjoy so
Speaker 1: I thought that the ending of this movie was somewhat anticlimactic,
Speaker 1: though I also in an at least an ironic way,
Speaker 1: enjoyed the Uh. The the sort of Bond villain speech
Speaker 1: that lou Olander gives at the end. Yeah, the basic
Speaker 1: idea is is this whole thing with the Samson project
Speaker 1: with uh, with the two individuals who went into it,
Speaker 1: and they ultimately had this job. This was always the
Speaker 1: plan to produce a a fire baby, allow that fire
Speaker 1: baby to grow up, and harness the power of fire baby,
Speaker 1: control fire baby, and use those fire baby powers as
Speaker 1: a weapon of some sort. Right. He says, you were
Speaker 1: America's atomic man, you know, like the like you're the
Speaker 1: next uh atomic weapon. Yeah, but I don't know. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: even if you're just looking at this from like, what's
Speaker 1: the most effective weapon to destroy people with? He seems
Speaker 1: less useful than atomic weapons. And this makes me feel
Speaker 1: like this is a case where perhaps the aspirations of
Speaker 1: this of of the the writers here to say something
Speaker 1: about nuclear power and nuclear weaponry, that perhaps it got
Speaker 1: in the way of of crafting a better trajectory for
Speaker 1: the character, because I ultimately feel like it would have
Speaker 1: been better if we had maybe a slightly more uplifting
Speaker 1: ending where maybe he becomes kind of the atomic man
Speaker 1: and he saves the day or it becomes like a
Speaker 1: you know, angel of pure light and transcends or something.
Speaker 1: But I kind of get the sense like that they
Speaker 1: I can imagine a situation in the writing room or
Speaker 1: the you know, the writing table, where it's Toby Hooper
Speaker 1: and Goldberg there, and I imagine I'm saying, well, like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what we want to say about about nuclear power.
Speaker 1: That's not what we believe about nuclear power. So we're
Speaker 1: we're not going to do that with the character. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm totally off, but that's I couldn't help but think
Speaker 1: about that watching this ultimately, though, I don't really know
Speaker 1: if the anti nuclear thing is like a is like
Speaker 1: a genuine sentiment of the filmmakers and something they're trying
Speaker 1: to communicate to the audience, or if it's more of
Speaker 1: a plot device true it's yeah, or if it's just
Speaker 1: kind of like it was on their mind so it
Speaker 1: ends up filling up the background, So it's it's, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like if there's pepsi in the
Speaker 1: background a lot of the times, it doesn't mean the
Speaker 1: picture is trying to say something about pepsi cola versus
Speaker 1: Coca cola. But there's another confrontation after the confrontation with
Speaker 1: with lou Olander where he does the thing where he
Speaker 1: like melts into a puddle of light and then turns
Speaker 1: into a hand made of light and reaches out and
Speaker 1: grabs fire off of Lisa to save her. Like he says,
Speaker 1: I can take your fire, and he takes it, and
Speaker 1: then he's got that and that that scene was weird
Speaker 1: and kind of confusing. I like the idea. I can
Speaker 1: see where it would have worked really well on paper,
Speaker 1: you know, and even the words sound kind of nice,
Speaker 1: I can take your fire for you, you know. But
Speaker 1: at that point in the in the film, everything's going
Speaker 1: off the rail, so it's it's it doesn't make as
Speaker 1: much of an impact, but it's kind of a fire
Speaker 1: apotheosis at the end. And but instead of coming up,
Speaker 1: going up and becoming a star constellation in the sky,
Speaker 1: his apotheosis is melting into a puddle of light and
Speaker 1: becoming one with the radiation, the sparks and the fire
Speaker 1: at the center of the earth. Well, you put it
Speaker 1: like that, it sounds pretty beat of yeah, in the
Speaker 1: actual picture, it's not really beautiful, though there is. I
Speaker 1: do enjoy the sequence earlier towards the end where he's, uh,
Speaker 1: he's walking into the mansion there to confront Loo and
Speaker 1: there's all this blue light and um and Brad Doff's
Speaker 1: character Sam is like is he smoking? Like his whole
Speaker 1: body is kind of smoldering a little bit. I did
Speaker 1: really like that. I thought that looked pretty cool. I
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna stand by what I said earlier. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: I think this movie is pretty much incoherent, and yet
Speaker 1: it's absolutely a blast. I mean, Toby Hooper knows how
Speaker 1: to make a fun movie that is not boring. Uh
Speaker 1: And and Brad Doriff is tremendous. Uh. Yeah, I definitely
Speaker 1: agree that Brad brad Dorff is great in this Um
Speaker 1: though I don't know if you've never seen Brad Dorf
Speaker 1: in a film, I don't know where to even tell
Speaker 1: people to start. The thing is, you probably have seen
Speaker 1: Brad Dorrif in a film. He's just not the kind
Speaker 1: of actor that you can, um, you can avoid seeing.
Speaker 1: He's shown up in something, and he's probably was probably
Speaker 1: memorable in it. All Right. You you're probably wondering, well,
Speaker 1: where can I watch Spontaneous Combustion? Well, it's available on
Speaker 1: DVD and Blu ray from Sunset Films. Sometimes you'll find
Speaker 1: it on streaming as well. Um, And if you happen
Speaker 1: to live in Atlanta, you can go to Atlanta's only
Speaker 1: video store, Video Drome. They have a copy of it,
Speaker 1: I believe on DVD. Rent it, but do not don't
Speaker 1: set it ablaze with your with your psychic powers. Be
Speaker 1: careful with the case. They say plastic can make that happen. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and be careful calling into video drume about it because
Speaker 1: you can cause fire that way. I don't know. It
Speaker 1: might even be dangerous to listen to this podcast with
Speaker 1: those powers, because you could make us burst into flames
Speaker 1: right here. Please don't. All right, we're gonna go and
Speaker 1: close it out there, but we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: I'd love to know what are your favorite Brad dorriff rolls.
Speaker 1: He's been in so much UH and there's so much
Speaker 1: I haven't seen him, will probably never have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to see. So if there's something, if there's a particular
Speaker 1: gym uh to be found in um in another uh
Speaker 1: cinematic husk out they are, If there's a there's some
Speaker 1: some some really prime Brad Dora, if it's worth enduring
Speaker 1: U the flaws in another picture for let us know
Speaker 1: about it. I would, I would, I would like to
Speaker 1: be enlightened. Please light our fire all right, if you
Speaker 1: want to listen to Weird House Cinema. It publishes every Friday.
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Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
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Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you can email us
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