Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Limb and this is Joe McCormick, and we're out this week,
Speaker 1: so we're bringing you a vault episode or I guess
Speaker 1: are they vault episodes if it's Weird House Cinema. Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema Rewind an older episode of the show. This
Speaker 1: one originally aired February twenty fifth, twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 1: it's one of our few musicals. Have we done any
Speaker 1: other full length musicals? I'm not sure. Play of Monsters
Speaker 1: of Monsters, Yeah, both great movies. Actually, this is Billy
Speaker 1: the Kid in the Green Bay's Vampire. Yeah. I picked
Speaker 1: this one for rewind, not because it's certainly there are
Speaker 1: more popular episodes and more popular movies that we've looked at.
Speaker 1: But this, gosh, this is such a weird and wonderful film.
Speaker 1: I just want to help signal boost it if it
Speaker 1: all possible, you know, I'd love to see some sort
Speaker 1: of proper release of this come out in the future.
Speaker 1: I'd love to see the soundtrack come out in some
Speaker 1: form or some fashion, which, if memory serves it never has.
Speaker 1: It's a tragedy and I never had no alligators living
Speaker 1: in me bath. Yes, so it's a fun one. We
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind,
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: the movie that we're going to be talking about today
Speaker 1: is one called Billy the Kid and the Green Bays Vampire,
Speaker 1: a film from English director Alan Clark that came out
Speaker 1: in either nineteen eighty five, nineteen eighty seven, or nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine, depending on which source on the Internet you check.
Speaker 1: I really was not able to figure out which one
Speaker 1: was correct. I'm gonna guess eighty five is right, but
Speaker 1: who knows. Ye five is what's on IMDb, so that's
Speaker 1: what I take to go by, but sometimes that's that
Speaker 1: can be misleading. Yeah, that's canonical. We can just accept it.
Speaker 1: And this is, as far as I can tell, the
Speaker 1: world's only supernatural, post apocalyptic billiard sports musical and folks,
Speaker 1: this is such a fit for Weird House Cinema because
Speaker 1: this is truly one of the strangest movies I have
Speaker 1: ever laid eyes on. Yeah, this one I think initially
Speaker 1: popped up on my radar when we were talking about
Speaker 1: Split Second, the rugger Hower movie that also features one
Speaker 1: of the actors in this film, Alan Armstrong, and I
Speaker 1: was looking into Armstrong's work and I saw this curious
Speaker 1: title and I had to And you know, every time
Speaker 1: I looked at it again, I'd bring it up occasionally,
Speaker 1: you know, I'd look it up and think, was this
Speaker 1: the week that I take a closer look at this picture?
Speaker 1: And every time I learned a little bit more about it,
Speaker 1: I was a little more convinced. Well, I know, months
Speaker 1: ago we watched a video of one of the songs
Speaker 1: from this movie, because again it is a musical, and
Speaker 1: it was a song where Alan Armstrong is livid because
Speaker 1: there has been slander h or I guess it would
Speaker 1: be libel printed about him in a newspaper. And he
Speaker 1: appears to be a vampire in this song, but it's
Speaker 1: sort of ambiguous without having seen the whole film, and
Speaker 1: uh oh, it was so good. I remember there's a
Speaker 1: line that is stuck in my head ever since we
Speaker 1: first watched the song where he protests I never had
Speaker 1: no alligators living in me bath. Yeah, we just Rachel
Speaker 1: and I walk around the house singing that a lot.
Speaker 1: Oh man, there's so many lines in this movie where
Speaker 1: they would just they're they're washing over me. And I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if they're just you know you are, or
Speaker 1: were usual turns of phrase in um in British slang,
Speaker 1: particularly cockney slaying in some cases, or if this is
Speaker 1: just just pure poetry you know from the screenwriter here,
Speaker 1: uh you know stuff about There's there's one character where
Speaker 1: Alan Armstrong's UM character is talking about her and says,
Speaker 1: oh if she if you ever told the truth, it
Speaker 1: would turn her teeth black. Like that's something almost Shakespearean
Speaker 1: about that line. But I have no idea if that's
Speaker 1: something that people say every day, or if this is it,
Speaker 1: this is the time what those words exited somebody's mouth.
Speaker 1: Same here. There were a lot of expressions in the movie,
Speaker 1: and there were multiple I think regional British sort of
Speaker 1: vernacular coming out. Like one character is clearly he's like
Speaker 1: easton London expressions. He's Cockney, that's our title Billy the
Speaker 1: Kid character. But then the green based vampire I believe
Speaker 1: is supposed to be from the north of England. I
Speaker 1: think he's from Yorkshire or something. So there may be
Speaker 1: different sort of regionalisms. But I have to also say,
Speaker 1: I think of all the movies we have ever watched
Speaker 1: for the show, this was the hardest to understand. It's
Speaker 1: absolutely just clattering with deep British accents and expressions. I
Speaker 1: think specifically, a lot of the Cockney expressions just went
Speaker 1: right past me, and I was like, I don't know
Speaker 1: what that meant. I mean, I get the vibe. A
Speaker 1: lot of it is insults of various kinds. This movie
Speaker 1: is thick with insults. Almost every reference a character makes
Speaker 1: to another character is an insulting one, and even with
Speaker 1: subtitles on, I often had no idea what characters were
Speaker 1: talking about, at least the first time I watched it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I watched this on Amazon Prime with the subtitles on
Speaker 1: because I wanted to follow the dialogue and also the
Speaker 1: lyrics a little bit closer. And there were times where
Speaker 1: the subtitles could not keep up and they would just
Speaker 1: subtitles would say speaks in a foreign language in reference
Speaker 1: to something somebody's saying. And also sometimes the subtitles were
Speaker 1: a little inaccurately, seemed to be off just a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I want to come back to the genre designations.
Speaker 1: I made about this up at the top. So again,
Speaker 1: this is a sports movie, which is going to be
Speaker 1: unusual for weird house cinema. I mean, usually sports movies
Speaker 1: are very kind of down the middle of main street.
Speaker 1: They don't usually get that weird. But this is a
Speaker 1: sports movie in that the main conflict is between two
Speaker 1: players of a sport, of a game called snooker, or
Speaker 1: as all the character is in in this movie, say snooker.
Speaker 1: I think that's the British the common British pronunciation, but
Speaker 1: we're us, so we're going to say snooker and if that,
Speaker 1: if that irritates British listeners, I'm sorry, but I may
Speaker 1: have to say snooker though, because of just snooker times
Speaker 1: in my head, as i've and and certainly I've heard
Speaker 1: it while watching this film. Yeah, yeah, So snooker is
Speaker 1: a type of Q sport or billiard sport that is popular,
Speaker 1: especially in England, and I think also especially in places
Speaker 1: where there was like a former British colonial presence. But
Speaker 1: you know, there are leagues all around the world apparently, so,
Speaker 1: but for Q sports or billiard sports, you know, imagine
Speaker 1: a game like pool. If you're not familiar, it is
Speaker 1: played on a table like that. It's a pocket ball
Speaker 1: Q type game, but it has that extra special English flare.
Speaker 1: It's got a you know, a little whiffs of afternoon
Speaker 1: tea on it. But on top of that, it's not
Speaker 1: just a sports movie. It's a supernatural sports movie. Since
Speaker 1: one of the two players is literally a magical vampire.
Speaker 1: This is a little more ambiguous early in the film,
Speaker 1: but later on he shows off his powers and Alan
Speaker 1: Armstrong is literally a vampire. You had the same understanding, right,
Speaker 1: I think so that this is a movie that I mean,
Speaker 1: it's how many different versions of unreality is this movie
Speaker 1: in because just by virtue of being a musical, a
Speaker 1: musical is a film in which people spontaneously burst into
Speaker 1: song and do prolonged musical numbers in order to express
Speaker 1: themselves or or sometimes not even to express what the
Speaker 1: character's thinking or what their character's motivations are, but just
Speaker 1: to sort of to set the scene, like where are
Speaker 1: we Let's sing about the place that we're in, or
Speaker 1: you know, or sometimes it's a little more obscure than that.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what some of these songs really had
Speaker 1: to do with the you know, over the main plot
Speaker 1: or the main characters, but I get that they kind
Speaker 1: of contribute to the vibe. I think the opening song
Speaker 1: is just about money, Yeah yeah, green tickets Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh but okay, So so it's a supernatural sports movie.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of other examples of that.
Speaker 1: I know there are some, but I was like, Angels
Speaker 1: in the Outfield. Maybe maybe air Bud, depending on if
Speaker 1: that counts. Yeah, well, Angels in the Outfield definitely. It's
Speaker 1: probably a good an example because that's a movie that
Speaker 1: I've not seen in a very long time. But it's
Speaker 1: about baseball, but it's also about the feelings we have
Speaker 1: about baseball and the connections we have through baseball. And
Speaker 1: so in a similar sense, this is not just a
Speaker 1: film about snooker. It's about it's also it gets into
Speaker 1: like what does it mean? And whose game is it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's where you get into a lot of the
Speaker 1: deeper social commentary that's in this picture, because ultimately it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a pretty political picture. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: would say it is not nearly on the same level
Speaker 1: of sort of syrupy sentimentality as a movie like Angels
Speaker 1: in the Outfield. This is more of a kind of
Speaker 1: nasty movie. Uh well, I don't know about nasty, but
Speaker 1: it's I don't know, it's it's harder edged, like all
Speaker 1: the characters are mean. Yeah, yeah, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: There is some some you know, London underworld types throughout
Speaker 1: the picture, but it's all I mean, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: tame picture. I don't want anybody to think that it's
Speaker 1: like a video nasty sort of a situation. No, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, I don't mean like that. I just mean
Speaker 1: that it's just full of mean attitude. Yeah, yeah, not
Speaker 1: not a lot of love in this picture, okay. But
Speaker 1: also the game, Yeah, it's all about snooker vibes. But
Speaker 1: it's also a musical, as we said, so everybody's constantly
Speaker 1: breaking into song, including multiple songs that are about snooker itself.
Speaker 1: And then I had to throw in also, I called
Speaker 1: it a post apocalyptic movie. Now I say that on
Speaker 1: my own accord. It's not because anything is explicitly acknowledged
Speaker 1: about that in the movie, but it just seems to
Speaker 1: me that the entire film takes place in a vast
Speaker 1: network of fallout shelter tunnels and underground bunkers. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: the entirety of this film looks like it takes place
Speaker 1: underground and the windowless interiors of I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: the city of raa Keane on a racus. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: nothing even halfway resembling a natural or outdoor environment. It's
Speaker 1: like the film's vision of London is that of a tomb,
Speaker 1: which is fitting. Yeah, And there's only one scene I
Speaker 1: could recall in this movie where you actually see the
Speaker 1: sky and it turns out that sky is fake, because
Speaker 1: it's when the Green Bay's vampire is on a film
Speaker 1: set being shot pretending to be a vampire with longer
Speaker 1: fangs than his actual fangs, and then behind him you
Speaker 1: can see a red sky with clouds moving through it
Speaker 1: out the window of his vampire's castle. But then it
Speaker 1: turns out, yeah, that's not a real sky. He's actually
Speaker 1: in a dark, dingy film studio and it's a fake
Speaker 1: sky going behind the back of the set. And I think,
Speaker 1: all this is perfect. I'm not entirely clear if this
Speaker 1: was like a budget situation where they had to shoot
Speaker 1: everything on a set, but I would not want this
Speaker 1: picture to have any exteriors for any natural environments like
Speaker 1: it adds to this field. It does feel post apocalyptic.
Speaker 1: You could if you were to say, oh, well, this
Speaker 1: takes place in Mega City one from the Judge Dread comics,
Speaker 1: I would say, yeah, absolutely, it really and that would
Speaker 1: be fitting for the time period too, because these are
Speaker 1: it's part of the same sort of era of British
Speaker 1: fiction and sort of it's a sort of critique of
Speaker 1: British society during the nineteen eighties. There's a constant sort
Speaker 1: of shoving out of the frame of a nagging sense
Speaker 1: of worldwide despair that is embodied in the fact that
Speaker 1: there are no windows in this movie, and nobody ever
Speaker 1: sees the sky, and even when characters are presumably outside,
Speaker 1: they're actually inside in some pitch black tunnel that's just
Speaker 1: sort of illuminated by these sickly street lights that kind
Speaker 1: of cast a pool of disease over whatever you're looking
Speaker 1: at right now. Yes, absolutely, now, okay. I said at
Speaker 1: the beginning that there appears to be some confusion on
Speaker 1: the internet about what or this movie was released. I
Speaker 1: think we're going with nineteen eighty five, that seems the
Speaker 1: most plausible, but I've seen eighty seven, I've seen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: There is also some confusion about the title of this movie. Now,
Speaker 1: everywhere I could read it was acknowledged as Billy the
Speaker 1: Kid and the Green Bays Vampire. Bays is baize. That
Speaker 1: is the name for the material that coats the top
Speaker 1: of a snooker table or a pool table. But also,
Speaker 1: if you look at the very beginning of this movie,
Speaker 1: when the title screen comes up, it says the movie
Speaker 1: is called Billy and the Vampire. And so I did
Speaker 1: not even notice this when I watched it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: took a screenshot for you to look at. Now I
Speaker 1: see it. Yeah, so yeah, So what store of information
Speaker 1: has superseded the title given within the film itself to
Speaker 1: make the official title. It's like, no, no, it's not
Speaker 1: Billy and the Vampire, like the movie says it's Billy
Speaker 1: the Kid and the Green Bays Vampire. I mean Billy
Speaker 1: the Kid and the Green Bays the Vampire like that
Speaker 1: song at one point. So yes, I feel like that
Speaker 1: has to be the authentic title. Um, yeah, Louise Gold
Speaker 1: sings that. Now. One other possible point of confusion with
Speaker 1: the title here is that there is a nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six horror western titled Billy the Kid Versus Dracula. Um
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with this picture. Um that one
Speaker 1: starred John Carradine as like an old West Dracula. Um
Speaker 1: And I think I read that John Carradine referred to
Speaker 1: this as one of his worst films, which is a
Speaker 1: bold statement coming from Yeah, but how is that possible?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe you just had a particularly it
Speaker 1: was a particularly annoying shoot or something, because he was
Speaker 1: he was in some great pictures. But as we've discussed before,
Speaker 1: he was he was in a lot of pictures, and
Speaker 1: he was in a lot of stuff that we would
Speaker 1: struggle to say with you know, was any good. He
Speaker 1: did Red Zone, Cuba mostly that's mostly stock footage. I
Speaker 1: think that one, Yeah, Night Train to Mundo. Fine. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: did they just take that shot of him singing a
Speaker 1: song and just tack it onto the beginning of the
Speaker 1: movie like he didn't know he was in it? Possibly,
Speaker 1: but I'm assuming that there's some other reasons that this
Speaker 1: is a snooker film with a vampire in it. But
Speaker 1: I also help I can't help but imagine that just
Speaker 1: the title Billy the Kid Versus Dracula somehow influenced the
Speaker 1: shape of this picture. It just maybe help nudget in
Speaker 1: the right direction. I can see that. Okay. I feel
Speaker 1: like before we move on any further, we have to
Speaker 1: explain what snooker or snooker is, because before watching this movie,
Speaker 1: I had no idea. All I knew was it looks
Speaker 1: like it happens on a pool table, right, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's that's all I knew going into it. And I
Speaker 1: do have to say, you don't really need to know
Speaker 1: how snooker works to enjoy the film. But yeah, here's
Speaker 1: some of the basics. So snooker is said to have
Speaker 1: originated among British soldiers in India during the eighteen seventies.
Speaker 1: Q sports themselves are much older, and it's kind kind
Speaker 1: of weird to think about it this way, but there
Speaker 1: are largely thought to be outdoor lawn games that have
Speaker 1: been miniaturized and constructed for indoor play. Uh okay, so
Speaker 1: something like croquet maybe became something like pool or billiards
Speaker 1: or snooker. Yeah, based on what I was reading, like,
Speaker 1: the main connection seems to be, Yeah, there's something like
Speaker 1: croquet that was played with qes and over time people
Speaker 1: were like, well, what if we did this on a
Speaker 1: tabletop instead? You know, maybe they were sick of having
Speaker 1: to deal with mud and whatnot, and then eventually they're like, well,
Speaker 1: what if we did this inside? Maybe I can't be
Speaker 1: outside right now, or I don't want to be outside.
Speaker 1: So that seems to be basically how it all came together.
Speaker 1: Some form of billards was apparently in use during the
Speaker 1: thirteen forties, and King Louis the eleventh of France, who
Speaker 1: lived fourteen sixty one through fourteen eighty three, had the
Speaker 1: what is thought to be the first indoor table, and
Speaker 1: this quickly became the fashion, killing off the outdoor and
Speaker 1: lawn variants that spawned it. So again, I just this
Speaker 1: amazing to think that that all these games that have
Speaker 1: some sort of the bays top you know, you know,
Speaker 1: pool and snooker, they're they're essentially just taking the outdoors
Speaker 1: and recreating an indoors. Like why haven't we done that
Speaker 1: with everything? Why aren't we still playing golf outside like
Speaker 1: uh like like caveman, But why can't we miniaturize that
Speaker 1: and play at inside? Well, I don't know. I'd say
Speaker 1: the majority of golf now played is probably of the
Speaker 1: video variety Mario Golf or whatever. Yeah, well, because that's
Speaker 1: the ultimate, right, that's the next step. I mean, when
Speaker 1: you are out on the actual golf course, you cannot
Speaker 1: wear a bowser costume. If you did, people would look
Speaker 1: at you weird. Oh, by the way, one thing I
Speaker 1: read this is interesting. Popularity for Q games has apparently
Speaker 1: gone up and down over the years in different parts
Speaker 1: of the world. But it's interesting to consider that apparently
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty one filmed The Hustler, which is about Pool,
Speaker 1: helped boost the popularity of Pool in the US once
Speaker 1: more like like it's popularity had dipped down and movie
Speaker 1: about about the about Pool helped bring it back into popularity. Wait,
Speaker 1: that's not the one with Paul Newman? Is that seems
Speaker 1: too early for That's what's the one with Paul Newman?
Speaker 1: Is that the color of Money? I think you're thinking
Speaker 1: about the sequel to The Hustler was the Color of Money? Right,
Speaker 1: the Hustle? Yeah, it was the sixty one. That one
Speaker 1: did have Paul Newman, but it also had Jackie Gleeson. Okay, yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: back back to snooker. As best I can tell, it
Speaker 1: emerges a variant of existing que games in the Officers
Speaker 1: Messes of British Troops in India, British Indian Officer Neville Chamberlain,
Speaker 1: not to be confused with the Prime Minister of the
Speaker 1: same name, allegedly finalized the rules. The word snooker was
Speaker 1: apparently slaying for first year cadets, okay, something about like, well,
Speaker 1: you know you can you know, the first year cadets,
Speaker 1: they're definitely snookers. But everybody's a snooker when you play
Speaker 1: this game, like it's I don't know something, you know,
Speaker 1: an even playing field for everybody in the British military
Speaker 1: or something. Oh I see, that's funny because that calls
Speaker 1: to mind the themes of this movie of Alan Armstrong's
Speaker 1: character being very mad that just anybody thinks they can
Speaker 1: play snooker these days exactly. So. Snooker, like billiards, is
Speaker 1: about sinking balls into holes, and just as with American pool,
Speaker 1: you hit the white ball, but you don't want to
Speaker 1: actually sink the ball while pocketing other balls. That's what's
Speaker 1: called scratching. I think I learned this for the first
Speaker 1: time whilst playing a video version of pool in like
Speaker 1: a Grand Theft audio game or something. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm not supposed to actually make that ball
Speaker 1: go in the hole as well, But Now where it
Speaker 1: gets interesting with snooker is that involves colored balls as well,
Speaker 1: like additional colors. So the game consists of twenty two balls.
Speaker 1: You have one white ball that's the Q ball. You
Speaker 1: have fifteen red balls, which are one point each. You
Speaker 1: have one yellow ball for two points, one green ball
Speaker 1: for three points, one brown ball for four points, one
Speaker 1: blue ball for five points, one pink ball for six points,
Speaker 1: and one black ball for seven points. Now, the main
Speaker 1: thing I noticed that was interesting about snooker in the
Speaker 1: movie was that every time you sink a red ball,
Speaker 1: I think they pull the black ball out of the
Speaker 1: pocket and put it back on the table, so you
Speaker 1: can just keep sinking the black ball over and over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so and again I may have this wrong, and certainly
Speaker 1: we invite anybody who has experienced playing snooker to write
Speaker 1: in and correct us on anything, and also just tell
Speaker 1: us what you thought about this movie, because I assume
Speaker 1: you've seen it. Why wouldn't you have seen it if
Speaker 1: you play the game. So yeah, I think the idea
Speaker 1: is if you have to declare if a non red
Speaker 1: ball is in play or on before you strike it, ok,
Speaker 1: and if it's not on and it gets pocketed, it
Speaker 1: gets to come back out again again. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I don't think this is necessary to really understand to
Speaker 1: enjoy the movie. But but yeah, if you start watching
Speaker 1: the game really closely, you see all this in play
Speaker 1: because they had they had like snooker advisor on set
Speaker 1: to make sure that everything looked correct here. Oh man,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to make a snooker very similitude error.
Speaker 1: That would that would really sink your movie. No, you
Speaker 1: don't want. You don't know the snooker fans at that.
Speaker 1: They buy back. So at the start of the game,
Speaker 1: the reds are in a pyramid and the break that's
Speaker 1: you know, there's like another pool. You know, there are
Speaker 1: que sports. You have to hit the Q ball and
Speaker 1: break up that mass of red balls. Um yeah, non
Speaker 1: red balls that are pocketed accidentally come back into play.
Speaker 1: You have to declare which non red ball is on
Speaker 1: before you strike it. And each game is a frame.
Speaker 1: Uh that's this. This is basically this is basically how
Speaker 1: it goes. There are various other rules in play, but
Speaker 1: these are the key ones and basically all you need
Speaker 1: to know and more before enjoying Billy the Kid in
Speaker 1: the Green Bay's Vampire. Well, I watched it knowing nothing
Speaker 1: about snooker, and I understood what was going on, so
Speaker 1: so so be not intimidated, right, And I think that's
Speaker 1: important because like, this is a movie there's clearly made
Speaker 1: for snooker. I don't know that you get into a
Speaker 1: larger question of who this movie was made for, but
Speaker 1: but I guess it was made for people who knew
Speaker 1: who know what snooker is and what the basic rules are,
Speaker 1: and yet they did a good job of making it
Speaker 1: accessible for people who are not really familiar with that world.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure it's also full of little in jokes
Speaker 1: for people who do know things about snooker. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's right there in the title, like what does the
Speaker 1: Green Bay's vampire me? And I did not know going in,
Speaker 1: But again that that is like the material on the table,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, it's a woolen cloth, similar, similar, It's
Speaker 1: easy to mistake it for felt, but that is what
Speaker 1: snooker has played upon. It's green, so it's green Bay's.
Speaker 1: And apparently the archaic version of the spelling in English
Speaker 1: was like bays, so it's pronounced you know, more or
Speaker 1: less like that. It's also used in other que games
Speaker 1: and also you'll find it on like card playing tables,
Speaker 1: which I guess in the olden days we played cards
Speaker 1: on the ground, which is why do we yeah the
Speaker 1: cards they moved from lawn games to to the table
Speaker 1: to ye old base table. All right, Well, let's do
Speaker 1: the elevator pitch on this one. It's basically this in
Speaker 1: the Ultimate Snooker Showdown, six time World Champ, Impossible Vampire
Speaker 1: Maxwell Randall battles Young Cockney Upstart Billy the Kid within
Speaker 1: the subterranean bottles of nineteen eighties London. Let's hear some
Speaker 1: trailer an Keith and the Green bas Big Jap Black,
Speaker 1: what come on? All right? And I think everybody got
Speaker 1: to hear a little bit of the music there as well,
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, I guess we haven't talked much about
Speaker 1: the quality of the music in the movie yet. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say I'm I'm in the middle on the music
Speaker 1: part of this musical. I love how weird it is. Overall,
Speaker 1: I would say the music for me is hit or miss.
Speaker 1: Some songs are really good and others are are kind
Speaker 1: of skippable to me. Yeah, and I would agree with
Speaker 1: that very much. I'm not a huge musical guy, I'm
Speaker 1: not even sure exactly what genre we're in. Is this
Speaker 1: kind of like sort of rock musical but sort of
Speaker 1: musical theater. Yeah, it's a mixture. I mean, some songs
Speaker 1: feel like like rock musicals, like they could you know,
Speaker 1: come from from Tommy or anything like that, and other
Speaker 1: ones are just more traditional kind of Broadway musical style
Speaker 1: or I don't know what you'd call it, even even operatic.
Speaker 1: In fact, i'd say my favorite song in the movie,
Speaker 1: I bite Back, is more opera style. Yes, yeah, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would agree. When I first started watching this, I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know if I'm a huge fan
Speaker 1: of the music, but I fell in love with the
Speaker 1: picture the more I watched it, and afterwards I found
Speaker 1: myself coming back to at least a few of the songs. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I also really like the supersonic Sam's Cosmic Cafe song.
Speaker 1: That one's good. Yeah. And then in our final showdown,
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of music where we call have
Speaker 1: callbacks to various previous numbers, which was nice. Yeah yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: So who actually directed this? This was directed by Alan Clark,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty five through nineteen ninety English director
Speaker 1: perhaps best known for his gritty and serious British dramas
Speaker 1: from the seventies and eighties, including nineteen eighty two's Made
Speaker 1: in Britain, in which Tim Roth plays a neo Nazi
Speaker 1: skinhead youth, oh as well as nineteen seventy nine Scum,
Speaker 1: starring Ray Winston as a juvenile offender. He also did
Speaker 1: a film in nineteen eighty nine titled The Firm, which
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with lawyers. Instead, it's about Gary
Speaker 1: Oldman as a soccer hooligan. Nothing okay, so this is
Speaker 1: not the Tom Cruise John Grisham adaptation. Right. Um, he
Speaker 1: did a lot of TV work. I feel like those
Speaker 1: three films seem to sort of signify a lot of
Speaker 1: what he was about. You know, like these are three
Speaker 1: different films about like really you know, disturbed and or
Speaker 1: violent members of sort of the the you know, the
Speaker 1: British working class. Um. A lot of his work is
Speaker 1: very political, and again, despite the weirdness and light hearted spirit,
Speaker 1: you know, more or less of this film, they're obvious
Speaker 1: political overtones as well. It's about you know, who owns
Speaker 1: this game, you know what's going on in society at
Speaker 1: the time. Uh, you know, who has who has the power,
Speaker 1: who has the balls? Uh that that comes into play
Speaker 1: in the final the final showdown, Like there's this we'll
Speaker 1: get to it in a bit, but yeah, there's this
Speaker 1: idea of like the balls or the power of society
Speaker 1: and who has access to it and who is who
Speaker 1: is dominating the playing field to an unfair degree. Yeah
Speaker 1: and yeah. So this is, i would say, pretty straightforwardly
Speaker 1: a class war movie, and class in the British sense
Speaker 1: of like more overtly acknowledged existence of class strata in society,
Speaker 1: where there's like a self conscious upper class that they
Speaker 1: think of themselves as the upper class, and they are
Speaker 1: very mad about the idea that you know, that that
Speaker 1: riff raff are invading their institutions. They don't want just
Speaker 1: you know whatever, guy who just stumbled drunk out of
Speaker 1: a video arcade to come lay snooker against them. This
Speaker 1: is a gentleman's sport, don't you understand. Yeah, don't be
Speaker 1: coming in here with your green hair, all right. The
Speaker 1: writer on this was Trevor Preston, who lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: eight through twenty eighteen, known for such films as two
Speaker 1: thousand and threes, I'll Sleep when I'm Dead starting Clive
Speaker 1: Owen and the nineteen seventy two psychological thriller What the
Speaker 1: Peeper Saw. Have not seen any of those. Since this
Speaker 1: is a musical, I'm going to go ahead mention the
Speaker 1: music credit on this before we get into the cast.
Speaker 1: So George Finton born nineteen forty nine has the music
Speaker 1: of credit here. Five time Academy Award nominee, responsible for
Speaker 1: numerous scores including Groundhog Day, Mary Riley, The Fisher King,
Speaker 1: The Company of Wolves, and Cry Freedom. He also scored
Speaker 1: The Wolves. Yeah, yeah, that's the if I'm remembering correctly,
Speaker 1: that's the one where you had the wolf mouth coming
Speaker 1: out of the human mouth transformation. Right, it's a Neil
Speaker 1: Jordan film. I want to say, yes, yes, it's right.
Speaker 1: That one is very weird. Also that we can possibly
Speaker 1: talk about that in the future on the show. Finton
Speaker 1: also scored numerous documentaries, including several David Attenborough documentaries, So
Speaker 1: like The Big Banner, David Attenborough, It's like Blue Planet,
Speaker 1: and so forth. If you've seen one of those, you've
Speaker 1: probably listened to George Finton's music. He also did a
Speaker 1: lot of theater work as well well. Like I said
Speaker 1: on this one, I would not say. The music doesn't
Speaker 1: have me across the board, but the highlights are really good. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: One of the weird things about the score for this
Speaker 1: film is, as far as I can tell, it was
Speaker 1: never released in any format. I could find no evidence
Speaker 1: of it ever coming out on vinyl or cassette, much
Speaker 1: less on CD or as a digital album. It seems
Speaker 1: like a real shame, especially now with all these like
Speaker 1: special editions that come out of cult favorite scoors and soundtracks.
Speaker 1: Can't you imagine that the Green Bay's vinyl It just
Speaker 1: screams to be done. I don't know why it hasn't. Oh,
Speaker 1: how would they do? Well? What like right in the
Speaker 1: middle part that doesn't play, it's like the green felt
Speaker 1: or yeah, or it's even it's made out of it's
Speaker 1: made out of repurposed que balls or something. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: so many directions you could go, and I guess it
Speaker 1: just hasn't happened yet for one reason or another. Noah, Well,
Speaker 1: whoever owns the rights issue that thing? Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: let's get into the cast. Uh, it's Billy the Kid
Speaker 1: in the Green Bay's Vampire. So let's start with Billy.
Speaker 1: Billy the Kid is played by Phil Daniels born nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight. This is our Cockney Nukar hero actor of stage,
Speaker 1: screen and TV who appeared in Quadrophenia, Zulu, Dawn, Scum,
Speaker 1: The Bride. That's the Frankenstein film that has Staying in it,
Speaker 1: among others. He was a voice in Chicken Run and
Speaker 1: he's in the music video for Blur's Park Life, in
Speaker 1: which he plays a singing salesman. So he was in
Speaker 1: I think he was the lead role in Quadrophenia, playing
Speaker 1: playing So that's another sort of rock opera from the
Speaker 1: who most people know Tommy but don't know Quadrophenia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I actually like Quadrophenia a good bit
Speaker 1: better if at least I've never seen the movie, to
Speaker 1: be honest, but I love the album and I think
Speaker 1: he's the main kid in that who's also like a
Speaker 1: kind of like he is in this sort of a
Speaker 1: board slightly threatening disaffected youth. Yeah, yeah, that is he
Speaker 1: singing in quadr Fia, do you know. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know if the movie Quadraphenia is like Tommy the movie
Speaker 1: where they have like, you know, different actors come in
Speaker 1: and do the parts, or if it's just like you
Speaker 1: know that they're playing the actual album with Roger Dultry
Speaker 1: singing and so forth. Okay, Now, the character of Billy
Speaker 1: the Kid here is allegedly based on real life snooker
Speaker 1: player Jimmy White born nineteen sixty two, who's still active
Speaker 1: today and professional snooker and is a three time world
Speaker 1: champion nicknamed the Whirlwind. Highest ranking was I think number
Speaker 1: two in the world. Now could you find anywhere or
Speaker 1: the actual snooker players that these characters are based on
Speaker 1: have commented on this movie. I did not. I couldn't
Speaker 1: find anybody really commenting on this movie. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it if it just like if it came out
Speaker 1: at a bad time, or they didn't know how to
Speaker 1: promote it, like I was. A lot of times you'll
Speaker 1: find actors like say David Warner talking about just various
Speaker 1: small films they did and having some something to say
Speaker 1: about them. And I couldn't find anybody anybody commenting on
Speaker 1: this film. I don't know of it if it doesn't
Speaker 1: have quite strong enough of a cult following, or or
Speaker 1: what the situation is. I mean, nobody's saying doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be Nobody seems to be saying anything negative about it,
Speaker 1: but they don't seem to even be acknowledging that it happened.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm just missing a juicy interview here or there. Well, well,
Speaker 1: I would also speaking of actors commenting on the roles,
Speaker 1: like David Warner going back, I would love to hear
Speaker 1: what Alan Armstrong thinks about this. So should we talk
Speaker 1: about Alan Armstrong? He plays the titular vampire Maxwell Randall,
Speaker 1: the the the Green Bay's villain of the night. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: Alan Armstrong are scowling Prince of darkness and snooker. So
Speaker 1: we talked about him on our Split Second episode a bit.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he has probably I think one of the
Speaker 1: best sneers in all of cinema, the best scowls he can.
Speaker 1: He can look with such disdain at the camera or
Speaker 1: at other other characters on screen in a in a
Speaker 1: way that I don't know other faces cannot. He has
Speaker 1: a true gift. Yeah, he's excellent in this. I mean
Speaker 1: he's great in everything I think I've seen him in. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was all that memorable and
Speaker 1: Split Second, but that was not really an actor's workshop
Speaker 1: kind of movie. He was still memorable, though, he played
Speaker 1: Rudger Howerd's character's boss. He was just in a snarling
Speaker 1: rage the whole time his character and that his name
Speaker 1: was Thrasher. So they just get into argument very much
Speaker 1: like every conversation is sort of like badge, I'm taking
Speaker 1: your badge and your gun sort of a thing. You're
Speaker 1: taking it too personal. You're off the force, you're a
Speaker 1: loose cannon. Here's your new partner. Yeah. But but Armstrong's
Speaker 1: been in tons of stuff. I think he was something
Speaker 1: of of a workaholic for a long time. He's been
Speaker 1: in TV movies, stage productions, often plays sort of scowling
Speaker 1: authority figures and the like. His first screen credit was
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy ones Get Carter, and he's had other notable
Speaker 1: roles in such pictures as The Duellists Krall Krall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's kind of not as recognizable in Krall because he's
Speaker 1: he's got like his beard's grown out and he I
Speaker 1: don't know, he doesn't look as as as Alan Armstrong
Speaker 1: as he often does, if that makes sense. I remember
Speaker 1: from when I was younger, I have a very firm
Speaker 1: stamp of his face from the movie Braveheart, which is
Speaker 1: which is not a great movie, not just for its
Speaker 1: historical inaccuracy, but I think is sort of egregious in
Speaker 1: many ways, but has a fantastic cast. I love Patrick
Speaker 1: Magoohan as the mustache twirling King in it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he was in some big name pictures for a spell there.
Speaker 1: He was in Sleepy Hollow, The Mummy Returns Van Helsing
Speaker 1: Oliver Twist so and he's done very very well for himself,
Speaker 1: it seems. But he's exactly the sort of actor that
Speaker 1: has appeared on both Tales from the Crypt and Downton Abbey,
Speaker 1: which I think that's all you need to know about
Speaker 1: Alan Armstrong. It like that covers sort of the sort
Speaker 1: of roles he can play and the sort of roles
Speaker 1: he often does play. But so okay, Billy the Kid
Speaker 1: was apparently at least loosely based on a real snooker player,
Speaker 1: and The Green Bays Vampire is as well. Yes, that
Speaker 1: is even more of a case with this character, The
Speaker 1: Green Bays Vampire Maxwell. The Bays Vampire is based on
Speaker 1: Welsh professional snooker player Ray Reardon born nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 1: still alive as of this recording, now retired, but he
Speaker 1: was a six time world champion at one time ranked
Speaker 1: number one in the world. And I don't I've not
Speaker 1: read anything to indicate that this guy was a meanie
Speaker 1: or a villain in real life. But his nickname, and
Speaker 1: it seems like all these major snooker players have nicknames.
Speaker 1: His nickname was Dracula because he had a pronounced widow's
Speaker 1: peak and kind of sharp looking teeth. Yeah, he looks
Speaker 1: like somebody who would be a Bella Legosi copycat in
Speaker 1: a parody film about Dracula. Yeah, you can see why
Speaker 1: the nickname stuck. Now, now as you're saying, though, I
Speaker 1: want to be careful this movie casts I would say strong.
Speaker 1: You know, you could even say moral aspersions on all
Speaker 1: of its characters, even the alleged hero, But I don't
Speaker 1: think that's meant to apply to this, this real life guy,
Speaker 1: this actual snooker player. As far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: it's more of an esthetic inspiration, right, Yeah, sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: you know that guy that they called Dracula, what have
Speaker 1: he really was a vampire? Yeah, and you can imagine
Speaker 1: sort of the conversation and the brainstorming session that carried
Speaker 1: on from there. The other thing that's a parallel, which
Speaker 1: is interesting, is that in the movie, Alan Armstrong, screen
Speaker 1: based vampire does product endorsements. So he's like filming a
Speaker 1: TV commercial where he gets up out of a coffin
Speaker 1: and then sprays breath freshener in his mouth. But you
Speaker 1: shared a video of this guy in a beer commercial,
Speaker 1: and I gotta say, great beer commercial. Yeah, Like the
Speaker 1: announcer is asking him, does does two bore gold help
Speaker 1: you play better snooker? And he's excuse me, snooker and
Speaker 1: he's like, no, I just like to drink it. And
Speaker 1: product endorsement. There you go. Anyway, Yeah, I think Armstrong
Speaker 1: is great in this role. Um, it's uh, it's wonderful
Speaker 1: because he's he gets to be kind of a very
Speaker 1: much a vampire at times. He gets to be a
Speaker 1: supernatural menace, but he also is like this human being,
Speaker 1: you know, So he's he's not completely unrelatable, even though
Speaker 1: he is a bit nasty and egotistical and very much
Speaker 1: out for blood against this young generation of snooker player. Um,
Speaker 1: but but I don't know, it's it's it's a really
Speaker 1: good performance if you if you like this guy, this
Speaker 1: is definitely a movie to see. Yeah, he's he's a
Speaker 1: little bit sympathetic because even though he's clearly a bad guy,
Speaker 1: he's also having a hard time, like they are printing
Speaker 1: slander about him or excuse me, libel in the newspapers,
Speaker 1: and he's to some extent being manipulated, as we'll get
Speaker 1: into as well. Yeah, all right. Another major character in
Speaker 1: this is the character t O, which stands for the One.
Speaker 1: That's another connection to Quadrophenia. Oh yeah, you know that song. No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm not familiar with Quadrophenia at Oh well,
Speaker 1: look at the song I'm the One. It's a song
Speaker 1: in Quadrophine. I assume this is just a coincidence. But yes,
Speaker 1: t O, the one played played by Bruce Payne. Yes,
Speaker 1: born nineteen fifty eight. I'd say there's a very good
Speaker 1: chance most of you out there are familiar with Bruce
Speaker 1: Payne as a B movie villain, thanks to various roles
Speaker 1: in such films as The Howling six, The Freaks, Necronomicon,
Speaker 1: Book of the Dead, Passenger fifty seven, Warlock three The
Speaker 1: End of Innocence. That's where he takes over the lead
Speaker 1: role from Julian Sands, who played the Warlock in the
Speaker 1: first two pictures. You know he looks a little bit
Speaker 1: more like Julian Sands in this movie when he's got
Speaker 1: the blonde hair. That's right. Yeah, I think most of
Speaker 1: us picture if you think of Bruce Payne, if you
Speaker 1: think of Bruce Payne at all, you picture like a bald,
Speaker 1: scowling British villain. But in this picture he's younger, you know,
Speaker 1: thinner Handsomer looks very very much came out of the
Speaker 1: same clone that as Julian Sands. Oh, but he was
Speaker 1: also he was in Highlander in games. That's the one
Speaker 1: that had both Christopher Lambert and what's his name, Adrian Paul,
Speaker 1: the guy from the TV series. Oh, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: I've never seen it. I haven't either. It's I don't
Speaker 1: think it was extremely well received. But he's in that more.
Speaker 1: Is it one of the more swordfighting focused ones or
Speaker 1: one of the more hand to hand martial arts ones?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's one where they I think they
Speaker 1: tried to bring the film franchise in the TV franchise
Speaker 1: together into like one final showdown, while also of course
Speaker 1: continuing to ignore Highlander too. The Quickney well there's your
Speaker 1: problem right there, right exactly. Bruce Payne was also in
Speaker 1: the year two thousands Dungeons and Dragons starting alongside Jeremy Irons. YEP.
Speaker 1: I looked up because I've seen that movie and oh,
Speaker 1: I gotta say, I recall it being not good but
Speaker 1: quite a fun viewing experience because it's it's in the
Speaker 1: unintentionally hilarious category and it's got Jeremy Irons playing some
Speaker 1: kind of frothing Warlock. I remember him being it being
Speaker 1: one of the most hyperactive performances I've ever seen, and
Speaker 1: I think Bruce Payne plays like his main Warlock Henchman.
Speaker 1: He's like bald with blue lips and he's got weird
Speaker 1: snakes coming out of his head and stuff. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I watched it once and it yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: I was not taken by it. It did not reflect
Speaker 1: well on Dungeons and Dragons for me. I recall it
Speaker 1: being the kind of movie that, like, when they want
Speaker 1: to show blood or some other kind of liquid, like
Speaker 1: running down a set of stairs, they had it was
Speaker 1: like CGI blood, but it was like year two thousand
Speaker 1: CGI Blood, And I was like, how much would it
Speaker 1: have cost to just like film actual liquid pouring down
Speaker 1: these stairs. Maybe they were like, we gotta get that.
Speaker 1: We gotta get a better rating. We gotta get the
Speaker 1: kids in. So just make the blood as fake as possible.
Speaker 1: All right. So that's Bruce Payne. He's these are you
Speaker 1: good in this? Like? I say, well, this is not
Speaker 1: the Bruce Payne that most of you are familiar with.
Speaker 1: In this picture, he's singing. He's a lot more fun.
Speaker 1: He's not just a scowling villain who gets punched in
Speaker 1: the face by a hero, you know. Speaking of the singing,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you agree with me on this, Rob,
Speaker 1: but I will say that, while in general the cast
Speaker 1: is great in this movie, most of the players do
Speaker 1: not seem to have been cast on the basis of
Speaker 1: singing ability. It's more like they were cast as actors
Speaker 1: and then it was like you can sing too, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. But I would say that the
Speaker 1: next person we're going to talk about, Louise Gold, is
Speaker 1: probably the best straightforward singer in the cast. She sings
Speaker 1: the song where you hear the name of the movie,
Speaker 1: Billy the Kid in the Green Bays Vampire. It's during
Speaker 1: like a practice montage, and she's great, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Louise Gold playing Miss Sullivan the troublemaking journalist. Gold was
Speaker 1: born nineteen fifty six, and she's had quite a career
Speaker 1: as both a screen and a stage act. There she
Speaker 1: was in the nineteen eighty two film adaptation of the
Speaker 1: Pirates of Penzance, but she's probably best known as a
Speaker 1: puppeteer who worked on numerous Jim Hinson productions over the years.
Speaker 1: I was quite surprised to read this. Yeah, and when
Speaker 1: I'm saying Jim Hinson productions, I'm talking the Original Muppet Show,
Speaker 1: the original The Dark Crystal. She's credited as a performer
Speaker 1: for the Gormon Skexi's character. She also worked on the
Speaker 1: Muppet Christmas Carol, she came back to work on The
Speaker 1: Dark Crystal, The Age of Resistance, just to name a few.
Speaker 1: She also appears as a ballroom dancer in Labyrinth. I
Speaker 1: think she also did various live action dance bits on
Speaker 1: The Muppet Show in addition to her puppeteer work. So
Speaker 1: anytime they needed an actual human being moving along, maybe
Speaker 1: dancing in the background, Louise Gold was one of the
Speaker 1: people they turned to. So yeah, I would say she
Speaker 1: is also great in this. I think she's the best
Speaker 1: singer in the cast. But also has a very good
Speaker 1: sort of cold closed affect. Is the utterly unscrupulous snooker journalist. Yep.
Speaker 1: Now she's not the only female character. We also have
Speaker 1: Miss Randall. That's Maxwell's wife, who's who's very supporting, a
Speaker 1: very I think, a strong character. She has his back,
Speaker 1: she has his side. She drives him to the Stoker
Speaker 1: Championship match there in a motorcycle and he's in the
Speaker 1: little sidecar. A brilliant, very good staging because they're driving
Speaker 1: through green fog and the vampires wearing this helmet with
Speaker 1: and she's not wearing a helmet. Oh god, these scenes
Speaker 1: of driving, you might think, well, the driving scenes, those
Speaker 1: are the ones that are shot outdoors. No, these are shot.
Speaker 1: If you've ever watched Garth Marenghe's Dark Place, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: do those driving sequences. This is the same technique, like
Speaker 1: I can. I don't know if there are other films
Speaker 1: or other TV shows that that prominently use this method
Speaker 1: of creating the effect of driving at night, but that
Speaker 1: I would not be surprised to learn that this was
Speaker 1: one of the reference points for Dark Place. Oh it's
Speaker 1: so dark place. Everyone's about to be Why can't she
Speaker 1: be mine? I wish I were more attractive like Daglas. Yeah. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Miss Randall, though, is played by Eve Farrett, who was
Speaker 1: born in nineteen sixty three. British actress, comedian, singer, songwriter
Speaker 1: came up in burlesque and then appeared in such films
Speaker 1: as Haunted, Honeymoon, Absolute Beginners, which I believe also had
Speaker 1: had pain in it. But then she also pops up
Speaker 1: in the David Bowie short film music video Jazzin for
Speaker 1: Blue Jean. Yeah, she's really good in this. She always
Speaker 1: has a I think the whole movie has a toy
Speaker 1: poodle in her arm in every scene. And there's a
Speaker 1: great scene where Alan Armstrong is having fits because a
Speaker 1: bunch of libel has been printed in the newspaper by
Speaker 1: miss Sullivan and making all these allegations about him, and
Speaker 1: he hands the paper to his wife and she's reading
Speaker 1: it and he, you know, he's like screaming, and she
Speaker 1: just says, what does it terrible turkey? Oh yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's good. And then she's got some pipes. She's, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of opera soprano singing. All right, Now we have
Speaker 1: another great character actor and this Don Henderson plays the
Speaker 1: Wednesday Man who's kind of a British underworld figure that
Speaker 1: plays an important part in the plot. I thought I
Speaker 1: recognized this guy from somewhere, and I was like, what
Speaker 1: is that strange hair beard combination? Why have I seen
Speaker 1: this before? And why do I pair it with this
Speaker 1: gravelly voice? And then I saw your note and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, my lord, he's in Star Wars. He's
Speaker 1: in the scene on the Death Star. Yes, he plays
Speaker 1: in seventy seven Star Wars. He plays that imperial general
Speaker 1: who's choked out by Darth Vader for his disturbing lack
Speaker 1: of faith. No, no, no, I think I think it's
Speaker 1: the younger guy, the other guy who's like, he's all
Speaker 1: about how good the Death Star is and how it's
Speaker 1: better than Vader. Yes, you're right. They look very similar
Speaker 1: except um, yeah, except for Don Henderson has has has
Speaker 1: an evil er face so and kind of a more
Speaker 1: of a you know, a rat like he has rat
Speaker 1: like eyes. So yeah, this guy's never gonna get choked
Speaker 1: out by Vader. He's gonna he's gonna fall in line.
Speaker 1: He's only gonna be as as snotty as he needs
Speaker 1: to be. He knows how to maintain his place within
Speaker 1: the Imperial ranks. I think he's the guy who's saying,
Speaker 1: if the rebels are able to obtain a technical readout, yes, Yeah, wonderful, wonderful,
Speaker 1: little nasty role. And I think he made kind of
Speaker 1: a career of such roles. But he pops up in
Speaker 1: a number of pictures. He was in Brazil, and he
Speaker 1: was also in the Adventures of Baron Munchausen. He was
Speaker 1: in the Island opposite Michael Caine and David Warner. He
Speaker 1: also played the Ghoul in nineteen seventy five's The Ghoul
Speaker 1: opposite Peter Cushing and a very young John Hurt. I
Speaker 1: actually looked that one up. That one looks I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it. It looks like it may be rather culturally insensitive,
Speaker 1: but also has a great hammer style cast. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it either, but but yeah, the cast
Speaker 1: looks interesting and John Hurt looks I don't know how
Speaker 1: old he was when that film was made, but he's
Speaker 1: far younger than I'm used to seeing John Hurt, like
Speaker 1: the the wrinkles had not really set in yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that he is a spring chicken now another actor I
Speaker 1: just want to mention, not because he really has any
Speaker 1: connections to anything, but just because he's really on in
Speaker 1: this picture is Neil McCall, who plays Big Jack Jay.
Speaker 1: What is this guy supposed to be? I guess he's
Speaker 1: like the the snooker hype man. He just comes out
Speaker 1: when the snooker game is about to begin. He comes
Speaker 1: out to sing a song about how snooker is awesome. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: snooker so much, so much more than just a game.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the song, and it's just such a
Speaker 1: performance and it's all about yes, we no matter what
Speaker 1: our differences are, you know, snooker is the best. Snooker
Speaker 1: brings us together. It's it's not just it's not just
Speaker 1: a game, it's the world, you know. He talks about
Speaker 1: how if you get to heaven it's going to be
Speaker 1: green bays everywhere. Yes, so anyway, it's a tremendously flamboyant performance.
Speaker 1: Neil McCall was born nineteen forty seven. Still active. He
Speaker 1: also had a small part in nineteen eighty three's The
Speaker 1: Pirates of Penzance, did a lot of TV work, and
Speaker 1: has also done a fair amount of voiceover work in
Speaker 1: animation in video games. He's wearing a great like sort
Speaker 1: of green satin. Almost Paisley Blazer in this, and he's
Speaker 1: got a pompadour. Rachel walked through the room and she
Speaker 1: was like, oh is Morrissey in this? It's not him,
Speaker 1: but it's not. A hair is similar, but the hair
Speaker 1: is great. One more person, just to mention, Clive Tickner
Speaker 1: born nineteen forty three, with cinematographer on this picture. We
Speaker 1: don't always highlight the cinematographer, but it's interesting because he
Speaker 1: was also the cinematographer on nineteen ninety two Split Second,
Speaker 1: which we refer to already, another movie without a sky.
Speaker 1: Really that sort of takes place all within tunnels, even
Speaker 1: when it's allegedly outdoors. Yeah, so you can see the
Speaker 1: you can see the DNA in both of them. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: should we talk a little bit about the plot and
Speaker 1: some of our favorite scenes? Oh yes, let's do it
Speaker 1: all right. Well, as I already mentioned, it starts off saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this movie is called Billy in the Vampire. If anybody
Speaker 1: tells you different, don't believe them. So the first scenes
Speaker 1: we get of the characters are inner cutting between two
Speaker 1: different scenes in different places. So we're watching Billy the
Speaker 1: Kid again. This is Phil Daniels are in the words
Speaker 1: of I think, in the words of the Wednesday Man,
Speaker 1: he's our cockroach, cockney cowboy. He's got a strong, curly mullet,
Speaker 1: and he's doing like late night private snooker games for
Speaker 1: big cash bets. He's making money. Yeah. And then meanwhile,
Speaker 1: t O is that's Bruce Payne. He's somewhere else. He's
Speaker 1: gambling at a card game. I think it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be poker, and it's revealed that he is in some
Speaker 1: kind of debt to a very scary loan shark. And
Speaker 1: this is the Wednesday Man. And again, both scenes feel
Speaker 1: like they are taking place inside a fallout shelter where
Speaker 1: lightbulbs are as rare as gold, because both scenes are
Speaker 1: illuminated only by scant little bits of light and there's
Speaker 1: just flooding darkness all around. Yeah, so we're in the catacombs,
Speaker 1: and the first thing we get is that already this
Speaker 1: world is all cutthroat competition. Billy's playing snooker for high
Speaker 1: sums of money. Ato is gambling for big pots. And
Speaker 1: I will say that from the beginning both of these,
Speaker 1: though I guess there are protagonists, sort of, they're not
Speaker 1: traditional lovable sweetheart protagonists like you might get in some
Speaker 1: other musical. Both of them already have a kind of
Speaker 1: sort of nasty, nihilistic edge, like you could imagine Billy
Speaker 1: the Kid killing somebody with a broken bottle outside a
Speaker 1: pub over an argument that started on a like Missus
Speaker 1: pac Man cabinet. Yeah. Yeah, these are not actors who
Speaker 1: are involved with snooker because they just love the game.
Speaker 1: It's because they want the money. In fact, though, I
Speaker 1: think the first song, or one of the first songs
Speaker 1: in the picture is about the money. It's called green tickets,
Speaker 1: referring green stamps, green stamps, I'm sorry, referring to cold
Speaker 1: hard cash. Is that what it is? I thought that's
Speaker 1: what it was, but I didn't. This is one of
Speaker 1: the many things I was like, I think there's some
Speaker 1: cultural thing I'm missing here. Could this be about some
Speaker 1: kind of coupons? No, I think it's just about cash.
Speaker 1: I think it's cash, yes, and I could be wrong,
Speaker 1: but that's that's certainly what I got from it. What
Speaker 1: else would these these guys be singing about. I don't know. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: let me clay. I think for I think t O's
Speaker 1: into the money, and I think Billy. I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: he's in it for the love of the game. I
Speaker 1: would say Billy is in it for ego. He seems
Speaker 1: to be like he wants to be the best in
Speaker 1: the world. He wants everybody to recognize that he's number one. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he's he's he's taking the money, and he's
Speaker 1: he seems to be blowing all the money. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's but he's he's living life like there's no tomorrow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: His relationship with the money is interesting. So it's like
Speaker 1: he wants the money, but then he also he's not
Speaker 1: trying to save up or anything, Like he gets out
Speaker 1: of his first game and he seems to be just
Speaker 1: wandering around, like handing out stacks of cash to people
Speaker 1: living on the streets, which makes him seem like nice.
Speaker 1: But he's also I think, living a life of shallow luxury,
Speaker 1: Like he just he just wants fancy cars and cool
Speaker 1: clothes and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he's not really Robin
Speaker 1: Hood so much. It's it's more like he disdains the
Speaker 1: money as much as he disdains anything else. But again
Speaker 1: to point out that, so he's wandering around outside in
Speaker 1: the streets and it's clearly it's not outside. The outside
Speaker 1: is inside. He's in some kind of pitch black tunnel
Speaker 1: with just these little showers of sickly light coming out
Speaker 1: of something overhead. And then after this we basically get
Speaker 1: the set up to the plot. So t O he
Speaker 1: has his gambling, he's playing cards, and after this he
Speaker 1: goes to deliver a big pot of money to settle
Speaker 1: outstanding debts with the Imperial Officer the Wednesday Man, and
Speaker 1: again some set notes, he goes to meet him in
Speaker 1: a place that looks like an underground construction site where
Speaker 1: everything is draped in tarps. Oh, and here begins a
Speaker 1: funny thread that goes throughout the movie. So he has
Speaker 1: the money that he owes the Wednesday Man, but the
Speaker 1: Wednesday Man won't accept it because it is a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes past midnight, making it a Thursday. And the
Speaker 1: Wednesday Man apparently just like only does things on Wednesdays,
Speaker 1: and so if you don't get him his money before
Speaker 1: midnight on Wednesday, then your twenty five thousand dollar debt
Speaker 1: turns into one hundred thousand. Yeah. I love it, Like
Speaker 1: they never explain it, so it's almost kind of like
Speaker 1: like sea level batman villain kind of weirdness. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I absolutely love this. The Wednesday Man is only going
Speaker 1: to do crimes on Wednesday. On Thursdays, no, no, no longer.
Speaker 1: Just see him next week if you're still trying to
Speaker 1: do crimes on Thursday's. Yeah, it's like I'm the clock King.
Speaker 1: I only accept payment in clock. The Wednesday Man only
Speaker 1: accepts payment on Wednesdays. And the other thing I was
Speaker 1: thinking of. He's kind of like a Dick Tracy villain,
Speaker 1: and that's say, yes, you know you've got you've got
Speaker 1: little face and you've got the Wednesday Man and the
Speaker 1: Wednesday Man, you know, close for business six out of
Speaker 1: seven days. Yeah, I love it. But anyway, so Tio's
Speaker 1: in trouble now because he got there a little bit late.
Speaker 1: So the Wednesday Man offers him a way out. It's like,
Speaker 1: you owe me a hundred thousand dollars. But TiO is
Speaker 1: Billy the Kid's manager, and so the Wednesday Man tells him,
Speaker 1: you know, if you can arrange a snooker grudge match
Speaker 1: between Billy the Kid and Maxwell Randall aka the Green
Speaker 1: Bay's Vampire, you're going to be off the hook. I'll
Speaker 1: let your debts go and I think the idea at
Speaker 1: this point is that there might be some kind of
Speaker 1: fixed to the match, though the it's not fully agreed
Speaker 1: at this point. Oh and he finishes up by saying,
Speaker 1: be sure to make it a Wednesday. Yeah. Well, the
Speaker 1: Wednesday Man does not seem like a character who plays fair,
Speaker 1: so you just assume that he has some sort of
Speaker 1: scheme in mind, and we of course find out more
Speaker 1: about that as the plot rolls on. Right, So next
Speaker 1: we go to meet the green based vampire himself, Maxwell
Speaker 1: Randall O b E. And we meet him when he
Speaker 1: is filming a TV commercial. So first we just see
Speaker 1: him like pop up out of a coffin and approach
Speaker 1: the camera and he's got these big fangs. But then
Speaker 1: he shoots himself in the mouth with breath freshen or spray.
Speaker 1: And this is the scene I mentioned earlier that has
Speaker 1: the closest thing we ever get to seeing the sky
Speaker 1: or outdoors, because there's a fake red sky behind the
Speaker 1: windows in the set. But yeah, he comes up and
Speaker 1: then they call cut and they're like, Okay, yeah, a
Speaker 1: nice job or actually not a nice job. I think
Speaker 1: they say average job, Maxwell, And he's going to come
Speaker 1: back and shoot some more stuff later. But this is
Speaker 1: when I first had the question, like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: is he actually a vampire or not? I have questions
Speaker 1: about the reality of this movie, like what is taken
Speaker 1: to be literal really fact within the narrative, right, because
Speaker 1: at this point in the film, it's like, Oh, he's
Speaker 1: not really a vampire. This is just his persona and
Speaker 1: he plays it up professionally, and he's definitely playing it
Speaker 1: up for a TV commercial. But we also established early
Speaker 1: on that Maxwell Randall is a jerk and a creep,
Speaker 1: Like we see him trying to get handsy with a
Speaker 1: makeup artist. So Maxwell not cool, right, But then we
Speaker 1: follow him home and oh this is this is where
Speaker 1: we get to see that he's not just playing up
Speaker 1: the vampire persona in the outside world. It's also very
Speaker 1: much his his his home fashion choice as well. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so he in his house. This is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite sets in the movie, in a movie full of
Speaker 1: great sets, floor to ceiling black marble patterned wallpaper, I
Speaker 1: mean just awesome red velvet furniture it looks like and
Speaker 1: a giant framed portrait of Bella Legosi. I was wondering, wait,
Speaker 1: is this supposed to be Maxwell Randall, but when I
Speaker 1: got a good look, I'm like, no, that's Bella Legosia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and no windows anywhere nowhere to be seen. Second question
Speaker 1: about the reality of the supernatural elements, is Missus Randall
Speaker 1: also supposed to be a vampire because we see that
Speaker 1: she has sharp teeth as well. I kind of get
Speaker 1: the impression that yet anyone in his circle could potentially
Speaker 1: be a vampire, though we rarely see any other signs
Speaker 1: except the fact that they never go out in the
Speaker 1: daylight because daylight doesn't exist in this None of the
Speaker 1: kid's go out in the daylight. Yea yeah. So in
Speaker 1: this scene we get sort of the setup of both
Speaker 1: the rivalry between the two snooker players and the class
Speaker 1: war themes. So this is where the snooker journalist, Miss
Speaker 1: Sullivan comes in, and so she arrives in Maxwell Randall's
Speaker 1: house to interview him about the possibility of this grudge
Speaker 1: match between him and Billy the Kid. Actually, I think
Speaker 1: she starts off just saying, like, tell me what you
Speaker 1: think about how snooker is going these days, And of
Speaker 1: course Maxwell hates the very idea of the younger generation
Speaker 1: of snooker players, and he hates Billy the Kid. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of great quotes here. He says, the
Speaker 1: twenty percent men have moved in with their smiles, like
Speaker 1: wet soap and their five hundred pounds suits. Ten years ago,
Speaker 1: it was still a gentleman's game. Now it's a circus.
Speaker 1: Permed hair, open collars. What does he does? He say,
Speaker 1: luminous waistcoats. I'm not sure what that means. But then
Speaker 1: the final straw where he starts to like lose it
Speaker 1: as he says, ques that unscrew in the middle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had no idea that that was that was considered uncool.
Speaker 1: I always thought that was kind of cool, right their mobile,
Speaker 1: you can unscrew him in the middle. But I think
Speaker 1: that means like a cheaper one. I don't know. Like
Speaker 1: he's he's really upset that the underclasses are gaining access
Speaker 1: to snooker. He says that one of the players has
Speaker 1: green hair. Billy the Kid is the worst of them,
Speaker 1: the worst of them all, and he starts screaming about him,
Speaker 1: and he gets so mad that he like literally becomes paralyzed,
Speaker 1: like he can't week anymore, until Sullivan just leaves. It's
Speaker 1: a great meltdown. Yeah, and so here we get our themes.
Speaker 1: The Green Bay's Vampire he wants snooker to remain a
Speaker 1: dignified game for the upper classes, and Billy the Kid
Speaker 1: represents everything he hates, un landed riff raff from the
Speaker 1: street coming in to turn his beloved snooker into an
Speaker 1: ashtray farce. But so we've had the journalist visit the
Speaker 1: Green Bay's Vampire at home, and now we apparently are
Speaker 1: going to visit Billy the Kid at more or less
Speaker 1: his home, which is Supersonic Sam's Cosmic Cafe. Another unbelievably
Speaker 1: weird set piece, this one. I really enjoyed this. I
Speaker 1: guess this is Billy the kids hang out and Rob
Speaker 1: how would you describe this place? It is another subterranean realm.
Speaker 1: It is like, um, it's like the Greek underworld if
Speaker 1: it were just for playing video games. But video games
Speaker 1: we never get to see. We just see the illumination
Speaker 1: of the video games on people's faces, ghastly illumination via
Speaker 1: like primitive Atari game. And it seems very dismal. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, Billy and the others are singing
Speaker 1: so optimistically about this place that you feel like there's
Speaker 1: some weird sense of futuristic optimism about like who they
Speaker 1: are and what technology can do. And I don't know what,
Speaker 1: you know, where games are taking them. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a weird juxtaposition. Yeah. They are in this
Speaker 1: this grizzly green tomb uh and they're singing like rapturously
Speaker 1: about how that they they have like claimed asteroids for
Speaker 1: themselves and yeah, yeah, so it's a very joyous song.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all it's like ecstasy almost.
Speaker 1: And and so you reach this place by navigating a
Speaker 1: maze of underground corridors illuminated only by horrible green light,
Speaker 1: and inside you see all these people. It's like a
Speaker 1: military formation of Cockney youths playing arcade cabinets. And like
Speaker 1: you said, we never see the screens, just like the
Speaker 1: green glow from below. While the video soldiers are sort
Speaker 1: of jostling about as they operate the joysticks, they're all
Speaker 1: facing the camera again like a like a like a
Speaker 1: squad formation. And I just love this sequence. It's it's
Speaker 1: really imaginatively choreographed, even though nobody's really dancing. They're all
Speaker 1: just standing at the cabinets. And swaying and jostling, but
Speaker 1: it looks great and it goes great with the song.
Speaker 1: And the scene ends with the same snooker journalist, Miss Sullivan,
Speaker 1: getting some incendiary quotes from Billy the Kid to incite
Speaker 1: the Green Bay's vampire. So she's trying to she's trying
Speaker 1: to help to get a rivalry going between them so
Speaker 1: that they'll do this grudge match. And well, let's see,
Speaker 1: I wrote down some of the good things the Billy
Speaker 1: the Kid says. He says, anyone with a name like
Speaker 1: Maxwell's got to be a king sized prawn. And then
Speaker 1: he says, I'm going to give him a terrible turkey.
Speaker 1: But oh boy. From here onto the reaction to the
Speaker 1: article she prints in the newspaper. This is probably my
Speaker 1: favorite scene in the movie. This is the song I
Speaker 1: Bite Back, which is it starts off with Alan Armstrong
Speaker 1: getting the newspaper and you hear him screaming throughout his
Speaker 1: house slander Calumny character assassination, and he's screaming about what's
Speaker 1: in the article to his wife and she seems just
Speaker 1: mildly amused. This is where she asks what terrible turkey
Speaker 1: means and he starts singing this song called I Bite Back.
Speaker 1: This is one where it's hard to communicate what this
Speaker 1: scene is like and how great it is without actually
Speaker 1: singing the song, which we can really do. But you
Speaker 1: can find video of this on the internet, I think,
Speaker 1: so I would suggest looking it up. It's very weird
Speaker 1: and great. Well. While Maxwell and his wife sing, they
Speaker 1: are standing in what looks kind of like a combination
Speaker 1: of a stage, just like a you know, a stage
Speaker 1: with wooden floorboards, but it also kind of looks like
Speaker 1: a windowless bank lobby in Gotham City. Yes, yeah, very gloomy.
Speaker 1: But he's filling the space with his rage and his voice. Yes,
Speaker 1: And the song is all about how he's furious all
Speaker 1: these things that were said about him in the article
Speaker 1: are not true. And he goes through like this song
Speaker 1: has wonderful insults. In the lyrics, he says, I may
Speaker 1: appear bizarre with my predatory features, but with little boys
Speaker 1: make noises of defamatory nature. I bite Back, And he
Speaker 1: goes through like the list of allegations as he refutes them.
Speaker 1: He says he loves the smell of garlic. He protests
Speaker 1: that he never bid a Bible salesman, or if he
Speaker 1: did it was just for a laugh, and he says,
Speaker 1: I never had no alligators living in me bath. Now
Speaker 1: I do what that means? Yeah, or the next one.
Speaker 1: The next one's also confusing. Oh, it's so good, he says.
Speaker 1: It says here when I die in my meals, glow
Speaker 1: in the dark. I don't quite know what that is,
Speaker 1: but that's really good, and he's clearly insulted by it.
Speaker 1: He also meant. There are also a few moments in
Speaker 1: the song where he seems to be like alluding to
Speaker 1: his own humble origins, you know, to say, like, you know,
Speaker 1: I like if he says something about how he when
Speaker 1: he first started out, he didn't even know how to
Speaker 1: spell Transylvania. Yeah, I think he's that He's ultimately pretty
Speaker 1: far from this vampire persona that he's. He's a He's
Speaker 1: a human being that's worked hard for what he has
Speaker 1: and now the upstarts are trying to drag him down. Yes,
Speaker 1: so he is taking the up eight. This match is
Speaker 1: on and in this song we also we learned that
Speaker 1: this is where we find out that t O and
Speaker 1: the the pot Stirring snooker journalist Miss Sullivan have conspired
Speaker 1: to get Billy and Maxwell so mad at each other
Speaker 1: that the match will definitely happen. Let's see now, after
Speaker 1: this in the movie, there's a long sequence that I
Speaker 1: guess we don't need to get into because it's mostly
Speaker 1: just like backstory between Billy the Kid and t O.
Speaker 1: They're talking about how they met each other and how
Speaker 1: to is going to take Billy the Kid to the top.
Speaker 1: But I suffice to say that this whole section is
Speaker 1: cowboy themed and it takes place in some kind of
Speaker 1: windowless subterranean lounge with gold bar lights and rifles on
Speaker 1: the wall. Yeah, they do a little target shooting. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's interesting. Um And I was never sure
Speaker 1: if this was supposed to be Billy's flat or just
Speaker 1: a place they hang out, but it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: their home turf at any rate, it's like the Cowboy hangout. Oh,
Speaker 1: now we should go to one of my favorite scenes
Speaker 1: in the whole movie. Actually, I don't know it's this
Speaker 1: might be my favorite scene in the whole movie. It's
Speaker 1: the one with Maxwell's father under the super table in
Speaker 1: his house. Yes, this, I must have rewatched this scene
Speaker 1: about five times. It is I think the strangest scene
Speaker 1: and what it's ultimately a very strange movie. Um so
Speaker 1: to goes to Maxwell's house, which we're already seen parts of,
Speaker 1: to meet with him and propose this match between Maxwell
Speaker 1: and Billy. Um. So, you know, we already know that
Speaker 1: Maxwell's house is gloriously dark and decorated with portraits of Dracula.
Speaker 1: But in this scene, it becomes apparent that Maxwell's father,
Speaker 1: who were told is the greatest snooker player to ever live,
Speaker 1: is himself an actual vampire, like a nos Faratu esque vampire,
Speaker 1: and he is perhaps it's hard to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: what this is supposed to be. He seems to be
Speaker 1: entombed within a glass casket that's topped with a black
Speaker 1: granite snooker table, which Randall Senior again, the entombed vampire
Speaker 1: uses to communicate from beyond the grave by like psychically
Speaker 1: sinking balls on the table. Yes, he's like from beyond
Speaker 1: He's like it's like an Owegia board, but in the
Speaker 1: form of a snooker table, except without any bayze on it.
Speaker 1: It's like a stone toop snack table. It is a
Speaker 1: It is an alarmingly strange scene and it's played very serious,
Speaker 1: especially by Armstrong. He really brings a dramatic energy to
Speaker 1: this scene, where you like, he's very serious about about
Speaker 1: asking his father if this is a match that he
Speaker 1: should agree to, and then the balls move on their own,
Speaker 1: and it's it's so shocking that TiO faints. Yes, it's oh,
Speaker 1: it's it's so good. Oh. Now what he proposes in
Speaker 1: this scene what the Vampire does? He says that whoever
Speaker 1: loses the match between Billy and Randall will agree to
Speaker 1: never play professional snooker again. Yes, yeah, And he's like,
Speaker 1: what do you think of that? Father? And then the
Speaker 1: ball just like shoots across the table and sinks. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's so good. This is such a weird scene. I
Speaker 1: loved it so much. Now, of course we get some
Speaker 1: more scenes with TiO and the Wednesday Man. The Wednesday
Speaker 1: Man loves this. TiO tries to resist because he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, Billy's young. What if he loses, he won't
Speaker 1: be able to play snooker again. We can't do it,
Speaker 1: but I think the Wednesday Man kind of pressures him
Speaker 1: into it somehow. He's like, oh, the wily old sheriff
Speaker 1: versus the brash young gunslinger. It has poetic overtones, he says,
Speaker 1: and then it's implied that he's going to fix the
Speaker 1: match somehow by making sure that Maxwell the Green Bays
Speaker 1: Vampire will not be at his best. But he doesn't
Speaker 1: explain what he's going to do there, Right, it either
Speaker 1: comes out here or it comes out later that the
Speaker 1: Wednesday Man has money on the kid, so it seems that, okay, well,
Speaker 1: you know he's gonna he's gonna show fix it. He's
Speaker 1: gonna make sure that the kid is victorious against all
Speaker 1: the odds because that's how he's going to make so
Speaker 1: much bank. And here we get a lot of jungle. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, Yes, a lot of green, a lot of jungle.
Speaker 1: But from here we go on to a practice montage
Speaker 1: that's like a song where they're going practice, practice, practice,
Speaker 1: and miss Sullivan sings Billy the Kid and the Green
Speaker 1: Bays Vampire. And I really enjoyed this because it's showing
Speaker 1: like Maxwell practicing again in the Gotham Bank lobby and
Speaker 1: Billy is in Supersonic Sam's Arcade from Hell and they're
Speaker 1: getting ready for the big match. Oh and then we
Speaker 1: see Maxwell and Missus Randall riding to the game again
Speaker 1: through a bank of green fog, motorcycle and sidecar. She's
Speaker 1: driving the motorcycle and he's like, you know, three feet
Speaker 1: down below from her, sitting with a scar fawn in
Speaker 1: the sidecar. Yeah, so many little touches like this, like
Speaker 1: they made the exactly the right choice, like if they
Speaker 1: if there was the other way around, it would not
Speaker 1: be as as memorable, so that this was wonderful. And
Speaker 1: from here, it just from here it turns into the game. Basically.
Speaker 1: You know, every sports movie has to end with the
Speaker 1: big showdown, the big game for for the ultimate championship,
Speaker 1: and that is what happens here, though, of course, with
Speaker 1: plenty of musical interludes and supernatural accents. Yes, yeah, we
Speaker 1: have that big number um about about Snooker. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is the one where he's like ah ah ah ah Snooker,
Speaker 1: what's the world in a frame Like it's just uh,
Speaker 1: it's like the enthusiasm for and and of course we
Speaker 1: have people in the audience from both sides, representing both
Speaker 1: competing sides of society, and you know they're either you know,
Speaker 1: they're cheering on their man, but everyone is an agreeance
Speaker 1: that Snooker is great. Yes, and they each like you say,
Speaker 1: they each bring their own audiences, So they're rooting for
Speaker 1: Billy the Kid is a is a gaggle of disaffected
Speaker 1: working class youth from Supersonic Sam's Cosmic Cafe. And then
Speaker 1: on the other side, rooting for the Green Bay's Vampire
Speaker 1: are a bunch of upper class blue bloods and their
Speaker 1: fur coats and things. Yeah, so they each have their entrances.
Speaker 1: You know, it's very grandiose, a little bit professional wrestling perhaps,
Speaker 1: But once the theatrics are out of the way, once
Speaker 1: everybody's had their sort of pro wrestling esque introduction, is
Speaker 1: time to get down to those seventeen frames that will
Speaker 1: decide the fate of our hero and our villain. Well,
Speaker 1: now here, I guess we got to explain maximum break. Yes,
Speaker 1: so this is not something I knew about going in.
Speaker 1: But basically, somebody has to break in a que game.
Speaker 1: You know, they have to hit the que ball and
Speaker 1: sort of break up the mass of balls and get
Speaker 1: things moving. But here's something that can happen in snooker.
Speaker 1: If you start sinking balls right pretty much right away,
Speaker 1: and you keep sinking balls, the person who does who breaks,
Speaker 1: who begins the game, can finish the entire game, scoring
Speaker 1: all the points without the other player ever actually approaching
Speaker 1: the table, right, And I think the amount of points
Speaker 1: you can possibly get is variable depending on like what
Speaker 1: order you sink things in. Because again they were doing
Speaker 1: that thing where every time he sunk a red ball,
Speaker 1: they pulled the black ball back out and he could
Speaker 1: sink that again. I think, I think that's right. Snooker players,
Speaker 1: you right in the details here. It doesn't really matter,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter. But yes, the Green Bay's Vampire
Speaker 1: just runs the entire game and Billy never gets to
Speaker 1: touch the touch the balls. Right. Yeah, this is what's
Speaker 1: called a maximum break. It's it's like the highest break possible.
Speaker 1: It's a flawless victory. And I was reading about this,
Speaker 1: it's pretty fascinating. During the nineteen eighties, these were apparently
Speaker 1: far less common, something like only eight maximum breaks occurred
Speaker 1: in professional play that entire decade. I don't think that
Speaker 1: the actual snooker Dracula ever scored a maximum break in
Speaker 1: professional play, but it's it's become more common, as you know,
Speaker 1: as often happened in recent years as in recent decades. Uh,
Speaker 1: and this happens with other games as well, Like the
Speaker 1: players just get better and better. And so nowadays, if
Speaker 1: you look at the scores and the rankings of of
Speaker 1: of professional snooker players, you'll find, you know, at least
Speaker 1: one maximum break in there often multiple maximum break sometimes
Speaker 1: a maximum break achieved at a very young age. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We were looking at who's actually like on top of
Speaker 1: the snooker leaderboards in recent years, and h's there's a
Speaker 1: guy named Neil Robertson who I think was the most
Speaker 1: recent winner in twenty nineteen of the Snooker China Open,
Speaker 1: and we were wondering, Okay, is he this generation's Billy
Speaker 1: the Kid? I don't know, but he rob I think
Speaker 1: you looked at this up and found that he's had
Speaker 1: at least for maximum breaks. Yeah yeah, and again during
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties there were only eight maximum breaks overall.
Speaker 1: So the idea that Maxwell's coming into this game and
Speaker 1: scoring a maximum break on the first frame, I mean,
Speaker 1: it is indeed nothing short of supernatural vocation for the game.
Speaker 1: He is just completely destroying our hero. And I have
Speaker 1: to say it works so wonderfully cinematically because they just
Speaker 1: cut to each sinking of the ball, so you have
Speaker 1: this rhythm down of the que striking the ball, the ball,
Speaker 1: striking the ball and pocketing and they just wonderful, like
Speaker 1: just rhythm of relentless victory. But then something else also happens.
Speaker 1: So not only is Maxwell playing well, like he's just
Speaker 1: getting these flawless victories one after another, he also I
Speaker 1: think I understood a little bit less what was happening here.
Speaker 1: It's implied that he uses his vampire powers to hypnotize
Speaker 1: Billy the Kid, so that when Billy the Kid actually
Speaker 1: does have a chance to play, he doesn't see any
Speaker 1: balls on the table. I was unsure about this as well,
Speaker 1: because we also have like a wake up in the
Speaker 1: back room where they're like, wake up, you know you're behind.
Speaker 1: You got to get back out there. So I don't
Speaker 1: know if this is kind of like a mental dream
Speaker 1: sequence where he's just desparing that he's so far behind,
Speaker 1: and there's this idea, like there's this whole bit where
Speaker 1: he's like, where are the balls? I don't have any
Speaker 1: balls to play the game with, like they've all been sunk.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is probably one of the more
Speaker 1: heavy heavy handed moments of social commentary in the picture,
Speaker 1: where it's like, you know that how are the kids
Speaker 1: supposed to achieve anything if if all the balls are
Speaker 1: being sunk by the upper class and by the older
Speaker 1: members of society, You know, is it any wonder that
Speaker 1: they're they're having to cower around the you know, the
Speaker 1: dismal light of their video games, because what else has
Speaker 1: have you supplied them in this world? Right? I don't
Speaker 1: even get a chance to play, like, I can't even Yeah,
Speaker 1: um and uh. And there's also some some of the
Speaker 1: class war stuff between the audiences, like the disaffected working
Speaker 1: class youth and and the blue bloods like sing at
Speaker 1: each other and this song where they keep going quack
Speaker 1: quack quack. I don't think I fully understood what all
Speaker 1: that was, but it was amusing. And then of course
Speaker 1: we get the standard sports movie arc right, because there's
Speaker 1: a dark Knight of the soul Billy. The kid is
Speaker 1: like as far down as he can possibly be. If
Speaker 1: he screws up one more time, the entire thing has gone.
Speaker 1: The green based Vampires won eight frames out of seventeen.
Speaker 1: But then he starts to mount a comeback and Russol
Speaker 1: builds up to a fantastic ending. Yes, I love everything
Speaker 1: about this ending. So yeah, Maxwell has already busted out
Speaker 1: some what seemed like mild psychic snooker powers during one
Speaker 1: of the musical numbers. So we're not sure if we're
Speaker 1: supposed to take those literally or not, you know, but basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: the kid has mounted a full comeback and finally we're
Speaker 1: down to the very last ball, and if the kid
Speaker 1: pockets this ball, then he actually wins, then he will
Speaker 1: be victorious. And so Maxwell's watching on. Billy hits the
Speaker 1: ball and writes it's about to go into the pocket.
Speaker 1: Maxwell's eyes glow like this, this ghostly white color with
Speaker 1: maybe a hint of purple, and he reaches out and
Speaker 1: he psychically freezes the ball above the hole, keeping it
Speaker 1: from being sunk. And I was like, is this is
Speaker 1: this in line with snooker rules or not? Is this addressed? No,
Speaker 1: it's not addressed. But he's he's using his vampire powers
Speaker 1: to prevent it from happening, to prevent the victory from
Speaker 1: taking place. So what does Billy the Kid do? He
Speaker 1: pulls out his six shooter, aims at first at at Maxwell,
Speaker 1: at at our green Bay's vampire, but then points it
Speaker 1: at the ball. The psychically held ball shoots the ball,
Speaker 1: which pockets it. Pockets the ball and then he wins
Speaker 1: the whole thing and we get this one last shot
Speaker 1: of Maxwell the Green Bay's Vampire eyes glowing, face scowling.
Speaker 1: It's pretty great. I guess you did have alligators living
Speaker 1: in your bath after all. Yeah, I mean it again.
Speaker 1: You're left with a lot of questions about about this movie.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a it's a movie that is existing
Speaker 1: in its own reality, I guess, but but is trying
Speaker 1: to say some serious things about about the real world
Speaker 1: as well. Well, that's it, Billy the kidd in the
Speaker 1: Green Bay's Vampire Again, I will stress officially one of
Speaker 1: the weirdest movies we have ever watched for the show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think our second musical, our first sports movie, and
Speaker 1: I have to say, I think it's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite musical films. Now you know, I'm putting it on
Speaker 1: the list. It's okay, it doesn't take the place of
Speaker 1: Rocky Horror in my heart, but it's it's up there.
Speaker 1: It's got to be top five, huh. I've never tried
Speaker 1: to make a ranks list, so I don't know where
Speaker 1: it would go. But I did very much enjoy it.
Speaker 1: I've actually really liked both of the musical as we
Speaker 1: watched for this show. This and Ship of Monsters are
Speaker 1: are both absolutely delightful. I think one of the things
Speaker 1: is is that if you have characters singing on the screen,
Speaker 1: singing their lines and using music to to relate their
Speaker 1: you know, their internal experience, then um, you know, you're
Speaker 1: already in kind of a weird place. You're already in
Speaker 1: a place of unreality. So you can do so many
Speaker 1: other things and get away with it. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: have ridiculous monsters. You can have um, strange vampire powers
Speaker 1: that are not you know, fully explained or understood. What
Speaker 1: a coincidence? Do you recall now that Ship of Monsters
Speaker 1: also had late arc revelations of vampire powers. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: didn't know at the beginning what was going on. Vampire
Speaker 1: powers revealed after the halfway point. Man, I guess I
Speaker 1: mostly like vampire themed or vampire esque musicals. That's that's
Speaker 1: my area of interest. All right, Well we're going to
Speaker 1: go ahead and call this one again. The film is
Speaker 1: Billy the Kid in the Green Bay's Vampire seems to
Speaker 1: be available anywhere you buy or rent digital movies. It's
Speaker 1: on two by so you can watch it there. If
Speaker 1: two Bees a thing. There's a DVD of the film,
Speaker 1: but I don't believe it's been released on Blu Ray
Speaker 1: at least not yet, and again sadly no soundtrack releases.
Speaker 1: This is one where I would like to see some
Speaker 1: interviews about like how this happened and what the production
Speaker 1: was like, Yeah, because I mean they it's it's snooker,
Speaker 1: Like how many of these guys like were super snooker fans.
Speaker 1: Did they have to train? They had snooker advisors on
Speaker 1: the on the set, on the you know, they were
Speaker 1: part of the crew. So I just wonder how all
Speaker 1: of this came together such a strange film. It doesn't
Speaker 1: look like they're using snooker stunt doubles. It looks like
Speaker 1: the actors are actually shooting the shots. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: I would be This is again where I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from actual snooker enthusiasts out there, like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: how do how do the actors look in this? Do
Speaker 1: they look like they knew what they were doing? I
Speaker 1: always love to ask my wife about this regarding actors
Speaker 1: riding horses, because I'm kind of blind to it, and
Speaker 1: I'll ask this guy really know how to ride? A horse.
Speaker 1: Does she really know how to ride a horse? And
Speaker 1: my wife will be like, oh yeah, yeah this this
Speaker 1: person's ridden before, this person really took some lessons for this,
Speaker 1: or oh boy, they just stuck that person on a
Speaker 1: horse and hope for the best. But in this I mean,
Speaker 1: to my eye, like Alan Armstrong looks, you know, very
Speaker 1: intimidating when he is he's making his shots. That it's
Speaker 1: I buy it completely. I don't know if the experts
Speaker 1: out there would feel the same. Maybe that took the
Speaker 1: place of the singing audition. Yeah, they just do a
Speaker 1: little snooker tryout. Oh that reminds me of one little
Speaker 1: bit that I read from an interview with Alan Armstrong
Speaker 1: where he said that author Miller, the playwright, cast him
Speaker 1: in a play once without seeing him act first, just
Speaker 1: having some drinks with him and telling him that no,
Speaker 1: he didn't need to see him act. He knew he
Speaker 1: would be good because he quote had a peasant's face.
Speaker 1: He was that he was sick of casting actors with
Speaker 1: like I guess like movie star good looks. Oh he's
Speaker 1: playing against type in this one. Yeah, anyway, good, great
Speaker 1: performances all around. Yeah, I loved this one. So I Yeah,
Speaker 1: I recommend it to anyone out there who's who's it all?
Speaker 1: Interested in snooker, vampires or musicals the subterranean life? Yes,
Speaker 1: all right as usual If you want to check out
Speaker 1: other episodes of Weird House, Cinema comes out every Friday
Speaker 1: in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We're
Speaker 1: primarily a science podcast, but on Friday's we set aside,
Speaker 1: set aside most serious matters and just discuss a weird film.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
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