Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. Today we are
Speaker 1: re airing our July fourth episode from last year. It
Speaker 1: is the nineteen ninety nine Frontier cannibal horror film Ravenous.
Speaker 1: It was a real joy to revisit this film. I
Speaker 1: feel like it is just as strong today as it
Speaker 1: was back when it came out, and has just as
Speaker 1: much to say, some strong performances throughout. Big fan of
Speaker 1: this movie and happy to share this episode with you
Speaker 1: once more.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb
Speaker 1: and this is Joe McCormick. Today is July the fourth
Speaker 1: Independence Day in the United States, as many of our
Speaker 1: American listeners can attest to, and I think our international
Speaker 1: listeners can also attest to to varying degrees and understand,
Speaker 1: national patriotic holidays like this can be really weird to process.
Speaker 1: They are at their they're very least a time of
Speaker 1: celebrating certain ideals while often ignoring the more complex or
Speaker 1: even problematic elements of a nation's history and place in
Speaker 1: the world. I often find myself just like end up
Speaker 1: with a day off on the on the fourth, and
Speaker 1: I'm just like, what am I doing? What? What's the
Speaker 1: game plan? I guess I'll watch some fireworks and you know,
Speaker 1: this year I made some space for today's.
Speaker 3: Movie, oh, on the fourth of July itself, or just
Speaker 3: an advance of like are you gonna watch it again
Speaker 3: on the fourth?
Speaker 1: Who knows what I'll do? But I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: given publication delays, you know, I couldn't actually watch it
Speaker 1: on the fourth, but in anticipation of the fourth.
Speaker 3: I see, typically if we watch a movie on the
Speaker 3: fourth of July, it's Jaws, that's you know, for obvious reasons.
Speaker 3: Fourth of July is a big holiday. In the narrative
Speaker 3: of Jaws, It's very much a summer movie. And I
Speaker 3: don't know, it just kind of feels right, especially if
Speaker 3: the day involves, like otherwise being outdoors or barbecuing or something.
Speaker 3: At some point you come inside, sit down and watch Jaws.
Speaker 3: I think we we haven't really done this fully and
Speaker 3: in a few years since my daughter was born, But
Speaker 3: I don't know, I think we're working our way back
Speaker 3: up to it at some point. And another tradition we
Speaker 3: used to have. This may sound a little bit cheesy,
Speaker 3: but so we used to like read Walt Whitman out
Speaker 3: loud in our house on the fourth of July. It's
Speaker 3: it's a good thing to do. I recommend that nice.
Speaker 1: Nice. Well, these are both solid, solid choices, especially Jaws,
Speaker 1: and because again the greatest primordial summer blockbuster in many respects.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's set the set the blueprint for blockbusters
Speaker 1: to follow. But also, you know, Jaws, in its own
Speaker 1: interesting way at least dips its toes into some contemplation
Speaker 1: about America.
Speaker 3: Hmm, I have to think about that. Okay, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Think it's it's in there. But the picture that we've
Speaker 1: selected here is nineteen ninety nine's Ravenous. Of note, this
Speaker 1: is only our second nineteen ninety nine film. The only
Speaker 1: other film from nineteen ninety nine that we've watched is
Speaker 1: Deep Blue Sea, a shark movie.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, interesting connection. You know, maybe it's not just
Speaker 3: the narrative of Jaws that ties into the Fourth of July.
Speaker 3: There is something very American feeling about the subgenre of
Speaker 3: the shark film that's just part of the national identity.
Speaker 3: Looking for connections between Deep Blue Sea and Ravenous. Not
Speaker 3: a huge amount in terms of I don't know the
Speaker 3: feel or content, but I guess they're both very much
Speaker 3: about eating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Deep Blue Sy very much feels like a nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine film. Ravenous in many ways just really feels
Speaker 1: out of place, Like it feels like maybe its soul
Speaker 1: is more seated I don't know, in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: or or in a way it's almost like a blueprint
Speaker 1: of things that might come later. And as well as
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody knew what to do with this
Speaker 1: film when it came out in nineteen ninety nine, no
Speaker 1: one knew how to market it, and no but and
Speaker 1: a lot of people didn't really know how to receive it.
Speaker 3: It is one of those artifacts like floating outside of time.
Speaker 3: It feels like it doesn't really fit in exactly anywhere.
Speaker 3: It is a strange. There are strange anachronisms within it,
Speaker 3: like this is a period movie set in the eighteen forties,
Speaker 3: and something I think, especially about the sound track leans
Speaker 3: a little bit into the sound of a nineteenth century music,
Speaker 3: you know. It involves like some accordion voicings and banjos
Speaker 3: and fiddles and things like that, but also has these
Speaker 3: electronic elements that kind of pull it out of the
Speaker 3: time space in which you're supposed to be imagining it,
Speaker 3: and it as a result, it does kind of feel
Speaker 3: like this this alien object that's just kind of like
Speaker 3: inserted randomly into the last one hundred years of culture. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The soundtrack, the score, especially as we'll discuss, gives it
Speaker 1: this kind of vibe of something ancient that is clawing
Speaker 1: its way up into the modern world. So I originally
Speaker 1: saw this one back more or less when it first
Speaker 1: came out. I did not see it in the theaters.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many people actually did. I caught
Speaker 1: it on home video, maybe even VHS, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Probably it's probably DVD. This was a time when DVD
Speaker 1: was really getting into the vibe. But I have to
Speaker 1: say it really impressed me back then. I was a
Speaker 1: rather different person back then, but it still impressed me
Speaker 1: when I rewatched it today. I think it certainly has
Speaker 1: its flaws, and we'll touch on some of those, but
Speaker 1: it's quite exceptional in its rumination on its central thesis,
Speaker 1: which it rolls out I think with enough care and
Speaker 1: nuance that it invites us to further ruminate on what
Speaker 1: this film means and what it's saying without transforming the
Speaker 1: picture into a kind of blunt instrument of social or
Speaker 1: political commentary.
Speaker 3: You know, something about the setting in time and place,
Speaker 3: and the fact that it takes place among kind of
Speaker 3: military officers within, you know, a couple of decades of
Speaker 3: the US Civil War makes it feel like it should
Speaker 3: have some kind of political historical commentary. Whatever political historical
Speaker 3: commentary is there, feels kind of subtle to me. I
Speaker 3: would say overall, the main themes are more of a
Speaker 3: classic morality struggle, but with Gonzo Freddy Krueger elements.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, I think it ultimately
Speaker 1: strikes a nice balance in its commentary. I do think
Speaker 1: if it had been made ten years ago instead of
Speaker 1: twenty six years ago, I think it would have been
Speaker 1: more aggressive in its critique. I think it might have
Speaker 1: been a little blunter and and I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: these are big what ifs, but I can easily imagine
Speaker 1: a picture that was ultimately less successful. So, if you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with nineteen ninety nine Ravenous, this is a
Speaker 1: weird one. Ravenus is a frontier cannibal movie set in
Speaker 1: eighteen forties California. It draws clear inspiration from both the
Speaker 1: Donner Party and then and the confessions of alleged cannibal
Speaker 1: Alfred Packer, And there's also a dash of Windigo of
Speaker 1: lore from Algonquin folklore. Now, given this premise, you might
Speaker 1: well expect a couple of different possible treatments. You might think, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be an exploitive horror movie. This is
Speaker 1: gonna be like a gonzo maybe even euro cannibal film
Speaker 1: like we saw in the seventies and eighties, including Cannibal Apocalypse,
Speaker 1: which we've covered on Weird House Cinema, partially filmed right
Speaker 1: over here in Decatur.
Speaker 3: I'd say there are some special effects sequences that are
Speaker 3: similar to Cannibal Apocalypse. Yeah, there's some kind of shoving
Speaker 3: of organs into the mouth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they definitely. They definitely get in there and paint
Speaker 1: with those brushstrokes. But at the same time, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really go overboard there either. I wouldn't set so if
Speaker 1: you come into this wanting like a complete gore fest,
Speaker 1: it might not deliver, certainly by sort of like fangoria standards.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: At the same time, yeah, you might think, well, this
Speaker 1: is about cannibalism, and cannibalism is inherently funny. There's no
Speaker 1: denying it. No matter how serious your treatment of cannibalism is,
Speaker 1: you can't help but get a yuck in there, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhere or another, in part because cannibalism is such a
Speaker 1: dark topic. But then there it also there are just
Speaker 1: so many potentially humorous wrinkles to the concept.
Speaker 3: Cannibalism really lends itself to puns and word play, a
Speaker 3: little double on tondras in sentences. Have you noticed that
Speaker 3: I feel like almost more than basically anything except sex,
Speaker 3: cannibalism is just like the double on tundras leap out
Speaker 3: of the language for you, right, and.
Speaker 1: Then they often go back into sex as well. So
Speaker 1: it's just it's all over the place. And so you
Speaker 1: might well think, well, this is going to be a
Speaker 1: you know, a grizzly comedy, maybe along the lines of
Speaker 1: Trey Parker's Cannibal the Musical, which came out in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, based in part on the Alfred Packer account
Speaker 1: which I just referenced. And it to be clear, this
Speaker 1: film does have its intentional laughs, but it also shows
Speaker 1: a great deal of restraint here as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is I would say a good bit of
Speaker 3: humor in this movie, but it's way less overt than
Speaker 3: in Cannibal the musical. I mean, this is not, in
Speaker 3: any sense played for comedy. Instead, it's one of those
Speaker 3: It's a dark story that is through and through dark
Speaker 3: on its face, and I think the viewer is expected
Speaker 3: to find little ironic amusements throughout it, you know, like
Speaker 3: you're having a little chuckle, but there's nothing, no juicy
Speaker 3: comedy happening on screen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think it's generally on the money to
Speaker 1: think of Ravenous as a horror film. Absolutely. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to make an argument that it doesn't belong in
Speaker 1: that section of the video rental store, but I think
Speaker 1: when you look at it, yeah, it also tends to
Speaker 1: defy categorization in other ways, and I think the studio
Speaker 1: clearly didn't know what to make of it. Audiences and
Speaker 1: critics also tended to respond as such. I believe Ebert
Speaker 1: really liked it, but I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: just didn't know what to make of it. No one
Speaker 1: really knew what to do with a serious minded cannibal
Speaker 1: slash sort of vampire frontier film, reflecting on, you know,
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, on the dark side of American
Speaker 1: destiny and capitalism or at least human nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean nothing marketers hate more than something that
Speaker 3: takes too many words to describe. Yes, it's just like
Speaker 3: hard to market something that doesn't really fit its jenre
Speaker 3: tropes very well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as such, the original marketing for this film
Speaker 1: is just I mostly just hate all of it. I
Speaker 1: hate all the posters in box art for it. All
Speaker 1: of it's just kind of like ugly looking. I don't
Speaker 1: like the trailer, and I don't think any of this
Speaker 1: has changed. It's weird, like, this is a film that
Speaker 1: has definitely developed its own cult following over the years,
Speaker 1: and it's readily available. It's been re released, you know,
Speaker 1: in Blu ray and so forth, but the packaging is
Speaker 1: still more or less the same. I picked up the
Speaker 1: box at at Video Drome here in Atlanta, and it's
Speaker 1: on the recent Shout Factory release, which is very nice
Speaker 1: as all these extras that were originally on the DVD release.
Speaker 1: And it's the same description the box states quote it's
Speaker 1: a recipe for NonStop action and excitement when the inhabitants
Speaker 1: of an isolated military outpost go up against a marauding
Speaker 1: band of cannibals in a deadly struggle for survival.
Speaker 3: That doesn't even accurately describe the plot. No, but then
Speaker 3: it also gets the tone roll.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the tone is totally incorrect here, Like, I
Speaker 1: love this film, but it is not a recipe for
Speaker 1: NonStop action and excitement.
Speaker 3: It is Also it's not that this makes it sound
Speaker 3: like it's like a bunch of soldiers having a shootout
Speaker 3: with a cannibal gang that had like it's mad Max
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or maybe the thing. You know, there's some comparisons
Speaker 1: to be made there, but yeah, totally different vibe.
Speaker 3: It's actually closer to the thing than what this makes
Speaker 3: it sound like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So my alternate elevator pitch for this would
Speaker 1: be cannibalism American style. But even that makes it sound
Speaker 1: like it's going to be more of a comedy than
Speaker 1: it actually is.
Speaker 3: If I could give it a slightly pretentious elevator pitch,
Speaker 3: I'll cite a line from the movie. The characters in
Speaker 3: the movie discuss a believe a Benjamin Franklin quote where
Speaker 3: they say, eat to live, don't live to eat. Now,
Speaker 3: that's an interesting aphorism. This movie explores what that aphorism
Speaker 3: means when you have to interrogate the meaning of both
Speaker 3: live and eat.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, I'm gonna skip the trailer since I've
Speaker 1: already established that I don't really like it. I would recommend,
Speaker 1: I even if you've not seen the film, I'd recommend
Speaker 1: just going in cold and experiencing it. And you know,
Speaker 1: don't even look at the box, don't even look at
Speaker 1: the posters. But but if you want to watch it
Speaker 1: on your own, it is widely available for digital rent
Speaker 1: and purchase. The Shout Factory Blu ray is definitely the
Speaker 1: pick for physical media. It contains numerous extras, including no
Speaker 1: fewer than three commentary tracks. I believe these were on
Speaker 1: the original release. This is just that period I believe
Speaker 1: for excitement for regarding disc extras, so they just went
Speaker 1: all out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the original release
Speaker 3: of this movie on DVD had little like little Easter
Speaker 3: eggs in the menus. Oh yes, something you could like
Speaker 3: navigate over to and click and it would play like
Speaker 3: a I don't know, you'd have like a dancing Robert
Speaker 3: Carlyle and.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, yeah, yeah, this is when they did all
Speaker 1: of that stuff, and I have to admit I haven't
Speaker 1: really gone into the extras on the disc. I feel
Speaker 1: like this is sometimes I really like to do that
Speaker 1: with the film for a weird House and get more
Speaker 1: of the backstory. This, I really feel like, is a
Speaker 1: film that just speaks so well for itself as itself.
Speaker 1: But you know, sometime down the line, I might really
Speaker 1: get into the extras because they look really good. You've
Speaker 1: got Carlisle and Bird doing a commentary track, You've got
Speaker 1: you know, various other individuals involved in the production, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's all really good stuff.
Speaker 3: One thing I would say before we go any further
Speaker 3: is that, of course, always on Weird House Cinema, we
Speaker 3: end up talking about the plot in some amount of
Speaker 3: detail as we go on, and that will include spoilers
Speaker 3: for the story. In cases where I think, you know,
Speaker 3: you might want to go in without anything spoiled, I
Speaker 3: throw a warning up. I think this is probably one
Speaker 3: of those. This is a movie where you might want
Speaker 3: to watch it without any of the surprises ruined. So
Speaker 3: so fair warning, folks. If you haven't seen the movie
Speaker 3: you feel like you want to, this might be a
Speaker 3: good place to pause and go check it out before
Speaker 3: listening further.
Speaker 1: All right, we've given you the warning, so now we're
Speaker 1: going to get into the meat of the people involved
Speaker 1: in this production, starting at the top. The director to
Speaker 1: hear is Antonia Byrd, who lived nineteen fifty one through
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen English TV and film director and also occasional producer.
Speaker 1: Her TV credits go back to the early eighties, working
Speaker 1: on various series and TV movies, including some work in
Speaker 1: the long running series EastEnders. In ninety four, she directed
Speaker 1: the film Priest starring Linus Roach, Tom Wilkinson and Robert Carlyle,
Speaker 1: which earned her a BAFF denomination among other honors. She
Speaker 1: followed this up with nineteen ninety five's Mad Love, no
Speaker 1: relation to the Peter Lourie picture. This one starred Chris
Speaker 1: o'donnald and Drew Barrymore. But what if it had been
Speaker 1: a remake of Mad.
Speaker 3: Love starring Chris O'Donnell Andrew Chris O'Donnell as.
Speaker 1: In the role of a lifetime in the Peter Lourie role.
Speaker 3: Amazing.
Speaker 1: She also did nineteen ninety seven's Face, a crime drama
Speaker 1: starring Robert Carlyle alongside ray Winston. Ravenous would be her
Speaker 1: last feature film, but she continued to work in television,
Speaker 1: directing a handful of TV movies and episodes of show
Speaker 1: like I five and Cracker. She was one of the
Speaker 1: UK's leading female directors by many estimates. She sadly passed
Speaker 1: away following a battle with cancer. Now it is important
Speaker 1: to include a brief note about the production here. So
Speaker 1: first of all, just incidentally, this movie was filmed primarily
Speaker 1: in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, So I think all
Speaker 1: of these scenes that are supposed to be the American
Speaker 1: Frontier are actually Europe. And then the scenes that take
Speaker 1: place in Mexico were actually filmed in Mexico.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Bird was apparently a last minute replacement for a different director,
Speaker 1: a Macedonian director, Milt show Manchewski, And I'm not sure
Speaker 1: on the details there ultimately not important, but amid discussions
Speaker 1: of who are we going to get into who's going
Speaker 1: to step in and direct this picture? Now we're getting
Speaker 1: down to the last minute. You know, the cast, everything,
Speaker 1: all these these expensive pieces are in place, and it's
Speaker 1: Robert Carlyle who reportedly suggested that they get Bird done.
Speaker 1: His previous work with her.
Speaker 3: It was clearly a good move. You can feel something
Speaker 3: about something that is really working in this movie is
Speaker 3: a kind of playfulness and a freedom to experiment that
Speaker 3: I think you can feel coming from the top. At
Speaker 3: least that's my sense in watching it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I believe that's the sense that you get
Speaker 1: when you read interview pieces from Carlisle about the picture.
Speaker 1: So he had worked with her on episodes of TVs
Speaker 1: The Bill Cracker, as well as an anthology series called Screenplay.
Speaker 1: The episode that Bird directed was a nineteen ninety three
Speaker 1: episode titled Safe that centered around homelessness and also feature
Speaker 1: Aidan Gillen and Kate Hardy. So yeah, he always he
Speaker 1: seems like he always spoke very highly of citing her
Speaker 1: collaborative spirit and her on set demeanor. In a nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine interview with The Guardian that, to be clear,
Speaker 1: was promoting this picture, he said the following about power
Speaker 1: dynamics on productions, Antonia is very different from most directors
Speaker 1: in thinking that way, the more you do in your
Speaker 1: career and the more success you get, you can pick
Speaker 1: and choose. But I've been confronted with a power thing
Speaker 1: from directors before and that's what makes Antonia refreshing because
Speaker 1: she doesn't have that. It's a collaborative thing. It's about trust,
Speaker 1: and you build up trust over a period of years,
Speaker 1: and therefore you will do anything for each other.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, So if I'm interpreting that right, that
Speaker 3: does match the feeling I get from watching the movie
Speaker 3: where it is. You get the sense that this is
Speaker 3: the kind of production where people were just trying things.
Speaker 3: People might do something weird, and then it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: that kind of works, let's go with that, yeah, instead
Speaker 3: of a director just draconian ly to you know, bossing
Speaker 3: everybody around and saying, no, I've got a vision, do
Speaker 3: it this way.
Speaker 1: And of course all that makes sense when we get
Speaker 1: into the cast here in just a minute, because it's
Speaker 1: a great cast of character actors and experienced the stage
Speaker 1: and screen actors, and so you can really feel it
Speaker 1: all come together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: The screenplay is by Ted Griffin born nineteen seventy. This
Speaker 1: was his first produced feature film script, but he followed
Speaker 1: it up with two thousand and one's adaptation of Ocean's Eleven,
Speaker 1: based on a previous film from many years back. He
Speaker 1: also did two thousand and threes matchtick Men, the twenty
Speaker 1: ten series Terriers, twenty eleven's Tower Heist, and twenty ten Solace.
Speaker 1: He also got into producing and co produced twenty thirteen's
Speaker 1: The Wolf of Wall Street. All Right, heading up our
Speaker 1: cast top build is Guy Pierce playing the character BOYD.
Speaker 1: Born nineteen sixty seven. And I think everybody knows who
Speaker 1: Guy Pierce is, big name Australian actor who really broke
Speaker 1: into the mainstream with his supporting role in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven's La Confidential.
Speaker 3: I would argue Guy Pearce is really playing against type
Speaker 3: in this movie. He again and again throughout his career
Speaker 3: he plays characters that are very driven, the kind of focused,
Speaker 3: competent people who are always the active party in the scene,
Speaker 3: always the agent, And here he plays the exact opposite,
Speaker 3: a character whose main vice is cowardice and indecision.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a great read because whether he's
Speaker 1: playing heroes or villains, which and he does both terrifically,
Speaker 1: it is generally a very driven character. And in this
Speaker 1: film the character is intentionally presented is very passive for
Speaker 1: much of the film, resigned to whatever fate has seemingly
Speaker 1: for whatever fate has seemingly chosen for him, and you
Speaker 1: know as such, he doesn't even seem to have much
Speaker 1: agency at first, and on the whole speaks very little
Speaker 1: in the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a weird choice to have a protagonist this way.
Speaker 3: He's like, there are multiple scenes where he is an
Speaker 3: officer in the military in this film, but he has
Speaker 3: like men underneath him who are having to kind of
Speaker 3: like give him orders essentially because he's just frozen and
Speaker 3: he doesn't know what to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, prior to Like Confidential, his Australian credits included the
Speaker 1: cult favorite drag film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of
Speaker 1: the Desert, alongside Hugo Weaving and Terrence Stamp. So this
Speaker 1: film pretty much follows up on the La Confidential boom
Speaker 1: and proceeds a string of early two thousand films Christopher
Speaker 1: Nolan's Memento in two thousand, of Course, two thousand twos,
Speaker 1: The counta Monte Crisco, two thousand and two's The Time Machine.
Speaker 1: Subsequent credits included such films as two thousand and five's
Speaker 1: The Proposition, two thousand and eight's The hurt Locker two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine is The Road twenty twelve's Prometheus, twenty
Speaker 1: thirteen's Iron Man three, in which he gets to play
Speaker 1: the chief villain, twenty sixteen Brimstone. I believe that's another
Speaker 1: grim sort of Western frontier picture. Twenty seventeen's Alien Covenant,
Speaker 1: small but memorable roll. There a turn as Scrooge in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen's A Christmas Carol. I haven't seen that, but
Speaker 1: I'm imagining it as Peter Wayland as Scrooge, so I
Speaker 1: hope that wouldn't disappoint.
Speaker 3: Dan Ackroyd did nothing but trouble as Scrooge.
Speaker 1: And then oh, he's in twenty twenty fours The Shrouds.
Speaker 1: That's I believe the latest Cronenberg film. Haven't seen that one,
Speaker 1: And he's also in The Brutalist, for which he was
Speaker 1: nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I always like Guy Pearson. He is great in this,
Speaker 3: but once again a very different kind of role for him.
Speaker 1: All right, now, coming back to Robert Carlyle. Robert Carlyle
Speaker 1: plays we're past spoilers at this point, so we can
Speaker 1: go in and say that it's kind of a double role.
Speaker 1: He plays a character that it's initially identified as with
Speaker 1: the name Calhoun, but we come to know as ives.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of great things about this movie,
Speaker 3: but I would say Robert Carlyle is the hub around
Speaker 3: which the spokes revolve here. He is the core of
Speaker 3: this movie, and he's like the best thing in it.
Speaker 3: He is driving this train and he's driving it right
Speaker 3: off the tracks and it's great. He is fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he really gets to shine here. He gets to
Speaker 1: go in various directions. It's in many ways a Dracula
Speaker 1: role in all the great ways that it's a Dracula role,
Speaker 1: but with all these other layers in place, Like he
Speaker 1: gets to play a frontier mad man, he gets to
Speaker 1: play a cold, pragmatist villain. He gets to be this
Speaker 1: kind of embodiment of predatory capitalism and empire. And there
Speaker 1: are also subtle homoerotic layers to the character as well.
Speaker 1: I don't think those are as pronounced, or at least
Speaker 1: they didn't jump out at me as much, But based
Speaker 1: on interviews I've seen with Carlisle, he does stress that
Speaker 1: that it was part of the calculus of the character.
Speaker 1: So Carlile is of course a noted Scottish actor whose
Speaker 1: credits go back to the late eighties, starring in TV
Speaker 1: with some small roles before starring in nineteen ninety one's
Speaker 1: Riff Raff, which earned him earned him a BAF denomination.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't long after this that he worked with
Speaker 1: Byrd Unsafe and then worked with her again on Priest
Speaker 1: the same year, nineteen ninety four, he also appeared in
Speaker 1: a supporting role in the Robin Williams film Being Human.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety six, he appeared in Dan he Boils
Speaker 1: Train Spotting, playing the sadistic Oh, it's been a while
Speaker 1: since I've seen this. I think the character's name is Bigbie.
Speaker 1: It's been forever. Yeah, Franco Begbee, I think. And this
Speaker 1: is a role he'd reprise in twenty seventeen's T two
Speaker 1: Trained Spotting. He followed this up with ninety seven's Face
Speaker 1: and The Full Monty, and this was another role he'd
Speaker 1: later reprise in twenty thirteen The Full Monty TV Project.
Speaker 1: He was a ninety nine's Plunkett McClean ninety nine's The
Speaker 1: World Is Not Enough. I forgot about this one. But
Speaker 1: he's a Bond villain.
Speaker 3: Oh, he's the villain of it. I've seen this movie,
Speaker 3: but I don't really remember he.
Speaker 1: Is either this is Yeah, I'm not a big fan
Speaker 1: of this era of Bond pictures, but he either plays
Speaker 1: the main villain or the chief henchman.
Speaker 3: Okay, the world is not. Oh is this the one with? Yes? Sorry,
Speaker 3: just had to look it up. She's doctor Christmas Jones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm I think I saw this, but I maybe
Speaker 1: I didn't because I don't really remember any of this.
Speaker 3: I notice it's a forgettable one. It's got a showdown
Speaker 3: in a nuclear submarine I think in the end, and
Speaker 3: Robert Carlyle is he's a villain called Renard. I had
Speaker 3: to look this up to jog my memory. I truly
Speaker 3: did not remember any of these details.
Speaker 1: Goldie is in it, the UK DJ musician. But yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I haven't seen this one at all. Well, it's
Speaker 1: not Robert Carlyle's fault. That's like good no, but you know,
Speaker 1: more power to him forgetting that Bond villain pay day.
Speaker 1: Let's see that same year, though, he was in Angela's Ashes,
Speaker 1: and then in two thousand he was in the Beach.
Speaker 1: He played Adolf Hitler in the two thousand and three
Speaker 1: mini series Hitler The Rise of Evil. Other credits include
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven's Aragon and also twenty eight weeks
Speaker 1: later from the same year. And he also played the
Speaker 1: role of sort of an updated version of Rumpel Stilskin
Speaker 1: on TVs Once Upon a Time, which ran from twenty
Speaker 1: eleven to twenty eighteen. All right, third billing for this
Speaker 1: picture is David Arquette playing the character Cleaves.
Speaker 3: Billing that's a strange choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think I guess they were capitalizing on
Speaker 1: his sort of like MTV era Scream franchise celebrity status
Speaker 1: at the time. But this is a very minimal role,
Speaker 1: kind of a mild comic relief stoner character.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's good in his scenes, no offense to
Speaker 3: David Arquette at all, but he's more unhinged than I
Speaker 3: would have expected David Arquette to get, like his hysterical
Speaker 3: laughter at absolutely nothing and h and also like while
Speaker 3: he's getting gutted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I guess they, you know, they when they
Speaker 1: were marketing it, they're like, you liked Scream, right, well,
Speaker 1: enjoy Ravenous because ye at this point, Scream one and
Speaker 1: two had already come out the same year he starred
Speaker 1: and Never Been Kissed. Subsequent films include two thousand and
Speaker 1: two's Eight Legged Freaks, two thousand and fours Never Die Alone,
Speaker 1: and also twenty fifteen's Bone Tomahawk, which you know is
Speaker 1: another weird Western frontier movie.
Speaker 3: Oh. I remember having mixed feelings about that one, because
Speaker 3: I thought like, in some ways it was well made,
Speaker 3: but also it just made me feel so nasty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's kind of a kind of a nasty one.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm like, again, only twenty fifteen, and I'm not
Speaker 1: sure it has aged well, but and I haven't gone
Speaker 1: back and rewatched it, but I enjoyed the experience when
Speaker 1: it came out. You know, Kurt Russell was great and
Speaker 1: everything and solid supporting cast in that one as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, who is it? Oh Man who plays Richard Jenkins.
Speaker 1: Richard Jenkins is outstanding in that.
Speaker 3: He's great in it. Yeah, but I remember that one
Speaker 3: just being particularly just mean and vile.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let's get into the more of the
Speaker 1: supporting cast. Here. We have Jeremy Davis playing Toffler. Born
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, American actor who the same year was
Speaker 1: part of the cast of Saving Private Ryan. He'd already
Speaker 1: appeared in ninety six's Twister Subsequent films included two thousand
Speaker 1: and two Secretary as well as Solaris, and he played
Speaker 1: Charles Manson in two thousand and four's Helter Skelter that
Speaker 1: was a TV film, and he also had roles on
Speaker 1: TV's Lost and Justified.
Speaker 3: It's weird to imagine him playing Charles Manson because he
Speaker 3: usually played it once again against type there he usually
Speaker 3: plays these kind of quiet, frightened, timid mouse like characters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's a he's like a sweet but weird
Speaker 1: dude in this very religious if we haven't mentioned it already,
Speaker 1: one of the whole things here is that all of
Speaker 1: the people that have been kind of exiled to this
Speaker 1: remote outpost in Ravenous they are all outcast of one
Speaker 1: sort of or another. They have been put here to
Speaker 1: be forgotten. This is the ubliette of the American Frontier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, and then we have we have a major
Speaker 1: supporting character by the name of Heart, played by Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Jones born nineteen forty six, and is kind of This
Speaker 1: one is kind of a tough one to write about
Speaker 1: and to bring up here because Jones was one of
Speaker 1: I think the most beloved weirdo character actors of the
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties, noted for roles in such films as
Speaker 1: eighty four's On It of Course, nineteen eighty six is
Speaker 1: Ferris Bueller's Day Off, in which he is the principal.
Speaker 1: He also has a fun villain role in Howard the
Speaker 1: Duck the same year, He's in eighty eight Beetlejuice, ninety
Speaker 1: two Stay Tuned, and nineteen ninety four's ed Wood, in
Speaker 1: which he played the amazing Chris Well.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: On TV. He had a regular cast role on HBO's Deadwood,
Speaker 1: but of course legal problems in two thousand and two
Speaker 1: with some really rough charges that I don't even want
Speaker 1: to get into here on the podcast, but the info
Speaker 1: is readily available on Wikipedia and everywhere else. This essentially
Speaker 1: ended his career. At any rate. His on screen work
Speaker 1: was always terrific, and he's great in this His Heart
Speaker 1: is it Colonel Heart.
Speaker 3: I can't.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily remember everybody's military rank, but Heart is
Speaker 1: a very likable character and it has a very nice,
Speaker 1: it perhaps a bit rushed character arc.
Speaker 3: Which sets up a late movie twist that is I
Speaker 3: remember back in the day, was like a real gut punch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and yeah, it hit the same way, even
Speaker 1: though it was knowing it was coming. All right. We
Speaker 1: also have General Slawson. Great choice of a name because
Speaker 1: it sounds like it goes with barbecue, played by John Spencer,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen forty six through two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: Noted American actor best remembered for his role as Leo
Speaker 1: McGarry on TV's The West Wing. Other credits include eighty
Speaker 1: three's War Games, eighty nine's Black Rain, nineties Presumed Innocent,
Speaker 1: ninety six is the Rock in ninety seven's Copland. This
Speaker 1: was his last theatrical appearance.
Speaker 3: I was thinking of this character as General Cole Slawson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they do those nicknames. Yeah, he's really good at this.
Speaker 1: You your gruff authority figure. Everything that you would ask
Speaker 1: about that character, he does a good job, all right.
Speaker 1: We also we have a return of a character actor
Speaker 1: that we previously talked about on the show. Steven Spinella
Speaker 1: plays Knox born nineteen fifty six, American actor of stage, screen,
Speaker 1: and TV. We previously talked about him because he was
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety five's Virtuosity. He played the creepy doctor
Speaker 1: Lynden Meyer.
Speaker 3: Is this the guy who In Up, he creates Sid
Speaker 3: six point seven, Yes, the Russell Crow virtual reality murderer,
Speaker 3: but then like starts worshiping him.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, yes, yeah, so yeah, great creepy performance in Virtuosity.
Speaker 1: Totally different vibe here as he plays brash, terminally alcoholic
Speaker 1: major knocks. His other main film credits include two thousand
Speaker 1: and eights Milk, twenty tens Rubber, and twenty twelve's Lincoln.
Speaker 1: Solid performance here. All right, then we also have Reich.
Speaker 1: This is the character played by Neil McDonough born nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six. Stealey, American tough guy actor whose first role
Speaker 1: was a dock worker in nineteen nineties Dark Man. He
Speaker 1: also popped up in ninety six's Star Trek First Contact.
Speaker 1: Really busted out with a role in two thousand and
Speaker 1: one's Band of Brothers, followed by a key role in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two's Minority Report, and he got to
Speaker 1: play m Bison in the two thousand and nine Street
Speaker 1: Fighter movie.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, that's the later movie, because yeah, for me,
Speaker 3: m Bison will always be Roald Julia. Oh.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Once Raal Julia has played a role, it's his forever.
Speaker 1: So mcdod is good here it's kind of one note role,
Speaker 1: but it's a good note.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: And then we have a couple of Native American actors
Speaker 1: to round everything out. First, we have Joseph Running Fox
Speaker 1: playing the character of George born nineteen fifty five, Native
Speaker 1: American actor of the Pueblo Nation whose credits go back
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy eight. He played the lead in the
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three Geronimo TV movie and since Ravenus has
Speaker 1: continued to work steadily, appearing in two thousand and two Skinwalkers,
Speaker 1: the Navajo Mysteries, TV's Sons of Anarchy, and also TV's
Speaker 1: Dark Wins.
Speaker 3: The character George is the scout who works at the
Speaker 3: four Tier, and he is also the character who delivers
Speaker 3: the movie's core lower dump.
Speaker 1: Yes, so a minimal role, but an important one, and
Speaker 1: he's good. And then we also have Sheliah Talzi playing
Speaker 1: Martha born nineteen sixty She's a Monomine and Stockbridge, Munsey
Speaker 1: Native American actress whose credits include nineteen ninety two's Thunderheart,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five's Lord of Illusions, the Clive Barker film.
Speaker 1: I don't remember her from that, but that's one i've
Speaker 1: been tempted to revisit. In recent years. She pops up
Speaker 1: on TV's The X Files. She was in two thousand
Speaker 1: and two skin Walkers and two thousand and fives Into
Speaker 1: the West. She was active from about ninety two through
Speaker 1: two thousand and five.
Speaker 3: Her character's presence is limited, but she does play a
Speaker 3: kind of central role in giving one of the core
Speaker 3: like moral exhortations in the movie. Especially. It's interesting watching
Speaker 3: the movie multiple times because you might not fully understand
Speaker 3: what she's saying to Guy Pearce's character the first time
Speaker 3: you see it, and then it kind of makes more
Speaker 3: sense when you know the whole arc of the story.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Martha and George have important roles in being the characters
Speaker 1: who have some degree of understanding of what's actually happening.
Speaker 1: They provide a certain wisdom that has thus far been
Speaker 1: elusive for the Western characters in the picture. All right,
Speaker 1: briefly getting behind the camera here. Anthony B. Richmond was
Speaker 1: a cinematographer on this Born nineteen forty two. His work
Speaker 1: goes back to the nineteen sixties and includes such films
Speaker 1: as seventy three's Don't Look Now and nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: is The Man Who Fell to Earth. Wow. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: also worked on ninety two s Candy Man and ninety
Speaker 1: five's Tales from the Hood and apparently is still working today.
Speaker 3: That's a good resume for a bunch of great looking films.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Nicholas Rogue connection there. And you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to get into the producers, but I think there
Speaker 1: is a producer executive producer perhaps connection to some Nicholas
Speaker 1: Rogue pictures as well. Okay, but now look, we should
Speaker 1: talk to just a little bit about the score. In
Speaker 1: my opinion, Ravenous boasts one of the most original, un
Speaker 1: effective scores that I can think of, certainly from this
Speaker 1: time period, painting a rich sonic tapestry that includes discordant
Speaker 1: renditions of patriotic anthems and American frontier banjo, some of
Speaker 1: which I've read was performed by non musicians that were
Speaker 1: gathered together for the project. You have tape loops, you
Speaker 1: have brooding primal beats, electronic distortion, in addition to some
Speaker 1: more traditional movie score flourishes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. The score is extremely varied. It's all
Speaker 3: over the place and all different kinds of genres and textures,
Speaker 3: and it comes together quite well. This is I would
Speaker 3: agree with you. The score is one of the strongest
Speaker 3: elements of the movie, which is overall very strong, and
Speaker 3: it really stands out to me. I think the music
Speaker 3: is fantastic, especially because there are so many moments where
Speaker 3: the music it seems like it doesn't quite fit in
Speaker 3: one way or another, like it doesn't fit the time period,
Speaker 3: or it doesn't fit the mood of the scene. But
Speaker 3: then it kind of does, like it just continues and
Speaker 3: then it resolves and reaches this state where it does
Speaker 3: feel right in a way that it kind of rewards
Speaker 3: your earlier trust in this tension created between sound and picture,
Speaker 3: and I don't know, it's it's a very interesting feeling
Speaker 3: that it creates in the film. And this is one
Speaker 3: that I would like to have music from this movie
Speaker 3: just on a record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's this. It was released on CD, and I
Speaker 1: know that I either had the CD or some MP
Speaker 1: three's ripped from the CD back in the day, But
Speaker 1: as of this recording, I don't think it's available to
Speaker 1: stream anywhere aside from YouTube, as you know, probably a
Speaker 1: user upload a situation, and as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: has never been released on vinyl. It seems like this
Speaker 1: would be a no brainer for a really cool like
Speaker 1: blood red vinyl release, but you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: how the rights for those sorts of things work. Apparently
Speaker 1: the music here was a so the music here is
Speaker 1: a joint composition of two different musicians, though it's sometimes
Speaker 1: a tangled web to try to figure out which one
Speaker 1: did what. Apparently it was ultimately like a sixty forty split,
Speaker 1: and the credit order depends on whether you're looking at
Speaker 1: the film or the published album. But the two gentlemen
Speaker 1: involved here are Damon Alburn and Michael Nyman. Damon Alburn
Speaker 1: born nineteen sixty eight is, of course the illustrious English
Speaker 1: musician best known for his work with the British band Blur,
Speaker 1: who had a string of hits that I mostly know
Speaker 1: from their inclusion in various DJ mixes from the nineties.
Speaker 1: But then he would go on to be the key
Speaker 1: creative force and lead vocalist on the Gorillas Project. I
Speaker 1: believe his only other film score or soundtrack work is
Speaker 1: a two thousand and one film called one Oh one Reykivic.
Speaker 1: That's another collaboration, so really not much that's directly film
Speaker 1: oriented outside of that. In ravenous, but he's worked in
Speaker 1: all manner of musical projects, including things like operas, throughout
Speaker 1: the course of his career. If nothing else, you're familiar
Speaker 1: with Gorillas, and yeah, his work is fabulous.
Speaker 3: There are actually moments in the movie where I don't
Speaker 3: know if he's using exactly the same electronic instruments or voicings,
Speaker 3: but there are moments where I hear bits of the
Speaker 3: first Gorillas album, Like there's a kind of electronic piano
Speaker 3: tone used in a loop throughout the hit, their hit
Speaker 3: Clint Eastwood that I hear that same tone in the
Speaker 3: soundtrack here. And there's just stuff like that that feels
Speaker 3: very familiar to Gorillas fans.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that would make sense now. As for Michael
Speaker 1: Nyman born nineteen forty four, English composer, pianist, filmmaker as
Speaker 1: well in his own right, His best received scores in
Speaker 1: addition to this one include his work on nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight's Gatica, two thousand's The End of the Affair,
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen's The Piano. His other scores include nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one's Prospero's books ninety four's mesmer In nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: six is the ogre?
Speaker 3: All right? Is it time to talk about the plot?
Speaker 1: Yes, let's do so.
Speaker 3: Okay. We get a couple of epigraphs right at the start.
Speaker 3: One is a quote attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche that says
Speaker 3: he that fights with monsters should look to it that
Speaker 3: he himself does not become a monster. The relationship of
Speaker 3: that to the plot will become a parent as we
Speaker 3: talk more. And then you get a second quote that
Speaker 3: comes in which is attributed to anonymous, and it is
Speaker 3: eat me this.
Speaker 1: I like this, but this also maybe feels like a
Speaker 1: late studio attempt to sort of try and control how
Speaker 1: people are going to consume this picture. But I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly whose choice this was. I don't know it
Speaker 1: still works.
Speaker 3: Is this the chef coming out and telling you how
Speaker 3: to eat your food?
Speaker 1: Yeah? But overall I love this because we're instantly hit
Speaker 1: with that squeaky, perhaps non musician Frontier band rendition of
Speaker 1: the American patriotic song Hail Columbia, which sounds fabulous here,
Speaker 1: but when you look up the lyrics, it's it's pretty
Speaker 1: It fits pretty well. To what we're about to see.
Speaker 1: Hail Columbia, Happy Land, Hail Ye Heroes, heaven born band
Speaker 1: who fought and bled in Freedom's cause, Who fought and
Speaker 1: bled in Freedom's cause.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So we start with, of course, that kind of music.
Speaker 3: It's patriotic military marching band kind of music. And we
Speaker 3: see a waving American flag and that with fewer stars
Speaker 3: though than the flag you're used to because this is
Speaker 3: the eighteen forties. And then we see a banquet hall
Speaker 3: with a long table, bunch of place settings, patriotic regalia,
Speaker 3: and it's lined by officers in full uniform, so this
Speaker 3: is some kind of ceremony. And we hear a voice
Speaker 3: saying for heroism beyond the call of duty, for successfully
Speaker 3: infiltrating the enemy's ranks and securing victory independently with cunning
Speaker 3: and honor. We see Guy Pierce here in uniform as
Speaker 3: Captain John Boyd, and he is ready to receive a
Speaker 3: medal for his meritorious service. We also get a glimpse
Speaker 3: of John Spence is the general presiding over this ceremony.
Speaker 3: This is General Slawson, and then we cut back to
Speaker 3: Boyd looking kind of uneasy as we get a sudden
Speaker 3: flashback to the midst of battle, so we see him
Speaker 3: in a very different place. There's gunshots ringing out on
Speaker 3: this hillside, smoke everywhere. This is supposed to be the
Speaker 3: Mexican American War, so it's a Mexican kind of landscape.
Speaker 3: And then Guy Pearce is kind of falling to his
Speaker 3: knees in the middle of the battlefield, as if his
Speaker 3: strength has left him, And of course we get a
Speaker 3: title telling us it's the Mexican American War. The year
Speaker 3: is eighteen forty seven. A chaplain says a blessing, and
Speaker 3: then all of the officers here at this banquet sit
Speaker 3: down at their places at the long table, and they
Speaker 3: dig in and the meal appears to be steak and
Speaker 3: nothing else, not even a little salad, baked potato, some cream, spinach. Nothing.
Speaker 3: But of course then I remember that this film takes
Speaker 3: place before vegetables were invented.
Speaker 1: I was reminded of that in this of of the
Speaker 1: later film two thousand and sevens There Will Be Blood,
Speaker 1: in which Daniel day Lewis's character Daniel Plainview. At one
Speaker 1: point he is in a restaurant with his son and
Speaker 1: he orders quote two steaks, a whiskey and water for him,
Speaker 1: and we never get to actually see that meal, but
Speaker 1: I always I had a false memory that I had
Speaker 1: seen it because I just imagine it coming out just
Speaker 1: like that, just two steaks, no vegetables, one glass of whiskey,
Speaker 1: one glass of water. Though I believe there is a
Speaker 1: later key scene in which plaine View is enjoying a
Speaker 1: plate of just steak.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know steak. How steakhouses worked back then,
Speaker 3: maybe that was a more normal kind of meal to eat,
Speaker 3: but I know I have to imagine even back then,
Speaker 3: people would probably want some more variety. You want some starch,
Speaker 3: some sides, some vegetables, something in there, like just a
Speaker 3: plate of steak.
Speaker 1: The last time I went to a like certified steak
Speaker 1: restaurant before I gave up steak, I do remember it
Speaker 1: being a situation where you order the steak and then
Speaker 1: you have to pay extra for anything else, any sides,
Speaker 1: which kind of I mean, I guess the idea is
Speaker 1: that that's just how it's priced out and all. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's tradition, but it also kind of felt like like, oh,
Speaker 1: if you want to get anything in addition to the meat,
Speaker 1: you better pay for it, you're paying extra for that, buddy,
Speaker 1: the steak stands alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that that sort of makes sense, like
Speaker 3: because you can choose, like you get to pick your
Speaker 3: sides all the carts, so you pick your favorite. So
Speaker 3: it's not just like you know, oh, this is what
Speaker 3: comes with it. But yeah, I see what you're saying there.
Speaker 3: You know, the cream spinach is the classic steakhouse side.
Speaker 3: I feel like, at least in the I don't know
Speaker 3: how far back that tradition goes, but I would think
Speaker 3: even in the eighteen forties you got to give them
Speaker 3: some cream spinach or something.
Speaker 1: In this case, they were not able to requisition some
Speaker 1: cream spinach for the troops.
Speaker 3: So everybody noisily digs into their steak and nothing else,
Speaker 3: and you can really just hear them making sounds. Like
Speaker 3: the movie plays up the disgustingness of the eating noises,
Speaker 3: and it's like, and as this happens, Boyd is sitting there,
Speaker 3: the only person not eating. All his peers are shoveling
Speaker 3: the meat into their mouths, and you can see him
Speaker 3: feeling anxiety, like his breathing is shallow and he's looking
Speaker 3: around nervously. And then they also show Boyd's plate, which
Speaker 3: looks disgusting. It's got this gross looking gray cut of
Speaker 3: I think this is beef shank, which also is confusing
Speaker 3: because that is not typically prepared as a steak. That's
Speaker 3: going to be tough as rubber. If you need shank,
Speaker 3: you have to cook it a long time, like in
Speaker 3: a stew or something. So it's just like a steak
Speaker 3: of beef shank sitting in a puddle of juice that
Speaker 3: has clearly been modified to look less like regular steak
Speaker 3: juices and more like fresh red blood. It looks like
Speaker 3: thick and bright red. Here Boyd has another flashback to battle,
Speaker 3: this time too, lying pinned down on the ground in
Speaker 3: a pile of dead bodies, covered in blood, gasping for breath,
Speaker 3: and eventually the association overwhelms him. He bolts up, gets
Speaker 3: up from the banquet table, runs outside, and vomits, and
Speaker 3: then we get the title Ravenous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think this is where that unsettling banjo
Speaker 1: music begins to kick in a ditty that will continue
Speaker 1: to hear over and over again throughout the picture. So really,
Speaker 1: at every key moment in the film, the music is
Speaker 1: right there, amping everything up, and at times like subtly
Speaker 1: twisting your expectations.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the next thing we see is John Spencer
Speaker 3: as the General, giving Boyd a real dressing down in private.
Speaker 3: He tells Boyd that he is not actually a hero
Speaker 3: and he wants him as far away from his company
Speaker 3: as possible. So Boyd is sent away on a new
Speaker 3: assignment to a remote frontier fort in California called Fort Spencer,
Speaker 3: and we see Boyd in a few little scenes making
Speaker 3: his journey across a background of these huge, black, snow
Speaker 3: covered mountains. I think these are supposed to be the
Speaker 3: Sierra Nevadas and millions of acres of dark green forest.
Speaker 3: This wild landscape, so Fort Spencer is sparsely occupied. It's
Speaker 3: this outpost in a meadow in view of the mountains,
Speaker 3: built mostly of woods, surrounded by palisade wall, and the
Speaker 3: accommodations are pretty grungy. Boyd gets shown his quarters. He
Speaker 3: sort of like tests the give of the bedroll and
Speaker 3: then looks at it, looks at himself in this dim
Speaker 3: spotted mirror. In this sequence, we also briefly meet the
Speaker 3: character Martha played by Sila Tauci, and this is a
Speaker 3: Native American woman who works at the Fort and she
Speaker 3: brings boyds and blankets here. Eventually, Boyd has to go
Speaker 3: for a meeting with the commander of the fort, Colonel Hart,
Speaker 3: who is at least at first portrayed as kindly, mild
Speaker 3: mannered and a bit odd. We see him dressed up
Speaker 3: with a large blanket or cloak kind of covering his uniform,
Speaker 3: and he's often like this when we see him. He's
Speaker 3: got something kind of draped over him that just turns
Speaker 3: him into a kind of mass. And he's hearing what
Speaker 3: looks like two different pairs of eyeglasses at the same time,
Speaker 3: one set up on the bridge of his nose and
Speaker 3: another down near the tip. I guess for reading. I
Speaker 3: don't understand if that was like a thing people commonly
Speaker 3: did back then or.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. I haven't caught myself doing that
Speaker 1: with my own reading glasses.
Speaker 3: Yet it does contribute to making him seem kind of odd.
Speaker 1: Well, no, I have to back that up. I do
Speaker 1: frequently find myself painting miniatures with a pair of reading
Speaker 1: glasses and my magnification loops, so I have essentially done
Speaker 1: this a time or two. So maybe that's what's up.
Speaker 1: Because as we learn, like his passion is reading various texts,
Speaker 1: reading books in their original language, So who knows, sometimes
Speaker 1: maybe he has to really bust up the optics in
Speaker 1: order to handle certain font sizes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so when Boyd gets in, he's like trying to
Speaker 3: frustratedly pry into a walnut with a knife, and this
Speaker 3: is unsuccessful. So he's telling Boyd about what you were
Speaker 3: talking about, how he fights the boredom the outpost by
Speaker 3: reading these old texts in the original languages. And then
Speaker 3: he goes and gets this giant leather bound book from
Speaker 3: the shelf and uses it to smash his walnuts open.
Speaker 3: I wonder if there's a kind of implied joke here that,
Speaker 3: like he tells himself the way he fights the frontier
Speaker 3: boredom is through reading these ancient tomes, but really the
Speaker 3: way he fights the boredom is through eating. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, possibly it's there's a strong time enough at last
Speaker 1: vibe to this character, you know, Yeah, like he is
Speaker 1: like everyone here, he's an outcast, but he's found the
Speaker 1: place where he can mostly just set around and read.
Speaker 3: Hart asks Boyd if he has a hobby, and Boyd
Speaker 3: says swimming. Probably not much opportunity for swimming here in
Speaker 3: the mountains. Heart explains a bit about the history of
Speaker 3: the ford. It was originally a Spanish mission. Now it
Speaker 3: serves as a way station for travelers moving through the
Speaker 3: Sierra Nevadas, and he says, of course, there are very
Speaker 3: few travelers in the winter, so the ford only has
Speaker 3: minimal staff for the season, and then we get a
Speaker 3: brief introduction to each of them. There's Private Toffler, who
Speaker 3: is very religious. This is Jeremy Davies. We see him
Speaker 3: praying before meals and like heaving wooden crosses up to
Speaker 3: the sky. He's also in many scenes trying to compose
Speaker 3: a hymn. You can see him working on the melody.
Speaker 1: And the lyrics. It's not coming together.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We see Major Knox played by Steven Spanilla, who
Speaker 3: likes to drink. That's his main character trait. He likes
Speaker 3: the whiskey bottle. He used to be a veterinarian, so
Speaker 3: he is the forts medic. We see Private Reich played
Speaker 3: by Neil McDonough, who is the tough guy, and there's
Speaker 3: this brief flash of him standing naked up to the
Speaker 3: waist in a mountain stream surrounded by snow, and he's
Speaker 3: just screaming and flexing his muscles.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, this is some troubled masculinity here.
Speaker 3: I am hard man. Yeah yeah. And then of course
Speaker 3: there's George played by Joseph running Fox, who is Martha's brother.
Speaker 3: He's a Washo scout. And then there is Private Cleaves
Speaker 3: played by David Arquette. Hart calls him the over medicated
Speaker 3: Private Cleaves. He likes drugs, and he's the cook. We
Speaker 3: get a short little dinner scene with everyone assembled. The
Speaker 3: vibes are pretty cursed, especially since Cleaves is seized with
Speaker 3: crazy laughter at apparently nothing the whole time. And then
Speaker 3: we get some more of Boyd's backstory. We like flashback
Speaker 3: to what happened during the war, and we learned the truth.
Speaker 3: The truth was Boyd was in the middle of battle
Speaker 3: and he became so terrified that he froze, and he
Speaker 3: just laid down on the field and pretended to be
Speaker 3: dead while his men were slaughtered all around him. And
Speaker 3: then after the battle was over, the enemy came and
Speaker 3: collected the bodies from the field and put them in
Speaker 3: a cart. Boyd was at the bottom of the cart
Speaker 3: with the blood of his commanding officer running down his
Speaker 3: face and into his mouth. Then he says, after this
Speaker 3: he had a change of heart. Something came over him
Speaker 3: while he was lying at the bottom of that cart.
Speaker 3: He regained his courage, and he sprung from the pile
Speaker 3: of bodies, and he single handedly captured the enemy command.
Speaker 3: And this was the act that won him his commendation
Speaker 3: for heroism. But when General Slawson found out that this
Speaker 3: whole thing started with the dreadful act of cowardice, you know,
Speaker 3: playing dead on the battlefield, he decided to punish Boyd
Speaker 3: by sending him out here to California. So back in
Speaker 3: the present, it is winter time, snow is falling, and
Speaker 3: Heart sends Cleaves and Martha out on a journey to
Speaker 3: the nearest trading post to get the stuff you need salt,
Speaker 3: pork and flour and all that. And it's going to
Speaker 3: be a three day journey. So it's only the rest
Speaker 3: of the crew there left at the fort. And while
Speaker 3: they're gone, we see Heart and Boyd bonding sharing some bourbon.
Speaker 3: There's an interesting little moment where Heart talks about how
Speaker 3: he wanted to escape the world by coming here, but
Speaker 3: now he wants to escape this place. Quote frightening thing
Speaker 3: about escape is the chance you might end up someplace worse.
Speaker 3: I don't know if this is one of the major
Speaker 3: themes movie. I have to think about it, but it
Speaker 3: is a little interesting in the context of the story,
Speaker 3: that the observation that we can be deceived into thinking
Speaker 3: that everything would be better if we could just change
Speaker 3: some particular set of external circumstances, like where we are,
Speaker 3: what our job is, or what we're doing, or something
Speaker 3: like that, but that sometimes, you know, maybe sometimes that
Speaker 3: is really the problem, but a lot of times it's not.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you manage that change and discover that wasn't actually
Speaker 3: the problem, and your new circumstance is not actually the solution.
Speaker 3: The new circumstance is something you once again desire to escape.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that idea does weave itself rather
Speaker 1: nicely through through many aspects of the plot.
Speaker 3: But this moment is suddenly interrupted by a boo scare outside.
Speaker 3: Through a frosted window, Boyd sees a figure in black
Speaker 3: looking in at them from the cold. So the soldiers
Speaker 3: run outside and they find a man collapsed in the snow,
Speaker 3: apparently dying of hypothermia, and they bring him inside and
Speaker 3: they're able to warm him up and save his life.
Speaker 3: The next day, the man wakes up and he looks
Speaker 3: to me surprisingly healthy. He introduces himself as F. W. Colhoun,
Speaker 3: servant of God, and he's like, I don't know, like
Speaker 3: you get to look at him and like he looks
Speaker 3: like pretty well fed, Like he looks like he's doing great.
Speaker 1: He's worth noting to hear that both Calhoun and Boyd
Speaker 1: they both kind of look like Jesus, you know, they're
Speaker 1: both shaggy, long hair and either a beard or a goate.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Colhoun explains that he had been stuck in
Speaker 3: the mountains for three months before he found the fort,
Speaker 3: three months without food. And Heart is incredulous at this,
Speaker 3: but Colhoun clarifies. He says, I said three months without food,
Speaker 3: not three months with nothing to eat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's going to explain. But you also get
Speaker 1: the idea here that that's all he really needed to say,
Speaker 1: Like everyone knows what he means by that. Everyone's familiar
Speaker 1: with the idea of cannibalism.
Speaker 3: So here Colhoun launches into his backstory and he gives
Speaker 3: a whole monologue. I'm not gonna quote the entire thing here,
Speaker 3: but basically he tells a story of how he was
Speaker 3: part of a traveling party with five other people and
Speaker 3: a There was a guide. They had, a military man
Speaker 3: named Colonel Ives, who he calls a detestable man, a
Speaker 3: disastrous guide, who professed to know a new shorter route
Speaker 3: through the Sierra Nevada mountains. But in fact, it turns
Speaker 3: out they took the route and then they got stuck
Speaker 3: in a snowstorm in the winter, and they were stuck
Speaker 3: in a cave and they couldn't get out. This, of course,
Speaker 3: mirrors real incidents in history, like the quote shortcut that
Speaker 3: was taken by the members of the Donner Party. This
Speaker 3: was a path that others had taken in the past.
Speaker 3: But basically the Donner Party, when they took a different
Speaker 3: path through the Sierra Nevada has got delayed and then
Speaker 3: got stuck up in the mountains in the winter. So
Speaker 3: he describes them getting stuck in this cave, and then
Speaker 3: Calhoun and says, quote, we had run out of food.
Speaker 3: We ate the oxen, all of the horses, even my
Speaker 3: own dog, and that lasted us about a month. After that,
Speaker 3: we turned to our belts, shoes, any roots we could
Speaker 3: dig up. But you know, there's no real nourishment in
Speaker 3: those we remained famished. The day that Jones died, I
Speaker 3: was out collecting wood. He had expired from malnourishment, and
Speaker 3: when I returned, the others were cooking his legs for dinner.
Speaker 3: Would I have stopped it had I been there, I
Speaker 3: don't know, but I must say when I stepped inside
Speaker 3: that cave the smell of meat cooking, I thanked the Lord.
Speaker 3: I thanked the Lord. And then things got out of hand.
Speaker 3: And he goes on to describe how he, you know,
Speaker 3: only ate you know, the meat from the people who
Speaker 3: had died naturally, and he ate sparingly. But the others
Speaker 3: something changed in them, something came over them, and they
Speaker 3: had to eat a special Ives became insane, and he
Speaker 3: just kept killing other people from the cave so he
Speaker 3: could eat them. And at last, Calhoun says that his
Speaker 3: courage failed him, and he fled the cave, and he
Speaker 3: wandered out and eventually came across this fort. But the
Speaker 3: way the story trails off, it is alleged here that
Speaker 3: Colonel Ives is still alive up in the cave with
Speaker 3: at least one other person, innocent person stuck up there
Speaker 3: with him, a woman named McCready. Is she still alive
Speaker 3: as far as Calhoun knows, possibly she is. So Heart decides,
Speaker 3: based on the story that they immediately have to send
Speaker 3: out a rescue party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody really wants to go, but Heart is, you know,
Speaker 1: he's dedicated to what is right here, and he says,
Speaker 1: it's our job, it's our job. We have to do it.
Speaker 1: There's no choice.
Speaker 3: Everybody's getting ready to leave. But George comes up to
Speaker 3: Heart and Boyd and stops them to warn them about something.
Speaker 3: And it's based on Calhoun's story. What he wants to
Speaker 3: warn them about is the wind to Go being spoken
Speaker 3: of by some of the people of the north. In reality,
Speaker 3: I believe the Windygo legend comes from Algonquin folklore, which
Speaker 3: would have been further north and east. But here George
Speaker 3: explains and Heart translates for Boyd. The gist of it
Speaker 3: is a man eats another's flesh, usually the flesh of
Speaker 3: an enemy, and in doing so, he steals the man's strength,
Speaker 3: his essence, his spirit. His hunger becomes insatiable. The more
Speaker 3: he eats, the more he wants to and the more
Speaker 3: he eats, the stronger he becomes. And Heart is, like George,
Speaker 3: people don't still do that, do they? And George responds
Speaker 3: by telling him that white man eats the body of
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ every Sunday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he flips the high that he's been reading
Speaker 1: the soft ov and it has Christian iconography on the
Speaker 1: other side.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a nice moment. So the party sets out
Speaker 3: on the rescue mission. The party is Hart, Boyd, Reich, Toffler, George,
Speaker 3: and the stranger Colhoun. They pack up provisions, they bundle up,
Speaker 3: and they head into the mountains, and so we get
Speaker 3: a little montage of their journey. I like one little
Speaker 3: moment on the journey where Colhoun helps Toffler find a
Speaker 3: rhyme when he's composing as him like he says, he
Speaker 3: ends a line with the word servant, and he's going
Speaker 3: like leervent deervant, and Calhoun is like fervent. And Toffler
Speaker 3: is very, very helped by this. He's appreciative. But anyway,
Speaker 3: they are making their way along through the mountains and
Speaker 3: at one point they stop in this high mountain pass
Speaker 3: in the snow, and Boyd kind of questions Colhoun. He's
Speaker 3: clearly he's curious. He says, when you ate the flesh
Speaker 3: of the man, afterwards, you said your hunger was different,
Speaker 3: more wanton. Did you feel physically different, stronger? And Calhoun
Speaker 3: kind of mildly says, I seem to recall something like that,
Speaker 3: feeling some kind of virility. He's being very reticent about
Speaker 3: it now, but this will become funnier in retrospect. Also,
Speaker 3: I just have to comment on everybody's nineteenth century sunglasses here.
Speaker 3: They've all had these shaded goggles of various kinds that
Speaker 3: look like, I don't know, they look like Vin Diesel
Speaker 3: and pitch black.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Robert Carlisle here reminds me a little bit of
Speaker 1: Kurt Russell. And the thing actually with the sunglasses and
Speaker 1: to a certain extent with the hat. He does not
Speaker 1: have the full the full hat situation going on.
Speaker 3: But still so somewhere in here Toffler falls down and
Speaker 3: gets injured, and so he's got like a bloody wound
Speaker 3: that they have to bandage up. And later that night,
Speaker 3: after Toffler's injury, everybody's asleep in their tent when suddenly
Speaker 3: Toffler comes away can he starts screaming, and it's dark
Speaker 3: and you can't see what's happening. But then somebody lights
Speaker 3: a lamp and Toffler is backed up against one side
Speaker 3: of the tent, terrified, and on the other side of
Speaker 3: the tent is Calhoun looking pale and kind of crazed
Speaker 3: with blood on his lips, and Toffler says, he was
Speaker 3: licking me. And this is interesting because rob if you
Speaker 3: know what I mean, Robert Carlisle plays Calhoun very straightforwardly
Speaker 3: before this, like there's nothing to indicate really that they
Speaker 3: would should have any concern about him. He seems like
Speaker 3: a wronged, victimized man who is frightened and in search
Speaker 3: of justice, Like there's nothing about him that reads as abnormal.
Speaker 3: But that starts falling apart on this journey. So Calhoun
Speaker 3: pleads with hard on the others he's apologizing. He says
Speaker 3: he was having a nightmare and then he woke up
Speaker 3: to find himself crouched over Toffler licking the wound, and
Speaker 3: then he asks them to restrain him for the rest
Speaker 3: of the journey, so they do. They tie his hands,
Speaker 3: and then the next day they come to the cave,
Speaker 3: the cave where there should be ives and missus McCready
Speaker 3: and I still have strong memories of how freaky this
Speaker 3: scene was. The first time I saw it, such a
Speaker 3: powerful sense of unease and menace, and things just steadily
Speaker 3: becoming weirder and more chaotic by the moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the editing is superb here. The music is
Speaker 1: incredible building that tension. We get these kind of like
Speaker 1: rumbling rhythmic beats, like there's some primal force welling up
Speaker 1: through the whole situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And so as they approached the cave, Calhoun,
Speaker 3: who had been again, he was fairly composed and sympathetic
Speaker 3: at first, I mean, frightened, but that's all. He starts
Speaker 3: acting increasing erratic, not just afraid, but like quaking and
Speaker 3: moving his body in bizarre ways and making these weird
Speaker 3: little like yipping and whimpering noises again at first like
Speaker 3: he's afraid, but then just more and more weird, like
Speaker 3: some kind of trapped wolverine that's tipping from fear into
Speaker 3: a kind of threatening playfulness. And so Reike and Boyd
Speaker 3: go into the cave to investigate, and everybody else waits outside.
Speaker 3: And in this scene, Reich makes his contempt for Boyd
Speaker 3: clear while they're searching, like obviously he views Boyd as
Speaker 3: gutless and unworthy of command, and inside the cave, they
Speaker 3: find some kind of pit like a natural ubliet, and
Speaker 3: they go down and investigate this, and what they find
Speaker 3: inside is too many skeletons, too many skeletons to Magicalhoon's story.
Speaker 3: And the piles of clothes inside include a military uniform.
Speaker 3: So if the colonel ives of the story was not
Speaker 3: the eater and was instead eaten, who was the eater?
Speaker 3: And then the guys inside the cave are like, oh no,
Speaker 3: and they scream it's a trap.
Speaker 1: And this whole cave. To drive this home, this this
Speaker 1: is this is like a wonderful like cannibal cavern situation.
Speaker 1: We're right out of an episode of Tales from the Crypt.
Speaker 3: Disgusting. Yeah, the skeletons all have this kind of melted
Speaker 3: fat looking thing over them, like they look they're kind
Speaker 3: of waxy. It's really gross. And then so Boyd and
Speaker 3: Reich rush back outside, but Colhoun is already on the attack.
Speaker 3: He first he starts frantically digging in the dirt outside
Speaker 3: the cave and he digs up a knife. He attacks
Speaker 3: and stabs Heart. A heart lays on the ground dying.
Speaker 3: He shoots George, and then he chases Toffler out into
Speaker 3: the woods, and this is where I was saying Colhoun.
Speaker 3: He gets into full like late sequel Freddy Krueger mode.
Speaker 3: He is having fun, like he tries to shoot top
Speaker 3: but the gun jams and he goes that is so annoying.
Speaker 3: And then he's like playing with him. He's brandishing the
Speaker 3: knife at him and kind of dancing, and he says,
Speaker 3: run run. So the chase breaks out, and interesting music
Speaker 3: choices here once again. The music at first in this
Speaker 3: chase is not like a threatening, dissonant jabs. It's not
Speaker 3: minor key chase music. It's a hodoun It's like a lively,
Speaker 3: upbeat major key fiddle and banjo music.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you don't expect it to go with this direction,
Speaker 4: but it, you know, looking at it, this was the
Speaker 4: obvious choice, Like it breaks the tension and we get
Speaker 4: to go in a different direction here.
Speaker 3: So Boyd and Reike run after them again, even though
Speaker 3: Boyd is the officer and Reich is the private. Reich
Speaker 3: is giving all the orders and Boyd is lagging behind,
Speaker 3: barely complying. They find Toffler's body disemboweled. Colhoun is a
Speaker 3: bit like Jason Vorhees here, seemingly disappearing and reappearing through
Speaker 3: the woods. Kind of an arcane trickster. At one point here,
Speaker 3: Boyd tries to chicken out. He's like, I'm going back,
Speaker 3: I've got to go back, but Reike kind of bullies
Speaker 3: him into staying. Reike is killed by Calhoun with a
Speaker 3: knife to the chest and he falls off a cliff.
Speaker 3: Boyd panics and then to escape Calhoun, he jumps off
Speaker 3: the cliff. He survives the fall, but he falls into
Speaker 3: a bunch of trees, breaks his leg, and then tumbles
Speaker 3: along with Reike's body, into a hidden pit in the
Speaker 3: earth covered by pine branches, and then he falls down
Speaker 3: in there along with Reike's body, and time begins to pass.
Speaker 3: So we get a little montage showing kind of I
Speaker 3: don't know, maybe days going by, and we see Colhoun
Speaker 3: transformed into a free roaming master of the wilderness. Now
Speaker 3: he's just sitting on a shoal of pebbles in the
Speaker 3: middle of a river, eating lustily from a big joint
Speaker 3: of human meat and then laid. He's skipping rocks in
Speaker 3: the stream with his shirt covered in blood and blood
Speaker 3: all in his beard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just loving life.
Speaker 3: At this point, back in the pit, Boyd sets his bone. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so warning folks, there is a self bone setting scene
Speaker 3: in the film, and it seems like he's clearly done
Speaker 3: for unless he could get some nourishment. And there's Reich
Speaker 3: right there.
Speaker 1: And I love right how Right's body is presented here.
Speaker 1: Reich has like just wide open dead eyes, like just
Speaker 1: continuing to judge him for his cowardice.
Speaker 3: These horrible cloudy eyes, but this horrible, huge grin, this
Speaker 3: dead rictus and he's covered.
Speaker 1: In dried, like blackened blood.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's interesting to see how Boyd works his
Speaker 3: way up to it, Like it starts with him taking
Speaker 3: Reke's coat off his body because he's cold. He's like,
Speaker 3: can I borrow this? You don't need it? And then
Speaker 3: he's like, well, I already took the coat, and he
Speaker 3: gets the knife, and it's mostly implied what he does next,
Speaker 3: But sometime later we see Boyd emerge from the pit
Speaker 3: somehow healed, like he's good, he's all right enough to walk,
Speaker 3: and he makes the track back to the fort. When
Speaker 3: he arrives, he's received and taken in by Martha and Cleaves,
Speaker 3: who have returned from their trip, and Knox, who was
Speaker 3: passed out drunk the whole time there while everybody else
Speaker 3: was doing the things in the previous scenes. So there's
Speaker 3: a scene here where Boyd goes to Martha. Now he's
Speaker 3: clearly he's turned on to the idea of the Windigo,
Speaker 3: and he goes to her to ask if she knows
Speaker 3: anything about it, can it be stopped. She gives a
Speaker 3: different kind of answer than he was expecting. She says
Speaker 3: the Windigo always takes, never gives, and to stop the
Speaker 3: wind to go, she says, you must give yourself, you
Speaker 3: have to die. Implicit in this is that she understands
Speaker 3: Boyd to be part of the Windigo, and the only
Speaker 3: way to truly beat it is to admit that you
Speaker 3: are part of it. For sake, cure hunger, and die. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Boyd doesn't say I'm asking for a friend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't try to cover it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So as time goes on, General Slawson and his
Speaker 3: entourage arrived at the fort. They hear Boyd's story and
Speaker 3: they investigate the cave, but they find nothing there, no bodies,
Speaker 3: no bones. There's not a scrap of evidence to back
Speaker 3: up the story Boyd has told. And Slawson tries to
Speaker 3: get Boyd to amend his statement, but he won't anyway.
Speaker 3: General Slawson has brought in a new commanding officer to
Speaker 3: serve as a replacement for Heart. It's a colonel Is.
Speaker 3: So step into the room, Colonel, let's let's see your
Speaker 3: new captain Boyd here, and it is a colonel named Ives. Uh, oh,
Speaker 3: it's him. It's Colhoun. He's all cleaned up now he's
Speaker 3: in uniform. And it turns out Colhoun is Ives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, gone is the is the prospector's beard and the
Speaker 1: crazy eyes. Now we have this like steely calm that
Speaker 1: is over him. He looks very professional. He has establishment
Speaker 1: cannibalism at this point.
Speaker 3: Yes, so Boyd immediately he freaks out and he tries
Speaker 3: to tell everyone, but the story doesn't check out because
Speaker 3: in his story he got a shot off on Coolhoun,
Speaker 3: like he shot him in the shoulder. So they're like, okay, well,
Speaker 3: if your story's true, he would have a scar. So
Speaker 3: they look on ives body and there are no scars.
Speaker 3: They find nothing, just like well fed, unblemish skin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Boyd's stock here. He continues to go down
Speaker 1: in the generals the general's view.
Speaker 3: Here, that's right, So everybody settles in with the new kernel.
Speaker 3: There's like a dinner scene where they're all having ribs,
Speaker 3: except Cleaves discovers that neither Colonel Ives nor Boyd will
Speaker 3: eat meat. Ives never eats meat at all, since he
Speaker 3: can't forget it used to be an animal, and Boyd
Speaker 3: says he will only eat meat as a last resort.
Speaker 3: There's a later scene where Boyd is looking out the
Speaker 3: window at Cleaves as he's setting up some kind of sculpture,
Speaker 3: like a big cow skeleton thing, and Boyd fantasizes about
Speaker 3: killing him and eating his organs, and Boyd kind of
Speaker 3: snaps out of it. It's like, what's going on with me?
Speaker 3: Why can't I stop thinking about eating people?
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's like it's kind of a version of the
Speaker 1: Looney Tune scene where you know, one character looks at
Speaker 1: another and they just just see a giant turkey leg.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So later there's one night alone, Boyd is like
Speaker 3: he's paranoid. He's sitting outside clutching a big kitchen knife
Speaker 3: with a blanket around him, and Ives comes out. He's
Speaker 3: very suave and dapper, and he's smoking a cigarello out
Speaker 3: in the cold, and Ives breaks the tension by essentially
Speaker 3: now admitting it because they're alone. He says to Boyd,
Speaker 3: I found your private reichup there, or what was left
Speaker 3: of him. You didn't finish. I can't blame you. He
Speaker 3: was tough, but then a good soldier ought to be.
Speaker 3: And then he takes a big drag out of his
Speaker 3: smoke and he says, you know, not too long ago,
Speaker 3: I couldn't do that. Could barely take a breath without
Speaker 3: coughing up a pint of blood. Tuberculosis. That along with
Speaker 3: fierce headaches, depression, suicidal ambition. I was in pretty horrible shape.
Speaker 3: In fact, I was on my way to a sanatorium
Speaker 3: to convalesce or more likely die, when en route, this
Speaker 3: Indian scout told me a curious story. Man eats the
Speaker 3: flesh of another, he takes the other man's strength, absorbs
Speaker 3: his spirit. Well, naturally, I just had to try it. Consequently,
Speaker 3: I ate the scout first, and you know what, he
Speaker 3: was absolutely right. I grew stronger. And then he launches
Speaker 3: into telling the wagon train story is sort of a
Speaker 3: different version of the story he told at the beginning,
Speaker 3: but now he is colonel Ives. He manages to get
Speaker 3: people stuck in the mountain, so he can eat them.
Speaker 3: He says he ate five men in three months. And
Speaker 3: he says tuberculosis vanished, as did the headaches and the
Speaker 3: black thoughts. I returned that spring, happy and healthy and virile,
Speaker 3: And here I've shifts shifts to kind of tempting, to
Speaker 3: being the satan figure tempting Boyd. He's like, you know
Speaker 3: what I'm talking about. You've done it too. You know
Speaker 3: its power, So why are you resisting? And Boyd says,
Speaker 3: what's wrong? It's wrong to eat people? But Ives mocks him.
Speaker 3: He says, morality is the last bastion of a coward.
Speaker 3: It's like a man says he cannot do something because
Speaker 3: it would be wrong. The real reason is because he's afraid.
Speaker 3: And then he keeps tempting him, like he gets a
Speaker 3: cut on his hand and he's like, sniff my blood. Mmmm.
Speaker 1: It's a great see this and a subsequent sequence. We're
Speaker 1: going to get a subsequent temptation segment sequence between Ives
Speaker 1: and Boyd. Just tremendous here, especially from Carlisle. Just just
Speaker 1: great acting, love every of the way the scenes are
Speaker 1: put together.
Speaker 3: Tremendous, fantastic. Yeah, and Boyd here tries to attack Ives,
Speaker 3: but they are interrupted by Martha and then by Knox,
Speaker 3: who they quickly discovered that Cleaves has been killed along
Speaker 3: with all of the horses, and Boyd is put under
Speaker 3: arrest on suspicion for that killing. So the next day
Speaker 3: Martha volunteers to make the journey by foot to San
Speaker 3: Miguel to get General Slawson for you know, I guess
Speaker 3: to come back and investigate crimes once again. So that
Speaker 3: just leaves Knox, Boyd and Ives at the fort, and
Speaker 3: so Boyd is under arrest, and there's this scene where
Speaker 3: Ives is cooking a stew and Knox is like can
Speaker 3: I help? And Ives is like, not right now, perhaps
Speaker 3: later you can contribute. Yes, yes, So.
Speaker 1: We get a little bit of the comedy here, but
Speaker 1: they you know, they underscore it's it's.
Speaker 3: Nice, yeah, and Boyd listens. So in this scene there
Speaker 3: are things happening in the other room, and it becomes
Speaker 3: apparent that somebody in the other room has killed Knox
Speaker 3: with his own sword. But then when the door swings open,
Speaker 3: it's not i'ves standing there, it's Colonel Heart Yep. He
Speaker 3: smiles and he says hello, Boyd, and he's covered with blood.
Speaker 1: Now he doesn't have any of his glasses on. There's
Speaker 1: a new energy to this man. It's clear that he
Speaker 1: has engaged in the cannibalism.
Speaker 3: That's right. So he tells the story of how he
Speaker 3: thought he was dying, but he found himself being nursed
Speaker 3: back to health in the cave by Ives, and he
Speaker 3: was healed from his mortal wound because he ate man flesh.
Speaker 3: He says, by the time I regained my senses, there
Speaker 3: was no turning back. I feel terrific. So now Heart
Speaker 3: and Ives are part of a cannibal conspiracy, and Heart
Speaker 3: makes a pitch Boyd should join them.
Speaker 1: And this is where we get this other temptation scene
Speaker 1: that is just excellent. This is where we get another
Speaker 1: just tremendous monologue from Carlisle, and it really kind of
Speaker 1: drives home I think the central thesis of the whole picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Boyd is taken out to where Ives is.
Speaker 3: I think they're grilling outside maybe now are they grilling
Speaker 3: parts of Knox or butchering him? I think, I don't know,
Speaker 3: They're doing some kind of cannibalism stuff outside and Ives
Speaker 3: looks at the mountains and he says, manifest destiny, westward expansion,
Speaker 3: you know, come April, it'll all start again. Thousands of
Speaker 3: gold hungry Americans will travel over those mountains on their
Speaker 3: way to new lives, passing right through here. We won't
Speaker 3: kill indiscriminately, no selectively. Good God, we don't want to
Speaker 3: break up families. And then oh yeah, horrible, And then
Speaker 3: he talks about how they want to recruit somebody else.
Speaker 3: General Slawson. They want to convert him to the religion
Speaker 3: of cannibalism because it would be useful to have somebody
Speaker 3: that powerful, right, He says, we don't wish to recruit everyone.
Speaker 3: We've got enough mouths to feed as it is. We
Speaker 3: just need a home. And this country is seeking to
Speaker 3: be whole, stretching out its arms, consuming all it can.
Speaker 3: We merely follow.
Speaker 1: Oh and that line there just gives me chills.
Speaker 3: So Boyd tries to resist them. He says he's not
Speaker 3: going to be like them, but the bids continue. Carlyle says,
Speaker 3: you're already one of us almost. You hunger for it,
Speaker 3: you just won't resign yourself to it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and we get that other line that's always
Speaker 1: stuck with me. It's not courage to resist me, Boyd,
Speaker 1: it's courage to accept me.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, but this makes me think, like when
Speaker 3: are you really part of a conspiracy, like when you
Speaker 3: do the crime, or when you accept that doing the
Speaker 3: crime is all right?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And there's a lot to chew on here,
Speaker 1: Cannibal puns aside, but yeah, it's like this idea that
Speaker 1: like there is this gravity that is pulling all of
Speaker 1: them down and there's inevitability to it, And like, Boyd,
Speaker 1: you're not doing yourself any favors by fighting against the tide.
Speaker 1: You'd make things so much easier for yourself and for
Speaker 1: everyone around you if you just gave in, if you've
Speaker 1: just accepted the world as it is, the world as
Speaker 1: we've made it, if you just accept that you're a
Speaker 1: part of it. And that, of course, has been part
Speaker 1: of Boyd's moral failing thus far. He's just proceeded through
Speaker 1: life like a thing encased in mud or almost fossilized
Speaker 1: in his environment and has just been generally just unwilling
Speaker 1: and unable to attempt to counteract that flow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he has acted upon, he does not act against. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: though he is trying to resist here. And it's interesting
Speaker 3: the way that Carlisle, the way that i'ves is like
Speaker 3: papering over distinctions. Like, He's like, you've already done the
Speaker 3: same as us, But Boyd hasn't unlike them. He has
Speaker 3: not killed to eat man flesh. He's just eaten of
Speaker 3: those who already died. But I think they're trying to
Speaker 3: make that transition for him easier. It's like not observing
Speaker 3: the distinction. Yeah. So then Ives tries to persuade Boyd
Speaker 3: by stabbing him, So he stabs him. He's like, all right,
Speaker 3: now you know the rules. You've either got to eat
Speaker 3: human or die from your wound. So Ives and Heart
Speaker 3: like sit around the table enjoying a major Knox stew
Speaker 3: and at first Boyd resists, but then the pain of
Speaker 3: his wound becomes too great and his fear of death
Speaker 3: overwhelms him and he begins to eat.
Speaker 1: I like, how, Yeah, the answer heres for him to
Speaker 1: give in and eat the stew too, which is like
Speaker 1: the completely civilized version of the cannibal feast, which I
Speaker 1: don't think we've had it up into this point. It's
Speaker 1: been more like bone nawing. But here is the sanitized
Speaker 1: version of it, which I think is also rife with
Speaker 1: so many different interpretations. When you start analyzing this picture
Speaker 1: like here, here's the refined version of the thing you're
Speaker 1: afraid of. Give in to it, be become a part
Speaker 1: of this operation.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the next day, of course, Boyd is all
Speaker 3: healed up. The cannibalism does wonders, and there is a
Speaker 3: conversation between Boyd and Heart while ives is outside. Heart
Speaker 3: talks about how he misses his books. They were taking
Speaker 3: off his shelf, I guess when he was presumed dead,
Speaker 3: and he muses about how even thousands of years ago,
Speaker 3: Plato and Aristotle were thinking over the same problems that
Speaker 3: they can't solve today, like what is happiness and how
Speaker 3: to get it? And Boyd says Aristotle wanted to get
Speaker 3: to truth, not happiness, and Heart kind of rebels against this.
Speaker 3: He says, I spent my whole life trying to do
Speaker 3: what I thought was right and true, and now here
Speaker 3: I am. But some cracks appear in Heart's conviction. Boyd
Speaker 3: reminds him of all the people they killed, cleaves knocks,
Speaker 3: and Heart kind of he fights his conscience off. He's
Speaker 3: screaming about how you have to kill to live, But
Speaker 3: Boyd eventually gets through to him, and Heart kind of
Speaker 3: collapses and decides you're right. I don't want to go
Speaker 3: on living like this, Boyd, You've just got to kill me.
Speaker 1: And Boyd does this scene here, which is intercut with
Speaker 1: a few things concerning Calhoun and other characters. But this
Speaker 1: scene I think is pretty admirable because a lot has
Speaker 1: to happen, particularly with Heart's character, in a very short
Speaker 1: amount of time, and I think it was done even
Speaker 1: slightly incorrectly, it would have felt really rushed as it
Speaker 1: is here, like it feels ultimately feels, you know, a
Speaker 1: bit on fast forward, but also completely earned. And I
Speaker 1: think it comes down to the direction, to the performances
Speaker 1: and just the way they've cut it all together. Like
Speaker 1: I end up completely buying it. But man, they do
Speaker 1: so much in such a short scene.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I think because it comes across that
Speaker 3: Heart was also just kind of weak willed, and he
Speaker 3: was allowing Ives' confidence in the cannibalism conspiracy to sort
Speaker 3: of allow him not to consult his own soul about
Speaker 3: whether this was right. He was just like going along
Speaker 3: with the justifications that i'ves gave. But now that somebody
Speaker 3: else from the outside is pressuring him kind of does
Speaker 3: break through the facade and the real heart comes out
Speaker 3: and his guilt and grief are unleashed and he can't
Speaker 3: deal with it.
Speaker 1: Right, And so now the line is clearly drawn. Ives
Speaker 1: sees this happen through the blood splattered window, and so
Speaker 1: now it's going to be it's gonna be a standoff
Speaker 1: between Bloyd and Ives, right.
Speaker 3: So the rest of the movie is basically this grueling fight,
Speaker 3: this duel between Boyd and Ives. They sword fight, they slash, stab,
Speaker 3: bash across the landscape of the fort, and then they
Speaker 3: end up at the end of this fight in a
Speaker 3: bear trap together, which is just perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an enormous bear trap, Like I'm almost like
Speaker 1: Acme level of bear trap, but it feels earned and
Speaker 1: it's a surprise I think they do. We do see
Speaker 1: a bear trap earlier in the picture, so it is established.
Speaker 1: But when it goes off, yeah, just get.
Speaker 3: Them both, I've says says to to Guy Pearce, if
Speaker 3: you die first, I am definitely going to eat you.
Speaker 3: But if I first, what will you do? Good question,
Speaker 3: because we actually don't know at this point. Boyd's character
Speaker 3: has been portrayed as weak willed enough, and the story
Speaker 3: is bleak enough that you could believe it would end
Speaker 3: with him just embracing the cannibalism eating him and becoming
Speaker 3: win to go again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that thus far, that's how he has proceeded.
Speaker 1: Those are the choices which brought him to this moment.
Speaker 3: But Boyd does have a moral victory in the end
Speaker 3: by resisting the temptation. Ives does die first and Boyd
Speaker 3: does not chow down. He dies as well. But then
Speaker 3: General Slosson arrives with his retinue and they wander in.
Speaker 3: They're looking around and he finds a stew bubbling over
Speaker 3: the fire. I guess this is still the knock stew,
Speaker 3: still left over from the day before, and he decides
Speaker 3: to taste it, and he tastes it. He's like delicious, yummy, yummy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it seems like maybe the cycle will continue
Speaker 1: with General Slosson. And then we see Martha show up
Speaker 1: and Martha finds the bodies of Boyd and Ives and
Speaker 1: the bear trap and she sees what's happened and she
Speaker 1: runs off into the wilderness.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Thinking about this slows in question like if he
Speaker 3: eats the stew, does he become the wind to go?
Speaker 3: Within the logic of the movie, are you a wind
Speaker 3: to go? If you don't know that you're eating human
Speaker 3: I think that's a real question. Like it comes back
Speaker 3: to one of the questions that we raised earlier, like
Speaker 3: does the monstrosity arise from eating human flesh physically? Is
Speaker 3: it the physical processing of it with your digestive system
Speaker 3: even if you don't know what it is, Or is
Speaker 3: it the conscious awareness that you are eating human flesh?
Speaker 3: Or is it the moral acceptance of yourself as one
Speaker 3: who eats human flesh. So the distinction between those last
Speaker 3: two being like being aware that you're eating human flesh
Speaker 3: but not feeling okay about it, versus feeling like, all right,
Speaker 3: it's okay that I'm doing this, versus the final thing
Speaker 3: is killing, the act of killing someone in order to
Speaker 3: get more human flesh. They're all like different points on
Speaker 3: a continuum, and I guess you could ask at what
Speaker 3: point does one become the monster? And does each step
Speaker 3: kind of lead to the next step.
Speaker 1: That's a great question. Yeah, the movie leaves it ambiguous,
Speaker 1: Like we can I think reasonably think that, Okay, Slawson
Speaker 1: is going to eat this stuff. It tastes great. He's
Speaker 1: probably going to just really pig out on it and
Speaker 1: maybe have like a really great week. He's going to
Speaker 1: take up new hobbies, he's going to get a lot
Speaker 1: done at work. But will he be able to make
Speaker 1: the connection? And maybe he will, Maybe there's enough essentially
Speaker 1: forensic evidence at the camp that he'll realize what he
Speaker 1: ate and then start making increasingly horrific choices. But maybe not.
Speaker 1: But then also it does kind of tie into some
Speaker 1: of the questions raised, like what happens when you come
Speaker 1: along and you eat this stew and you don't know
Speaker 1: how the stew was made. It's just presented to you,
Speaker 1: and now what are you for having participated in this meal?
Speaker 3: All right? Well that's ravenous?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think it really holds up. I think
Speaker 1: it's a great, great film, really stands out. Hard to
Speaker 1: think of another film from nineteen ninety nine that really
Speaker 1: that I keep coming back to. But this is the one.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not it's not End of Days, it's
Speaker 1: not Blair Witch Product product, Blair Witch Project that should
Speaker 1: have been the sequel Blair Witch Product.
Speaker 3: My memory is actually the Blair Witch Project is pretty good.
Speaker 3: I think, Yeah, I think it might hold up pretty well.
Speaker 1: I think with that one, it's it really impressed me
Speaker 1: at the time, but then we saw so much found
Speaker 1: footage material that I've just been so resistant to going
Speaker 1: back and watching anything from that year. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I look at a list of other nineteen ninety nine
Speaker 1: films that was the year we had audition. I'm in
Speaker 1: no hurry to rewatch that, but that was pretty strong
Speaker 1: as well, with.
Speaker 3: That remake of The Haunting with Liam Neeson and Catherine
Speaker 3: Zeta Jones. How about that.
Speaker 1: That's not on the list from the rewatch anytime soon?
Speaker 3: All right? Does that do it for today?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to go ahead and close it up here,
Speaker 1: but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. What
Speaker 1: are your thoughts on Ravenous or other cannibal films or
Speaker 1: other films from nineteen ninety nine. It's all fair game,
Speaker 1: right in. Let us know we would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. You can get this show wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Get it either in the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind podcast feed where it publishes every Friday, or
Speaker 1: on its own in its own standalone playlist, which you
Speaker 1: can currently get wherever you get your podcasts, as well,
Speaker 1: wherever you get Weird House Cinema rate and review. That
Speaker 1: really helps us out. If you were on letterbox dot com,
Speaker 1: look us up. Our username there is weird House and
Speaker 1: we have a big old list of all the movies
Speaker 1: we've watched over the years, and sometimes we get a
Speaker 1: peek ahead at what's next.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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