Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. My
Speaker 1: name is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today
Speaker 1: I'm Weird House Cinema. We're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: Carl Zaman's nineteen fifty eight science fiction adventure film Invention
Speaker 1: for Destruction, which is a loose adaptation of the works
Speaker 1: of Jules Fern rendered in I would say one of
Speaker 1: the most astonishing and wonderful visual animation styles I've ever seen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this film is absolutely gorgeous, especially if you see it
Speaker 1: in the restored form. And I'll say it again, but
Speaker 1: if you are inspired to go seek out this work
Speaker 1: after this episode, or you haven't seen it in many,
Speaker 1: many years, do yourself a favor. Watch it in the
Speaker 1: best quality post of all the I think it's like
Speaker 1: about a two thousand, eighteen or seventeen restoration is absolutely amazing. Uh,
Speaker 1: And this is the one you should watch. So I
Speaker 1: first became aware of this filmmaker when my friend Ben
Speaker 1: came over to show me another movie of his. A
Speaker 1: later one, his adaptation of the Baron Munko's in Story,
Speaker 1: which is also wonderful. But while that one is more fantasy,
Speaker 1: this one is more firmly science fiction. And I think
Speaker 1: it's very interesting how the style of this movie interacts
Speaker 1: with the science fiction content, because I think you could
Speaker 1: argue that many decades before anybody actually said this word,
Speaker 1: or before this concept existed, this movie is steampunk. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it has a very strong flavor of steampunk to it.
Speaker 1: It is this um unreal future, this sort of you
Speaker 1: can guess, you could call it like an alternate timeline
Speaker 1: future of where technology well I'm not gonna say it
Speaker 1: might have gone there, but this is the future based
Speaker 1: on some futurist optimism of the previous age. But also,
Speaker 1: this is a thing, Rob, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: had the same experience. I had a hard time forcing
Speaker 1: myself to remember that this movie was actually made in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight, so this movie came out after Attack
Speaker 1: of the Crab Monsters. This was released the same year
Speaker 1: as Fiend Without a Face. Because to me, it's so
Speaker 1: convincingly evoked the world of sort of techno futurist optimism
Speaker 1: in say, eighteen seventy, that I actually kept slipping into
Speaker 1: a mindset of like I'm watching a film from eighteen seventy,
Speaker 1: which of course is impossible. Yeah, it has a kind
Speaker 1: of timeless feel to it, and it's crazy to to
Speaker 1: look at this film, which again is based on some
Speaker 1: of the works of Jules Verne, has a giant cephalopod
Speaker 1: in it, again from nineteen fifty eight, and then compare
Speaker 1: it to Disney's nineteen fifty four Jules Verne adaptation of
Speaker 1: twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, which, granted, these are
Speaker 1: two very different films from very different film environments. Ones
Speaker 1: in color, one is in black and white. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this film seems to be coming from a time all
Speaker 1: its own, or it just feels timeless. It doesn't feel
Speaker 1: shackled to the late nineteen fifties by any stretch. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And not to put down the Disney twenty Thousand Leagues
Speaker 1: because of course, yeah, Kirk Douglas is ned Land, Peter Laurie,
Speaker 1: and James Mason as Captain Nemo. What a cast. But
Speaker 1: also it has some great special effects too, so I
Speaker 1: don't want to put it down too much, but it
Speaker 1: does feel like a film made in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: and it feels like a product of the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Invention for Destruction is from a past and a future
Speaker 1: that never existed. Yeah, it's unlike anything I think we've
Speaker 1: really watched on the show before, because I mean, certainly
Speaker 1: it is an adventure tale, it's a science fiction tale.
Speaker 1: We've watched plenty of those, yet, like twenty Thousand Leagues
Speaker 1: Under the Cea and and very films that we've watched
Speaker 1: for weird house cinema, it's very much a special effects
Speaker 1: spectacle in which pretty much every shot in the film
Speaker 1: includes some manner a special effect. Yes, I totally agree
Speaker 1: with that, and I think one of the real unique
Speaker 1: pleasures of this movie, but maybe more of of Carl
Speaker 1: Zeman's filmmaking in general, is that the special effects are
Speaker 1: applied not only to spectacular scenes and moments. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not just when there's like a great explosion or
Speaker 1: when there's a fantastic machine on screen. There are beautiful
Speaker 1: visual effects for just like a room with a staircase
Speaker 1: and a table, or like a man sitting in a
Speaker 1: shack that is dilapidated and a bird flying through the air.
Speaker 1: Like the special effects are applied to, you might say,
Speaker 1: not very special content of the narrative and in applying
Speaker 1: them that way, they kind of bring mundane details to
Speaker 1: a kind of weird heard in surreal life. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought A really great point on all of this was
Speaker 1: brought up by British filmmaker in Puppeteer John Stevenson, who
Speaker 1: does a little intro on the excellent second run Blu
Speaker 1: Ray release of the restored film that I watched that
Speaker 1: I actually I rented from Video Drum here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: They have a great um, a great selection of of
Speaker 1: Carl Zammon's films. But anyway, in this little little bit,
Speaker 1: Stevenson points out that while plenty of other special effects
Speaker 1: films of the era even were great and required a
Speaker 1: willful suspension of disbelief, invention for Destruction embraced stylish artificiality.
Speaker 1: Every shot in the film is not only a product
Speaker 1: of special effects, but a hand crafted special effects artifacts
Speaker 1: brought together to create this singular vision that again is
Speaker 1: not it's not about tricking you into thinking this is real. Um,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's it creates its own artificial world that
Speaker 1: you buy into. You know, this is funny, And how
Speaker 1: it connects to a conversation we had on last week's
Speaker 1: episode about Jason X about special effects. For me personally
Speaker 1: and I think for a lot of other film fans,
Speaker 1: to realism is not the only measure of of what
Speaker 1: makes a special effect good. It's it's not just good
Speaker 1: if it looks convincingly like the camera has captured a
Speaker 1: real instance of what is supposed to be happening in
Speaker 1: the narrative, be that actually a spaceship flying through the air,
Speaker 1: or actually a submarine fighting a giant octopus or something.
Speaker 1: There's a quality that you can seek beyond realism, which is, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a kind of pleasing artistic integrity. It's something
Speaker 1: kind of close to realism in that there's that integrity element,
Speaker 1: like the the effects have to all kind of work together,
Speaker 1: and they have to believe in their own magic in
Speaker 1: a way, but they don't have to necessarily look real.
Speaker 1: They just have to look right. Yeah. Weirdly, a film
Speaker 1: that comes to mind that really has nothing in common
Speaker 1: with it, uh in in so many ways except for
Speaker 1: this commitment to a stylish artificiality, would be the with
Speaker 1: the the Rodriguez adaptation of the Sin City comic books.
Speaker 1: Not a not a film I'm in a hurry to
Speaker 1: watch again right now. I feel like it's kind of
Speaker 1: a kind of a violent, nasty film in many respects,
Speaker 1: but it does really commit to an artificial film world
Speaker 1: that you buy into that that that doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: a distraction but an enhancement. I know exactly what you mean,
Speaker 1: and I see why you would compare it to Invention
Speaker 1: for Destruction. Not again, they don't. They're not esthetically similar
Speaker 1: in any way, but what they have in common is
Speaker 1: a sort of total commitment to deep integration of like
Speaker 1: animation and various types of special effects with the live
Speaker 1: actors in a way that that you sort of stop
Speaker 1: seeing as special effects and it just becomes this other world.
Speaker 1: This is just a different type of world. There's our
Speaker 1: world where it's all three D objects and live actors,
Speaker 1: and then there's this other type of world where they're
Speaker 1: actors who ride inside hand drawn locomotives and like animated
Speaker 1: birds fly around between the blades of a propeller and
Speaker 1: an airship. Yeah, it's um, I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: film you really really just you need to watch it. Um.
Speaker 1: We can talk about it all day, but but you
Speaker 1: need to see it to understand what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: Because some of the some of the aspects of it
Speaker 1: are are are kind of it's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: understand how they work if we're just describing it, because yeah,
Speaker 1: you have this wonderful combination of live action performances by
Speaker 1: human actors, these kind of two D sets and environments UM,
Speaker 1: stop motion animation, more traditional two D animation, UM. But
Speaker 1: you never feel like it's cobbled together, as you might
Speaker 1: feel with special films like say, uh, you know some
Speaker 1: of the various films that poorly integrate practical and digital effects,
Speaker 1: or even films that have say, stop motion monster scenes
Speaker 1: mixed with a costume a monster effect and something feels
Speaker 1: off about it, Yes, totally. And so it has all
Speaker 1: these different um film styles and effects styles coming together
Speaker 1: within each frame, but it has this deep blended integrity.
Speaker 1: They are all parts of a machine working together, and
Speaker 1: that machine is cranking. And there are other movies like this,
Speaker 1: but um, a lot of the other movies that that
Speaker 1: combine these different effects styles often I think the bar
Speaker 1: is realism. I don't want to get ahead of you, Rob,
Speaker 1: but I think you were going to invoke the example
Speaker 1: of Jurassic Park, which I think is a great example
Speaker 1: of a film that effectively combines different effects styles uh
Speaker 1: into this integrated whole and it works very well. But
Speaker 1: what they're going for is trying to create the impression
Speaker 1: of a real dinosaur, and that's not what Zamon is doing.
Speaker 1: But he's doing something at least equally beautiful, probably much
Speaker 1: more beautiful, I think. Yeah. Like I said, this film
Speaker 1: embraces the artificiality in a way that Jurassic Park didn't,
Speaker 1: and Jurassic Parts effects are amazing in that they don't.
Speaker 1: It's just a totally different approach to how you present
Speaker 1: in saying a world on the screen. Yeah. Like, Well,
Speaker 1: one thing I was also I also kept thinking about
Speaker 1: watching this film is the performances and the plot are
Speaker 1: against science fictional uh, but also pretty straightforward. There's nothing
Speaker 1: really dream like about the plot of the film for
Speaker 1: the most part, but the visual language of the film
Speaker 1: really does feel like the etchings in a printed book
Speaker 1: have been brought to life through magic, or that we've
Speaker 1: partially entered a world through the looking glass. You know,
Speaker 1: much about the movie makes you kind of ask what
Speaker 1: reality is this? And there are there are elements actually
Speaker 1: other than the visuals I'll refer to in a minute, like,
Speaker 1: for example, the movies relationship to its literary subject matter
Speaker 1: kept making me think, like, what is reality here? But
Speaker 1: we'll save that question from when we talk about Jules Verne.
Speaker 1: All right, well, what would you what would you say
Speaker 1: the elevator pitches for this film, Joe, Oh, I didn't
Speaker 1: write one ahead of time. But how about a brilliant
Speaker 1: but absent minded scientist is on the verge of creating
Speaker 1: the world's most powerful weapon, though he's not very concerned
Speaker 1: with its practical uses. Um, he is kidnapped by a
Speaker 1: pirate king and his work will be put to questionable ends.
Speaker 1: How will he and his lowly assistant deal with this situation? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that pretty much captures it. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a film full of flying machines, other spectacular
Speaker 1: vessels of the ocean, um, super science, and all of
Speaker 1: it like a nineteenth century illustrated Jules Verne novel, just
Speaker 1: brought to stunning life. That's another thing that I've read, Robin.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much the introduction by the puppeteer
Speaker 1: addressed this, but one thing I saw alleged was that
Speaker 1: the animation style of Invention for Destruction was especially geared
Speaker 1: toward essentially making the hand drawn engravings and illustrations that
Speaker 1: accompanied Jules Verne novels of the nineteenth century, like making
Speaker 1: those into a film texture. Yeah, that's my understanding. They
Speaker 1: there's a bit on this blue ray that I was
Speaker 1: watching that had some interview segments with his daughter, Zaymon's daughter,
Speaker 1: and she mentioned, you know, his inspiration being these, uh,
Speaker 1: these various illustrated Jules Verne books that he would just
Speaker 1: you know, pour over and would just be totally enraptured by.
Speaker 1: And and a lot of that is is visible in
Speaker 1: the use of lines, so that there'll be a lot
Speaker 1: of say, horizontal lines in a given scene. Um. Also
Speaker 1: in the costumes there will be a lot of horizontal
Speaker 1: or vertical lines, all of this helping to create this
Speaker 1: idea of wood grains in the the illustration. And z
Speaker 1: Aymon's daughter also mentions like helping her father on the
Speaker 1: on the production. Uh, you know, she was young at
Speaker 1: the time, but he's like, hey, do you want to
Speaker 1: come in and draw lines on costumes and so and
Speaker 1: so there's apparently a great deal of that wonderful Oh
Speaker 1: that's so sweet. One thing we should also point out, um,
Speaker 1: before we move on, is I really we've done. Is
Speaker 1: this our third Check or Czechoslovaka movie on on weird House?
Speaker 1: It is? So far we've done nineteen seventies Fruit of Paradise,
Speaker 1: that was the very Chidlova movie. Yeah, yeah, and there'll
Speaker 1: be a connection to that in this film. And then
Speaker 1: also while you were out on going to leave Seth
Speaker 1: and I talked about John Stuck Buyers Alice from Awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's uh, and and we're probably not done that.
Speaker 1: It's possible that we'll do another Check film next week.
Speaker 1: I have to watch it on my own to see
Speaker 1: how it will fit. But yeah, I mean, Check cinema
Speaker 1: is a rich well to draw from. It's not a
Speaker 1: cinematic world that I feel as versed in as other
Speaker 1: things like you know, Spanish horror or an Italian Jallow
Speaker 1: cinema and so forth. They're certainly American British film. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's just so much there and and so much that
Speaker 1: is new to me. If only one of these beautiful
Speaker 1: weirdo Check directors could have made a movie with Paul
Speaker 1: Nashy in it, like a Paul Nashy Werewolf film directed
Speaker 1: by Carl Zaman or Vera Chidlova m. Well, let's keep
Speaker 1: that in mind, because I'm I'm curious what this film
Speaker 1: I'm going to check out feels like, you know, the
Speaker 1: one I'm gonna look at has some sort of gothic
Speaker 1: horror elements to it. All right, well, let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and hear the English language trailer for this film. This
Speaker 1: is a good places. They need to mention that this
Speaker 1: film was released in America as The Fabulous World of
Speaker 1: Jules Verne, and so this is the This is the
Speaker 1: trailer for it. And I think this will work better
Speaker 1: for our English language listeners because you'll get to hear
Speaker 1: this old timey narration talking up the worlds of Jules Verne,
Speaker 1: brought to live on the screen. From the Fantastic Jules Verne,
Speaker 1: creator of Around the World in eighty Days, comes now
Speaker 1: the most fabulous adventure on over or under the Earth,
Speaker 1: the first potion picture produced in the Magic Image Miracle estimation.
Speaker 1: Wonders never before seen will unfold before your startled eyes.
Speaker 1: Fantastic aircraft, fly the Skies, electronic machines, an incredible sea
Speaker 1: battle adventure in the mouth of a blazing volcano, underwater
Speaker 1: escape from Chara Island. The Fabulous World of Jules Burn
Speaker 1: brings you the master storyteller of our time, with wonders
Speaker 1: to delight and excite and stir your imagination. The fabulous
Speaker 1: world of Jules Burn. Show them down, Show them down,
Speaker 1: all right, before we jump in further, it just remind everyone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you want to watch this film for yourself, and
Speaker 1: we highly recommend you do, the second run blue ray
Speaker 1: edition is amazing. That's the one I watched it on,
Speaker 1: but you can also stream it via the Criterion Channel
Speaker 1: if you subscribe to that service or want to do
Speaker 1: a like you know, the free intro month deal on
Speaker 1: that um. Again, if you do watch it, make sure
Speaker 1: that it's I believe four K restoration because it is gorgeous.
Speaker 1: There is also some a little extra on the disc
Speaker 1: I watched that showed them restoring and showing like all
Speaker 1: the various things they had to do to clean it
Speaker 1: up and just get it get the film looking just
Speaker 1: so splendid. The restoration does look wonderful, like the the
Speaker 1: the lines are so crisp, you know, it is like
Speaker 1: a Durors copper pen had just left the page or
Speaker 1: the wood block. It's it's amazing. Yeah, and the extra
Speaker 1: is John Stevenson, the British filmmaker in Puppeteer. I believe
Speaker 1: he was one of the directors in the first Kung
Speaker 1: Fu Panda film. For example, he has this whole bit
Speaker 1: talking about how as a child he glimpse part of
Speaker 1: this film on British television I don't know, like some
Speaker 1: sort of kids morning show or something, and just needed
Speaker 1: to see it. And even at one point, I believe
Speaker 1: as a child like wrote to the um the check
Speaker 1: embassy to see if you could get a copy, uh yeah,
Speaker 1: And then for the longest apparently it was it was
Speaker 1: kind of hard to get a copy of it. Like
Speaker 1: he's talking about, I think a lot of film fans
Speaker 1: who were seeking out films and you know, the in
Speaker 1: the nineties and the early two thousands have this experience
Speaker 1: where you're having to turn to things like um uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like dubbed copies and you know, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a copy of a disk from another region.
Speaker 1: He says. At one point, um, there was a Japanese
Speaker 1: edition that came out with a number of Ziman's films
Speaker 1: in it, but it was just tremendously expensive, but he
Speaker 1: had to buy it, so he spent like all of
Speaker 1: his available funds getting it, and so you know, finally
Speaker 1: building up to the day when not only is the
Speaker 1: film widely available, but it's widely available and just splendid
Speaker 1: restored quality. That is something we don't often stop to appreciate, uh,
Speaker 1: in the present day, Like how how fortunate we are
Speaker 1: that a lot of these great old films are available
Speaker 1: now and that there's so much easier to see than
Speaker 1: they used to be in and often beautifully restored form.
Speaker 1: And that's the painstaking work of many experts. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: films that maybe, like I don't know if you could
Speaker 1: make an argument that maybe Assignment Terror didn't need to
Speaker 1: be so splendidly restored, but but they did it, and
Speaker 1: thank goodness they did. Oh what why would you say
Speaker 1: it didn't need? Of course it does. That's history. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I guess some films, you know, some films
Speaker 1: I guess you could make an argument for like the
Speaker 1: grittiness of the original medium can sort of add to
Speaker 1: the experience. It will be part of the nostalgia for
Speaker 1: a given film. I've also seen effects people discuss how
Speaker 1: older mediums allowed them to sort of cover up the
Speaker 1: limitations of their effects at times, you know, and and
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, the stuff that might have worked
Speaker 1: on VHS suddenly oh they now they have it out
Speaker 1: on DVD or Blu ray and you can really see
Speaker 1: the scenes. You were never meant to see this wire
Speaker 1: effect in four K. It worked great on a on
Speaker 1: a grainy VHS. Yeah, and I mean I understand they've
Speaker 1: had to go back and do some of that, even
Speaker 1: on productions like Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and they're just
Speaker 1: some you know, the the quality that we have now
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily um, something they were taking into account. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's get into the people here. Uh So Carl's Aiman.
Speaker 1: Uh the director also has adaptation and scenario credits, production
Speaker 1: design credits, and special effects credits that they had other
Speaker 1: individuals working with him on the special effects as a
Speaker 1: whole crew here. Uh. He lived nineteen ten through nine.
Speaker 1: Highly influential Czech filmmaker and animator, best remembered for his
Speaker 1: combination of animation and live action, though I believe there
Speaker 1: there are films and short works of his that are
Speaker 1: more purely animation, but this is a great example of
Speaker 1: one that utilizes multiple forms of animation and live performances.
Speaker 1: You'll find many many filmmakers that signed him as an influence,
Speaker 1: and they include the likes of Jans Punkmya himself, uh,
Speaker 1: Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, which seems like a no brainer
Speaker 1: when you think about Terry Gilliams uh use of animation,
Speaker 1: especially during the Monty Python years. Absolutely, I see Hugh Zaman,
Speaker 1: d n A and and Terry Gilliam work m H.
Speaker 1: John Stevenson obviously Wes Anderson as well, And I think
Speaker 1: that's very telling because even as I was watching the
Speaker 1: film before I knew that that Wes Anderson, you know,
Speaker 1: had had had had said this before. I think of
Speaker 1: The Life Aquatic and I think of the way that
Speaker 1: the Bellefonte, the the vessel there, the way it's presented
Speaker 1: um at times takes on this kind of embraced artificiality. Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: and the c Life as well. I think, um, if
Speaker 1: memory serves, it's been a little bit since I've seen that,
Speaker 1: but that of course it's a wonderful film. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some invention for destruction E Sharks, I think is Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a long time, but yeah. So Zamon produced
Speaker 1: a number of short films over the years, and multiple
Speaker 1: full length pictures, most of which are at least loosely
Speaker 1: sci fire, fantasy and genre. Prior to filmmaking, who worked
Speaker 1: in advertising and poster design, his films include The Treasure
Speaker 1: of Bird Island, Journey to Prehistory, Baron Munch co Housen,
Speaker 1: Adjuster's Tale, The Stolen Airship, which is another Jewels Verne picture,
Speaker 1: kind of a mashup of tales, um On the Comet,
Speaker 1: which is a Jewels Verne adaptation, Tales of a Thousand
Speaker 1: and one Night's Crabbitt, The Sorcerer's Apprentice that's when that one,
Speaker 1: I believe is fully animated, and The Tale of John
Speaker 1: and Mary. Those are, of course all English translated titles
Speaker 1: they have. The original titles are all check titles. I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm gonna have to eventually see all of those.
Speaker 1: All those sound very interesting. Um and I believe his
Speaker 1: I was reading. And when it comes to awards in
Speaker 1: granted awards, especially you know, uh you know, Western awards
Speaker 1: or not, uh not the be all and end all
Speaker 1: to all this. But his short from nineteen I Believe
Speaker 1: a Christmas Story or Venanci Sin this one best short
Speaker 1: film at the CONNS Film festival. Oh and if you
Speaker 1: find yourself in Prague, there is a museum dedicated to
Speaker 1: his work, the Museum Carla Zamana. I believe, so if you,
Speaker 1: if you, if you live in Prague or visiting Prague,
Speaker 1: or have visited Progue and have gone to this museum,
Speaker 1: definitely right in and tell us all about it. Now.
Speaker 1: We've focused a lot on the on the effects and
Speaker 1: the visual style of the movie, but there's also I
Speaker 1: think a lot of interesting stuff to say about the
Speaker 1: narrative content of the film. And one thing here is
Speaker 1: that while there is one major work that I think
Speaker 1: you could say this is most adapted from, uh, and
Speaker 1: that's a Jules Verne novel called Facing the Flag. In
Speaker 1: other ways, it's a very much a mash up. It's
Speaker 1: just sort of a you know, it's a blender smoothie
Speaker 1: full of nineteenth century science fiction ideas, primarily from Jules Verne. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jules Verne through nineteen o five, the legendary French novelist, poet,
Speaker 1: and playwright. Uh. Some have even you know today will say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: he was kind of a futuristic prophet, you know. He
Speaker 1: he described these various technological achievements and uses that would
Speaker 1: come to fruition. Uh. They were even saying this daring
Speaker 1: Verne's own lifetime, and he tended to deny such praise
Speaker 1: and saying that's just coincidence, and you know it is
Speaker 1: probably a bit over the top. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, he he did in some ways seem to
Speaker 1: see further than uh than many uh in trying to
Speaker 1: imagine how humans would use technology. Um. His science fiction
Speaker 1: has a has this wonderful charm to it though it's
Speaker 1: it can be a bit naive and optimistic in some ways,
Speaker 1: but also very aware of the dark potential for human technology. Yes,
Speaker 1: both sides are there. I mean he he often has
Speaker 1: um like villains or anti heroes, uh, sort of searching
Speaker 1: after a powerfully destructive piece of technology. But also I
Speaker 1: would say a very generally kind of enthusiastic, even exuberant,
Speaker 1: positive vision of human progress. Yeah. I think that's a
Speaker 1: good way of summing it up. Among his most famous
Speaker 1: and frequently adapted works, or around the World in a
Speaker 1: days journey to the center of the Earth, twenty leagues
Speaker 1: under the sea, the mysterious Island, and from Earth to
Speaker 1: the Moon. Uh. Yeah. Given the proximity of his work
Speaker 1: and popularity to the birth of cinema. Adaptations of his
Speaker 1: work are numerous and are are frequently kind of important
Speaker 1: benchmarks in the history of cinema, especially when you look
Speaker 1: back to nineteen o two is a Trip to the Moon.
Speaker 1: We already mentioned fifty four two Leagues under the Sea.
Speaker 1: There's also six around the world in eighty days. They're
Speaker 1: still making Jules Verne adaptations, but I was hard pressed
Speaker 1: to pinpoint one that felt important. Somehow, I fully support
Speaker 1: the artistic choice in Voyage Don Laloon to change the
Speaker 1: Baltimore gun Club in Jules Verne's novel into a bunch
Speaker 1: of guys in Wizard Robes. So um. In terms of
Speaker 1: the you know, the final script we see here a
Speaker 1: final vision on the screen. Um. Of course, Naman himself
Speaker 1: has some credit. Um. There's also a check poet and
Speaker 1: writer by the name of Frantis sat Kruven who nineteen
Speaker 1: nine seventy one that has a scenario credit at least.
Speaker 1: This is via IMDb, and among his works are Romance
Speaker 1: for Flugelhorn, which is the one epic poem which was
Speaker 1: also adapted for film in nineteen sixty seven. He wrote
Speaker 1: the screenplay for seventy eight Beauty and the Beast, a
Speaker 1: check film based on his own play. I believe this
Speaker 1: is a stunning looking gothic horror film directed by Urage
Speaker 1: hers Uh, the accounting director of nineteen sixty nine The Creamator,
Speaker 1: a dark comedy horror film that's apparently very well regarded.
Speaker 1: This adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. You were sharing
Speaker 1: some stuff from this with me and this this could
Speaker 1: be on our radar for the future. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: need it. I need to check it out. But it
Speaker 1: looks very interesting. There are a couple of other credits,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't find that much about them, but uh,
Speaker 1: Milan Vacha dates unknown, at least we're not visible to me.
Speaker 1: When I was looking around, uh credited on this, but
Speaker 1: not much else was turning up. And also a screenwriter
Speaker 1: about the name of Jerry Pradecca who live nineteen seventeen
Speaker 1: through two, is also credited on some film databases, but
Speaker 1: not IMDb, so I'm not sure, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: listen their names anyway. All right, should we talk about
Speaker 1: the cast? How you do you want to start with
Speaker 1: the old Luboar Tokosh. Yeah, playing Simon Hart are our
Speaker 1: hero of the piece. Uh. He lived nineteen twenty three
Speaker 1: through two thousand and three. Check Actor active and TV
Speaker 1: and film from the late forties to the early two thousands.
Speaker 1: His more famous work, certainly taking into account global recognition
Speaker 1: of check films are, are probably his films UH nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: UM Who Show That Year, which I believe is a
Speaker 1: surveillance thriller about people who uh suddenly find their home
Speaker 1: bugged by presumably the state UH nineteen seventies, which Hammer
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two is The Girl on the Broomstick.
Speaker 1: But I'm likely missing something major here, especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to the intended audience. So uh, if you have
Speaker 1: more experience than we do with cinema and check television
Speaker 1: and so forth right in, we would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. But yeah, he's he's quite good in this.
Speaker 1: He has very expressive eyes. Luebar Tokosh here has a
Speaker 1: very dark, very like, tightly sculpted strap like beard that
Speaker 1: follows his jawline and a and a similar kind of mustache.
Speaker 1: And I almost wonder if that look is selected because
Speaker 1: of the high contrast like uh beard color and shape
Speaker 1: going well with the animation style. If you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Yeah, yeah, I believe that there are Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are characters like is it Yana? Uh yeah, the
Speaker 1: sort of the love interest of the piece. Uh. She
Speaker 1: was specifically selected because she looked like she would fit
Speaker 1: into one of these old illustrations. She had a kind
Speaker 1: of naive look to her. She looks I think that
Speaker 1: in the materials about the film I was looking at
Speaker 1: on the disk she looked like she was quote born yesterday,
Speaker 1: you know so, and that she looked good in period
Speaker 1: peace uh garbs. So. Yeah. It was all about like
Speaker 1: what will look in the in the the overall piece,
Speaker 1: not so much like what is this individual's acting prowess? No,
Speaker 1: not to take away from the actors. I thought all
Speaker 1: of the actors in the movie did well. Another actor,
Speaker 1: who I think like like these two we were just
Speaker 1: talking about, seems clearly chosen for a sort of look
Speaker 1: that works well with the animation. Is the Pirate captain
Speaker 1: Captain Slade. Oh yeah, yeah. This is interesting because this
Speaker 1: character is played by front to Seek Sligger Born, and
Speaker 1: I was mostly just amused that he also played a
Speaker 1: pirate captain in Zaman's nineteen sixty two film The Fabulous
Speaker 1: Baron muchausen m M. Fun fact, the other pirate players
Speaker 1: that pop up in the pieces, like Pirate Crew. Apparently
Speaker 1: Zaman just went down to the local retirement home and
Speaker 1: recruited a bunch of guys who had like rugged looking faces.
Speaker 1: He's like, this is what I need. Then get get
Speaker 1: these rugged mugs into the studio, the retirement home pirates.
Speaker 1: How can you not love this? Yeah? Now we mentioned
Speaker 1: the professor that's gonna be a central part of the plot,
Speaker 1: Professor Roach. Uh, well, okay, we should raise here. I
Speaker 1: don't know if we're going to consistently pronounce the character's
Speaker 1: names the same way they are pronounced in the movie. So,
Speaker 1: for example, Simon Hart, the the hero. I think in
Speaker 1: the check version they call him like she Mon Hart
Speaker 1: or something. Uh, so we're probably we're not going to
Speaker 1: manage that. While we're talking about the movie, we will
Speaker 1: have some Anglicized name pronunciation. So the professor is named
Speaker 1: R R O C H. I think they call him
Speaker 1: rogue maybe in in their pronunciation, but we can say roach. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and also what language did you watch? I watched
Speaker 1: the English dub Oh, okay, so we may we have
Speaker 1: some differences there as well. I watched in the original
Speaker 1: with subtitles. Okay, well anyway, this particular professor character played
Speaker 1: by Arnast Novrato, who lived nine four A check actor.
Speaker 1: His other films include Great Solitude from nineteen sixty. But
Speaker 1: I was also amused that he's actually younger uh than
Speaker 1: lue Boar and the actor of Yeah, actor lue Boar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if the dates are correct, Um, he's actually three years younger. Wow.
Speaker 1: I would not have expected that. Yeah, the magic of cinema.
Speaker 1: We also have an evil count in this uh, in
Speaker 1: this film, always going to have an evil count scheming away. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's a count. Arctic Gas played by Miroslav Hlob Yeah,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifteen through nine check actor. His other credits include
Speaker 1: nine seven's Frankenstein's Aunt and Carl Zaman's nineteen seventy film
Speaker 1: On the Comment. He was also an enemy general in
Speaker 1: Zaman's nineteen sixty two film The Fact Lost Baron Munchausen.
Speaker 1: So you know very much. He seemed to have a
Speaker 1: crew that he turned to for a lot of these films. Now,
Speaker 1: we often mentioned the music and rob even though I
Speaker 1: think this is this is not uh an electronic score
Speaker 1: like you typically love the most I bet you love
Speaker 1: the music in this movie because it is incredibly appropriate
Speaker 1: to the narrative. We get a lot of uh, kind
Speaker 1: of like daunting horn ORNs, but then also jaunty harpsichord. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. I love the music in this in part
Speaker 1: because there are some great stretches where you have either
Speaker 1: organ or even possibly electronic organ. I'm not sure, but
Speaker 1: it's Oregon that sounds electronic enough for me anyway. And uh,
Speaker 1: and then a lot of scenes where characters are uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're like either weaving their way through some sort
Speaker 1: of machine filled room or chamber, or they're hanging out
Speaker 1: in the laboratory, and we get a lot of sort
Speaker 1: of drone the electronic ambience going on. The music for
Speaker 1: this film is from z Nick Liska, who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three. Noted check composer uh and something of an
Speaker 1: electronic music pioneer. I'm to understand. It was active from
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties through the early nineteen eighties and is
Speaker 1: especially noted for his work in check, new wave and
Speaker 1: the early films of stop motion. Legend John Spankmeyer. Uh,
Speaker 1: he scored nineteen seventies Fruit of Paradise. So we have
Speaker 1: discussed his work previously on the show. Oh Wow, The
Speaker 1: Furtive Paradise had awesome music. You remember the scene at
Speaker 1: the beginning that retells the Garden of Eden story sort
Speaker 1: of in short before the longer, more surreal version, and
Speaker 1: then it's got those choirs and the like the psychedelic vision.
Speaker 1: You have very ethereal Bliska also scored ninety nine The Creamator,
Speaker 1: which I have not seen, but again, uh, it factors
Speaker 1: into a couple of different filmographies here and is highly regarded. Okay,
Speaker 1: you want to talk about the plot. Yeah, again, you
Speaker 1: watched the original check version with subtitles. I watched the
Speaker 1: English dub, which was the US release version of the picture,
Speaker 1: and the dub is a lot of fun that this
Speaker 1: is a film where I didn't I don't feel particularly
Speaker 1: guilty using an English language dub because it's it's ultimately
Speaker 1: more about the visual experience, and this way I'm not
Speaker 1: reading anything on the screen. Instead, I'm looking at these
Speaker 1: like weird fish. Um but U. Two major differences in
Speaker 1: the US is that it's promoted as using the new
Speaker 1: motion picture technique mistimation, which I talked about this briefly
Speaker 1: with Seth before that like, what is this weird? Um,
Speaker 1: American and possibly British aversion to staying stop motion instead
Speaker 1: if everything has to have some sort of weird name
Speaker 1: like Claymation and so forth. Yeah, that's funny. Um. Also
Speaker 1: the most noticeable difference, though, is the U S version
Speaker 1: has an extended intro by American radio and television broadcaster
Speaker 1: Hugh Downs lived nineteen one through uh. Leonard Malton described
Speaker 1: this introduction as quote pointless. Um. Yeah, kinda like I
Speaker 1: I went back and looked at the the original check
Speaker 1: version to see how it started, and yeah, this is
Speaker 1: kind of like a bloated intro from Hugh Downs, where
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of like, you know, he's in this
Speaker 1: like weird living room and he's like saying, Hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna watch this film today, and it's, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's about the how brilliant Jules Verne was. And he
Speaker 1: tells you a little bit about how Jules Verne was
Speaker 1: brilliant essentially a profit of technology in the future, and
Speaker 1: sort of slowly eases you into the film almost like
Speaker 1: you needed, you know, some sort of appetizer or intro,
Speaker 1: or you needed permission from Hugh Downs to enjoy the movie.
Speaker 1: Are are there any like animated fish swimming around his
Speaker 1: head or like an octopus grabbing his leg? Now he
Speaker 1: has some like model airplanes and rockets on the table
Speaker 1: behind him. Yeah, it's almost yeah, yeah, I see what
Speaker 1: you're saying. It's almost like you wonder at the time
Speaker 1: for American audiences to accept something this kind of like
Speaker 1: visually unusual, did they have to say, Okay, now we're
Speaker 1: gonna sit you down with a boring man in a
Speaker 1: kind of boring environment to tell you that it's okay
Speaker 1: to watch what follows. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's um,
Speaker 1: you know this is this is right before or around
Speaker 1: the same time that The Twilight Zone came out, So
Speaker 1: you know, maybe there's certain uh, there're certain comparisons to
Speaker 1: be made there except Q downs is there's nothing creepy
Speaker 1: about the way presenting. Eddie's very he's very square in
Speaker 1: his presentation of a film that is anything but square.
Speaker 1: A retirement home pirate and a fish that turns into
Speaker 1: a butterfly. It couldn't happen, but it could in Jules Verne. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I don't know, it's fun, but you can sort
Speaker 1: of take it or leave it, depending on which version
Speaker 1: of the film you watch and eventually you can end
Speaker 1: up in the same place, all right. Well, so in
Speaker 1: the opening credits we see an acknowledgement that this is
Speaker 1: what the the the subtitles translate as freely adapted from
Speaker 1: the writings of Jules Verne, and I think that's a
Speaker 1: good way to put it, because there is one major
Speaker 1: novel that this plot comes from, but it's pulling in
Speaker 1: stuff from all over the place, and I think they
Speaker 1: give you a taste of the buffet of imagery to come,
Speaker 1: because the opening credits have kind of line drawings in
Speaker 1: really behind them where you see hints of wait a minute,
Speaker 1: what is that? Is that a bullet shaped capsule flying
Speaker 1: through the stars towards the moon? Is this lightning striking
Speaker 1: a castle on a mountaintop. You've got a hot air balloon,
Speaker 1: erupting volcano, a ship shooting up, laser beams or beams
Speaker 1: of some kind. Yeah, it pretty much. It's just established
Speaker 1: this that we are in a strange Jules Verne version
Speaker 1: of what the future or the past could have consisted of.
Speaker 1: And then we opened on a shot of an antique
Speaker 1: office that's aligned with a sort of fluor de le
Speaker 1: esque wall paper, a small lamp and ink pot, and
Speaker 1: a stack of books which all bear the name Jules
Speaker 1: Verne on the spine of the books, and we get
Speaker 1: some voice over narration. It says, good evening, friends, come closer,
Speaker 1: I shall tell you about the greatest adventure of my life.
Speaker 1: And we zoom in on a notebook says, this is
Speaker 1: my journal everything I experienced I confided to its pages.
Speaker 1: Forgive me, I haven't introduced myself. I am Mr Simon Hart,
Speaker 1: and he says I lived at a time of such hope,
Speaker 1: the dream of human progress. And here we see an
Speaker 1: illustration that maybe a kind of airship. He says, we
Speaker 1: could think of nothing else. My friends and I rob
Speaker 1: or the conqueror, Barbican Captain Nemo. Uh. And then we
Speaker 1: see all kinds of illustrations, including one of like ce
Speaker 1: monsters or prehistoric marine reptiles biting each other's necks. And
Speaker 1: there's an ambiguity here when he says we could think
Speaker 1: of nothing else, My friends and I rob or the Conqueror,
Speaker 1: Barbican Captain Nemo, because all these names he lists are
Speaker 1: Jules Verne characters, and it's not clear from what he's
Speaker 1: saying whether he's saying those were his friends who couldn't
Speaker 1: think of anything other than human progress, or if his
Speaker 1: friends couldn't think of anything other than human progress, And
Speaker 1: the examples of human progress he's listing are Roeber, the Conqueror,
Speaker 1: Barbican and Captain Nemo, both of which would make sense
Speaker 1: as as interpretations of that sentence, and both are kind
Speaker 1: of supported by the context. Like he's looking at books
Speaker 1: that say Jewels Verne on them, and these are Jewels
Speaker 1: Verned characters, so they're like characters he's referring to within
Speaker 1: the narrative, but then he also talks about them as
Speaker 1: if they are real people. So there's a very kind
Speaker 1: of interesting, ambiguous superposition of the fictional world of Jules
Speaker 1: Verne and the supposed reality of this movie's narrative. Uh,
Speaker 1: that that are like existing at the same time there,
Speaker 1: Do you see what I mean? Yeah? Yeah, And this
Speaker 1: is another way that this film feels not you know,
Speaker 1: we've discussed how it feels like something echoing from a
Speaker 1: time before, but in this it really feels like like
Speaker 1: something from much later, like from the the eighties or
Speaker 1: perhaps the nineties, in the way that it's it's it's
Speaker 1: treating this world creation. But I wanted to explain these
Speaker 1: other jewels Verne characters he mentions just for some context.
Speaker 1: So you've got a rubber of the Conqueror. This is
Speaker 1: the title character of a novel by Jules vern It's
Speaker 1: called Robert the Conqueror. Robert is an inventor, and the
Speaker 1: thing he conquers is the skies. He creates a gigantic
Speaker 1: airship that is held aloft, empowered by a series of
Speaker 1: propellers and air screws. And Robert he's one of Verne's
Speaker 1: kind of antisocial genius inventors. He flies around the world
Speaker 1: planting black flags on top of pyramids and the Statue
Speaker 1: of Liberty and so forth. And apparently the novel involves
Speaker 1: a bitter factional struggle within a Philadelphia aeronautics or flight
Speaker 1: club between Roeber and the group that prefers dirigible as
Speaker 1: another lighter than air aircraft. And he'll he'll sure show
Speaker 1: them that heavier than air aircraft are the way to go.
Speaker 1: And note, of course that this was written at a
Speaker 1: time before powered flight. So I don't know if we
Speaker 1: if we want to say technoprofit or whatever, but Jules
Speaker 1: Verne often was writing several decades ahead. You know, he
Speaker 1: was writing about things that would in some rough sense
Speaker 1: become real technologies several decades after he was writing about them,
Speaker 1: or would become more developed, because he also like talks
Speaker 1: about submarines, which, like at the time he published twenty
Speaker 1: Leagues under the Sea, there were sort of primitive submarines,
Speaker 1: but not anywhere near the kind of thing he describes
Speaker 1: in twenty Leagues. Um, So the other characters he mentions,
Speaker 1: one is Barbican, which is one of the main characters
Speaker 1: of From the Earth to the Moon and then the
Speaker 1: sequel Around the Moon's a sort of a story in
Speaker 1: two parts. Barbican is the president of a Baltimore gun
Speaker 1: club who builds a cannon that will shoot him and
Speaker 1: two other passengers around the moon in a closed capsule,
Speaker 1: again seemingly to prove the haters wrong or kind of
Speaker 1: sensing a pattern here, there's like a like a gentleman's
Speaker 1: club for people interested in science and technology and human progress,
Speaker 1: and then there's like a struggle within that club, and
Speaker 1: there's a defiant inventor or or genius in the club
Speaker 1: who's like, I'm gonna show my my rivals wrong and
Speaker 1: does something amazing, But I think it's notable that the
Speaker 1: ones that follow almost that exact pattern are kind of
Speaker 1: the less notable jewles for novels, because when you come
Speaker 1: to twenty Leagues and Captain Nemo, uh, this is once
Speaker 1: again a defiant, antisocial, globe trotting genius of sorts, but
Speaker 1: with I think a much more complex and tragic motivation.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of critics would say twenty Leagues
Speaker 1: is better and more interesting than a lot of verns
Speaker 1: other novels in in uh, in the quality of its
Speaker 1: character is not just for the avocation of an interesting
Speaker 1: PSI tech scenario, Because Captain Nemo is there's a lot
Speaker 1: about him that's kind of hidden under the surface. You
Speaker 1: you don't know exactly what his motivations are, but like
Speaker 1: there's the implication that he's sort of on a plot
Speaker 1: of anti imperialist revenge after like imperial or colonial powers
Speaker 1: have destroyed his home and his family, which makes him
Speaker 1: a weirdly kind of sympathetic character, even though he sort
Speaker 1: of fills the role of a villain or antagonist in
Speaker 1: the book. And so Nemo and twenty Leagues are very interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is some thing that the Disney adaptation
Speaker 1: from the fifties I think captured quite well. And I
Speaker 1: remember thinking a lot about this as a child watching
Speaker 1: this film and rewatching this film, it's like you you
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time thinking about Captain Nemo, Like,
Speaker 1: obviously he's the villain, but he's also really cool. But
Speaker 1: also he clearly is a very conflicted character and and
Speaker 1: other characters in the film are trying to figure him
Speaker 1: out as well. That thought, it was well produced in that,
Speaker 1: But I would say the closest to a single inspiration
Speaker 1: for the plot of Invention for Destruction is the jewels
Speaker 1: Urn novel Facing the Flag, which is a later novel
Speaker 1: of his, which has a very patriotic twist to it,
Speaker 1: which some I've argued is is kind of a much
Speaker 1: lesser rehash of Twenty Leagues. Like it involves a rogue
Speaker 1: captain operating a submarine with a secret island base, but
Speaker 1: he's in the case of Facing the Flag, the character
Speaker 1: is not as interesting and nuanced and complex as as
Speaker 1: Captain Nemo. He's just sort of a bad guy. He's
Speaker 1: like a mean criminal. But anyway, so to come back
Speaker 1: to this whole thing where the narrator here seemingly is
Speaker 1: the main character in a loose adaptation of a Jules
Speaker 1: Verne novel, but describes himself as swept up in a
Speaker 1: in a wave of giddy enthusiasm for progress through science
Speaker 1: and technology. That is implied, It's not explicit, but it's
Speaker 1: kind of implied that this is by reading Jules Verne novels.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like if you had a Superman origin
Speaker 1: story where he grew up excited about heroism because he
Speaker 1: read d C comics. You know, it reminds me just
Speaker 1: a little bit of Time after Time, where HD Wells
Speaker 1: is both a character and the time machine has a
Speaker 1: physical reality, though that's a little more that they that's
Speaker 1: a little more battened down in terms of making it all. Um,
Speaker 1: have narrative sense to it. Yeah, but I see the comparison. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that blending of the you know, the the higher
Speaker 1: level of reality with the with the narrative inside the book. Mhm.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so that's establishing the setting, and Simon hart
Speaker 1: A narrating goes on to say, well, that was the
Speaker 1: world of our youth, and then we begin a fabulous
Speaker 1: animated sequence where um so again to try to picture
Speaker 1: what's going on in in the scenes of this movie
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it. There are often different layers
Speaker 1: of animation, so there will be live action and still
Speaker 1: imagery combined into a single frame to affect a total scene,
Speaker 1: and then often animation going on on top of and
Speaker 1: around it. So you might have, for example, live action
Speaker 1: footage of crashing waves superimposed overhand drawn waves, and a
Speaker 1: shoreline with an animated boat filled with live actors. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so many layers to it, and then shot to shot
Speaker 1: things will change as well, Like in one shot a
Speaker 1: diver may be presented as a as a stop motion puppet,
Speaker 1: and then in the next it's a live actor in
Speaker 1: a costume. And again that it's it's not a seamless transition,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't feel flawed. It feels in keeping with
Speaker 1: the handcrafted artificiality of the picture. Yeah. So the narrator says,
Speaker 1: my story proper begins on the Atlantic. What an impression
Speaker 1: that made on me. I was a passenger on the
Speaker 1: first steamship to cross the Ocean, which I think is
Speaker 1: funny because all these things different differently kind of blend together,
Speaker 1: But like somehow I just find the the steamship crossing
Speaker 1: the ocean. While it is actually in reality an impressive
Speaker 1: feet it's just far less inspiring to the imagination than
Speaker 1: like a submarine or an airship. But anyway, he says,
Speaker 1: I watched as the human spirit challenged the waves below
Speaker 1: and the empire of the air above. And here we
Speaker 1: have a row of well dressed passengers on the boat.
Speaker 1: They're lining the walls of the steamship, gazing out at
Speaker 1: things with spyglasses and opera binoculars, and we see an
Speaker 1: airship and a submarine. To match his comments there, Now
Speaker 1: with the airship, there's sort of a dirigible frame, and
Speaker 1: then a pilot who is pedaling bicycle pedals to power
Speaker 1: a propeller, and there's all kinds of things going on.
Speaker 1: It really looks like one of the seagulls flying around
Speaker 1: is going to get squashed or chopped up by the
Speaker 1: bow prop like a seagull salad shooter. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I can only imagine a little. Touches like this were
Speaker 1: intentional in part because they're they're they're funny, but also
Speaker 1: it made me think of something that I heard Gamo
Speaker 1: de Toro talk about in making a feature about Pinocchio,
Speaker 1: his new Pinocchio film, which is beautiful, but he he
Speaker 1: made a really nice point. He said that that, um,
Speaker 1: if you're filming with live actors and your live performances,
Speaker 1: you have the script, you have the performance of the script,
Speaker 1: and you hope for little alterations, even a little mistakes,
Speaker 1: out of which something special may arise. But when you're
Speaker 1: doing animation and stop motion animation or or something like
Speaker 1: like this picture, you know, everything is meticulously planned out,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you have to plan in the mistakes. You
Speaker 1: have to plan in things like say a character not
Speaker 1: closing a closet door all the way, or kind of
Speaker 1: fumbling a little bit when placing a plate on a table,
Speaker 1: because those are the things that feel real, and you
Speaker 1: have to plan for those. Yeah. Yeah, So with live
Speaker 1: actors and and the three dimensional world, imperfections that prove
Speaker 1: the reality arise naturally. But with animation, because you're going
Speaker 1: frame by frame, you have to plan them in. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think that's also when This is something that
Speaker 1: I talked about with Seth on that that Alete episode,
Speaker 1: is that this one of the charms of stop motion
Speaker 1: in general is that there's this handcrafted nous and this
Speaker 1: kind of lovable awkwardness to it where it feels real.
Speaker 1: You know that that reminds me of another thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to say about this movie, Uh, to contrast it
Speaker 1: with what you would usually say about a special effects
Speaker 1: driven film movie critics that like, I can just hear
Speaker 1: in my head Cisco and Ebert saying this using the
Speaker 1: phrase special effects picture almost as synonymous with a movie
Speaker 1: that is lacking in kind of expressive human qualities, that
Speaker 1: it's a more kind of alien uh you know, uh,
Speaker 1: product of a kind of plastic texture, mass manufactured in
Speaker 1: a way. And this movie is a special effects picture
Speaker 1: in every way, like the special effects are the main character.
Speaker 1: But it is exactly the opposite. It feels lovingly handmade.
Speaker 1: It is the opposite of what you would mean when
Speaker 1: you said that about like, you know, Transformer six or something. Right. So, anyway,
Speaker 1: while we're watching this, the narrator goes on about giddy
Speaker 1: excitement for every new development of science and technology, and then, ah,
Speaker 1: what's this. There's another site off the side of the steamship.
Speaker 1: There is a strange iron mass, this elongated hull, bobbing
Speaker 1: in the water. And then we see several men scamper
Speaker 1: into a into a hatch on the top and close it,
Speaker 1: and then the vessel descends down into the water, and
Speaker 1: the narrator says, little did I know what roll submersible
Speaker 1: would soon play in my life. But suddenly we're onto
Speaker 1: something else. We're watching a train across a giant bridge
Speaker 1: spanning a colossal canyon, and the narrator says, my journey
Speaker 1: continued overland. The iron horse knew no obstacles, and we
Speaker 1: get another ingeniously composed shot. So the locomotive is fully
Speaker 1: animated or hand drawn, but the people peering out the
Speaker 1: windows and the conductor are live actors. I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly how this shot was accomplished, but it's beautiful. And
Speaker 1: then we see our narrator as a passenger on board
Speaker 1: the train. This is that you know, this is a
Speaker 1: lu boor Tokas. He's a young man with sad eyes,
Speaker 1: that that trim mustache and the dark strap like beard
Speaker 1: along his jawbone. Uh and uh. He's sitting in the
Speaker 1: train and there's a man with a rifle who squats
Speaker 1: down inside the train trying to I think, shoot a
Speaker 1: bird out the train window, but then he accidentally shoots
Speaker 1: through a h passengers newspaper that he's reading, which was
Speaker 1: very funny. Yeah. I laughed out loud and kind of
Speaker 1: exclaimed too, because it's like, oh my god, he just
Speaker 1: shot somebody in the face. But then no, the man
Speaker 1: with the newspaper lowers the newspaper and it's just a
Speaker 1: whole blasted through the newspaper, and he's slightly annoyed, but
Speaker 1: you think that he's freaked out by the fact that
Speaker 1: the newspaper was shot. But then he almost seems not
Speaker 1: to have noticed that because he was just reading a
Speaker 1: very tragic story, something about a catastrophic accident with a submersible.
Speaker 1: So I think that we're to understand that submarine that
Speaker 1: that uh Simon Hart saw earlier has sunk. It was
Speaker 1: a tragic accident, and the sadman says, such a needless
Speaker 1: loss of life. He had another invention meets its fate.
Speaker 1: Man was given legs to walk upon the earth, and
Speaker 1: there he should stay. But our young protagonist he has
Speaker 1: a look and then he folds up the newspaper and
Speaker 1: he hands it back as if to rebuke the man.
Speaker 1: He says, fortunately, there are always those not content to
Speaker 1: merely walk. So he is fully devoted to the future,
Speaker 1: even if there are catastrophic submarine accidents, and we also
Speaker 1: get more narration and and animation about air ships. So
Speaker 1: that's moving in the kind of Robe or the Conqueror idea.
Speaker 1: But eventually he goes on to say an era of
Speaker 1: steam and electricity has rendered obsolete the servants of yesteryear,
Speaker 1: And we see a carriage driver standing over a wrecked
Speaker 1: axle and just lamenting the fate of the carriage. But
Speaker 1: we cut from that to a steam powered horseless carriage
Speaker 1: being driven by a mustachio gentleman with an aviator's cap
Speaker 1: like a goggle cap. Uh, and our narrator, while riding
Speaker 1: the steam powered truck, Abomination looks at the sky and
Speaker 1: he notices an airship chugging along in the clouds, and
Speaker 1: he makes mention of his friend Robe or the Conqueror.
Speaker 1: So once again like what level of reality are we
Speaker 1: inhabiting here? Like are these jewels verned characters characters from books?
Speaker 1: Or are they living people? It seems kind of both.
Speaker 1: But eventually Heart arrives at the end of his long journey.
Speaker 1: He arrives at his destination and it is a private
Speaker 1: sanatorium stashed up on a rocky cliff overlooking the sea,
Speaker 1: and as he approaches it, he passes by a man
Speaker 1: who looks like a grizzled sea captain in a large
Speaker 1: cloak who's wandering the rocks outside. And at first this
Speaker 1: man pulls a revolver on on Simon Hard as they
Speaker 1: bump into each other, but then he's just kind of
Speaker 1: like whatever, and they go on their separate ways. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the narrator asks, but who was that man? And
Speaker 1: I was thinking, you know, he kind of looks a
Speaker 1: bit like svennl A Thorson. Oh yeah, but we learned
Speaker 1: here that Heart is at the sanatorium to visit his mentor,
Speaker 1: the brilliant scientist Professor Roach, who recovering from nervous exhaustion
Speaker 1: after working so long on his most recent invention, has
Speaker 1: been has been stashed away here. Um and uh so, uh,
Speaker 1: let's see, Simon Hart is speaking to the I guess
Speaker 1: the warden, the man who operates the sanatorium, and Heart
Speaker 1: says that he and Professor Roach need money so that
Speaker 1: they can finish Professor Roach is great invention in peace,
Speaker 1: and the other man says, sometimes I wonder if no
Speaker 1: good will come of this great explosive device, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: And we're not told at this point why the professor
Speaker 1: is building a great explosive device, But you know, it's
Speaker 1: Juels Verne stuff he just did. This is just progress.
Speaker 1: And although it did not appear in the English subtitles
Speaker 1: for this movie, I don't know if they ever said
Speaker 1: it in in the w watched rob but in I
Speaker 1: was reading about Jules Verne's facing the flag, and allegedly
Speaker 1: in that Roaches device is called the full Garater. I
Speaker 1: don't remember that term. I do remember there's a lot
Speaker 1: of talk about like absolute matter and and so forth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this may be a kind of red coon with reality.
Speaker 1: But they later when they're explaining his breakthrough, it makes
Speaker 1: it sound a lot like he's discovering uh, nuclear secrets,
Speaker 1: you know, basically nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: but after this, a dark and beautiful scene unfolds later
Speaker 1: that night when the grizzled sea captain man from the
Speaker 1: cliffs earlier, he's out by the stormy sea and there
Speaker 1: are waves crashing on the rocks and he raises a
Speaker 1: lantern to signal at a mysterious vessel, and someone on
Speaker 1: board the vessel flashes a light to signal back, and
Speaker 1: here onto the shore come a crew of gnarly pirates.
Speaker 1: I guess these are the retirement home pirates, rowing their
Speaker 1: boats in the gloom against the heavy surf. I love
Speaker 1: the look of the scene. Now this is not the
Speaker 1: one where they're in the submarine that's later, I think,
Speaker 1: right right rightning their swords. Oh no, no, no, this
Speaker 1: is when they're rowing their boats to get to the senatorium. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And we get a little backstory meanwhile between Simon Hart
Speaker 1: and Professor Roach that they're talking about his work, and
Speaker 1: Roach says, I'm a scientist and my interestalize in chemical reactions,
Speaker 1: not their practical applications. And this is a theme that
Speaker 1: will they'll come back to several times. He's just plowing
Speaker 1: ahead with with scientific progress, and he actively refuses thinking
Speaker 1: about to what use the progress will be put. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh and and they'll be payoff with this later on.
Speaker 1: So the pirates are here, in fact, to kidnap Professor
Speaker 1: Roach and young Simon Hart. They take him along to
Speaker 1: uh and they are being led by the sea captain
Speaker 1: and his revolver. And here's where we noticed there's a
Speaker 1: kind of curious magic to the pirates. They are realized
Speaker 1: with both Menace and whimsy, so they appear kind of frightening.
Speaker 1: But over on the whimsy ledger there is, for example,
Speaker 1: a special effect where like a strongman pirate lifts Simon
Speaker 1: hard up in the air, like lifts him up above
Speaker 1: his head. So and he is so obviously being hoisted
Speaker 1: up by some other means, maybe a hidden pulley or something,
Speaker 1: that it looks like he's just a balloon in the
Speaker 1: muscle pirate's hands, Like there's no attempt at all to
Speaker 1: maintain the illusion of weight. He just kind of floats up.
Speaker 1: And it adds a kind of subtle physical comedy that
Speaker 1: I found incredibly pleasing, Like when the Man with the newspaper,
Speaker 1: when the newspaper is shot on the train earlier, and
Speaker 1: there's another gag like this with like a a pirate
Speaker 1: throwing a rope that seems to almost magically wrap itself
Speaker 1: around the professor. Yeah, yeah, I'm also reminded of the
Speaker 1: wind up machine gun pistol from later on in the film.
Speaker 1: That's so good. Yeah, when the Count is trying to
Speaker 1: shoot down a hot air balloon and he's got it
Speaker 1: looks like a musket pistol almost, and he's trying to
Speaker 1: fire it and it's not working, and his his scientist Henchman,
Speaker 1: winds it up for him and then yeah, yeah, then
Speaker 1: it's an automatic weapon, yeah with no kick. It doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like it has any kick to it, right. Uh So,
Speaker 1: Simon Harden Professor are whisked off into the night on
Speaker 1: on the rowboats, where they will be taken as prisoners
Speaker 1: to destinations unknown. Now why them? Could it be because
Speaker 1: of the Professor's interest in chemical reactions and not their
Speaker 1: practical applications. Uh. Anyway, the the narrator informs us that
Speaker 1: word of their kidnapping spreads like wildfire, and there is
Speaker 1: soon a worldwide man hunt for them. And this is
Speaker 1: a theme that I want to plan a seed here,
Speaker 1: because I think this is something that's kind of characteristic
Speaker 1: of Jules Vernes fiction, and there might be something interesting
Speaker 1: to tease out about this. In Jules Verne novels, there
Speaker 1: is often a sense of like there is a situation
Speaker 1: and word of it spreads around the whole world, and
Speaker 1: everyone learns of this situation or problem, and uh, problem
Speaker 1: solvers around the world all simultaneously turn their attention to
Speaker 1: solving this problem. Yeah, yeah, this this idea, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's almost kind of the same level of one
Speaker 1: world optimism that you see uh in in the later
Speaker 1: works of you know, like like Star Trek and so forth.
Speaker 1: You know, this idea that that the world at large,
Speaker 1: when unified, is this force of order and progress. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: like not the kind of mundane reality that, oh, if
Speaker 1: if two people were like kidnapped from a sanatorium, probably
Speaker 1: like nothing would happen, Like they just disappear. Uh. Instead,
Speaker 1: this is like, okay, now the machine is activated, the
Speaker 1: whole world is looking for them to get them back. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which again it's kind of like that naive optimistic charm
Speaker 1: of this uh, this vision of the Jewels Verne universe.
Speaker 1: And this leads to a confrontation. So we see a ship,
Speaker 1: presumably at first the ship on which our heroes are
Speaker 1: being held prisoner, and the bearded sea captain he's leaning
Speaker 1: over the side and they the people on this ship
Speaker 1: are staring down a battleship with is like a naval
Speaker 1: destroyer with big long guns trained on them, and they're
Speaker 1: sort of a bookish looking man with mutton chops, side
Speaker 1: burns and a pipe. And he asks the captain can
Speaker 1: they detain us? And the sea captain says, might makes right?
Speaker 1: Was this phrase in your in your English dub it was, yes,
Speaker 1: I do remember this part. And so the bookish man says, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to go inform the count. So he does,
Speaker 1: and we come to learn that this is Count arctic Gas,
Speaker 1: the boss, the boss for whom everybody here on the
Speaker 1: ship works. And uh so the ship is boarded by
Speaker 1: a bunch of marines or French naval seamen. I don't
Speaker 1: know what they're I think they're supposed to be French,
Speaker 1: but there's some kind of authorities and they perform a search.
Speaker 1: They look at a fancy captain's quarters, a lonely empty
Speaker 1: hold full of rats and a few luggage bags, but
Speaker 1: nothing to see here, so they leave, and then we
Speaker 1: cut to a scene where Count arctic Gas and the
Speaker 1: captain are talking and the Count is I thought this
Speaker 1: was so funny, and I'm not sure what it means.
Speaker 1: The Count is trying on top hat after top hat,
Speaker 1: and in a full length mirror, NonStop top hats, and
Speaker 1: you can see in the background he has a huge
Speaker 1: steamer trunk full of more top hats. Oh yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I think this has some cinematic payoff in the in
Speaker 1: the finale of the film as well. It does, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: we associate him with I think this is supposed to
Speaker 1: have something to do with the Count being vain, But
Speaker 1: he's not just vain. He's arrogant and domineering because he
Speaker 1: also humiliates the grizzled sea captain. He forces him to
Speaker 1: address him as your excellency when posing a question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a bad dude. So after this we have a
Speaker 1: couple of mysteries raised. So the ship continues to sail ahead.
Speaker 1: We see it sailing even though it's sales are furled.
Speaker 1: How is that possible? What is driving the ship? And uh?
Speaker 1: And if Simon Harden Professor are on board, if they
Speaker 1: have been kidnapped, how come the marines did not find them? Well,
Speaker 1: the answer to these two questions is the same revelation.
Speaker 1: The ship above the waves is only half of a
Speaker 1: two part system. Below there is a great submarine towing
Speaker 1: the ship along, and it is down on the submarine
Speaker 1: where our heroes are kept. So here we get a
Speaker 1: meeting between Professor, Roach and Count. Are two gas on
Speaker 1: the submarine, and this is the first scene where we
Speaker 1: will see a sort of tableau or display of marine
Speaker 1: life behind the human drama. So they are in the
Speaker 1: in the I don't know what you call the parlor,
Speaker 1: the I don't know, the drawing or something of the ship,
Speaker 1: and there's a big display window and we see all
Speaker 1: the fish and everything outside, marvelously animated fishes and octopus,
Speaker 1: and uh, Professor Roach wants to know, Hey, why the kidnapping.
Speaker 1: What's going on here? And we we learned that basically,
Speaker 1: the count just wanted to give the professor a research grant,
Speaker 1: a non consensual research and this is the best way
Speaker 1: he could figure out how to do it. So because
Speaker 1: of his submarine, he says he is the master of
Speaker 1: all the oceans, kind of Captain Nemo Wish once again.
Speaker 1: And he says he has access to untold riches because
Speaker 1: the sea claims all lost ships, including the treasures they carry.
Speaker 1: And then we look out the window and we see
Speaker 1: the shipwrecks spread out across the ocean floor, and the
Speaker 1: ocean is just littered with them like trees in a forest.
Speaker 1: Oh and I loved this this image. It suggests something
Speaker 1: about um like the world in which this takes place,
Speaker 1: there's almost kind of just an infinite past where ships
Speaker 1: have been sinking for for millions and millions of years,
Speaker 1: taking gold and treasures with them, and now the whole
Speaker 1: seafloor is nothing but shipwrecks. Yeah, I love this. I
Speaker 1: love the way they create this world. But also I
Speaker 1: love this, uh this idea. It's like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: all the they're all these uh these shipwrecks out there,
Speaker 1: and if if there's a shipwreck, then we can take
Speaker 1: advantage of it. And of course the there's going to
Speaker 1: be an added detail to this arrangement as well. Right,
Speaker 1: you kind of get the sense that maybe he's already
Speaker 1: been to all of the pre existing shipwrecks. Um, so
Speaker 1: what do you do when funds start running out after that? Well,
Speaker 1: you make new shipwrecks. Exactly. So, the Count wants to
Speaker 1: help the Professor finish his research on the great explosive
Speaker 1: device from the novel The Full Garad or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: surely because he too is only interested in chemical reactions,
Speaker 1: not practical applications. And uh so he oh, he also
Speaker 1: informs Professor he has constructed an underwater city called back Cup.
Speaker 1: In my translation, I didn't know if that was supposed
Speaker 1: to be a joke. I don't remember what they called
Speaker 1: it in the version I watched, anyway. So while that's
Speaker 1: going on with the professor, he's being sort of seduced
Speaker 1: by the promise of of unlimited funding to continue his research.
Speaker 1: Simon Hart is in a jail cell on the submarine
Speaker 1: and he's not he's not being tricked into thinking that
Speaker 1: this is a benign arrangement. He's like rattling the bars
Speaker 1: of his cage. He's saying, what right do you have
Speaker 1: to hold me here? And the count comes in and,
Speaker 1: echoing an earlier phrase by the sea captain, he says,
Speaker 1: might makes rights or so this is the point of
Speaker 1: view of the villains that it is the right of
Speaker 1: the strong to rule over the week. So we learned
Speaker 1: the names of some characters we've seen before, the grizzled
Speaker 1: sea captains, captain's uh Spade or Captain Slade. I may
Speaker 1: have said Slade earlier, but I think it's Spade Um
Speaker 1: and the the bookish man with burns as Mr Circo,
Speaker 1: who is going to be working alongside the professor to
Speaker 1: complete his invention. And coming up here we get a
Speaker 1: scene where's there's the payoff? We were saying about you
Speaker 1: know what, what about when you run out of shipwrecks
Speaker 1: to raid. Uh. So the submarine attacks a defenseless merchant
Speaker 1: ship that has been becalmed in the middle of the sea,
Speaker 1: so much like leagues, sort of rams it with the
Speaker 1: pointy bow of the submarine, jabs a hole in the
Speaker 1: ship's hull and then sinks it. And there's a great
Speaker 1: preparation scene that keeps intercutting between the pistons pumping and
Speaker 1: the submarines engine room and the pirates all sharpening their
Speaker 1: swords in unison. Yeahup there getting ready for the Yeah
Speaker 1: that the impact and the and the following raid. This
Speaker 1: whole sequence is just amazing, wonderful. So I was thinking
Speaker 1: at first when they're sharpening their swords, I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: so are they going to like to aboard the boat?
Speaker 1: But no, instead they're preparing for a dive walk. The
Speaker 1: dive walk scene is such a treat. I just watch
Speaker 1: this all day. So the the pirates dawn old fashioned
Speaker 1: heavy metal diving helmets, gonna you know, BioShock style, and
Speaker 1: uh they go out and walk along the sea floor
Speaker 1: to explore the fresh ship wreckage, and there's just sea
Speaker 1: life of ridiculous dimensions. They're riding these sort of deep
Speaker 1: sea bicycles, like these powered craft that they peddle on.
Speaker 1: And there's this again a combination of hand drawn animation,
Speaker 1: live action stop motion. Also it's all coming together. There
Speaker 1: are divers versus sharks. There is a couple of the
Speaker 1: pirates get into a deep sea sword fight over I
Speaker 1: think they're trying to take the treasure for themselves. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is a great part where yeah, they're the two pirates.
Speaker 1: They get into a squabble, they start sword fighting, which
Speaker 1: is just a comedic vision anyway. Um, and then another
Speaker 1: pirate comes along on one of those little deep sea bicycles.
Speaker 1: He has a shotgun in his hand, but he gets
Speaker 1: them to stop by ringing a bicycle bell like thinking,
Speaker 1: and they're like, okay, all right, and they cut it
Speaker 1: out and they get back to work. So all the
Speaker 1: treasure is removed from the merchant ship. Uh. And by
Speaker 1: the way, they go out of their way to keep
Speaker 1: the Professor in the dark about this. They don't want
Speaker 1: him realizing that they're sinking ships on purpose. So when
Speaker 1: the attack is about to begin, count ourt to gases, like, professor,
Speaker 1: would you like to go inside for a snack? So
Speaker 1: they go down to the I guess the soundproof snack room.
Speaker 1: But whoops, they failed to keep him completely in the dark,
Speaker 1: because when the Professor comes back out on board, he
Speaker 1: hears somebody calling for help, and it turns out there
Speaker 1: was a survivor of the shipwreck. Uh. There is a
Speaker 1: passenger floating in the water and they are forced to
Speaker 1: rescue her. Now, this is a woman named Yanna. This
Speaker 1: is someone who we saw earlier during the attack, very
Speaker 1: efficiently releasing her cage to birds. She's like opening the
Speaker 1: doors on multiple cages and letting the birds fly away.
Speaker 1: Do do do do do? Hey, folks, if anything sounds different,
Speaker 1: we just had to take a break in the recording here,
Speaker 1: but we're back to continue talking about the movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're the same people we were before the break. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: So picking up where we left off, The next thing
Speaker 1: is an arrival at a mysterious island. I think this
Speaker 1: is back Cup uh, And actually it turns out this
Speaker 1: island is a volcano, and it looks like the volcano
Speaker 1: is active. There is black smoke pouring out of the top,
Speaker 1: but the Count assures the Professor the smoke is actually
Speaker 1: from his factories. Oh good, Uh, So there is an
Speaker 1: undersea tunnel, we learned, and through the undersea tunnel, the
Speaker 1: submarine can access the Count's pirates citadel. So you go
Speaker 1: through the tunnel and there's a weird fish swimming around,
Speaker 1: and then you come up and there is a gloomy
Speaker 1: lagoon and Simon Hart's narration says, are too gass satanic
Speaker 1: mills spewed clouds of oily black fumes that floated over
Speaker 1: the caldera like a threat of inevitable eruption. What is
Speaker 1: it with megalomaniac villains holding up in active volcanoes? Because
Speaker 1: Minos did it in the Hercules movie. We watched Blowfield
Speaker 1: does it in uh the James Bond films. Oh that's yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh certainly I think you only lived twice. Right,
Speaker 1: that's Donald pleasants as Blowfeld. Um, that's the one where
Speaker 1: he's got the piranha pit. But anyway, also in this lagoon, uh,
Speaker 1: the castle of Count art Gas looms over the lagoon,
Speaker 1: and uh we learned that he is the pirate king
Speaker 1: of the modern age. So here at the lagoon we
Speaker 1: have several arrangements. Simon Hart is kept in a dilapidated
Speaker 1: shock while the professor is sent to the laboratory to
Speaker 1: continue his research, and it seems like they've got Simon
Speaker 1: Hart sort of as backup because he was the professor's assistant.
Speaker 1: So it's like, hey, if the prop can't get it done,
Speaker 1: we'll get this young whipper snapper on the case and
Speaker 1: we'll see if he can, you know, create the super weapon.
Speaker 1: The shack still looks fabulous though, because it is rendered
Speaker 1: in the same style as everything in this film. I
Speaker 1: love the shock. Yeah. So we see the professor doing
Speaker 1: science while art of Gas and his cronies look on.
Speaker 1: There's like a glowing flask and you know, is bubbling
Speaker 1: with with fog coming out of it and so forth,
Speaker 1: and the professor says that he is going to discover
Speaker 1: the secretive matter and then they're like okay, and then
Speaker 1: what um. Meanwhile, Jana from the shipwreck she is now
Speaker 1: working in the professor's lab and she asks him about
Speaker 1: his experiments and he says there is great energy locked
Speaker 1: within matter and he is learning how to release it,
Speaker 1: and that energy could be used to power lights or
Speaker 1: heat homes. But ultimately he says he's only interested in
Speaker 1: unlocking the knowledge how it should be used is quote
Speaker 1: for technicians and others to decide, again playing with the
Speaker 1: theme that this this scientist is disavowing all responsibility to
Speaker 1: consider practical implications. He only wants the raw knowledge. Mean,
Speaker 1: while they're trying to get Simon Hart to do some
Speaker 1: research for him as well. They they want him to
Speaker 1: do heavier than air flying machines, but he refuses, and
Speaker 1: at first the professor he's like, you know, the Professor
Speaker 1: will never do your bidding. He's not going to make
Speaker 1: a super explosive for you. But then in the narration
Speaker 1: he remembers, but oh, the Professor is as trusting as
Speaker 1: a child. He probably will do it now. I think
Speaker 1: this is somewhat that this is a difference between the
Speaker 1: professor in the book facing the Flag versus in this movie.
Speaker 1: I think in the book the professor is more kind
Speaker 1: of like bitter and seemingly willing to um to work
Speaker 1: along with the criminals at least for the time being,
Speaker 1: and in the movie he's presented more as just like
Speaker 1: not understanding who these people are, what he's working on, yeah,
Speaker 1: just so focused on the scientific achievement and the mystery
Speaker 1: and the challenge of the thing, without thinking really and
Speaker 1: refusing to really consider the practical applications, especially by a
Speaker 1: pirate king. Right, So, uh, Simon Hart figures out what's
Speaker 1: going on that that the professor is going to build
Speaker 1: a super weapon obliviously for the pirate king and his
Speaker 1: band of criminals. It's got to be stopped. So he
Speaker 1: attempts to warn mankind about this with a note attached
Speaker 1: to a balloon. And so he like loads up this
Speaker 1: kind of leather lined flask with a with a handwritten note,
Speaker 1: attaches it to a hot air I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's a hot air balloon. It's a balloon of some
Speaker 1: kind that he manufactures in his laboratory, and then he
Speaker 1: launches it off the island and then there's this whole
Speaker 1: word going out sequence that is so beautiful, like the
Speaker 1: letters somehow reaches some major metropolitan center, maybe it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be Paris or something, and then we see it
Speaker 1: just being like transmitted all over the world, like a
Speaker 1: message in the bottle that is addressed to the United
Speaker 1: Nations and it's promptly delivered. Again, coming back to that
Speaker 1: theme of like the world responds. Uh, And I've got
Speaker 1: some thoughts on that in just a minute. But first, uh,
Speaker 1: there there is a part where uh Simon Hart also
Speaker 1: tries to get in touch with the professor by attaching
Speaker 1: a note to a toy vote and sending it across
Speaker 1: the lagoon to Jana so that maybe she'll deliver it
Speaker 1: to the professor. Meanwhile, there is a movie night scene
Speaker 1: that is absolutely wonderful. So count Arctic Gas and his
Speaker 1: cronies get some film reels delivered to the island, I think,
Speaker 1: and it's showing. First of all, there's like a newsreel
Speaker 1: report that that's letting them know, Hey, by the way,
Speaker 1: the whole world knows that you're doing experiments on this
Speaker 1: island now because somebody warned them, and now they are.
Speaker 1: They're putting soldiers on top of camels riding roller skates
Speaker 1: to come get you. But funny enough, it doesn't stop
Speaker 1: with the news reel. We also get a reel called
Speaker 1: Sport that is just showing musclemen of the world doing
Speaker 1: muscle things. And so they're they're just watching various projected
Speaker 1: reels and then the projector catches on fire. I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure why it happens, but it's very funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I found this very amusing. And again this has to
Speaker 1: be intentional on the part of the filmmaker here, because
Speaker 1: in this movie and in the context of this film,
Speaker 1: all manner of technological dreams are possible and achievable and
Speaker 1: realized to a very high degree. You know that the
Speaker 1: air is full of flying machines, space may have flying
Speaker 1: machines in them, and ships are sailing beneath the waves. Um,
Speaker 1: all this works very well except for film, which is
Speaker 1: clearly messy, dangerous, and prone to failure. And I think
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting and perhaps insightful commentary coming from such
Speaker 1: an accomplished filmmaker. Um like Carol's Aiman. Yes that I
Speaker 1: think that subtext may in fact be there. That that's good.
Speaker 1: So the next big thing that happens is that Simon
Speaker 1: Hart gets sent underwater in a diving suit to fix
Speaker 1: a problem with the cable connecting the island to the
Speaker 1: outside world. And uh, there's a great moment in the
Speaker 1: scene where he gets like he gets assigned to this job.
Speaker 1: I guess he volunteers for it, but he gets assigned
Speaker 1: this job by Mr Circo, the the scientist who works
Speaker 1: for Ourt of Gas, the guy with the mutton chops
Speaker 1: and the and the glasses and uh. In that scene,
Speaker 1: Mr Circo is like sitting at a desk in a
Speaker 1: cave working on some paperwork, and there's a part with
Speaker 1: this giant steam powered like I don't know what you call,
Speaker 1: like a crane or a bulldozer type machine hands him
Speaker 1: a pen. So the dispatcher said, something's wrong with Dina cobble,
Speaker 1: and so Simon Hart is going to use this and
Speaker 1: as an excuse to explore the tunnel leading to the
Speaker 1: outside world, because of course he wants to get out
Speaker 1: of there. Once again, we get an absolutely fabulous underwater
Speaker 1: sort of dive walk sequence that that has a giant
Speaker 1: octopus or squid attack in it. It's not exactly clear.
Speaker 1: I want to see squid there. There's a big like
Speaker 1: ink squirting scene at the end of the fight, but
Speaker 1: it also kind of looks octopusy. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: they're going for here, but there is a there is
Speaker 1: a cephalopod versus diver squabble. Now is this the scene
Speaker 1: where he fights it with an axe? I think so, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And then when he defeats it, there's like this big
Speaker 1: ink cloud that billows up from where he chopped it.
Speaker 1: And this is in the background to the diver, and
Speaker 1: it's a very I mean, the whole sequence is amazing,
Speaker 1: but the scene too is just just excellent. The stills
Speaker 1: you can you can freeze on, Yeah, really good. And
Speaker 1: there's one little detail I loved here where uh, Simon
Speaker 1: Hart has to keep track of how much oxygen he
Speaker 1: has and and it's running out, so he keeps track
Speaker 1: of it by looking at a watch, but of course,
Speaker 1: you know his watch is not gonna work underwater, so
Speaker 1: he has a watch inside a bottle, yes, like a
Speaker 1: cork on top. But then he does run out of oxygen,
Speaker 1: so as he's trying to escape, his tank runs low,
Speaker 1: and then he becomes very fatigued, and he lays down
Speaker 1: on the ocean floor as if maybe to die, and
Speaker 1: we see some visions he's having or something where the
Speaker 1: fish are transforming into butterflies underneath the waves. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is beautiful, uh and and and very probably even more
Speaker 1: dream like than than everything already has. But of course
Speaker 1: it's you know, a vision he's deprived of oxygen. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like the fish come together and they act like
Speaker 1: they're doing that sort of you know, fish kiss kind
Speaker 1: of a thing, which isn't actually a kiss. But but
Speaker 1: then they keep moving into each other until only their
Speaker 1: tales are visible, and though each tail forms a wing
Speaker 1: of the butterfly. I'm not sure if that's uh that
Speaker 1: is accurately recreating the image in your head, listener, but
Speaker 1: you need to see it. It's gorgeous, it's sublime. And
Speaker 1: then out of nowhere, he has brought on board a
Speaker 1: submarine and saved just when you think he's going to die.
Speaker 1: So what's going on here? Well, the crew of the
Speaker 1: submarine inform him, They say, you were among friends, sir,
Speaker 1: And we see a newspaper that with a headline that
Speaker 1: says world powers unite to combat invention for destruction. So
Speaker 1: the world got his note and the world responded. And
Speaker 1: I love something about this, and I think it's worth
Speaker 1: having a brief sub discussion about this being indicative of
Speaker 1: an unusual outlook in in a lot in film in general,
Speaker 1: but one that's more characteristic of Jules Verne. As we
Speaker 1: were saying earlier, I would contrast this with the exact
Speaker 1: opposite trope that we often see in horror movies, where
Speaker 1: the outside world is anything but helpful. So if you
Speaker 1: are in a horror movie and you're running from anything
Speaker 1: Wherewolf Jason vorhees whatever, and you run into anything representing
Speaker 1: structures of authority on the outside, you run into a cop.
Speaker 1: Is that cop going to be able to help you? No?
Speaker 1: Obviously not. Never happens. I mean of the time, it
Speaker 1: does not happen in a horror movie. No external authorities, institutions,
Speaker 1: or people in general are going to be of assistance.
Speaker 1: You are on your own in escaping or defeat being
Speaker 1: the monster. And in fact, if the world finds out
Speaker 1: about your situation, they will often make things harder for you.
Speaker 1: They will they'll say like, oh, you're crazy. You know,
Speaker 1: you're lying about what's going on. They'll try to blame
Speaker 1: you for what's happening. But this is a totally different
Speaker 1: vision the world. Here's about this ongoing tragedy. And the
Speaker 1: world responds they like put the scientific and technological machinery
Speaker 1: of the entire planet into overdrive to develop submarines to
Speaker 1: go confront ourt to Gas to stop him from creating
Speaker 1: a super weapon. Yeah, this is it is interesting to
Speaker 1: think about this because you can you can almost go
Speaker 1: like movie to movie. Um. Yeah, and of course you
Speaker 1: can look to to really crucial examples of this trope
Speaker 1: of the world outside world and outside authority being unable
Speaker 1: to help. I guess Psycho being a very influential example
Speaker 1: of that. Uh that the your your rescuer is not
Speaker 1: going to be able to save you, yum, and then
Speaker 1: you're gonna and and so. So it's often like a
Speaker 1: situation of Okay, this movie is to some degree saying
Speaker 1: like this part of society is unable to help with
Speaker 1: this scenario. But then who is the person who can
Speaker 1: or is there someone who can at all? And then
Speaker 1: sometimes films kind of buck that a bit, like I
Speaker 1: instantly think of an American Werewolf in London, where um,
Speaker 1: ultimately that's that's a movie that kind of maybe is
Speaker 1: a little retro in the way you're act you actually
Speaker 1: deal with the creature at the end, because I believe
Speaker 1: the authority shoot it in Mali, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: which kind of feels like a throwback in that regard,
Speaker 1: but also is kind of subverting the idea that a
Speaker 1: problem of this magnitude is something that we can handle
Speaker 1: on our own. Well, yes, But also I would say
Speaker 1: in the cases of horror movies where like say the
Speaker 1: cops shoot the monster or something. Almost all of those
Speaker 1: that I can think of. It's actually kind of a
Speaker 1: tragic story where the monster is someone that is like,
Speaker 1: actually is the main character, or is a character you
Speaker 1: feel pity for. That's right, I mean, that's the actually
Speaker 1: the case of American Werewolf. We'll have to keep this
Speaker 1: in our heads because I'm sure some some some exceptions
Speaker 1: and other notable examples will come to mind. I know
Speaker 1: there's got to be at least some awkward horror film
Speaker 1: out there from perhaps the nineteen fifties, in which the
Speaker 1: police show up and nobly shoot at a monster to
Speaker 1: death for which you have no feelings or a sympathy.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you know, I mean it certainly, haven I
Speaker 1: think there are a lot of fifties movies like that.
Speaker 1: It didn't Tarantula basically in that way. Oh yeah, Tarantula basically, yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't. We don't feel anything for the tarantula. And
Speaker 1: they were just like, yep, the military's here. Clint Easwood
Speaker 1: just flew in in a jet. It's taking care of yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: So to come back to the plot, so this submarine
Speaker 1: sent by the world is is attacked. However, there's a
Speaker 1: submarine battle and the Count's submarine skewers, it pokes a
Speaker 1: big hole in the side, and then, uh, basically I
Speaker 1: think everyone inside parishes except Simon Hart. He survives and
Speaker 1: he comes ashore, and from there he climbs a tower
Speaker 1: inside the goon and comes into Janna's window, and so
Speaker 1: here Simon Hart and Yanna become a team. They team up,
Speaker 1: and Simon reveals to her that the men who saved
Speaker 1: her life are not actually so nice. Uh. They saved
Speaker 1: her life when her ship sank, but they were also
Speaker 1: the very people who sank it. And now they are
Speaker 1: planning something even more diabolical and evil crime of global proportions,
Speaker 1: and only the Professor can stop it. So they're going
Speaker 1: to team up to try to get to the Professor
Speaker 1: to make him not create the what's the flu Fu
Speaker 1: flu Glorator or whatever it is. In the subtitles of
Speaker 1: the movie, they were calling it the super Gun. There's
Speaker 1: a supergun filled with the Professor's new explosive. I guess
Speaker 1: it might be were too loosely think of this as
Speaker 1: atomic weaponry, right, And they reveal the new soldiers of
Speaker 1: the Count's Super Gun Army, which they look quite terrifying.
Speaker 1: They're wearing these dark suits and gas masks, and they
Speaker 1: are loaded down with so much technology that they look
Speaker 1: like Jacob Marley, like wrapped round and round with chains
Speaker 1: and metal boxes. So when they walk through the rooms,
Speaker 1: they're kind of clanking and dragging all of this equipment
Speaker 1: with them. Yeah, they're kind of like verns in Stormtroopers
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, and uh so what's going to happen here? Well, uh,
Speaker 1: Simon Hart and Yanna have an idea. They do a
Speaker 1: classic James Bond style uniform swipes. So they beat up
Speaker 1: a couple of the Supergun Army soldiers, they steal their
Speaker 1: outfits and they use that to sneak on board the
Speaker 1: the Count's air balloon, which I think the Hot air
Speaker 1: Balloon was supposed to be used to drop bombs on
Speaker 1: the ships that are coming to rescue them. I think
Speaker 1: that's right. Yes. Anyway, everything comes down to a big
Speaker 1: fight at the island. The warships are incoming, the world
Speaker 1: is coming to the rescue. The Count's forces are getting
Speaker 1: ready to attack via Supergun and via the Hot air Balloon,
Speaker 1: but of course our heroes steal the Hot air balloon
Speaker 1: um in the battle. This is the scene where the
Speaker 1: Count is shooting at the hot air balloon with like
Speaker 1: a musket pistol that is also a wind up machine gun. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: that was fabulous. And at the very last the Professor
Speaker 1: realizes what is happening. He comes to his senses and
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, the people I'm working for are the
Speaker 1: bad guys. And so he sabotages his own invention by
Speaker 1: causing an explosive shell to fall off a cliff. It detonates,
Speaker 1: it destroys the entire island, including himself, the Count, all
Speaker 1: of the Count's cronies and his armies and uh and Simon,
Speaker 1: Hard and Yanna escape in the hot air balloon and
Speaker 1: they sort of float off, almost float into the sun. Oh.
Speaker 1: And one of the last things we get when the
Speaker 1: island explodes as we see a top hat going sky high.
Speaker 1: Nice the top hat came back. Um. This this whole
Speaker 1: scene with the Professor having a change of heart and realizing,
Speaker 1: you know, what he has wrought and to a certain
Speaker 1: degree kind of like being like, oops, I almost became
Speaker 1: death of his way of worlds. Maybe I shouldn't do that, um,
Speaker 1: and trying to decide to take a step backwards. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's really well executed though, Like it's it's nicely
Speaker 1: framed and shot with him approaching the weapon, climbing up
Speaker 1: on the weapon and then you know, Knox this uh
Speaker 1: uh you know, atomic shell off and lets it roll
Speaker 1: down to to destroy everything. But yeah, it's it's really
Speaker 1: it's really well done. It's a dramatic moment um that
Speaker 1: it's easy. That's one of the things that it works.
Speaker 1: So that's so impressive about this film is that it
Speaker 1: can be so you know, kind of silly and dream
Speaker 1: like and whimsical and so many of its visuals, and
Speaker 1: yet it still can deliver some really great moments that
Speaker 1: have a sense of drama and spectacle to them, like
Speaker 1: this moment, the slaying of the squid, and other moments
Speaker 1: throughout the film. Absolutely, and I also love the professor's
Speaker 1: realization at the end, connecting to the theme of what
Speaker 1: he's been talking about the entire time, with the knowledge
Speaker 1: versus the practical application. I think his final moment is
Speaker 1: he he realizes the only good practical application of his
Speaker 1: invention is to destroy itself, is to erase itself from
Speaker 1: existence so it cannot be used. Yeah, and then like
Speaker 1: you said, they balloon off into the sun, like to
Speaker 1: the point where my son walked in for the last
Speaker 1: ten minutes of this film when I was watching it
Speaker 1: yesterday and he's like, oh, now they're going into the sun,
Speaker 1: and um, maybe he's been exposed too much ms tap,
Speaker 1: but um I thought. I was like, no, no, don't
Speaker 1: say that, don't ruin the nice moment. But then I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it does kind of look like they're going into the sun.
Speaker 1: Well that that is what it looks like, but I
Speaker 1: don't know, I kind of like that. I mean it symbolically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the ideas that they are going into the light. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: into into the future, into a better tomorrow. It's a
Speaker 1: lot like the ending of Congo. Actually, yes, except there's
Speaker 1: there's uh well no, no, the guerrilla wasn't on board
Speaker 1: the balloon and Congo either, so yeah, the gorilla stays
Speaker 1: behind too. Yeah, but they don't have Ernie Hudson. That's
Speaker 1: really the only difference. If this film had Ernie Hudson
Speaker 1: in it, it would basically be identical. God, I love Ernie.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's so good. Okay. One difference that I was
Speaker 1: reading about between Invention for Destruction in the movie and
Speaker 1: the novel Facing the Flag. They both have a professor
Speaker 1: who creates a super weapon, is kidnapped by a pirate king,
Speaker 1: and you know, goes through all this. But apparently in
Speaker 1: the end of the novel Facing the Flag, the professor
Speaker 1: initially allows his supergun, the full Garad or whatever, to
Speaker 1: be used against a British warship that is coming to
Speaker 1: the rescue of of his associates, and so, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're turning the weapon on the British and he's like rock.
Speaker 1: But when he sees a French warship approaching and sees
Speaker 1: the French flag, his sense of patriotism because he is
Speaker 1: French makes him makes him question his actions. And then
Speaker 1: he has overcome with guilt and he says, I can't
Speaker 1: turn this on a French ship. And so then he,
Speaker 1: I guess distry roys his own creation or something like that,
Speaker 1: turns against he no longer cooperates in some way. Um,
Speaker 1: and I think that is a that is a far
Speaker 1: less grand and less beautiful ending that I like the
Speaker 1: change they made for the for the movie, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so. I think it ultimately is a lot more
Speaker 1: compelling and relatable because we have a have an individual
Speaker 1: who is kind of oblivious to the impact of what
Speaker 1: they're doing or how they view the world, and then
Speaker 1: there is a revelation that like, no, no, this what
Speaker 1: I'm doing does matter, what I'm not doing doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's something that even the average
Speaker 1: person can relate to, you know, waking up to your
Speaker 1: own role in something or place in something, or or
Speaker 1: you know, or to realize that that not having having
Speaker 1: an opinion and not acting that inaction is like making
Speaker 1: a choice. Yeah. Yeah, So in the end, I'd say
Speaker 1: Invention for Destruction one of my favorite movies we've done. Uh, beautiful,
Speaker 1: truly a work of art and surprisingly profound for a
Speaker 1: little sci fi adventure story. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Um,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like like I was telling you before
Speaker 1: we recorded, sometimes you view a film and you feel
Speaker 1: like it's just a purely additive experience, Like that's great.
Speaker 1: I've seen another film that was a lot of fun
Speaker 1: or very enjoyable, very admirable, you know, even a great film. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of film where once you see it,
Speaker 1: you realize that you're not just it's not just additive,
Speaker 1: You're filling in something that was missing in your your
Speaker 1: appreciation of cinema. Yeah, yeah, so you know, three stars kidding,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't get stars. It's almost as good
Speaker 1: as Laser Blast. Yeah, no, no, it's it's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. Yeah again, high highly recommend this one. All Right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna gohea and close the books here on Invention
Speaker 1: for Destruction, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Speaker 1: If you have thoughts on this film, you have, if
Speaker 1: you have a history with this film, etcetera. Right in
Speaker 1: in the meantime, if you want to keep track of
Speaker 1: all the other films, the the one hundred other films
Speaker 1: that we've covered on Weird House Cinema, you can find
Speaker 1: them all at our letterbox page. That's l E T
Speaker 1: T E R B o x d dot com. We
Speaker 1: have a profile there it's weird House and if you
Speaker 1: go there you'll find a list of all these films
Speaker 1: with a link story. You can listen to the episodes
Speaker 1: if you haven't listened to the episode already, huge thanks
Speaker 1: to our audio producer J. J. Pauseway. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind. It's production of I heart Radio.
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