Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking
Speaker 3: about the nineteen sixty seven Soviet folk horror film V,
Speaker 3: a story about a ne'er do well seminary student who
Speaker 3: bumbles his way into a blood curdling confrontation with witchcraft,
Speaker 3: living death, and the armies of Hell via some absolutely
Speaker 3: amazing nineteen sixty special effects. V was based on an
Speaker 3: eighteen thirty five novella by the author Nikolai Gogel, and
Speaker 3: it gets its title from the name of a monstrous
Speaker 3: creature that the protagonist is brought face to face with
Speaker 3: at the climax of the story. So in the author's
Speaker 3: note of the top of the novella, Gogol describes the
Speaker 3: V as the king of the gnomes, whose eyelashes reached
Speaker 3: to the ground. Do you get much of a gnome
Speaker 3: feeling when we finally see the V in this thing.
Speaker 2: In a well, in a sense, cinematically, it reminds me,
Speaker 2: It reminds me of the was it a Nome King
Speaker 2: and returned to oz.
Speaker 3: Oh. Yes, he's called the Nome King without a g
Speaker 3: it's just me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it did remind me of that. I was
Speaker 2: digging into this a little bit. And the story is
Speaker 2: supposedly derived in large part from Ukrainian folklore. Gogel was
Speaker 2: himself Ukrainian born, and we can think of this as
Speaker 2: as very much Ukrainian story that we're discussing here. But
Speaker 2: apparently there's some discussion as to whether nomes actually factor
Speaker 2: into Ukrainian folklore. So it's very possible that the entity
Speaker 2: V is the element in the story that is pretty
Speaker 2: much a creation.
Speaker 3: Of the author.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: This is Gogel's.
Speaker 2: Creation, and we can look to various things he might
Speaker 2: have drawn upon from other cultures, like it has again
Speaker 2: like what I eyelids or eyebrows that cover eyes that
Speaker 2: cast a deadly ray. This reminds us a little bit
Speaker 2: of in Irish mythology, the King of the Fomorians, whose
Speaker 2: lids are like that. I think his brow hangs down
Speaker 2: over a terrifying gaze. And if you raise that brow,
Speaker 2: if others raise it for him, then he can decimate
Speaker 2: the enemy.
Speaker 3: I don't know what exact word go Gol would have
Speaker 3: used that these authors translate as Gnome in that note,
Speaker 3: but yeah, the king of the gnomes at least in
Speaker 3: that English rendering.
Speaker 2: Well, I love the way it comes together, and we'll
Speaker 2: be talking about this a lot, because, yeah, everything comes
Speaker 2: to a head in this movie when V actually takes
Speaker 2: the stage and there's just it's just such a weird entity.
Speaker 2: The presentation is so strange and does feel, you know, certainly,
Speaker 2: you know, to my eyes, and I think to maybe
Speaker 2: like international viewers at least, but also perhaps viewers of
Speaker 2: the film as well, like there's just an otherworldly weirdness
Speaker 2: to it. And that's exactly what you should feel when, like,
Speaker 2: you know, unknown darkness is boiling up and overcoming of
Speaker 2: all of the things that you thought were going to
Speaker 2: protect you from their ravaging power.
Speaker 3: Though I do think it's interesting that the title of
Speaker 3: this movie and of the novella that it's based on,
Speaker 3: is taken from the name of a creature which does
Speaker 3: not appear until the very last few minutes of the film,
Speaker 3: and unless I missed something, is never mentioned before that.
Speaker 3: It's not like, oh, you're going to have to meet
Speaker 3: V soon. I don't think VE ever comes up until
Speaker 3: right before he summoned.
Speaker 2: Oh no, he's just he's the culmination of the film.
Speaker 2: But he's not a culmination and anyone's really prepared for.
Speaker 3: But well, I mean that's sort of a great metaphor
Speaker 3: for what the movie is overall. This this film is
Speaker 3: quite famous for storing up its demonic payload for a
Speaker 3: sudden and overwhelming deployment in the final few minutes. And Rob,
Speaker 3: you and I had discussed before, you know, should we
Speaker 3: do this movie. It had come up, but I think
Speaker 3: we had both read people saying on the internet, like
Speaker 3: it's kind of slow for most of the runtime, though
Speaker 3: the last few minutes are amazing. I'm going to stick
Speaker 3: up for the rest of the runtime. I think this
Speaker 3: is a pretty great movie end to end. Though it's
Speaker 3: hard to deny that it really saves it really saves
Speaker 3: the bang for the very end.
Speaker 2: That is true, absolutely. I mean, we've discussed other films
Speaker 2: that do this as well. I mean the last fifteen
Speaker 2: minutes of the film, the least ten minutes of the film,
Speaker 2: or even just the last act, Like that's the time
Speaker 2: when you have your monster go on a full rampage
Speaker 2: and it's fully visible to the audience. That's the time
Speaker 2: also when key bad guys might melt or explode. So
Speaker 2: it makes sense that you would save your special effects
Speaker 2: fiasco for that portion of a film. But I agree
Speaker 2: with you. I think that I think that the rest
Speaker 2: of the film absolutely holds up and lays the groundwork
Speaker 2: and builds up to that moment in a wonderful way.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it is It is still definitely the case
Speaker 2: that most of the clips you might have been exposed
Speaker 2: to concerning this film, the images you might have been
Speaker 2: exposed to, and certainly some of the poster are you know,
Speaker 2: the main selling point it is from the final like
Speaker 2: ten minutes or so of the movie. And so on
Speaker 2: one hand, like all of that is the thing that
Speaker 2: you absolutely use to pull someone in, and if you're
Speaker 2: telling somebody about v you're going to say, hey, make
Speaker 2: sure you watch those last ten minutes. But you almost
Speaker 2: do it a disservice because it kind of can lead
Speaker 2: to this idea that it might be lopsided and it's
Speaker 2: maybe a slog to get there. But yeah, there's still
Speaker 2: plenty of weirdness, there's humor, beautifully sought shot sets and locations,
Speaker 2: so the journey is worth it.
Speaker 3: As well. Yeah, I totally agree. The special effects centerpiece
Speaker 3: is the climax of the film, but there's a lot
Speaker 3: to love before we get to that. Like you say,
Speaker 3: it is very funny throughout and even beyond that, the
Speaker 3: ending is not the only thing where there's something really
Speaker 3: beautiful and interesting to look at. Like throughout the movie,
Speaker 3: there are there's some beautiful cinematography. There's some great locations.
Speaker 3: I love the chapel where the climax takes place. We
Speaker 3: get there early on and get to survey all the
Speaker 3: different little nooks and crannies of it. In earlier scenes.
Speaker 3: There are some beautiful uses of actual outdoor locations, some
Speaker 3: really cool indoor for outdoor sets that highlight these these
Speaker 3: blue slavic atmospherics that just make the world feel like
Speaker 3: it's humming with witchcraft. Yeah, I loved it. I thought
Speaker 3: this is a great film. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Plus, not all the special effects are saved for encounters
Speaker 2: with the unseen world. We also get a great scene
Speaker 2: where our lead character just gets terribly drunk with some Cossacks,
Speaker 2: and so we get some great like spinning room sequences
Speaker 2: like triple vision, you know, and it has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with magic. It's just that he's really, really drunk.
Speaker 3: The Cossack Boss appears coming out of three different doors
Speaker 3: at the same time. Yes, it's pretty great that vodka
Speaker 3: will get you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of vodka drinking in this so
Speaker 2: so yeah.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 2: On one hand, there's a lot of unknowable folk magic
Speaker 2: in this film. And our our our lead character is
Speaker 2: fresh out of seminary, and so he is.
Speaker 3: He is a man of the cloth, but he's often
Speaker 3: described I think as a philosopher. Philoh.
Speaker 2: They're always calling him that. They're saying, hey, philosopher, come
Speaker 2: over here.
Speaker 3: That may be a kind of mocking title, and I'm
Speaker 3: not entirely sure how that's intended. But yes, he's a
Speaker 3: he's a seminary student. He is studying with the clergy.
Speaker 3: I don't know if his plan is to become a
Speaker 3: member of the clergy, but he's he's he knows how
Speaker 3: to say prayers and read books. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But the interesting thing, and we'll come back to this
Speaker 2: a number of times, I think, is for this seminary.
Speaker 2: And his faith is not enough, like the power. I
Speaker 2: don't know if the power of God is even enough,
Speaker 2: but at least his his faith in the power of
Speaker 2: God is not enough to save him in the end,
Speaker 2: and he has marginal success with like a magic circle,
Speaker 2: which doesn't feel expressly Christian. And of course the main action,
Speaker 2: like the most terrifying things in the picture, take place
Speaker 2: within this kind of gloomy, creepy chapel that's decorated with
Speaker 2: night gallery worthy paintings of Christ and saints. And so, yeah,
Speaker 2: we see him in the midst of these trials. We
Speaker 2: see him appeal to race and nationalism as often as
Speaker 2: he appeals to God. And you know, he's reminding himself
Speaker 2: of his own faith and his resolve and the power
Speaker 2: of Christ. But none of this is sufficient to stave
Speaker 2: off the forces of darkness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he does try to find recourse with a cossack
Speaker 3: as afraid of nothing, but yeah, yeah he is afraid.
Speaker 3: I like that you pointed out the creepiness of the
Speaker 3: paintings in the church, and this is before the church
Speaker 3: transforms into monster mode. It does go through a transformation
Speaker 3: where all of the paintings turn into paintings of devils
Speaker 3: and stuff, and we can revisit that later, but even
Speaker 3: in its daytime form, this church has images of the
Speaker 3: face of Jesus Christ that are so morbid and horrible.
Speaker 3: It has this green, frowning Christ is just looking on
Speaker 3: you with absolute contempt. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Creepiest chapels since a Lucarde.
Speaker 3: Yeah here, but I agree with what you were saying here.
Speaker 3: I was actually going to say myself that in this film,
Speaker 3: it feels almost like Christianity is treated as simply an
Speaker 3: alternate form of witchcraft. It's like the good witchcraft. I
Speaker 3: think a lot of horror movies that have this type
Speaker 3: of conflict, that throw a priest or a member of
Speaker 3: the clergy into conflict with witchcraft or the devil, have
Speaker 3: a framework that you could call magic versus religion, highlighting
Speaker 3: the different in form and structure of magic versus religion.
Speaker 3: So in these types of stories, magic can be viewed
Speaker 3: as a chaotic, transactional system of power in which witches
Speaker 3: and sorcerers get strength by recruiting the help of these
Speaker 3: dangerous supernatural beings. And then you contrast that with religion,
Speaker 3: which is viewed as orderly, maybe inherently good, maybe a
Speaker 3: fully integrated thing in the lives of the practitioners, unlike magic,
Speaker 3: which is simply for sourcing power, and that the power
Speaker 3: from the religion comes from a predictable God and his
Speaker 3: earthly authorities. But in the Coma's Christianity does not feel
Speaker 3: like an orderly system that is integrated and meaningful throughout
Speaker 3: his whole life. Did you get that feeling at all?
Speaker 2: Right? Right, he is in a very shaky place with it.
Speaker 2: And I guess there's a lot of commentary that seems
Speaker 2: to be going on here, some some criticism of religion
Speaker 2: as a whole, and you know, pretty much all of
Speaker 2: the religious figures in the in the movie are portrayed
Speaker 2: as being well drunks in many cases, as being letcherus.
Speaker 2: Like the movie opens with them like what breaking, Like
Speaker 2: the seminary is breaking for the summer or something, and
Speaker 2: they let the students loose and they're like already like ones,
Speaker 2: like trying to get a goat to read the Bible.
Speaker 2: They head out, they start drinking, they're like chasing women
Speaker 2: across the fields, like they're just these do not feel
Speaker 2: like men of God that have been or even future
Speaker 2: men of God that have been released. So there's there's
Speaker 2: always this sense of hypocrisy with the way the people
Speaker 2: of Christ are portrayed in this film.
Speaker 3: Yes, the seminary students as a whole at the beginning
Speaker 3: are portrayed as an almost malevolent, chaotic force, like so
Speaker 3: you said the opening scene, the rector comes out of
Speaker 3: the seminary and lets them loose for vacation, and as
Speaker 3: soon as they're released, yet they're just they swarm over
Speaker 3: the town, looting and pillaging. So and I do want
Speaker 3: to emphasize that it's not just like a little harmless mischief.
Speaker 3: They are like an attacking army that is sacking a city.
Speaker 3: So they run to the market and they steal everything
Speaker 3: that's not tied down in the market. They are shown
Speaker 3: kidnapping women from the fields doing their laundry. It's just mayhem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, though with all of this with an intended comedic flare,
Speaker 2: that needs to be sure.
Speaker 3: And you know, we're used to seeing stories where the
Speaker 3: clergy are depicted ironically, maybe highlighting vices.
Speaker 2: Or yet like the drug friar is a common trope.
Speaker 3: For exactly yeah, totally ways that the clergy might fail
Speaker 3: to live up to what they preach. But I think
Speaker 3: this is significantly over that line. It's it's it is
Speaker 3: still played for comedy, but it's more than just some
Speaker 3: light ribbing of the priesthood. These these seminary students are
Speaker 3: like locusts.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and I think in some of this we
Speaker 2: can detect a bit of that so yet era atheism
Speaker 2: in its portrayal of organized religion here as lazy, hypocritical,
Speaker 2: and ineffective. And it's interesting to potentially see that here
Speaker 2: because we've definitely looked at plenty of examples of cinema
Speaker 2: from different countries under different regimes and different standards and practices,
Speaker 2: which you know, interfere with not portraying like, say, you know,
Speaker 2: the Christian faith or some sort of some sort of
Speaker 2: set of morals as being superior to the forces of darkness,
Speaker 2: or as being like some sort of backbone you can
Speaker 2: depend upon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so here you might be getting a counterposed type
Speaker 3: of anti clerical piety. But yeah, so anyway, I just
Speaker 3: to come back and finish the thought I started a
Speaker 3: minute minute ago about the Christianity and the movie feeling
Speaker 3: not really like a religion, but feeling like an alternate
Speaker 3: form of witchcraft. I think when you actually get into
Speaker 3: the exorcism or prayer scenes, you know, we're used to
Speaker 3: seeing these exorcism scenes in movies like The Exorcist. We've
Speaker 3: done exorcism movies on weird House before, where there's a
Speaker 3: spiritual battle, often of words going on, a ritual, rituals
Speaker 3: fighting back and forth, or ritual versus a kind of
Speaker 3: projection of profanity by the demonic forces. A lot of
Speaker 3: times those scenes emphasize the confidence and the rectitude of
Speaker 3: the orderly forces representing the whole apparatus of religion. This
Speaker 3: movie doesn't feel like that at all. Instead, it feels
Speaker 3: like Coma is trying to hold up the Christian rights
Speaker 3: and prayers as this tenuous system of apotropaic magic. It's like,
Speaker 3: these are the charms and hexes he knows that can, hopefully,
Speaker 3: with a bit of luck, keep the devils from killing him.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't work. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In a way, you could almost imagine him expecting Satan
Speaker 2: to make an appearance at the end, but there's no Satan.
Speaker 2: There's the He might be like, who the heck is
Speaker 2: the you know, I wasn't prepared for this at all,
Speaker 2: and the creatures of the night would just tell him, yeah,
Speaker 2: you were not.
Speaker 3: There is no day, only the yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now it's worth addressing that this is a then Soviet
Speaker 2: Union film produced by Moss Film, based on the work
Speaker 2: of a Russian author of Ukrainian origin, set and filmed
Speaker 2: for outdoor scenes at least in what is now Ukraine,
Speaker 2: and featuring a mix of Soviet actors and filmmakers, some
Speaker 2: of whom had Ukrainian origins, So it has a distinctive
Speaker 2: Ukrainian flair. But again, film during the nineteen sixties when
Speaker 2: Ukraine was part of the USSR, and set during the
Speaker 2: eighteenth century when this part of Ukraine was ruled by
Speaker 2: the Cossack Hetmanate. So at any rate, referring to the
Speaker 2: film and the work of Gogel, it is highly accurate
Speaker 2: to call this a work of Ukrainian full.
Speaker 3: Car Yeah, very much Ukrainian in setting and feeling. But
Speaker 3: I think it'd be also worth addressing the second half
Speaker 3: of what you said, they're Ukrainian full corror? Is this
Speaker 3: full corror? I encountered this movie actually because it came
Speaker 3: with a box set that I recently ordered, Rob. I
Speaker 3: think maybe you were going to bring this up anyway.
Speaker 3: I ordered the Severin Films collection called All the Haunts
Speaker 3: Be Hours, a compendium of full corr Volume one, Rob,
Speaker 3: Have you check this out?
Speaker 2: I have looked at it longingly, because you know, it
Speaker 2: looks amazing. It has what fifteen discs in it. It's
Speaker 2: films from different eras, different countries, all kind of loosely
Speaker 2: under the umbrella of full car.
Speaker 3: I haven't watched all the movies in it yet, but
Speaker 3: I think you could argue that this film selection is
Speaker 3: very much curated. It's not just one of these collections
Speaker 3: where what movies could we get, let's throw them together,
Speaker 3: And the films feel very carefully selected to kind of
Speaker 3: tell a story about what full core is and could be.
Speaker 3: And in that sense, it is accompanied by a there's
Speaker 3: a documentary called A Woodland's Dark and Days Bewitched. This
Speaker 3: is a documentary about the history of full corror as
Speaker 3: a genre. Especially interesting because full corror, though it's a
Speaker 3: term we use now all the time, when a lot
Speaker 3: of the movies within the genre of full carr were made,
Speaker 3: there wasn't. This wasn't really a concept people were referring to.
Speaker 3: A lot of the people didn't think I'm making a
Speaker 3: full corror movie. It's like a more recently applied term.
Speaker 2: Usually, yeah, yeah, you would be more I think likely
Speaker 2: to have a film like this described. It might be
Speaker 2: described as horror, but probably more likely to be described
Speaker 2: as fantasy or a fairy tale.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. It is the folk tale framing or the
Speaker 3: fairy tale or folk tale framing that I think probably
Speaker 3: would have come first to mind of the filmmakers in
Speaker 3: this case, and in a lot of the earlier films
Speaker 3: that are now thought of as full core. But there's
Speaker 3: like in this documentary about what full core is and
Speaker 3: where it comes from there, or all these descriptive phrases
Speaker 3: people are coming up with to to try to describe
Speaker 3: the genre. And I thought that part was very interesting,
Speaker 3: just in how a full car is one of these
Speaker 3: things that I had never thought to try and define before,
Speaker 3: but I totally know it when I see it, but
Speaker 3: I couldn't come up with a comprehensive definition of what fits.
Speaker 3: It has very fuzzy edges, but those edges overlap somehow
Speaker 3: with witchcraft, paganism, anything pre Christian resurfacing in the Christian context,
Speaker 3: and also is very much about like buried layers of
Speaker 3: previous culture or the past being sort of unearthed and
Speaker 3: brought up into a more modern context. And putting all
Speaker 3: these things together, I was starting to wonder, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: is the actually full car? It feels like full car
Speaker 3: it feels like it fits. Maybe it's just that it's
Speaker 3: one thing about the clash between Christianity and witchcraft, like
Speaker 3: that alone is enough to get you there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's one of those things it's
Speaker 2: hard to nail down, you know. We can there's certain
Speaker 2: things we can we can look at and we can
Speaker 2: be like, oh, yeah, of course blood on Satan's clause
Speaker 2: it's full Car or you know, or the wicker Man.
Speaker 2: But then you you can also bring up a movie
Speaker 2: like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I think you can make
Speaker 2: a case for there being some strong Full Car elements
Speaker 2: there without it being like so clearly full Car that
Speaker 2: you you know that you would you would never miss it.
Speaker 3: That's sort of yeah. Well, it's interesting because a lot
Speaker 3: of the key elements of Full Care are are also
Speaker 3: very common in movies that people don't think of as
Speaker 3: Full Car. For example, one of the key things, like
Speaker 3: one of the most common plot structures of Full Car
Speaker 3: people critics identified this a lot is a naive city
Speaker 3: dwelling outsider or scholar goes into a rural place and
Speaker 3: discovers a pagan conspiracy or some kind of some kind
Speaker 3: of ancient or superstitious horror taking place there. Yeah, now
Speaker 3: that you know, that's kind of the wicker Man that's
Speaker 3: in a lot of these full Correr movies of the
Speaker 3: past and the craft, yeah, and of the present. But
Speaker 3: it's also just like you start thinking about it, Oh,
Speaker 3: that's so much horror. That's things we don't think of
Speaker 3: full car at all. Lots of slasher movies or about
Speaker 3: like a naive city dweller who goes out into a
Speaker 3: rural place and stumbles upon some kind of conspiracy. I
Speaker 3: guess in some of those cases where where we have
Speaker 3: these slasher movies that have that structure but don't feel
Speaker 3: like full cor I was trying to think, why don't
Speaker 3: they feel like full core. Maybe it's just because there
Speaker 3: are no real elements of like displaced ancient culture or
Speaker 3: rituals or paganism. Maybe you need that kind of element
Speaker 3: to cement the full core connection.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so. And so like with Texas
Speaker 2: Chainsaw Masacre, you get some slight hints of that with
Speaker 2: some of like the the little dabbles that they decorate
Speaker 2: the trees with, you know it, but it's not really
Speaker 2: dwelled upon. It's kind of faint. And then there are
Speaker 2: some other bells and whistles in that film that kind
Speaker 2: of make you look in different directions, like astrological data
Speaker 2: and so forth.
Speaker 3: This movie, actually, now that I think about it, it
Speaker 3: does have that structure too, doesn't it. Because Coma is
Speaker 3: from the city. He's a he's a student, a scholar
Speaker 3: from Kiev who goes out into the country and stumbles
Speaker 3: across some witchcraft. So I didn't even think about that
Speaker 3: when I started describing this, but that is right. That
Speaker 3: is basically the structure of the plot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the locals are making him do something. He tries
Speaker 2: to run away from his responsibilities. They catch him and
Speaker 2: they lock him back in and they make him do
Speaker 2: his job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you could.
Speaker 2: You could easily imagine like a Southern exploitation treatment of
Speaker 2: this exact same plot.
Speaker 3: So that's interesting. Yeah, student wanders off campus from Liberty
Speaker 3: University and has like Southern Baptist student is out there,
Speaker 3: runs into some country witchcraft. Yeah I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody do it all right, So if you would
Speaker 2: like to watch v for yourself or rewatch it as
Speaker 2: the case may be, As Joe mentioned, that excellent box
Speaker 2: set All the Haunts Be Hours, a compendium of Folk
Speaker 2: Are Volume one. I believe there are two volumes out now,
Speaker 2: it might be three. There might be three, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: Volume one's the one you want to pick up if
Speaker 2: you want to watch this film. This episode came together
Speaker 2: rather quickly, so I ended up watching it via the
Speaker 2: Eternal Family streaming service, which I also highly recommend a
Speaker 2: great source for weird housey selections from around the world.
Speaker 2: All right, shall we get into the people behind this film?
Speaker 3: Yes? Please? All right?
Speaker 2: So I believe there may be more to this story.
Speaker 2: But essentially we have two credited directors, co directors, co writers.
Speaker 2: We have Konstantine Ershov who lived nineteen thirty five through
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four, and then we have Gyorghi Kropatschev, who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen thirty through twenty sixteen. Both Russian born. Kropatschev
Speaker 2: would go on to make his mark in production design,
Speaker 2: mostly active through around twenty thirteen, and Ershov continue to
Speaker 2: act right and direct into the nineteen eighties. But the
Speaker 2: various materials I've been looking at point to a third,
Speaker 2: more experienced man being the primary creative force behind this film.
Speaker 2: In fact, you'll see his name listed as a third
Speaker 2: director if you look at the IMDb listings for the film.
Speaker 2: I don't know that every database listed this way, but
Speaker 2: this individual is Alexander Patushko. He is credited as a writer,
Speaker 2: as a creative advisor, and the special effects supervisor on
Speaker 2: the film. He lived nineteen hundred through nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 3: I would kind of say that even if all he
Speaker 3: did were the special effects, he should probably get a
Speaker 3: co director's credit this movie. Yes, that's how important the
Speaker 3: special effects are.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he's a big deal Potushko. I don't think
Speaker 2: we've mentioned him on the show before, but we have
Speaker 2: at least referenced some of the films that he's done,
Speaker 2: or one in particular that will be known to certainly
Speaker 2: known to international audiences and known to Mystery Science Theater
Speaker 2: three thousand fans. So Patushko was a Ukrainian born filmmaker
Speaker 2: internationally recognized for a cinematic vision and for his contributions
Speaker 2: to animation. This was obviously towards the very end of
Speaker 2: his life and career, so he'd only write and direct
Speaker 2: one more project, the nineteen seventy two fantasy epic Russwin
Speaker 2: and Ludmila. But his prior work goes back to nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty eight, and features such fantasy classics as nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: nine's The Golden Key, which I'm to understand is kind
Speaker 2: of a Russian Pinocchio. Nineteen forty six is The Stone Flower,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six is The Sword and the Dragon, nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty nine's The Day the Earth Froze. These last two
Speaker 2: titles again should be familiar to MSD three K fans,
Speaker 2: as they were featured on that program.
Speaker 3: I remember those titles, but I don't know if I've
Speaker 3: seen those episodes.
Speaker 2: Oh they're pretty great, like there were films that I've
Speaker 2: never had the chance to see either of them in
Speaker 2: refined quality. I believe, at least The Sword and the Dragon. No, no,
Speaker 2: I believe The Day the Earth Froze as well. I
Speaker 2: think believe both of these films are available now on
Speaker 2: disc in beautiful restored quality, and I really need to
Speaker 2: see them. But I remember even watching them in kind
Speaker 2: of grimy quality on MSD three K, and certainly enjoying them.
Speaker 2: Through the riffing. You could tell like, Wow, this is
Speaker 2: like really an amazing fantasy vision that we have here.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I really need to go back and give
Speaker 2: them a second look. Because potishco is and was largely
Speaker 2: regarded as a master, often compared to Walt Disney and
Speaker 2: Mario Bava for different reasons. He's largely credited with transforming
Speaker 2: this film into the form that makes it so memorable,
Speaker 2: including its amazing effects. He was behind its wire stunts
Speaker 2: which hold up just exceedingly well, and it's overall horror pacing.
Speaker 2: Film historian Tim Lucas has written about this. I did
Speaker 2: not have a chance to read it myself, but I
Speaker 2: understand he wrote an essay about this and about Potushcode
Speaker 2: that was included in the printed material that came with
Speaker 2: like a European or a British release of the film V.
Speaker 3: This is a film where I would say that the
Speaker 3: special effects in themselves feel like an art form. I
Speaker 3: don't know. Maybe actually that comes off as just denigrating
Speaker 3: special effects in general, which I don't mean to do.
Speaker 3: But sometimes I feel like special effects are there is
Speaker 3: certainly art to them in that the director presents a
Speaker 3: vision and the special effects tried to help the director
Speaker 3: achieve that vision, looking more or less realistic in camera somehow,
Speaker 3: And that's not really what we get here. This is
Speaker 3: a movie where I feel a strong sense of style
Speaker 3: and sort of personal charisma of the artist in the
Speaker 3: special effects, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah. The special effects of this film
Speaker 2: are just are essentially kind of its heart in a
Speaker 2: very authentic way. Not in a sense like the rest
Speaker 2: of the movie is forgettable, but the effects are great.
Speaker 2: Like the effects feel like the beating heart of the picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: So again, both co directors and Putushco have writing credits
Speaker 2: on this but again it is based on this original
Speaker 2: novella by Nikolai Gogel, who lived eighteen oh nine through
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty two, Russian writer of Ukrainian origin, best known
Speaker 2: both within Russian and Ukrainian literature as well as internationally
Speaker 2: for his works on political corruption, notably the eighteen forty
Speaker 2: two novels Dead Soles and The Government Inspector. But he's
Speaker 2: also highly regarded for his short fiction, including eighteen thirty
Speaker 2: five's Diary of a Madman, which some of you are familiar.
Speaker 2: This is about a character named Ozzy who turns into
Speaker 2: a werewolf. I think, yeah, yeah, no actual connection I
Speaker 2: think to the nineteen eighty one Ozzy Osbourne album. But
Speaker 2: he was on a bark at the moon seiking a
Speaker 2: bark at the moon. Yeah, I was bark at the
Speaker 2: moon on Diary of a Mad Man. Or is that
Speaker 2: that's what I was asking? I don't, oh, I don't remember.
Speaker 2: Some of the Azzie albums kind of bleed together in
Speaker 2: my memory. But Gogel was also influenced, especially in his
Speaker 2: early works, by Ukrainian folklore and in general relished in
Speaker 2: the grotesque. V is a novella included in a volume
Speaker 2: two of his collected tales titled Mirgorod. Gogel died before
Speaker 2: the advent of the cinematic age, but his work has
Speaker 2: been adapted many many times. V especially has been adapted
Speaker 2: like I couldn't even really put together a full list
Speaker 2: because like it begins as early as nineteen oh nine
Speaker 2: and then as recently as twenty fourteen, there was a
Speaker 2: Russian Ukrainian film known internationally as Forbidden Empire for some reason,
Speaker 2: but it had an international cast. It has spawned two sequels.
Speaker 2: There's like V two, where they go to China, and
Speaker 2: then V three I think is coming in which they
Speaker 2: go to India. There's no reason for there to be
Speaker 2: that much international travel in a V film, it seems
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 3: Which is the one you showed me that did it
Speaker 3: have Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charles Dance.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's the second one, the V film that
Speaker 2: takes place in China, and I can't remember what its
Speaker 2: international release title is, but they remove V from it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's not only is there are there contemporary V films
Speaker 2: series in Russian cinema. There there are also a couple
Speaker 2: of films in which Gogel himself his position is like
Speaker 2: a crime solving figure, which I found kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: Like Abraham Lincoln Vampire.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, like, yeah, not to say that
Speaker 2: it's it's I mean, it's exactly the same thing that
Speaker 2: US cinema has done and will continue to do. But
Speaker 2: you know it's interesting to see that same energy but
Speaker 2: with like different literary and historical figures.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the story by gogle here V or the V
Speaker 2: was also apparently the inspiration or a partial inspiration for
Speaker 2: Mario Baba's nineteen sixty film Black Sunday, and as Anne
Speaker 2: Bilson points out in an article for Sid and Sound
Speaker 2: from April of twenty twenty one, this film the sixty
Speaker 2: seven can be seen as quote a patriotic correction to
Speaker 2: Mario Baba's Black Sunday, based only very loosely on the
Speaker 2: same Gogle story and seen in the USSR as a
Speaker 2: Hollywood travesty of the source material, probably because the version
Speaker 2: distributed there was the American Duboe.
Speaker 3: We just did Black Sunday last October on the show
Speaker 3: for a Weird House Cinema. That's the one where Barber
Speaker 3: Steel makes the most demonic face a person has ever made.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I mean, you can you can see
Speaker 2: where Bob was at least partially inspired by this tale,
Speaker 2: by this novella, but the the final form of Black Sunday,
Speaker 2: and certainly that the structure of the thing is rather
Speaker 2: different from these Yeah, but you can also you can
Speaker 2: understand where where some people might take offensive they thought
Speaker 2: that source material was being mistreated in some fashion.
Speaker 3: It almost feels like a spiritual adaptation. I'm trying to
Speaker 3: think what elements of the plot are actually poured it over.
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like much. Creepy lady, Yeah, there's a
Speaker 3: creepy lady.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, all right, let's get into the cast a
Speaker 2: little bit here. We've been talking about Coma already. He
Speaker 2: is the seminarian he's our main character. He is going
Speaker 2: to be our our unwitting and unprepared soldier of light,
Speaker 2: standing up against the darkness, rocking a hell of a
Speaker 2: bowl cut, Yes, an amazing bowl cut. And he is
Speaker 2: played by Leonid Karavolyyov. He lived nineteen thirty six through
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two Russian and Soviet actor, best known internationally
Speaker 2: for this film, but his other films include the seventy
Speaker 2: three comedy Ivan Vasselevich Changes his profession, and also an
Speaker 2: adaptation of Robinson Crusoe from the same year, in which
Speaker 2: he plays Robin Zona Cruso. So I'm very much the
Speaker 2: Russian treatment of the tale. He was highly regarded in
Speaker 2: Russian Soviet cinema, active in film from fifty nine through
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen. He did tons of films, but only a
Speaker 2: few genre titles, and this being the only thing you
Speaker 2: could even classify as horror. Of note, I was just
Speaker 2: looking at some of the less well known films that
Speaker 2: he did, some of the later day films that he did.
Speaker 2: He played dead Moro's father, Frost, in a nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: seven film called New Year's Story, which somehow involves secret
Speaker 2: alien fighting government operatives and a Santa figure hiding in
Speaker 2: playing sight at a Gorky Studios annual Christmas event. Okay,
Speaker 2: so yeah, that sounds interesting.
Speaker 3: Merry Christmas.
Speaker 2: But at any rate, as far as this film goes,
Speaker 2: I can't keep enough braves in his performance. I think
Speaker 2: coma is he's very sympathetic, but obviously he's riddled with dow.
Speaker 2: He's seeking momentarily momentary bursts of bravery through faith, through
Speaker 2: ethnic heritage, through strong drink, and none of this is
Speaker 2: enough to protect him, you know. And and yet again
Speaker 2: he's sympathetic, and he hits just the right comedic beats
Speaker 2: to keep everything from feeling too doomy, even though our
Speaker 2: trajectory is very much one of doom. But that you know,
Speaker 2: it's there are enough comedic slip ups along the way
Speaker 2: that it doesn't feel I don't know, it doesn't feel bad.
Speaker 2: It feels it feels like a commentary on human nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think partially because it has the folk tale
Speaker 3: structure and because it's leavened with all this comedy. Even
Speaker 3: though the ending is very dark, it doesn't leave you
Speaker 3: feeling bad. I agree. Yeah, I walked away from this
Speaker 3: movie with a song in my heart, even though Koma
Speaker 3: dies spoiler. Yeah, it just it just felt all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean afterwards, you just drink a little vodka,
Speaker 2: you eat a few raw onions, and you're you good
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 3: The man that was great, who is that? Which character
Speaker 3: is that? He's got the green onions in his hand.
Speaker 3: He's just munching on one.
Speaker 2: It's one of the two old friends from the seminary
Speaker 2: and they're like, yeah, yeah, he really got screwed on
Speaker 2: that one. And then they're supposed to be like painting
Speaker 2: something and doing some repairs, but they're just setting around
Speaker 2: drinking vodka and one of them is eating like raw
Speaker 2: green onions that he's picked or something.
Speaker 3: The rector goes by, he's like, are y' all working?
Speaker 3: And they're like, yeah, we're working, but they're just sitting
Speaker 3: there drinking with their onions. All right.
Speaker 2: So we have mentioned the creepy woman in this. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll get into the reasoning, but you know, she is
Speaker 2: a witch, but she's also like an undead body. She
Speaker 2: is dead, a beautiful woman who has died and doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to want to stay dead. We'll get into the
Speaker 2: details of this, but the younger version of this character
Speaker 2: were given a name for her it's Panachka I Believe,
Speaker 2: and she is played by Natalia Varley born nineteen forty
Speaker 2: seven as of this recording, still with Romanian born Russian
Speaker 2: and Soviet film and theater actress active in film from
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty two through twenty twenty two. This was only
Speaker 2: her third feature length film credit, following her role in
Speaker 2: a popular nineteen sixty four comedy titled Kidnapping a Caucasian Style,
Speaker 2: which launched her career. So it's interesting that both of
Speaker 2: our leads here, either beforehand or afterwards, would definitely make
Speaker 2: their mark in comedy in Russian comedy as well as
Speaker 2: this notable entry in what you could call full car.
Speaker 3: Well, she has an almost clownish press in many of
Speaker 3: her scenes, actually the horror scenes, like with just a
Speaker 3: little tweak in tone, you could see a lot of
Speaker 3: her behavior going from scary to funny. I'm thinking about
Speaker 3: the way that in the haunting scenes she is often
Speaker 3: kind of jittering up and down and kind of jittering
Speaker 3: and chattering. It's it's a fantastically physical performance that you
Speaker 3: could see working well for like comedy, miming almost.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And she does really feel like a live wire.
Speaker 2: She is animated by strange energy. Yeah, that we can't
Speaker 2: quite understand, and even her designs are are kind of unknown.
Speaker 2: We'll get into that when we start talking about the
Speaker 2: Three Nights, the diseased Queen of the May Yeah, let's
Speaker 2: see others. The other characters of note playing her father,
Speaker 2: the Satnik a centurion, is this act Alexei Glazurin who
Speaker 2: lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen seventy one, Soviet actor
Speaker 2: who credits include mostly supporting roles in various war dramas
Speaker 2: throughout the fifties, sixties, and seventies. But coming back to
Speaker 2: what you were talking about, the line between comedy and
Speaker 2: horror in acting, we also have this old witch that
Speaker 2: shows up early in the picture and she is played
Speaker 2: by Nikolay Kutuzov who lived eighteen ninety seven through nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one. So we've seen this before in Russian cinema.
Speaker 2: Thinking back to Jack Frost, which we previously covered on
Speaker 2: Weird House, the casting of a male actor as a
Speaker 2: female witch, And I haven't read anything about this in
Speaker 2: Russian cinema, but I'm assuming this was just kind of
Speaker 2: standard practice at the time, which would seem to run
Speaker 2: kind of counter to what we're used to in other
Speaker 2: cinematic traditions, where you absolutely give older witch and crone
Speaker 2: roles to female performers, because I mean it's part of
Speaker 2: the classic Hollywood type casting for older actresses, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But while in sixty five's Jack Frost in Morosco, Bobby
Speaker 2: Yaga is played by a male actor for largely comedic reasons,
Speaker 2: and it is it is a great performance here the
Speaker 2: old Witch is played mostly straight and menacing by this
Speaker 2: male performer. You know he's there. There is a little
Speaker 2: humor in the way this Witch is presented early on,
Speaker 2: but for the most part, this is this is an
Speaker 2: ominous figure. This is not someone that's there just for
Speaker 2: a bunch of like silly gags or anything.
Speaker 3: Yes, the Witch is presented ambiguously at first. I mean,
Speaker 3: she's not overtly frightening when we first see her. As
Speaker 3: there's a scene where she has she takes in these
Speaker 3: lost seminary students into her house and she's like you
Speaker 3: have to sleep in different rooms and they're like okay.
Speaker 3: And then she appears Tacoma the student in the middle
Speaker 3: of the night and he's like, I don't know what
Speaker 3: what do you want what's going on? And then he
Speaker 3: thinks she's trying to seduce him, But she's not trying
Speaker 3: to seduce him. She's about to turn him into a
Speaker 3: broomstick and ride him through the skies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, that's a great point about
Speaker 2: the ambiguity of it. Yeah, because it's not clear. It's like,
Speaker 2: is she she trying to seduce them? Does he want
Speaker 2: just she wants to drink his blood? No, it's something
Speaker 2: that makes even less sense to us mortals. She wants
Speaker 2: to ride him like a horse. She wants to jump
Speaker 2: on his shoulders and ride him through the sky. So,
Speaker 2: and we can't possibly understand the reasons for this.
Speaker 3: And she's not you know, she's kind of smiling when
Speaker 3: she comes to him. So I don't know that this character.
Speaker 3: There's this very creepy sense of like, I don't know
Speaker 3: what's going on here. I don't know what to make
Speaker 3: of this. Yeah, and she becomes much more frightening actually
Speaker 3: after having transformed into into her young form, which I
Speaker 3: guess I have questions here about what was the Witch's
Speaker 3: true form. Maybe we can revisit that at the ending,
Speaker 3: because do you remember how but at the end. After
Speaker 3: after the cock crows and all of the evil magic collapses,
Speaker 3: we see Panachka, we see the girl. She falls back
Speaker 3: into her coffin, and the coffin kind of explodes and
Speaker 3: she's transformed into the old witch form again. And I
Speaker 3: thought that the young form was her true form, because
Speaker 3: that's the form recognized by her father. But if she
Speaker 3: transforms back into the witch form, is that the true
Speaker 3: her was the young form some kind of mask. I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: It doesn't completely make sense, but it feels like there's
Speaker 2: some sort of underlying sense to it, and I think
Speaker 2: that's that's why it works so well. But but yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like we can't quite understand what the connection here is. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, we mentioned that our main character gets drunk
Speaker 2: with a bunch of Cossacks that he travels with them.
Speaker 2: The Cossacks here are played by an ensemble of Ukrainian actors.
Speaker 2: The main one Dorosh. He's the big guy with this
Speaker 2: signature Ukrainian haircut, the oscelidet. I may be saying that wrong.
Speaker 2: Please please forgive my non Slavic tongue here, as I
Speaker 2: struggle with some of these words. But this guy was
Speaker 2: apparently a pretty big deal in Ukrainian theater. His name
Speaker 2: was Petro Veklyirov, who lived nineteen eleven through nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: I think he also plays one of the characters of
Speaker 2: the seminary. I think he might have had another role
Speaker 2: in the picture as well, but his other credits include
Speaker 2: sixty one Song of the Forest. This is another cinematic
Speaker 2: adaptation of Ukrainian folk tales or fairy tales, but a
Speaker 2: very big guy, stern faced. He's definitely one of the
Speaker 2: ones that's there too.
Speaker 3: He's the guy.
Speaker 2: This is the one who comes out of the three
Speaker 2: doors when Coma is drunk. And he's also one of
Speaker 2: the primary characters who intercepts Koma when he tries to
Speaker 2: run away from his responsibilities.
Speaker 3: Like this guy, very solid, good drinking buddy apparently.
Speaker 2: And finally the music here. The composition is by Kiaran
Speaker 2: Kotschaturan lived nineteen twenty one through twenty eleven, Russian composer
Speaker 2: of Armenian descent, active from nineteen fifty through two thousand.
Speaker 2: His work in film also included a number of animated shorts.
Speaker 2: But I thought the score was quite good here, really
Speaker 2: effective in some of those creepy tension building sequences.
Speaker 3: There were certain points where it sounded like the strings
Speaker 3: in Night on Bald Mountains. Yes, yeah, absolutely, yeah, but
Speaker 3: before the main theme comes in, just kind of in
Speaker 3: that perpetual, like hovering high strings mode. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: very good music.
Speaker 4: I thought, Okay, are you ready to talk about the plot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's jump into it.
Speaker 3: So for this movie, I'm not going to do a
Speaker 3: close scene by scene narration like we do for some films. Instead,
Speaker 3: I think we should do a quick summary of the
Speaker 3: plot as a whole, and then come back and look
Speaker 3: at some notable scenes and choices, especially the hauntings later on.
Speaker 3: But to do the summary, the story begins at a
Speaker 3: seminary in Kiev when all of the students are being
Speaker 3: sent home for vacation, and we fall in with three
Speaker 3: students in particular Koliava Gora, Bets and Coma. And while
Speaker 3: making the journey home, the three of these students become
Speaker 3: lost at night, and they take shelter at a cottage
Speaker 3: belonging to an old woman who allows them to come
Speaker 3: inside but forces them to sleep each in separate parts
Speaker 3: of the house. Koma is sent to sleep in the barn,
Speaker 3: but at night he is awakened by the old woman,
Speaker 3: who seems at first maybe to be trying to seduce him.
Speaker 3: He doesn't really know what she wants. And then Koma
Speaker 3: tries to escape, but he finds himself hypnotized or entranced,
Speaker 3: and then, to his horror, the old woman climbs up
Speaker 3: on his back, takes hold of a broom and begins
Speaker 3: to ride Coma like an animal, first out into the
Speaker 3: meadows beyond the house, and then finally up into the sky,
Speaker 3: and they fly around in the moonlight while the witch
Speaker 3: is squatting on his shoulders.
Speaker 2: It's a wonderful sequence. And again this is just an
Speaker 2: example of how this film gets gets plenty weird rather quickly,
Speaker 2: so don't believe that this is a movie with only
Speaker 2: like ten minutes of weirdness capping the end of things.
Speaker 3: While all of this is happening, of course, Coma is
Speaker 3: terrified and he finally manages to get out from under
Speaker 3: the witch. Does he say some magic words or something?
Speaker 3: Does he hold up across I don't remember what he does.
Speaker 3: He somehow squirms his way out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was kind of mesmerized by the
Speaker 2: whole sequence. It was one of these we see enough
Speaker 2: weird films. It's beautiful when you have this moment, we're like,
Speaker 2: I can't believe I'm watching this? What am I watching?
Speaker 2: And then and then it so the read I kind
Speaker 2: of got on. It is like she almost kind of
Speaker 2: like rides him until he's exhausted, Like she's like not
Speaker 2: in a physical sense perhaps, but in like a spiritual sense,
Speaker 2: you know. And they both kind of collapse into a
Speaker 2: field somewhere she has used.
Speaker 3: Up all of his magic broom fuel, and they come
Speaker 3: down on the ground. And then when he gets out
Speaker 3: from under her, he suddenly takes hold of a stick
Speaker 3: and then beats her. He beats the witch until she
Speaker 3: cries for mercy and says that he is killing her.
Speaker 3: And to his astonishment, he looks down and the old
Speaker 3: crone now seems to have transformed into a beautiful young woman.
Speaker 3: And Cooma doesn't know what to make of this, but
Speaker 3: he runs away terrified. He makes his way back to
Speaker 3: the seminary, where when he arrives, the rector tells him
Speaker 3: that a rich Sutnik, which again a type of a
Speaker 3: Cossack chief or leader. The Sutnik has sent his men
Speaker 3: to recruit Coma. Apparently this man's daughter is dying and
Speaker 3: she has asked for Coma Buying to come pray for
Speaker 3: her in her final hours. Cooma does not want to go,
Speaker 3: but he has no choice. The satniks men compel him,
Speaker 3: and by the time he arrives, unfortunately, the girl has
Speaker 3: already died, and her father promises Coma a huge reward,
Speaker 3: many many gold coins if he will stay with her
Speaker 3: body in the chapel and pray over her for three nights.
Speaker 3: It was her final wish. But when Koma sees the
Speaker 3: girl's body lying in her coffin, he realizes, oh no,
Speaker 3: it's her. It is the witch that rode him through
Speaker 3: the sky, but not in her crone form, the young,
Speaker 3: beautiful form that she transformed into after his beating. And
Speaker 3: now he realizes, oh no, it is probably his beating
Speaker 3: that killed her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is why she called for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And he's trying to pretend to the father like, oh,
Speaker 3: I've never seen her before, I know what this is about.
Speaker 3: So the structure sure of the rest of the story
Speaker 3: is we follow Cooma for the three nights of the Bargain.
Speaker 3: On the first night, he is locked in the chapel
Speaker 3: with the witch's coffin, and in the middle of his prayers,
Speaker 3: the witch wakes up. Cooma is deeply afraid, but he
Speaker 3: is able to protect himself by drawing a magic circle
Speaker 3: and reading the sacred words from his prayer book. But
Speaker 3: each night is of course more devilish than the last,
Speaker 3: and in the days in between these prayers, Koma tries
Speaker 3: to escape or to negotiate his way out of going
Speaker 3: back in the following night, but he always fails. On
Speaker 3: the second night, the witch curses him and makes his
Speaker 3: hair turn white. This is after some piloting the coffin
Speaker 3: through the air like an airship and ramming his magic circle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the second night certainly has a lot of spectacular
Speaker 2: special effects. The first night the dead Walk, the second
Speaker 2: night the dead.
Speaker 3: Fly, the pilot. Yeah, the second night the greatest pilot
Speaker 3: in the gall and then the third night. We reached
Speaker 3: the climax of the story when the witch is just
Speaker 3: filled with venom and hate for Coma and she calls
Speaker 3: forth all of the vampires the werewolves. She actually uses
Speaker 3: the word verdilac, like we've talked about on the show before.
Speaker 3: The verdilachs calls out all the creeps and the monsters
Speaker 3: of Hell to slither out into the chapel and vomit
Speaker 3: forth her vengeance onto this young student. And then finally
Speaker 3: at the end, the king of all the monsters the
Speaker 3: v is brought out and his great heavy eyelids are
Speaker 3: lifted and his gaze is fixed on Coma, and then
Speaker 3: all of the monsters fall on him and he dies.
Speaker 2: Kind of reminded me of the part in the Simpsons
Speaker 2: tree House of Horror Shinning episode where Moe has the
Speaker 2: monsters go into the walk in freezer to drag over.
Speaker 3: Out and it's all Freddy and Jason and all the
Speaker 3: other ghouls. Yeah. And then finally there's an epilogue where
Speaker 3: the other students comas friends from the seminary. They talk
Speaker 3: about what happened to him. They say, oh, he was
Speaker 3: a good guy. It's a tragedy that happened to him.
Speaker 3: And they have kind of different ideas about what it means,
Speaker 3: like maybe the story's not really true. One of them
Speaker 3: seems kind of doubtful. Another one says that all you
Speaker 3: have to do to protect yourself from witchcraft is make
Speaker 3: the sign of the Cross and spit It's easy. Also,
Speaker 3: one of the guys is like, yeah, all the women
Speaker 3: in the market in town are witches, and yeah, so
Speaker 3: that's the story as a whole. But I thought we
Speaker 3: should come back and focus on some specific things. We'll
Speaker 3: definitely focus a lot on the Third Haunting, the Third Night.
Speaker 3: But one thing I wanted to talk about in the
Speaker 3: film throughout is the cinematic language of textures of decay,
Speaker 3: of neglect and decay. The camera really lingers on cobwebs
Speaker 3: and dust and things being spilled or overgrown, all these
Speaker 3: visual signifiers of neglect and decay. And the credit it's
Speaker 3: actually at the beginning of the movie, play over quiet
Speaker 3: music and a static shot of cobwebs in a church corner,
Speaker 3: just billowing in a slight breeze. There's all this dust,
Speaker 3: these old candles. There's even one very small detailed that
Speaker 3: I noticed that I loved. I wonder if you caught
Speaker 3: the same thing. And there's a scene part of the
Speaker 3: way through the movie when Coma is entering the chapel
Speaker 3: with a candle in his hand. I think it might
Speaker 3: be the scene when they're actually taking the girl's coffin
Speaker 3: into the chapel, or maybe it's another time he's entering,
Speaker 3: but he's holding a candle and his hand is actually
Speaker 3: covered with this bumpy, spilled layer of dried drip wax.
Speaker 3: It's like he's been holding the candle forever and just
Speaker 3: letting the wax flow out onto his hand and solidify
Speaker 3: there over and over for a long time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some great details with the candle work in
Speaker 2: this film. I love the scene where he's coming into
Speaker 2: the chapel and he's like, chapel is not supposed to
Speaker 2: be this dark and gloomy. It's supposed to be a
Speaker 2: place of light, and he starts lighting all these candles
Speaker 2: to lighten things up, and of course this just makes
Speaker 2: the in in some ways, just makes the chapel look
Speaker 2: even creepier, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. There's another thing I wanted to mention about
Speaker 3: the look and feel of the movie, which is the
Speaker 3: atmosphericx of the scene where the three students become lost
Speaker 3: and they have to go to the witch's house. So
Speaker 3: early in the film, I really think the landscape is
Speaker 3: infused with this feeling of witchcraft. So there are some
Speaker 3: scenes of real, actually beautiful outdoor vistas, but they are
Speaker 3: kind of creepy. Like there's one shot of the students
Speaker 3: who have left the seminary. They're camping up on a
Speaker 3: hill overlooking a kind of misty swamp in the distance below,
Speaker 3: and they're burning of fire and it looks beautiful and
Speaker 3: a little creepy at the same time. Other scenes are
Speaker 3: indoor for outdoor sets with this blue glowing sky with
Speaker 3: a painted backdrop and the evil magic here, I got
Speaker 3: the feeling that it comes out of the land and
Speaker 3: out of the sky, creating this feeling of witchcraft as
Speaker 3: a natural force or a natural law, something that kind
Speaker 3: of creeps in like vines upon an unmaintained lawn, which
Speaker 3: I thought was interesting because of these other things about
Speaker 3: decay and neglect, like just things being kind of untended
Speaker 3: in the witchcraft taking them over.
Speaker 2: There's also a great moment in this part of the
Speaker 2: film where they realize their loss. They realize they are
Speaker 2: not on a road anymore, and that in and of itself,
Speaker 2: I think ties in nicely with this, because what is
Speaker 2: a road but a road. It is the vein of civilization.
Speaker 2: It takes you back and connects you to the place
Speaker 2: of modernity and logic and reason that you hail from.
Speaker 2: And now you realize you were no longer on that road.
Speaker 3: You are.
Speaker 2: You belong to this land. Now you don't belong to
Speaker 2: that place back there.
Speaker 3: I think in that same sequence, there's the part where
Speaker 3: one of the students is reaching around in the dark
Speaker 3: trying to grab the other one, and he gets horrified
Speaker 3: because he grabs something in his hand is full of rot.
Speaker 3: And then he realizes, oh, that was just a dead log.
Speaker 3: I thought I had grabbed your head. But there's another
Speaker 3: theme that I wondered what you made of. It's the
Speaker 3: theme of singing in the face of fear. When the
Speaker 3: students first become lost in the beginning, they sing in
Speaker 3: the dark to make themselves unafraid when they're wandering after
Speaker 3: they've lost the road and they're wandering around in the
Speaker 3: fields with the blue sky. And then later at multiple
Speaker 3: times in the film, Coma sings songs to make himself unafraid.
Speaker 3: He sings that song that has the lyrics of a
Speaker 3: cossack has no fear, you know. There there's a kind
Speaker 3: of lyrical content where he's trying to beef himself up
Speaker 3: to face the ghosts. But there is all so just
Speaker 3: a part at the end where in the final Haunting,
Speaker 3: he starts by reading the prayers from the Prayer Book
Speaker 3: and then starts getting louder and louder and singing them.
Speaker 3: I wonder what you thought. Is there any significance on
Speaker 3: this repeated theme about singing as an act that has
Speaker 3: warding power? Maybe?
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean that's a deep topic we've touched on
Speaker 2: a little bit before, like, for instance, wist well, whistling,
Speaker 2: because on one hand, like whistling in the dark can
Speaker 2: be seen as a way to sort of keep darkness away,
Speaker 2: like how can you know what's going to attack me
Speaker 2: when I'm singing, Like there's kind of like a singing
Speaker 2: or whistling. But then at the same time, there are
Speaker 2: all these traditions about whistling being the very sort of
Speaker 2: thing that could invite creatures of darkness towards you. So
Speaker 2: don't whistle in the dark? Ynd Yeah, so yeah, should
Speaker 2: I whistle? Should I not whistle? I don't know, but
Speaker 2: there is Yeah, you know, there's there's something deep in
Speaker 2: the human psyche about like how should I behave as
Speaker 2: if something unseen is watching me? And of course the
Speaker 2: calculus there is different if you or considering you know,
Speaker 2: real life people you know and and you know a
Speaker 2: threat that is that is that is human, if you're
Speaker 2: considering a threat that is animal, or if you're considering
Speaker 2: a threat that you know is from the unseen world
Speaker 2: it is ghosts or spirits or demons or whatnot. And
Speaker 2: maybe in some cases like loudness is the defense. I mean,
Speaker 2: loudness in one form or another is often tied to
Speaker 2: exorcism and and and magical rights to drive away monsters
Speaker 2: and horror.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on what is
Speaker 3: your relationship to the thing you're afraid of. You know,
Speaker 3: people talk about wandering in the wilderness. It often is
Speaker 3: good to be loud, because then you're less likely to
Speaker 3: accidentally stumble across some kind of you know, encounter with
Speaker 3: the beast that you don't want to startle. You know,
Speaker 3: they'll hear you coming if you make a lot of noise,
Speaker 3: So that could be helpful in that sense if you
Speaker 3: were actually thinking about a malevolent, predatory, supernatural creature. In
Speaker 3: that case, you'd almost think, you don't it to know
Speaker 3: where you are, so you shouldn't make any noise at all.
Speaker 3: But maybe the effect of singing very loudly it's like
Speaker 3: a way of convincing yourself that there is no danger,
Speaker 3: because if there is danger, this would be really stupid
Speaker 3: to do. So, you know, there better be no danger
Speaker 3: because of how much attention I'm attracting with this loud singing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many ways to think of, like yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm reminded of the bit from the rhyme of the
Speaker 2: ancient marin or you know, like one that on a
Speaker 2: lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having
Speaker 2: once turned round, walks on and turns no more his head, like, so,
Speaker 2: don't look back at the thing that you know is
Speaker 2: back there. But on the other hand, there's also the
Speaker 2: value of like, yeah, like shout at the devil, yell
Speaker 2: at the devil, curse the devil, throw things at the devil.
Speaker 2: You need to go on the offense. That's the only
Speaker 2: way to protect yourself, calm. I should have thought of
Speaker 2: that here. He mainly is on defense. Yeah, relies a
Speaker 2: lot on that chalk circle on the ground.
Speaker 3: So should we talk about the three nights? Anything in
Speaker 3: particular you want to say about the first night where
Speaker 3: she first wakes up. This one is the most low
Speaker 3: key of the three.
Speaker 2: It's the most low key, but it's still plenty spooky again,
Speaker 2: Like the set is amazing here, that dark, gloomy chapel,
Speaker 2: full of decay, full of night gallery paintings and candle
Speaker 2: light and cobwebs, like the gothic grotesque vibe here is
Speaker 2: just so rich. And when she starts rising, it's very
Speaker 2: much what you'd expect, you know, the slow rising of
Speaker 2: the corpse. But it's highly effective, Like it would be
Speaker 2: a highly effective theme, it would be a highly effective scene.
Speaker 2: Rather if this were the only night we had in
Speaker 2: the film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And of course Coma is saved by the cock crowing,
Speaker 3: so he draws the magic circle and she gets out
Speaker 3: of the casket and she's trying to find him. She's
Speaker 3: like feeling around on the outside of the magic circle,
Speaker 3: almost like it's an invisible cylinder that goes up to
Speaker 3: the ceiling. You see her feeling around on the on
Speaker 3: the wall. Again. I mentioned earlier that she does things
Speaker 3: physically that feel almost like mime work, like comedy mimework,
Speaker 3: and this is one example, when she's feeling the unseen wall.
Speaker 2: Oh before she even rises. Though, there's a moment I
Speaker 2: absolutely loved where we get a we essentially we get
Speaker 2: a jump scare, but without you know, all the bells
Speaker 2: and whistles of a modern jump scare that can feel
Speaker 2: a bit get a bit more gimmicky in some cases.
Speaker 2: But here we get, on one hand, something we're used
Speaker 2: to have.
Speaker 3: What do you have?
Speaker 2: You have a black cat dart across the screen? Sure,
Speaker 2: and maybe a musical note to sort of drive it home.
Speaker 2: Here we get that, but we get not one black cat,
Speaker 2: but four of them at once, with the chapel in
Speaker 2: the chapel, which you know, it does make you logically like,
Speaker 2: how many cats live in this church? How many are necessary?
Speaker 2: It's like they're just feral cats everywhere. Maybe so, But
Speaker 2: also I just love that as a modern viewer of
Speaker 2: horror cinema, in any film that just wants to get
Speaker 2: a jump out of you, we're used to the black
Speaker 2: cat running across the screen. Here we get four of them,
Speaker 2: and somehow it being four of them. Yeah, it just
Speaker 2: works better, like it feels more like an omen like
Speaker 2: there's numerical data there.
Speaker 3: You know, that's all right? I mean the cats usually
Speaker 3: run together like that, I don't know, usually we're being herded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, cats will live together, but you know,
Speaker 2: generally it's in films it's just one running across the screen,
Speaker 2: jumping out of a closet, and we'll see more of
Speaker 2: the cat antics and subsequent scenes totally.
Speaker 3: And this scene also is the first time we see
Speaker 3: the ghost, or not the ghost, the body of the
Speaker 3: witch doing that kind of rapid bouncing up and down, shivering,
Speaker 3: jittering thing. Yeah, which is again looks almost funny, but
Speaker 3: stays on the line of creepy. I think. So. The
Speaker 3: second night is the night when she starts piloting her
Speaker 3: coffin like a spaceship to ram into the sides of
Speaker 3: this invisible cylinder.
Speaker 2: That's right. She awakens in the casket as before, but
Speaker 2: then the casket takes to the air and we begin
Speaker 2: to get these zooming, spinning sequences where she's flying in
Speaker 2: the casket, eventually kind of almost surfing on the casket
Speaker 2: like surfing ussr here, but again so beautifully executed, like
Speaker 2: they're using wires here to create this effect.
Speaker 3: The room.
Speaker 2: They may be using a spinning room as well of
Speaker 2: some sort. There's so much richness here to discuss here.
Speaker 2: Even in the first night, when the cock crows, I
Speaker 2: believe like she kind of glides back into the casket.
Speaker 2: Do you remember a verse footage effect. Yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 2: some sort of Dolly system was in play.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: So this is just amazing, just terrifying, with the sense
Speaker 2: that this is a spirit that is just growing more
Speaker 2: powerful night by night, and he is barely able to
Speaker 2: protect himself like that, this magic circle is barely holding.
Speaker 3: I wonder if the reverse footage backwards climb back into
Speaker 3: the coffin in this movie inspired the similar effect that
Speaker 3: is used in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. Where do you
Speaker 3: remember when the vampire of Lucy? I think it is
Speaker 3: she like reversed footages into her coffin.
Speaker 2: Oh, I would bet there's a very strong chance of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I be's I was gonna say scorsesey, that's not Scorsese.
Speaker 3: I bet Copola is a fan of this movie.
Speaker 2: Probably, yeah, yeah, how could you not be?
Speaker 3: Okay? And then finally we get to the Third Night,
Speaker 3: the third the Big Haunt, the Big Deal. This is
Speaker 3: where everything, all hell breaks loose quite literally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this sequence has it all like it is just
Speaker 2: the gates of hell have opened, and we get all
Speaker 2: manner of supposedly ghosts and wear wolves and vampires, but nothing.
Speaker 2: I don't know. The creatures look more ghoul like to me.
Speaker 2: You know, there are a lot of the maciated bald
Speaker 2: creatures that are humanoid, some tall, some very short, dressed
Speaker 2: in rags. They feel like they have very much climbed
Speaker 2: out of the grave. They've climbed out of the walls.
Speaker 2: They've come out of the floor. We get a dancing skeleton,
Speaker 2: which is nice. We get giant ghost hands rising up
Speaker 2: out of the.
Speaker 3: Floor, and then in many forms actually just oh yeah, we.
Speaker 2: Also just get hands coming out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hands coming out of the walls and out of
Speaker 3: the altar, I think, and then giant hands surrounding coma.
Speaker 2: There's some sort of a weird puppet at one point
Speaker 2: that I'm not sure what it's supposed to be, but
Speaker 2: it's it's like, I don't know, a muppet from hell
Speaker 2: and you're just like job dropping.
Speaker 3: The skeletal giraffe with seven heads.
Speaker 2: Well there's that, Yes, I've forgot about that. But there's
Speaker 2: some other kind of creature that nasty kitty cat. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it kind of a spines on its spines on its head.
Speaker 2: That So there's just sights and sounds well beyond anything
Speaker 2: you've experienced before.
Speaker 3: Now you've seen monsters that have more eyes than a
Speaker 3: human usually has, they've got extra eyes. You've seen monsters
Speaker 3: with extra arms and legs. Have you ever seen monsters
Speaker 3: with extra noses? We got that.
Speaker 2: Right, We get the guy that has kind of a
Speaker 2: reminds me of various bat species where they have like
Speaker 2: very extravagant nostrils. Yeah, we get that guy. Absolutely. The
Speaker 2: makeup work here is amazing, the.
Speaker 3: Rows of nostrils with these naked, wretched revenants and gray zombies.
Speaker 3: And meanwhile, we've just got the witch in the background.
Speaker 3: She's there's so much hate in her voice. She's saying,
Speaker 3: I summon vampires. I summoned were wolves. That's the translation
Speaker 3: whatever it is she's saying in the original, And one
Speaker 3: of the words is verdil ox. And I thought interesting
Speaker 3: that the beasts of hell here are all very gray.
Speaker 3: They are they seem like dust and cobwebs incarnate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like this is not Yeah, this is not
Speaker 2: like a fiery Christian hell that these creatures are emerging from.
Speaker 2: It's some sort of a gray necropolis or something, you know,
Speaker 2: some sort of a gray void deep in the earth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a gloomy, gloomy pit. Yeah, and one thing I
Speaker 3: brought this up earlier, the so the church's religious murals
Speaker 3: and paintings of saints and things are now changed into
Speaker 3: demons during the Yeah, and I was wondering, is this
Speaker 3: an alteration or a revelation? Is the nighttime transformation changing
Speaker 3: a normally holy place into an unholy place? Or is
Speaker 3: it revealing something about this place? Is this an unholy
Speaker 3: place that in the daytime is disguised.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, that's a great point. Yeah, what is the connection
Speaker 2: between this supernatural world it is now descending on him
Speaker 2: and the super natural world that is part of the
Speaker 2: Christian faith during the daylight? Is it the same world?
Speaker 2: And it's just depends on what the lights you're doing.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean I asked that in part about whether this
Speaker 3: there's something actually deeper that's wrong with this place because
Speaker 3: of a few things that are hinted in parts we
Speaker 3: haven't really talked about, like during the daytime when Koma
Speaker 3: is here at this compound, at the Suttnix compound, he
Speaker 3: for example, here's the people talking about stories of witchcraft,
Speaker 3: like about the huntsman who lived here, who was ridden
Speaker 3: like a horse by the witch, by the daughter and
Speaker 3: then there's also a thing with remember the scene where
Speaker 3: Coma goes to the girl's father and he's like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm out. I don't care. You got to do whatever
Speaker 3: you want. I'm just done. I'm not going back in there.
Speaker 3: Your daughter is a witch, her soul is in hell.
Speaker 3: And the guy doesn't react like, I don't know what
Speaker 3: you're talking about. He reacts almost like like I know
Speaker 3: she's in hell. You've got to save her. Like he
Speaker 3: reacts as if he knows that there is already witchcraft
Speaker 3: and evil infusing this place and it's not a surprise
Speaker 3: to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that this this thing just has to be done,
Speaker 2: like there's not really a sense that this will really
Speaker 2: generate any kind of favorable outcome for anybody. But it's
Speaker 2: like you you have you do what you are here for.
Speaker 2: You have to complete your job. You have to make
Speaker 2: it through the third night. And then on top of this,
Speaker 2: he tells him like, yeah, if you do this, you'll
Speaker 2: get a thousand gold coins, but if you don't, you'll
Speaker 2: get a thousand lashes, And he goes into detail about
Speaker 2: how good his guys are at lashing. He's like, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's really really frightening because he's telling them like,
Speaker 2: they're going to start lashing you, then they're going to
Speaker 2: get drunk, and then they're going to keep lashing you. Yes,
Speaker 2: and so like really he's presenting like the prisoning heaven
Speaker 2: in hell here in a very secular sense. It's like,
Speaker 2: you can either get beat to death or you can
Speaker 2: go off with a nice fat pot of money. But
Speaker 2: but you know those are your choices. And so he's
Speaker 2: he is finally like dragged into the church. He's like,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be rich when I get out of here.
Speaker 2: And of course I think we the viewers know at
Speaker 2: that point he's never getting out of here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he is doomed. But how in what form does
Speaker 3: that doom come? Why? It is the entrance of V.
Speaker 2: Mmm.
Speaker 3: So finally, the witch in this last haunting calls out,
Speaker 3: bring v She says, bring him here, bring V. So
Speaker 3: in walks this creature, this again gray, the same color
Speaker 3: palette as the rest of these beings of hell. Uh.
Speaker 3: He is a thundering, lumbering, stomping gray mass that has
Speaker 3: something of a rock elemental about him. He seems like
Speaker 3: he's made of rock or earth. No arms, just hands
Speaker 3: in the shoulders, eyes like mud or not eyes, eyelids
Speaker 3: like mud flaps covering up his eyes, and then he
Speaker 3: has to have these other zombies raise his eyelids for him.
Speaker 3: It approaches and it says, you know, raise my eyelids,
Speaker 3: and so the creatures bring up its eyelids and then
Speaker 3: its eyes are like gems, sort of like emeralds or
Speaker 3: like a textured green glass glowing, and the monsters descend
Speaker 3: on Coma while the witch laughs. There's something about the
Speaker 3: gaze of the v and then he points a finger
Speaker 3: at Coma that enables the monsters to destroy Comas maybe
Speaker 3: like maybe this overcomes the protection of his magic circle
Speaker 3: or something like that.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, yeah, yeah, And again this reminds me
Speaker 2: of Baler, the King of the Fomorians and Irish myth
Speaker 2: with the deathly gaze beneath the overhanging brow.
Speaker 3: But after Coma has been has been rent to death
Speaker 3: by these creatures, the cock crows a second time. The
Speaker 3: cock actually crows before he dies, but they ignore it
Speaker 3: the first time. Second time, they can't withstand the break
Speaker 3: of morning, so the monsters scamper back. But because they
Speaker 3: ignored the first crow of the cock, they get caught
Speaker 3: a little bit late getting back into hell, and so
Speaker 3: they like, we see these monsters getting stuck in the walls. Actually, here,
Speaker 3: if you don't mind, I'd like to read a passage
Speaker 3: from the Go Gol story. This is from the translation
Speaker 3: by Richard Pevier and Larissa Volokonski. They translate quote, A
Speaker 3: cock crow rang out. This was already the second cock
Speaker 3: crow the gnomes had missed the first. The frightened spirits
Speaker 3: rushed pell Mell for the windows and doors in order
Speaker 3: to fly out quickly, but nothing doing, and so they
Speaker 3: stayed there, stuck in the doors and windows. When the
Speaker 3: priest came in, he stopped at the sight of such
Speaker 3: disc grace in God's sanctuary and did not dare serve
Speaker 3: a pinakita in such a place. So the church remained
Speaker 3: forever with monsters stuck in its doors and windows, overgrown
Speaker 3: with forest roots, weeds, wild blackthorn, and no one now
Speaker 3: can find the path to it. The movie does this too.
Speaker 3: It actually catches the monsters frozen halfway going into the walls,
Speaker 3: and we see them kind of collapse with their body
Speaker 3: like a leg sticking out or the upper body just
Speaker 3: hanging there in the wall, still there when the priests
Speaker 3: come in in the morning, and I love that part.
Speaker 3: In fact, there's one thing we didn't even mention. When
Speaker 3: the monsters are first coming out, there's this marvelous special
Speaker 3: effect that somehow makes it look like it's like an
Speaker 3: optical illusion that makes it look like the monsters are
Speaker 3: crawling out from the middles of the walls. What it
Speaker 3: actually is is, I think that part of the wall
Speaker 3: is sort of advanced ahead of the other part of
Speaker 3: the wall, and there these gaps of depth so that
Speaker 3: they can crawl out from in between these parts. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's very very cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is just absolutely a special effects bonanza and
Speaker 2: just highly effective, very creepy. If if you have any
Speaker 2: knowledge of this film, again, you have probably seen clips
Speaker 2: from this part of the movie, or you've you've just
Speaker 2: seen images from it, because of course one of that
Speaker 2: the central images is when V comes out. They bring
Speaker 2: thee out, like you said, the unshielding of the eyes,
Speaker 2: And yeah, V is marvelous, great mysterious monster. We want
Speaker 2: to know more, but it's we were not meant to
Speaker 2: know anything of him.
Speaker 3: In the Actually I can read the description of V
Speaker 3: that is also in that translation of the story, because
Speaker 3: I think this is kind of interesting. So the in
Speaker 3: the story, the witch calls out, bring V, go get
Speaker 3: the V, and then it says quote, And suddenly there
Speaker 3: was silence in the church. The wolves howling could be
Speaker 3: heard far away, and soon heavy footsteps rang out in
Speaker 3: the church. With a sidelong glance, he saw them leading
Speaker 3: in some squat hefty splay footed man. He was black
Speaker 3: earth all over. His earth covered legs and arms stuck
Speaker 3: out like strong, sinewy roots. Heavily he trod, stumbling all
Speaker 3: the time. His long eyelids were lowered to the ground.
Speaker 3: With horror, Coma noticed that the face on him was
Speaker 3: made of iron. He was brought in under the arms
Speaker 3: and put right by the place where Coma stood. Lift
Speaker 3: my eyelids, I can't see, V said in a subterranean voice.
Speaker 3: And the entire host rushed to lift his eyelids. And
Speaker 3: I'll just finish this part. Don't look, some inner voice
Speaker 3: whispered to the philosopher. He could not help himself, and
Speaker 3: looked there he is. V cried and fixed an iron
Speaker 3: finger on him, and all that were there fell upon
Speaker 3: the philosopher. Breathless, he crashed to the ground, and straightway
Speaker 3: the spirit flew out of him in terror.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so v it really almost had you already
Speaker 2: mentioned that he has like an elemental vibe, but in
Speaker 2: the original text almost sounds a little bit like almost manufactured,
Speaker 2: like like he is a like a the end product
Speaker 2: of some sort of strange hurricane right where something or
Speaker 2: somebody is transformed into the v.
Speaker 3: It describes his face and his finger as iron, and
Speaker 3: it describes his arms and legs as like roots and
Speaker 3: black soil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty groovy, Pretty groovy, but not so for Coma
Speaker 2: because com again is struck dead by this.
Speaker 3: Yeah uh yeah. So then, of course, as we said,
Speaker 3: after this, we go back to the university and we
Speaker 3: just check in with the other oaths, the other guys
Speaker 3: there who are you know, we're his friends. They're probably
Speaker 3: thinking about something they can steal later today, and they're
Speaker 3: and they're doing their pain, and they're like, yeah, whatever
Speaker 3: happened to Coma? Too bad about him. He was a
Speaker 3: nice guy.
Speaker 2: It's interesting this little epilogue because it's certainly not a
Speaker 2: send them home happy sort of tack on ending like
Speaker 2: we see in some older horror films, though there is
Speaker 2: perhaps a sense of, well, we can't end it on
Speaker 2: such a dark note as well, you know, we have
Speaker 2: to let that. I think another part of it might be, Okay,
Speaker 2: we just had this amazing special effects sequence. Maybe the
Speaker 2: audience needs to breathe a little bit, They need to
Speaker 2: catch their breath before they can leave the theater. And
Speaker 2: we just have these two seminarians setting around ignoring their duties,
Speaker 2: drinking vodka and again eating what I assume to be
Speaker 2: like green onions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, too bad for coma munch, munch, give me some ramps.
Speaker 2: Okay, then, but then the credits roll and the credits
Speaker 2: are a little creepy again, we get some more cop.
Speaker 3: Webbed so yeah so I yeah, that does it for me.
Speaker 3: Those are my thoughts on V.
Speaker 2: V is pretty great. Highly recommend it. If you haven't
Speaker 2: seen it, go see it. And if you need to
Speaker 2: revisit it, yeah go do so. We spelled all the
Speaker 2: different ways you can go and see it these days.
Speaker 2: I would love to hear from everyone out there if
Speaker 2: you have thoughts on this film and also just its legacy,
Speaker 2: and if you've seen any other cinematic adaptations of V
Speaker 2: I would love to hear about you, hear your thoughts
Speaker 2: on those because we just briefly touched on I think
Speaker 2: a nineteen oh nine possibly lost film. I don't know
Speaker 2: that it remains. A lot of those old silent films
Speaker 2: did not make it. But then there are other productions
Speaker 2: from throughout the decades. There's one that's completely at least
Speaker 2: one that's completely animated. And then you have these more
Speaker 2: recent like Blockbuster Russian Blockbuster treatments. Right in if you've
Speaker 2: seen them, I think they've they've They've been streaming on
Speaker 2: some major platforms before, so some of you may have
Speaker 2: seen those, and you can write in and tell us
Speaker 2: what's what's that flavor, like, how did that Blockbuster adaptation go?
Speaker 3: Huge thing? Access always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Yourmind dot com.
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