Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2: And this is Joe McCormick and ooh, today we are
Speaker 2: featuring an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This is
Speaker 2: the episode we did on The Dunwich Horror with the
Speaker 2: most Lovecraftian of casts Dean Stockwell, Sandra Dee and Ed
Speaker 2: Begley Sr. Nothing says horror like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, this was a lot of fun. It's like
Speaker 1: it's a hippie necronomicon extravaganza, and it's also something of
Speaker 1: a love story, especially in the early going, so it's
Speaker 1: not a bad lead end to Valentine's Day in my opinion.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: This is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And this week we have a I think we have
Speaker 1: a pretty fun on film for everybody. We're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about the nineteen seventy necronomicon film The dune
Speaker 1: Wich Horror, starring the late great Dean Stockwell.
Speaker 2: Does a beholder make an appearance in this movie? I
Speaker 2: want to know from somebody who has more d and
Speaker 2: d experience than.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the depiction of the monster in this film
Speaker 1: is very interesting. For the most part, is very minimal,
Speaker 1: but we do see a weird splash of some sort
Speaker 1: of a beholder esque, you know, almost kind of Medusa
Speaker 1: esque gorgon head creature towards the end, but you don't
Speaker 1: really get a great look at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sort of a flying ball of meat with like
Speaker 2: eyeball stalks and tentacles writhing as the color saturation flashes.
Speaker 1: Now, there's a thing that's featured on the poster for
Speaker 1: this film, and it's a pretty cool poster. You'll see
Speaker 1: different versions of it where there's this kind of like
Speaker 1: beastial dean stockwell head with a bunch of snakes and
Speaker 1: serpents and leeches stuff kind of like writhing on the head.
Speaker 1: This is not exactly what you see in the film.
Speaker 1: This is just kind of poster art I think inspired
Speaker 1: by it.
Speaker 2: True though, I do like the diversity of the different
Speaker 2: kinds of heads on the snake things coming out of
Speaker 2: this beast. So you got like a cow skull looking
Speaker 2: thing with horns, but then you got a leech mouth,
Speaker 2: and then is there one thing that just kind of
Speaker 2: looks like a raccoon, like.
Speaker 1: A monst Oh yeah, it does kind of look like
Speaker 1: a raccoon. Yeah, all sorts of stuff going on there.
Speaker 1: It's chaos. It's chaos in that creature. But this is
Speaker 1: a film. It's been on my list for a while,
Speaker 1: but I think a couple of things kind of propelled
Speaker 1: it to the forefront for us to record this month.
Speaker 1: First of all, I'm growing a mustache for the November effort.
Speaker 1: You've probably heard our ads about that, and you know
Speaker 1: mentioning you know where you can go to learn more.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to watch some films with solid mustaches
Speaker 1: in them, and Dean Stockwell's mustache in this film was
Speaker 1: essential for me because, unlike the excellent mustaches of someone
Speaker 1: like Vincent Price or Olliver Read, this one looks like
Speaker 1: the sort of mustache that I could conceivably grow, an
Speaker 1: uncanny mustache, a mustache that at once checks out checks
Speaker 1: off all the boxes for being a cool mustache, but
Speaker 1: also looks somewhat uncomfortable. I don't know, maybe it's just me.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the That's the essence of Dean Stockwell's character
Speaker 2: in this movie. Because, while of course this is based
Speaker 2: on a novella originally by HP Lovecraft. One way I
Speaker 2: think the movie is very different than the source material
Speaker 2: is the movie has more suaveness in it. Dean Stockwell
Speaker 2: plays a guy who is ultimately an occult creep whose
Speaker 2: affinities lie in other dimensions. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: there are some scenes where he's kind of he's kind
Speaker 2: of smooth, he's kind of got a little bit of charm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of feels like a love story at times.
Speaker 1: It doesn't stay that way very long, but there are
Speaker 1: a few moments in here where you're like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is kind of a you know, a slightly horror themed
Speaker 1: love story. Now, the other thing that really propelled this
Speaker 1: to the forefront for us is that, of course, on
Speaker 1: November seventh, Dean Stockwell passed away. The star of this
Speaker 1: film were one of the stars of this film. So
Speaker 1: I thought, well, that settles it. You know, we probably
Speaker 1: need to cover this one. And it is kind of
Speaker 1: a tribute to Dean Stockwell, who, as we'll discuss in
Speaker 1: a bet. You know, it's been in tons of stuff
Speaker 1: over the years, and there are some very memorable roles
Speaker 1: mixed into that filmography. Now, as you mentioned, this is
Speaker 1: a film that is based on an HP Lovecraft story,
Speaker 1: And I think I long avoided watching this adaptation of
Speaker 1: the Dunwich hor because I'd always heard that Lovecraft officionados
Speaker 1: did not like it. They didn't think it was true
Speaker 1: to his vision. But I think that time has shown
Speaker 1: us that, first of all, cosmic car doesn't always translate
Speaker 1: that well onto the screen anyway. And also the more
Speaker 1: we come to terms with what Lovecraft's vision really entailed
Speaker 1: in its entirety, I think deviation from form sounds increasingly okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Plus I saw that Electric Wizards just Oborne loves this film,
Speaker 1: so I figured, well, something must be working in this adaptation.
Speaker 2: For people not familiar. That's sort of a house favorite
Speaker 2: Doom Metal Stone or Doom Metal band. But yeah, they
Speaker 2: actually sampled this movie in at least one of their songs.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah. And then there's another song that is just
Speaker 1: called Dunewich, which it seems entirely inspired by this movie.
Speaker 1: It has lyrics like Child of Dunewitch Rise you have
Speaker 1: your father's eyes, and it looks like somebody affiliated with
Speaker 1: the band actually cut together, you know, a music video
Speaker 1: for that track using footage exclusively from this movie. So
Speaker 1: there you go.
Speaker 2: I think it's fitting for the band because this movie
Speaker 2: has just the their right sort of balance between cosmic
Speaker 2: menace and absolute cornball.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And by the way, that track that music video,
Speaker 1: I'll include that on the blog post for this episode
Speaker 1: at Sammuda music dot com. And by the way, for
Speaker 1: those of you that have written in and you've said, hey,
Speaker 1: where can I get a list of all the movies
Speaker 1: you've covered of all the Weird House episode so that
Speaker 1: you've done that is where you will find that Samooda
Speaker 1: Music se m u t a m u sic dot com.
Speaker 1: So let's get into it. Yeah, what do we have
Speaker 1: in this film? We have a we have like a
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies hippie necronomicon story full of weird music bean stockwell,
Speaker 1: and it's produced by Roger Korman.
Speaker 2: And see the Corman connection, because it has a little
Speaker 2: bit of the same grit as those those like Corman
Speaker 2: Edgar Allan Poe movies from around the same time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it also, as we'll point out, a number
Speaker 1: of the people involved in this went on to be
Speaker 1: in episodes of Night Gallery. I feel like this if
Speaker 1: you if you dig Night Gallery, you'll dig this film
Speaker 1: because it has that same texture, that same field, that
Speaker 1: same mouthfeel that you get with Night Gallery.
Speaker 2: So how do you do an elevator pitch on this movie?
Speaker 2: Would you say, like boy meets Girl, boy wants to
Speaker 2: open an interdimensional riff to summon ancient demons that ruled
Speaker 2: the cosmos before humankind, meddling grandpas and professors interfere.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, sort of generational conflict over over you know,
Speaker 1: illicit books of ancient knowledge. Uh well, what would happen
Speaker 1: if you rolled a doobe with a page from an ecronomicon?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: These are all ideas that are bouncing around my head.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, we'll probably need to come back to this
Speaker 2: later on. But it's interesting the little ribbon of hippie
Speaker 2: culture and aesthetics running through the middle of this movie.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not a you know, it's not a
Speaker 2: Woodstock kind of movie, except in little like moments, and
Speaker 2: those moments are the suggestions of the the the otherworldly evil.
Speaker 2: It's almost like a you might say it's more anti
Speaker 2: hippie than hippie because like the hippie imagery and it
Speaker 2: is the visions coming from the the unspeakable place.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so it's gonna be very interesting to discuss
Speaker 1: those themes, because it's not one of those films that
Speaker 1: I feel like purshase itself, you know, perfectly between cultures
Speaker 1: of this time period, where it can fully be one
Speaker 1: thing to one side of the culture war and another
Speaker 1: to the other side. But it does it does seem
Speaker 1: to sort of be trying to have that ambiguity at times.
Speaker 2: Of course, then again it might just be sort of,
Speaker 2: I don't know, historical happenstance. The same way you might
Speaker 2: imagine if this movie was made in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: the visions from the Other Plane would involve sinister grunge
Speaker 2: people in flannel kind of flailing around in a Seattle alleyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. All right, Well, let's go ahead and have
Speaker 1: some of the trailer here.
Speaker 5: The nights are Darker at night is when it happens
Speaker 5: in The Dunwich Horror and.
Speaker 4: Come back old life, the faces of Dark, and Repossess
Speaker 4: the Earth.
Speaker 6: The Dunwich Horror based on HP Lovecraft's Terrifying Tale of
Speaker 6: Those Who Explore the Unspeakable, starring Sandra d Dean Stockwell
Speaker 6: Academy Award winner Ed Begley, Sam Jeffy Never Heard Anything
Speaker 6: like that.
Speaker 1: All right, sounds pretty good. Sounds pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: All right, Well let's dive right into the people involved
Speaker 1: in bringing this to the screen. First of all, I
Speaker 1: should know that apparently this was originally going to be
Speaker 1: a Mario Bava film, but it sounds like American International
Speaker 1: Pictures switch things up, you know, sort of for you
Speaker 1: the sort of business reasons you might expect with the
Speaker 1: STU Radio. Like, I think one of Baba's previous films
Speaker 1: underperformed or didn't perform in the way they wanted it to,
Speaker 1: so it ended up getting shuffled around and we ended
Speaker 1: up with Daniel Holler directing it. This is a guy
Speaker 1: who was born in nineteen twenty six, and weirdly enough,
Speaker 1: Haller's directorial debut was a nineteen sixty five Lovecraft adaptation
Speaker 1: Die Monster Die, starring Boris Karloff.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, that one based on the Color Out of Space,
Speaker 2: I believe.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I have not seen this one either.
Speaker 2: I haven't either of it. You know, they just made
Speaker 2: a new Color out of Space movie within the past
Speaker 2: year or two, and I actually never saw it yet.
Speaker 2: But it's got Nicholas Cage in it.
Speaker 1: Oh wow. Well, you know, it's good then. So Haller
Speaker 1: went on to from Die Monster Die, he went on
Speaker 1: to direct a pair of late sixties biker movies. He
Speaker 1: did Devil's Angels, starring John Cassavetti's he did The Wild Racers.
Speaker 1: This starred Fabian and also featured one of our favorites,
Speaker 1: Dick Miller in there.
Speaker 2: Of course, you know, this movie really missed out on
Speaker 2: having Dick Miller, and Dick Miller would have been great
Speaker 2: as one of the irate townspeople.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he has townspeople written all over him. He
Speaker 1: could have been the guy the gas station. That's a
Speaker 1: perfect Dick Miller role.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or he could have been one of the guys
Speaker 2: at the store making fun of Grandpa when he was
Speaker 2: talking about bringing beings over from another dimension.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, missed opportunity. Anyway. Haller went on to do
Speaker 1: mostly a lot of TV work. He directed the pilot
Speaker 1: for Buck Rogers in the twenty fifth Century, which ended
Speaker 1: up being pushed out as a film, so technically there's
Speaker 1: a film credit for him. He was also production designer
Speaker 1: and art director on a bunch of old Roger Kornman movies.
Speaker 1: All right, now, the writers on this there are a
Speaker 1: couple of writers that really didn't go on to do
Speaker 1: a whole lot else, Henry Rosenbaum and Ronald Silkowski, but
Speaker 1: Curtis Hansen was one of the writers. He lived nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five through twenty sixteen, and this was his first screenplay.
Speaker 1: He went on to work on screenplays for White Dog,
Speaker 1: Never cry Wolf, and La Confidential, which he also directed.
Speaker 1: Other directorial credits include The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,
Speaker 1: Wonder Boys, and Eight Mile.
Speaker 2: Now, I guess if you're trying to adapt a Lovecraft
Speaker 2: story for the screen, there's always a choice you've got
Speaker 2: to make, which is sort of I would say, probably
Speaker 2: usually prized for its dreadful imagination, you know, very imaginative
Speaker 2: of strange and powerful imagery that makes you feel small
Speaker 2: and afraid. So it's good horror in that sense, but
Speaker 2: very often lacks a human or humane element. And so
Speaker 2: do you just sort of try to do that in
Speaker 2: a movie and risk making an alienating film that nobody
Speaker 2: doesn't really have characters anybody can connect to, or do
Speaker 2: you try to adapt the story into something more human
Speaker 2: with more identifiable characters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that is always a because yes, so generally
Speaker 1: these are stories that are very asexual, don't really have
Speaker 1: any romance in them, and it's all about you know,
Speaker 1: dread and cyclopean architecture and so forth. So, yeah, what
Speaker 1: direction do you go in it? Do you go in
Speaker 1: like an action direction which a number of people have
Speaker 1: gone or tried to go. I know, that's what Gallermeal
Speaker 1: Del Toro I think has been wanting to do with
Speaker 1: at the Mountains of Madness. Do you go in kind
Speaker 1: of a schlocky, sexy horror direction like you know, the
Speaker 1: reanimator movies definitely went in that direction, or do you
Speaker 1: find some other path?
Speaker 2: I would say the screenplay adaptation in this movie doesn't
Speaker 2: step fully into making it like a you know, like
Speaker 2: a rich, lovely world full of identifiable characters that are
Speaker 2: you know fully human, But it takes sort of a
Speaker 2: half step in that direction. It is less barren of
Speaker 2: humanity than your standard Lovecraft story would be.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, Lovecraft lived eighteen ninety through nineteen thirty seven, pole
Speaker 1: horror author and one of the major voices of the
Speaker 1: Weird Tales era, who became more influential and famous after
Speaker 1: his death. His work has left an undeniable mark on
Speaker 1: modern horror, but modern horror fans have had to contend
Speaker 1: with the racism in his letters of correspondence as well
Speaker 1: as in the fabric of many of his tales in
Speaker 1: the stories themselves. It's one of those things that I
Speaker 1: feel like it's impossible not to see it once you've
Speaker 1: seen it, you know. And even in The Dunwich Horror,
Speaker 1: which I did not reread for the purposes of viewing
Speaker 1: this film, but even in watching this film, there are
Speaker 1: elements that are about like people being despised because of
Speaker 1: their lineage, and it's just impossible to ignore, Like it's
Speaker 1: just baked into so many of his works totally.
Speaker 2: And I think that's one of the reasons I would
Speaker 2: agree with what you said earlier, like I'm not really
Speaker 2: troubled by lovecraft adaptations not being true to his vision.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think you can probably take a lot
Speaker 2: of what's like cool about the monstrous and imaginative qualities
Speaker 2: of some of his stories and do something else with them,
Speaker 2: maybe even something better with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in this case, something groovy here. Yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: talk about the groovy humans involved in acting in this film.
Speaker 1: The top build star is Sandra d who plays Nancy Wagner,
Speaker 1: who lived She lived nineteen forty two through two thousand
Speaker 1: and five. A former child model and teen actor, d
Speaker 1: was a big deal in the late fifties through the
Speaker 1: late sixties, known for the title role in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: two's Gidget, among others, and this film The Dunwich har
Speaker 1: was supposed to be part of a comeback for her,
Speaker 1: but it apparently didn't quite take off, and her work
Speaker 1: after this film was increasingly sporadic. But she did go
Speaker 1: on to appear on three episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery,
Speaker 1: which again feels appropriate considering the tone of this film
Speaker 1: and the tone of Night Gallery.
Speaker 2: You know what, I thought Sandra d did really good
Speaker 2: in this movie. I thought her part was a little
Speaker 2: bit underwritten later in the film, but she does a
Speaker 2: good job with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, she's very charismatic on the screen. Buy
Speaker 1: into her into her character, just based largely on DEA's performance.
Speaker 1: But yeah, her character increasingly feels less dynamic and more
Speaker 1: powerless and kind of like shuffle to the background of things.
Speaker 1: So that being said, she does a good job with it.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, actually, very much reminds me of
Speaker 2: the arc of the protagonist in Lords of Salem who.
Speaker 2: My main problem with that movie is that the protagonist
Speaker 2: for the second two thirds of the movie becomes mostly catatonic.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think it was very much a comparison
Speaker 1: to be made between the character trajectories of both of
Speaker 1: these these roles in both of these films. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about Dean Stockwell, then Dean stock Will
Speaker 1: plays Wilbur Weiteley here. So Dean stock Will live nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six through twenty twenty one, and boy, he had
Speaker 1: a really long career. He started out as a child
Speaker 1: actor in nineteen forty five and continued acting for the
Speaker 1: next seventy years. His last screen credit was in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: So some two hundred and four screen credits. Wow, So,
Speaker 1: as you might imagine, there's a why hold on, hold on.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I have to ask, is that counting each individual
Speaker 2: episode of Quantum Leap separately or just as one credit?
Speaker 1: Just as one credit? Yeah? Wow, yeah, because yeah Quantum Leap.
Speaker 1: Of course, because he did a fair amount of TV work,
Speaker 1: And so I think a lot of people when you
Speaker 1: think of Dean stockwell, you probably think of his character
Speaker 1: Al the hologram on Quantum Leap. The guy who appears
Speaker 1: to you and helps helps you figure out what you've
Speaker 1: got to do in this weird sci fi reincarnation serial
Speaker 1: situation in order to keep passing on through other people's lives.
Speaker 1: I was a big fan of Quantum Leap. I remember
Speaker 1: we would it was like a show that my family
Speaker 1: would watch. We would watch it together whenever it was on.
Speaker 1: That's fond memories of that.
Speaker 2: I think that was another one that I sometimes saw
Speaker 2: at hotel cable like Cocation, because they did reruns of
Speaker 2: it on the Sci Fi channel.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh, did they Okay? I think yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you're right. I think you're right. So Stockwell did a
Speaker 1: lot of Western's early on again, a lot of TV work.
Speaker 1: He did the hippie picture psych Out in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: eight opposite Jack Nicholson. He was also in Dennis Hopper's
Speaker 1: The Last Movie in nineteen seventy one, so to a
Speaker 1: certain extent he seems to have been very much a
Speaker 1: part of that. Nicholson Hopper dern Fond a scene of
Speaker 1: the late sixties early seventies. In the mid eighties, he
Speaker 1: had this sudden film resurgence, appearing in Vim Vender's Paris,
Speaker 1: Texas in nineteen eighty four, as well as David Lynch's
Speaker 1: Dune in nineteen eighty four, in which he played doctor U.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I forgot he was in Dune.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he's got the mustache, he's got the mark
Speaker 1: on the forehead. In nineteen eighty five, he was in
Speaker 1: William Fredkins To Live and Die in La. Subsequent films
Speaker 1: include Blue Velvet, Beverly Hills Cop two. He also had
Speaker 1: a memorable role in the nineteen eighty eight Jonathan Demi
Speaker 1: comedy Married to the Mob, in which he played a mobster.
Speaker 1: I think it was something like Tony the Tiger or
Speaker 1: something was his name, But yeah on TV though, I
Speaker 1: think he's best remembered for Al and Quantum Leap. He
Speaker 1: also later had a fun recurring role on the Battlestar
Speaker 1: Galactica reboot as a John Cavell, and he did an
Speaker 1: episode of Night Gallery.
Speaker 2: So a weird fact I came across while while reading
Speaker 2: about this movie, Dean Stockwell was in a second movie
Speaker 2: adaptation of the Dunwich Horror of the novella. This movie
Speaker 2: is based on It's one from two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: that looks truly dreadful, but in this one, he's like,
Speaker 2: he switches roles. So in this movie he plays the
Speaker 2: guy who's trying to summon the demons, and in the
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight movie he plays the professor who
Speaker 2: has to battle that guy in the end. So it's
Speaker 2: basically a switch from like playing Macbeth to playing McDuff.
Speaker 2: And this adaptation is set in Louisiana, which what can
Speaker 2: you really separate the stony New englandness from this story
Speaker 2: that seems absolutely crucial to that seems like trying to
Speaker 2: set the shining in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: Well you say that, but then again, this film was
Speaker 1: the dunwichar from nineteen seventy was filmed in coastal northern California.
Speaker 2: So oh, that makes sense given it, and it works, but.
Speaker 1: Then again it works for this film, but yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel particularly like New England now. I will also
Speaker 1: mention that Dean was the son of actor Harry Stockwell, who,
Speaker 1: among other things, was the voice of the Prince in
Speaker 1: Disney snow White, the classic snow White animated film, and
Speaker 1: Dean's older brother, Guy was also an actor, appearing in
Speaker 1: such films as Santa San Gria and also nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: five's the Warlord. He played the villain in that opposite
Speaker 1: Charlton Heston. Now you mentioned the professor that the battles
Speaker 1: Wilbur This is Professor Armitage, doctor or doctor Henry Armitage,
Speaker 1: as he's referencing the credits for Dunwich Horror and in
Speaker 1: this film, this character is played by Ed Bagley Senior,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen one through nineteen seventy. So he's the
Speaker 1: hero of the picture. Philosophy professor at I believe from Missicatonic. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is like the California branch
Speaker 1: of the college or he's visiting.
Speaker 2: It's not really explored. Yeah, Miskatonic University, Riverside.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Ed Bagley Senior. As you may notice, this
Speaker 1: is of course Ed Bangley Junior's dad. He was nearly
Speaker 1: seventy years old during this film, and it definitely shows
Speaker 1: he has very much the feel of an older guy
Speaker 1: in this which I think is rather fitting because we
Speaker 1: talked about sort of the themes of generational tug of
Speaker 1: war in this picture. You know that it's about the
Speaker 1: old people telling the young people they shouldn't do things,
Speaker 1: and and ultimately it feels like it has this. You know,
Speaker 1: it makes sense that that armitage would be this grandfatherly
Speaker 1: character who's trying to protect young Sandra d from the
Speaker 1: dangers posed by hippie sorcerers.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I can see that. And well, even though
Speaker 2: Ed Begley is supposed to be on the side of
Speaker 2: good at the end of this at the end of
Speaker 2: this movie, he plays so well into the cranky old
Speaker 2: man archetype. I mean, and I think he was often
Speaker 2: type cast that way. I'm not I haven't seen all
Speaker 2: of his movie, but like, for example, in Twelve Angry Men,
Speaker 2: he plays like the worst duror. You know, he's like
Speaker 2: the racist one, he's the he's the like nasty old
Speaker 2: guy who they eventually went over in the end, but
Speaker 2: like it becomes clear that he's just like a mean
Speaker 2: old crank, and he can play a mean old crank.
Speaker 1: M yeah. I don't know that I've really seen him
Speaker 1: in much, or I at least don't remember him for much,
Speaker 1: but he was a major actor. He won an Academy
Speaker 1: Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two Sweet Bird of Youth. You already mentioned fifty
Speaker 1: seven is Twelve Angry Men, he was also in The
Speaker 1: Unsinkable Molly Brown in nineteen sixty four, and he was
Speaker 1: nominated for an Emmy Award for Inherit the Wind?
Speaker 2: Oh who did he play? And Inherit the Wind was he?
Speaker 1: Was he Darrow or a caveman? I think it's been watsin? Oh?
Speaker 2: Okay, no, I just looked it up. It was in
Speaker 2: not the original movie adaptation with Spencer Tracy, but another
Speaker 2: one they did for TV. And Ed Begley plays plays
Speaker 2: Matthew Brady, who is the character based on William Jennings Bryan. Okay,
Speaker 2: so he's the do not teach evolution guy.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, that falls in line with your basic argument
Speaker 1: here though that he tended to play the cranky antagonist.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so something about it does work in this movie,
Speaker 2: like you're saying, because I think because the like the
Speaker 2: evil visions are inflected with this kind of like youth
Speaker 2: and counterculture hippie strangeness that in the end the day
Speaker 2: is saved by just like a like a grumpy old crank.
Speaker 1: Yeah, an old guy who's like, you get your hands
Speaker 1: off the necronomicon. That's that's not for young folks, that's
Speaker 1: for us old, right, that's not for the common folk.
Speaker 1: That's for the professors like me. That's why we behinde
Speaker 1: the Necronomicon behind a paywall. I get to study it.
Speaker 1: You don't.
Speaker 2: But this is literally a conflict in the movie. Like
Speaker 2: early on, Dean Stockwell and Ed Begley have an argument
Speaker 2: about whether whether he can like look at the Necronomicon,
Speaker 2: and Ed Begley's.
Speaker 1: Just like, no, it's not for it.
Speaker 2: It's not for you to do.
Speaker 1: It's for me. It's for my study. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's not of the mind like, no one should look
Speaker 1: at the Necronomicon, you know, no one, not one of those.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, I should totally look at it. It's
Speaker 1: this is my thing.
Speaker 2: Well, we can discuss this when we get more into
Speaker 2: the plot. But I think the idea is Ed Begley
Speaker 2: believes Dean Stockwell's interests in it or not purer, which
Speaker 2: he's correct in actually true true.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Wilbur Weightly's father is Old Weighty, and he's
Speaker 1: played by Sam Jaffey, who lived eighteen ninety one through
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four, character actor known for roles in The
Speaker 1: Asphalt Jungle, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Bed Knobs
Speaker 1: and Broomsticks and Ben Her and you better know he
Speaker 1: appeared in an episode of The Night Gallery.
Speaker 2: Now you know. One of the actors I was most
Speaker 2: surprised to see in this movie was that Talia Shire
Speaker 2: shows up in a very small role. She plays a
Speaker 2: receptionist in a doctor's office who sort of passes along
Speaker 2: some general folk town knowledge about the evil of the
Speaker 2: Weightly family and how you know you better stay away
Speaker 2: from them. But I guess this makes sense because I
Speaker 2: was like, man, this is a strange role. But this
Speaker 2: was before The Godfather Rocky.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, this was only her second film credit. But yeah,
Speaker 1: she would go on to play Adrian. She's Adrian. She's
Speaker 1: the one that Rocky is where you'll like about yea,
Speaker 1: He's Connie and The Godfather. She was in a ton
Speaker 1: of other movies, including the nineteen seventy nine mutant bear
Speaker 1: film Prophecy, which of course also stars our favorite work
Speaker 1: beast Robert Foxworth.
Speaker 2: Ferk Based maybe we should start making a list of
Speaker 2: the movies that most often get mentioned with crossover. I
Speaker 2: feel like Prophecy somehow comes up a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess we've got to do Prophecy at some point,
Speaker 1: just because it keeps coming up. It's this collection picture
Speaker 1: that it just collects all these other actors that we
Speaker 1: keep referring to, and I guess it's one that I've
Speaker 1: never seen myself. But the VHS cover is like firmly
Speaker 1: fixed in my head because it has this like mutant
Speaker 1: bear in sort of this embryotic state. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the music in this film, because this
Speaker 1: I was really excited for because the music once more
Speaker 1: is by Les Baxter, who lived nineteen twenty two through
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six. We've discussed him a few different times.
Speaker 1: This is the king of exotica music. He did the
Speaker 1: effective jazzy score in Mario Bava's Black Sabbath. He also
Speaker 1: did the very minimal electric blooping frog noise score for
Speaker 1: the film Frog. Okay, what always happens is Baxter comes
Speaker 1: up and I mentioned, well, okay, Baxter's got all this
Speaker 1: excellent exotica work that he did, and then I'll say
Speaker 1: something to the effect of, well, but this isn't really
Speaker 1: an exotica score or anything. Because Baxter did a number
Speaker 1: of B movie scores and then it went on to
Speaker 1: compose music for SeaWorld. When scorework kind of dried up
Speaker 1: for him, So I think his work is probably better
Speaker 1: understood as a professional output rather than anything like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's get that exotica guy to do this film because
Speaker 1: we want an exotica score. But with Dunwich Horror, I
Speaker 1: think the elements of weird pagan ceremonies and it really
Speaker 1: provided a reason for some of those exotica elements to
Speaker 1: flare up. So we have this fun mix of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies cinematic jazz. We have Eastern motifs, we have weird
Speaker 1: theram and electronic sound effects. We have foreboding drums and
Speaker 1: blaring horns. It very much feels like jazz cigarette rolled
Speaker 1: with a paid for an acronomicon here. You know.
Speaker 2: I thought one of the sonic elements of this movie
Speaker 2: that was especially effective, And I don't know if Les
Speaker 2: Baxter did this part I would assume he at least
Speaker 2: partially did, was that when you are seeing the evil
Speaker 2: twin brother from the house. I guess would this be
Speaker 2: the titular Dunwich Horror or just the horror refer to
Speaker 2: like this guy or like the whole sort of situation.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I always took it to mean like the whole situation,
Speaker 1: but I think it could apply specifically to the brother.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the twin brother. There is this monstrous twin
Speaker 2: brother who is sort of the Hugo, if you will,
Speaker 2: the Hugo of the film, who's behind a rattling door
Speaker 2: for most of the movie, but later on in the
Speaker 2: film he gets out and that's when when things really
Speaker 2: get wild. But so when he gets out, we sort
Speaker 2: of see Hugo caam and so we're seeing from his
Speaker 2: perspective as he floats around over the landscape looking for
Speaker 2: people to terrorize. And in those sequences or when you're
Speaker 2: seeing people and you just know that the twin brother
Speaker 2: is near, there's just this steady, ominous chord and a
Speaker 2: slow kind of heartbeat rhythm. I know that sounds very
Speaker 2: standard for horror movies, but it works really well in
Speaker 2: this one. I always really liked the sound in those scenes.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think a huge part of it is,
Speaker 1: first of all, they're adapting a story about essentially an
Speaker 1: evil brother who's an invisible space blob. So if you're
Speaker 1: going to try and portray that accurately, you're already limited.
Speaker 1: So a lot of what they do is based in
Speaker 1: sound and then also in like weird colors and stuff.
Speaker 1: So the sound is essential here. And I don't know
Speaker 1: for certain, but I suspect this was totally Baxter's deal
Speaker 1: as well, for no other reason because it lines up
Speaker 1: with his work in Frogs, which is almost entirely you know,
Speaker 1: electronic and like minimal ambient in that regard. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't think the score for this film is widely available
Speaker 1: in digital or physical form right now, but it has
Speaker 1: been released over the years, and it was originally released
Speaker 1: on vinyl in nineteen seventy under the title and I
Speaker 1: Kid you Not Music of the Devil God Cult Strange
Speaker 1: Sounds from Dunwich and then it it's just it's a
Speaker 1: wonderful title, like they seem to be going like further away,
Speaker 1: like it's not just hey, here's the score for the
Speaker 1: dunwichar by Less Baxter, like they no, here is the
Speaker 1: music of that Devil God Cult.
Speaker 2: And the cover of the album is just Dean Stockwell's
Speaker 2: face with his eyes so wide it looks like his
Speaker 2: head's gonna explode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of this wonderful pose that he
Speaker 1: does where he puts his his hands to either side
Speaker 1: of his face while they're crossed. During one of his
Speaker 1: many yog Sagath chants.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I like that. So he puts his hands
Speaker 2: up beside his head and he's got a ring on
Speaker 2: each pinky, so it's like he's got a second pair
Speaker 2: of eyes almost. But also the way his hands are
Speaker 2: out flat beside his face, he looks like a cobra flaring.
Speaker 1: It's it's hood, yeah, it's it's it's it's excellent. It's
Speaker 1: it's a great pose. Maybe maybe my wife will let
Speaker 1: me use this pose and in the next photo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be good for the Christmas card.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So yeah, I would say that in general this
Speaker 1: movie is excellent from an audio standpoint. I watched it
Speaker 1: with with earbuds in and I felt like the weird
Speaker 1: sounds were just kind of like rolling around me in
Speaker 1: like three D audio. It has this these great dark
Speaker 1: ambient stretches. It has some wonderful like like you know,
Speaker 1: cosmic horror jazz going on, uh, which which I I
Speaker 1: absolutely loved. So this is yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: a wonderful score, and I really hope someone puts it
Speaker 1: out again, not only digitally, but like all these like
Speaker 1: crazy vinyls that we often touch on that come out
Speaker 1: to re release these very scores, like, oh man, you
Speaker 1: could go in so many fun directions with this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I really enjoyed the music. The whole
Speaker 2: audio landscape I thought was a highlight of the movie.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's get into the plot for this baby.
Speaker 2: All right, So this movie begins with a pre credit sequence,
Speaker 2: but it has some amazing animations that go along with
Speaker 2: the credits. We should talk about those in the second
Speaker 2: But before we get to that, there is this pre
Speaker 2: credit sequence where there's like a bunch of witches in
Speaker 2: a bedroom. It's kind of the it's kind of Rosemary's
Speaker 2: Baby ending scene, almost some witches in a bedroom and
Speaker 2: like a lady maybe going to give birth or having
Speaker 2: given birth. And the problem with this scene is all
Speaker 2: of the characters are being drastically upstaged by the decorps
Speaker 2: in the rooms, which is just the busiest purple wallpaper
Speaker 2: I've ever seen, and like weird clocks that look like
Speaker 2: they're made out of like they're like, you know, trash sculpture,
Speaker 2: strange framed photos, weird like popping sconces and sculptures everywhere.
Speaker 2: This house is awesome, but the interior decoration is so
Speaker 2: busy it's almost funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it is. It is an intensely decorated house
Speaker 1: that they use for this film, and that, like the
Speaker 1: color scheme is wonderful. It's got like these weird purples
Speaker 1: going on. I love it now.
Speaker 2: I guess we're just supposed to assume that something ominous
Speaker 2: has happened in the scene. But after the scene we
Speaker 2: go to the credits, and the credits are wonderful. They
Speaker 2: are these blue and black silhouette animations where we're like,
Speaker 2: we're watching all these scenes. For example, there are like
Speaker 2: these little figures that look like wizards of some kind
Speaker 2: running around on a blue background over the solid black terrain,
Speaker 2: and then we kind of get a zoom out and
Speaker 2: it turns out that the terrain is not ground, but
Speaker 2: it's like muscles on a giant horned devil body, which
Speaker 2: was great. But then they're also I don't know, there's
Speaker 2: just great imagery in it, like these weird trees and
Speaker 2: a big snakehead, and then a guy who I got
Speaker 2: to say, in his pose with his big cloak and
Speaker 2: staff looks way too much like the Master from Manos
Speaker 2: The Hands of Fate.
Speaker 1: But that's Okay, I agree that the opening credits for
Speaker 1: this are really fabulous. They also kind of tell a story,
Speaker 1: like they kind of fill you in and get you
Speaker 1: prepared for what's happening. It's about some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: presented story about a miraculous birth and you know, the
Speaker 1: coming of a sorcerer and so forth.
Speaker 2: It's it's nice, but okay, we cut from here to
Speaker 2: a modern university. It's like a university campus again. I
Speaker 2: guess this is supposed to be the infamous Miskatonic University,
Speaker 2: and we see Ed Begley as this character, Professor Henry Armitage.
Speaker 2: He's walking with some students, having just given a lecture
Speaker 2: on this book. The book is the Necronomicon. It is
Speaker 2: this tone of ancient evil that is stored in a
Speaker 2: glass case in the Miskatonic library.
Speaker 1: Yeah, plain sight of everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he well, I don't know if you understood
Speaker 2: it the same way. My read on this was that
Speaker 2: the Armitage character doesn't necessarily believe that the like spells
Speaker 2: in the book would actually work, or I was a
Speaker 2: little unclear on that, but he seems to have some
Speaker 2: kind of cautious respect for this book and its power,
Speaker 2: even if he doesn't fully buy into magic or any
Speaker 2: such nonsense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is, I mean again thinking of putting kind
Speaker 1: of like a generational conflict read on all of this.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like he's evaluating the hippie culture. And
Speaker 1: he's like, I don't actually believe in you know, Eastern
Speaker 1: real religion. I don't believe that you know that in
Speaker 1: all these beneficial, you know, powers that the young people
Speaker 1: say that these you know that these various drugs have.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in their music, but I believe that
Speaker 1: all these things are dangerous and can hurt them, and
Speaker 1: therefore I need to protect them from those influences.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: So anyway, sander D who plays a character named Nancy,
Speaker 2: and her friend Elizabeth is that her friend's name, I
Speaker 2: think so they're apparently students who have been attending these lectures,
Speaker 2: so I guess they're interested in ancient evil tomes and
Speaker 2: uh and and Ed Begley hands off the Necronomicon to
Speaker 2: sander D. He's like, take this back to the library,
Speaker 2: and she's like, okay, uh. But while she's taking it back,
Speaker 2: Dean Stockwell shows up, and he is from the very
Speaker 2: first moment. This this powerful combination of suave and unsettling.
Speaker 2: You know, is he is he a smooth operator or
Speaker 2: is he a dangerous creep? Seems like he's both.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he really walks that line. It's it's a
Speaker 1: great performance. There's a lot of a lot of him
Speaker 1: staring intently at characters and talking very calmly about, you know,
Speaker 1: either about some sort of esoteric topic or in this case,
Speaker 1: he's just like, oh, yes, I understand, but can I
Speaker 1: see the Necronomicon? Like he's very insistent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really wants to borrow the Necronomicon for five minutes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And she's like, she's finally like, oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: you can, just don't take it into the bathroom. Oh.
Speaker 2: And also, sander Dee immediately has a crush on Dean Stockwell.
Speaker 2: She and she and her friend are like, wow, did
Speaker 2: you see his eyes. He's got great eyes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got his father's eyes.
Speaker 2: So Dean Stockwell takes this book and I think he
Speaker 2: goes to a side room or something and he's reading
Speaker 2: aloud from it, and he's he's just enraptured. He's reading
Speaker 2: these lines about yogs of Thoth and various prophecies about
Speaker 2: gates and old ones and so forth. But then Ed
Speaker 2: Begley shows up and he's like, the book please. I
Speaker 2: beg does not like this screwing around this. This book
Speaker 2: needs to go immediately back to its display case. So
Speaker 2: this whole group ends up like going out to a
Speaker 2: bar and grill together to get realisticks and talk about
Speaker 2: ancient evil.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like there's the conflict is not such that it
Speaker 1: prevents everyone from going out to lunch, which I wish
Speaker 1: more conflicts in films would go like this, where there's
Speaker 1: an initial argument and they're like, well, hey, let's do lunch.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about this further.
Speaker 2: Shall we discuss yogso thought over a shrimp cocktail?
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: So while they're all out, you know, talking to each other,
Speaker 2: I think we find out something about Dean Stockwell's character's background.
Speaker 2: He is he's a guy named Wilbur Weighte and he's
Speaker 2: from this famous Weightly family that their family history is
Speaker 2: tied up in the Necronomicon, this evil book. And so
Speaker 2: Wilbur Weightly is the great either the grandson or great
Speaker 2: grandson I think great grand son of a guy named
Speaker 2: Oliver Weightly who was was murdered by the townsfolk of Dunwich.
Speaker 1: I think is done.
Speaker 2: What's supposed to be in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: Or something like that, Yeah, or in this case, perhaps
Speaker 1: in northern California.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, But his his great grandfather was murdered by
Speaker 2: the towns folk after having you know, it was mob violence,
Speaker 2: for allegedly having done something very evil. And Dean Stockwell
Speaker 2: wants to borrow the Necronomicon so he can study it
Speaker 2: because he says he's a student of the occult, and
Speaker 2: he says that this book is like the Bible to him.
Speaker 2: And Armitage is not amused by this. He's like, I
Speaker 2: know enough about strange things not to laugh at them,
Speaker 2: and so he won't let the book go and and
Speaker 2: so he heads off. And then Wilbur and Nancy are
Speaker 2: just hanging out Dean Stockwell and sanderde and and Wilbur's like,
Speaker 2: I can't stand pomposity, which is funny because his care
Speaker 2: is extremely pompous. Like there these moments where he is
Speaker 2: just making these grandiose prophecies. I don't remember exactly how
Speaker 2: he phrases them, but I would say that that Wilbur
Speaker 2: gets pompous, Yes, but his is the pomposity of youth, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: which is apparently more acceptable. So it ends up where
Speaker 2: Sandra Dee drives Dean stock Well back to Dunwich because
Speaker 2: he misses his bus, and we get a taste of
Speaker 2: the townsfolk's feelings about him and his family when they
Speaker 2: stop for gas in Dunwich and the gas station attendant
Speaker 2: once he sees Dean Stockwell in the car, he's like, oh, Wilbur,
Speaker 2: I don't want anything. He says, he just wants one
Speaker 2: dollar for the gas, and then he like leaves them alone,
Speaker 2: and apparently the animosity goes both ways. Wilbur does not
Speaker 2: like the townsfolk. He says, they've treated me that way
Speaker 2: since childhood. They're still the same, frightened, superstitious fools.
Speaker 1: And true enough, everything we see of the townspeople from
Speaker 1: here on out like they do seem they do seem awful.
Speaker 1: So i'm i'm, i'm, I'm i'm. When I was watching this,
Speaker 1: I was kind of at times wondering whose side we're
Speaker 1: supposed to be on. So you know, it becomes clear
Speaker 1: that you know, Wilbur does not have great intentions for
Speaker 1: humanity through his dealings here with an acronomicon and it's
Speaker 1: it's forbidden wisdom. But on the other hand, the townspeople suck.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, I don't know who we're supposed
Speaker 1: to be rooting for here. I guess Sandra D. I think.
Speaker 2: I think ultimately the audience is supposed to be on
Speaker 2: the side of Sandra D and her friend and professor Armitage.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So anyway, Sandra D comes over to Wilbur's house for
Speaker 2: a cup of tea or something, I think a cup
Speaker 2: of tea, and inside it's immediately clear that this is
Speaker 2: the house that the pre credit sequence took place in,
Speaker 2: because again, the busiest decor of any house ever. And
Speaker 2: I don't recall if it's like this in the novella.
Speaker 2: My impression of the house and the novella was that
Speaker 2: it was more of just a wreck. Yeah, this house
Speaker 2: looks like it was decorated by a family of a
Speaker 2: flamboyant stage magicians.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, they have. For instance, they have these wonderful
Speaker 1: crystals setting around that are never fully explained and are
Speaker 1: pretty fabulous. They occasionally are moved around, or move on
Speaker 1: their own, or suddenly set off intense fires. It's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the house is just wonderful. It's one of my
Speaker 2: favorite things about the movie, honestly, is the wallpaper, the
Speaker 2: little ornaments on the coffee tables and the hearth and everything,
Speaker 2: all the wall art. It's just oh and the floor decorations.
Speaker 2: When you get those sudden like shots from up above,
Speaker 2: it's just a great, great house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just a complete environment that they put together
Speaker 1: here now.
Speaker 2: At first, even though Wilbur has already said some strange things,
Speaker 2: we get the impression that sander d I think likes him.
Speaker 2: He's very handsome and charming and I don't know about charming, yah,
Speaker 2: sort of charming. I mean he's at least like smooth
Speaker 2: and confident and there's something about him. But we start
Speaker 2: immediately seeing this is not going to go well because
Speaker 2: Wilbur is not a cool guy. Wilbur is the inner
Speaker 2: dimensional creep that you got that hint of earlier. So
Speaker 2: he immediately sneaks out to Sanderde's car and steals something
Speaker 2: from her engine, disabling the car, and then back inside
Speaker 2: the house, Sanderdie starts having visions of threatening hippies in
Speaker 2: elaborate face paint and clothing, and she sees tree limbs
Speaker 2: and waves crashing on rocks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is where we get that real sense
Speaker 1: of hippie danger and I love it. The hippies and
Speaker 1: their magic pose a threat to the innocent youth and
Speaker 1: it's up to the olds to protect her from their influence.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we already saw Wilbur steal something from her
Speaker 2: car engine, which is bad enough, and then he gets
Speaker 2: even worse. We see him inside the house putting some
Speaker 2: kind of potion or substance into her tea, presumably to
Speaker 2: knock her out and keep her at the house to
Speaker 2: keep her from returning back to wherever Miss Katonic is.
Speaker 2: But while while Wilbur's being a creep over here, Sandra
Speaker 2: Dese somehow stumbles into Wilbur's grandfather.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah, he's just kind of just lurching around
Speaker 1: the house with his weird, funky staff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's staff. It's great. It's just got a
Speaker 2: big occult pendant on the top.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And later, of course, we see that it's
Speaker 1: not just around the house. He like takes this with
Speaker 1: him when he goes to like the gas station in town,
Speaker 1: which you can just imagine, like Wilbur's like, Dad, please
Speaker 1: please don't bring that to town again. Stop bringing that
Speaker 1: to the gas station.
Speaker 2: With you, Okay. Well, Sandra d finds out her car
Speaker 2: won't start, and she's getting very sleepy, presumably for the
Speaker 2: sleeping powder or whatever it was that he put in
Speaker 2: the tea. So she decides she's gonna have to stay
Speaker 2: the night at the house, and so Wilbur gives her
Speaker 2: a guest bedroom and she settles down and then she
Speaker 2: has a dream. And this dream really reinforces those vision
Speaker 2: themes from earlier, because it's these like elderritch half naked
Speaker 2: hippies running around grabbing at her face, and then waves
Speaker 2: crashing on the rocks, and these visions of just psychedelic
Speaker 2: evil woodstock, and then she gets chased into a shack
Speaker 2: and then I think that's the end of the dream.
Speaker 1: These are great sequences because we really don't see too
Speaker 1: much of them, and but what we do see of
Speaker 1: them is evocative and colorful and a little bit scary.
Speaker 1: I reminded. It made me think back to the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven film The Trip, which was Roger Corman directed
Speaker 1: Jack Nicholson written film about basically about character played by
Speaker 1: Peter Fonda going on an acid trip. In that film,
Speaker 1: there are a number of different psychedelic sequences, but also
Speaker 1: sequences that go on way too long. And she used
Speaker 1: to feel very trippy because you've been in them for
Speaker 1: like five minutes and had sort of like stationary effects
Speaker 1: and so forth. But these these feel very trippy because
Speaker 1: they are given in like dreamlike flashes.
Speaker 2: Okay, and then the next day comes along and we
Speaker 2: get two different threads. One is that we see Professor
Speaker 2: armitage Ed Begley and Sandrode's friend Elizabeth are driving out
Speaker 2: to Dunwich to find her because she disappeared the night
Speaker 2: before and the Weiteleys don't have a phone at their house,
Speaker 2: so she couldn't call anybody, so they're like, well, what
Speaker 2: happened to her? So they're driving out to check on her.
Speaker 2: But then the other half is we see Sander d
Speaker 2: and Dean Stockwell just hanging out walking around town, getting
Speaker 2: to know one another and sharing information. So among the
Speaker 2: conversations they have, one is where Wilbur and Nancy are
Speaker 2: exploring downtown Dunwich and he explains how the town's folk
Speaker 2: murdered his great grandfather and he says the reason for
Speaker 2: this is that he didn't believe in God or the
Speaker 2: devil and instead believed in an ancient erace of beings
Speaker 2: from another dimension that came before humanity are more powerful
Speaker 2: than us, and that he could bring them back from
Speaker 2: the plane where they sit waiting. And then he claims
Speaker 2: that they that they put a trumped up murder charge
Speaker 2: on his great grandfather, that a girl disappeared and they
Speaker 2: claimed that he had murdered her in some kind of
Speaker 2: human sacrifice. Though I think we were maybe supposed to
Speaker 2: understand that that charge may in fact be true.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, Armitage and Elizabeth end up they end up connecting
Speaker 2: with the local town doctor who might know something about
Speaker 2: the Weighty family, And this is where we meet Talia Shire.
Speaker 2: She's the receptionist of the doctor's office, and she, when
Speaker 2: speaking to Elizabeth kind of discloses the town's beliefs about
Speaker 2: the Weightles, Like she tells Nancy's friend that Wilbur never
Speaker 2: had a girlfriend before and no girl should go over
Speaker 2: to that house because that house is bad news.
Speaker 1: And this is a nice little scene, I thought, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's nothing groundbreaking or anything, but I felt like they
Speaker 1: had a nice little scene together with some well written dialogue.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it's a funny counterpoint to what's going on
Speaker 2: in the room next door, where Ed Begley is talking
Speaker 2: to the doctor and he's explaining, well, you know, there're
Speaker 2: these old ones, and so it's at least alleged that
Speaker 2: they can be brought back from another dimension and then
Speaker 2: the earth will be destroyed.
Speaker 1: I also love how it's basically armatage showing up and
Speaker 1: he's been like, hello, doctor, I'd like to I was
Speaker 1: wondering if I could sit down with you for a moment,
Speaker 1: you could tell me the medical histories of this entire family.
Speaker 1: And he's like, well, it'd better be good for a
Speaker 1: good reason.
Speaker 2: And it's because of these ancient gods from another dimension. Yes,
Speaker 2: And then the doctor is like, well in that case, yes,
Speaker 2: let me get out the file.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Somewhere in here, I don't remember how we get into this,
Speaker 2: but there's like a flashback of a scene, or maybe
Speaker 2: it's not a flashback. Maybe it's either a flashback or
Speaker 2: it takes place at the same time, but at some
Speaker 2: points a.
Speaker 1: Tone, so it must be in the past.
Speaker 2: Right, Oh, okay, okay, you're right. Grandpa Waiteley is in
Speaker 2: a local general store and he's just ranting about old
Speaker 2: gods I think, and the locals are viciously mocking him.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is one of those where you're like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: the people done, which like they mostly suck, so I
Speaker 1: really can't side with them, and all this feel bad
Speaker 1: for old Wayley here.
Speaker 2: But somehow in all this, the doctor and Armitage they
Speaker 2: figure out that Wilbur's mother, Lavinia, is currently in an asylum,
Speaker 2: and they go to see her there and she's in
Speaker 2: a padded room and her hair is turned completely white,
Speaker 2: and she's in there screaming about how my son's open
Speaker 2: the gate, my son's and then she says, kill them all.
Speaker 2: And so I think it's one of those cases where
Speaker 2: a character who is said to be mad is speaking
Speaker 2: things that are directly informative of the coming plot, but
Speaker 2: none of the characters realize it, so they're just kind
Speaker 2: of like, oh, what's this nonsense? And then meanwhile we're
Speaker 2: just seeing more stuff with Dean Stockwell and Sandra d
Speaker 2: they're hanging out. Dean Stockwell is always in a suit.
Speaker 1: Yep, great dapper, and I think it's.
Speaker 2: Implied Sandra Dee appears to be from this point increasingly,
Speaker 2: it's kind of hard to describe, just like increasingly kind
Speaker 2: of hypnotized, like she's always kind of sleepy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm kind of unclear on this, but the film
Speaker 1: seems to keep her in this weird place where she
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like she's like one hundred percent been kidnapped,
Speaker 1: but she's also not one hundred percent of collaborator either.
Speaker 1: She's not like, yeah, let's go up there and raise
Speaker 1: some old ones Wilbur. It really does feel like this
Speaker 1: film aligns with something we've talked about on the show before,
Speaker 1: this late sixties early seventies fear of hippie occult mind
Speaker 1: washing during this period. So it's really as if Sandra
Speaker 1: D's character is she's not being held captive by the
Speaker 1: evil Wilbur. He's not tying her to train tracks so
Speaker 1: the old Ones will run over. And she's also not
Speaker 1: portrayed as like a complete doll person where she's like,
Speaker 1: I obey Wilbur and the old Ones. Now, No, she's
Speaker 1: just under their spell in the non magical sense, like
Speaker 1: she's she's been caught up in all of this hippie
Speaker 1: danger and that's why she needs Professor Armitage to Grandpa
Speaker 1: Armitage here to jump in and save her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's about right. So, yeah, she's not
Speaker 2: being portrayed as being held and done which against her will,
Speaker 2: but at the same time it is suggested that that's
Speaker 2: something she's somehow enchanted, like her free will has been
Speaker 2: compromised in some way. Yeah, and so she and Dean
Speaker 2: Stockwell are out on these They're out on a seaside
Speaker 2: cliff at some point, and they walk up to some
Speaker 2: old stone ruins. They're like these pillars and a staircase
Speaker 2: and a stone altar, and Wilbur says, legend says, it's
Speaker 2: been here forever. It's called the Devil's hop Yard, which
Speaker 2: is the name. I look this up. It is the
Speaker 2: name of a place in Connecticut which does not look
Speaker 2: like this at all. There's no temple as far as
Speaker 2: I can tell. But the landscape is very beautiful looking
Speaker 2: in the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, again it's it's clearly coastal northern California, but it
Speaker 1: looks gorgeous. And yeah, they're increasingly these shots, and I
Speaker 1: think these are ultimately closing shots of the film of
Speaker 1: this the seaside and the waves crashing on these rocky beaches,
Speaker 1: and it's it's good, it's really good.
Speaker 2: And so Wilbert starts talking about this ancient ritual, ancient
Speaker 2: occult rituals here that would involve like virgin sacrifice, and
Speaker 2: this would somehow open a gate that would allow the
Speaker 2: old ones to come through. And then he does the thing.
Speaker 2: He puts his hands to the sides of his head,
Speaker 2: flares them like the cobra hood, and he's got the
Speaker 2: pinky rings next to his eyes, and he starts yelling
Speaker 2: yogs of Thoth. And so here we get more weird
Speaker 2: psychedelic visions. Sandrade imagines herself to be sacrificed on this
Speaker 2: stone altar. She's surrounded by evil priests with these black
Speaker 2: hoods over their heads, and there's Wilbur standing among them.
Speaker 2: So it seems like he may have some kind of
Speaker 2: connection to these evil rituals from the deep past. Oh oh,
Speaker 2: and in this whole sequence, this is where we finally
Speaker 2: get the Wilbur chest reveal, which is where he takes
Speaker 2: his shirt off and he's covered in tattoos that look
Speaker 2: like hieroglyphics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is great. I think in the original short story,
Speaker 1: Wilbur for starters of not dashing. I think he comes
Speaker 1: off more as like a dangerous bum and we find
Speaker 1: out that he ultimately find out that he's like he
Speaker 1: has part monster body or something, and in this we
Speaker 1: don't have that. Instead we just have these really cool,
Speaker 1: you know, occult tattoos all over him.
Speaker 2: After this, there's a whole sequence where we follow Nancy's
Speaker 2: friend Elizabeth, who's trying to investigate you know, she's worried
Speaker 2: about the well being of her friend, so she's going
Speaker 2: to the Weightely house to look around for her, to
Speaker 2: check on her and make sure she's okay. And while
Speaker 2: she's investigating the house, there are several times so far
Speaker 2: in the movie where we have seen this door upstairs
Speaker 2: in the house rattling as if there is something behind
Speaker 2: it that wants to get out. And unfortunately it is
Speaker 2: Elizabeth who opens this door and goes into the forbidden
Speaker 2: room while she's looking around the house. And so this
Speaker 2: is the first like attack, like the first murder scene
Speaker 2: in the movie. By this the why Wilbert's twin this
Speaker 2: other being in the house. And this scene is weird.
Speaker 2: It's it's done with this flashing color abstract animation suggesting
Speaker 2: kind of the flailing of octopus arms and lights from
Speaker 2: another world. It does this heavy like red and blue
Speaker 2: color saturation that goes back and forth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like they're really I feel like they were really
Speaker 1: going for like an LSD trip kind of a vibe
Speaker 1: here and again. It comes back to the fact too,
Speaker 1: that they can't really show the monster. They seem to
Speaker 1: have some sort of physical apparatus that they're shooting, some
Speaker 1: sort of tentically thing about. They're not showing as much
Speaker 1: of it at all, and the film works better for that.
Speaker 2: I think it's always a better decision to show less
Speaker 2: of the monster. I mean, you can find exceptions, like
Speaker 2: the thing shows a lot of the monster and it's wonderful,
Speaker 2: but that that's pretty rare. Most of the time. You're
Speaker 2: going to do better if you give suggestive imagery rather
Speaker 2: than just getting a good long look at the suit.
Speaker 2: And you know, because often if you get a good
Speaker 2: long look at the suit or the makeup effect or
Speaker 2: whatever it is, it starts to look less and less great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that the flaws become increasingly obvious.
Speaker 2: It's the Jaws principle. They did not have a great
Speaker 2: robotic shark, but they ended up getting really good footage
Speaker 2: out of what they did have, just by clever use
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, even today when you have some
Speaker 1: tremendous CGI effects, and granted there are some pitfalls with
Speaker 1: CGI at times as well, but like, even if the
Speaker 1: monster is perfectly well executed on the screen, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you have to remember what are monsters? Historically,
Speaker 1: Monsters are things that lurk in the imagination, and monsters
Speaker 1: are things that are not fully seen but partially seen
Speaker 1: in the mist, in the dark, in the wild, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Now there's a scene shortly after this that I think
Speaker 2: this is more indication of that there's something going wrong
Speaker 2: with Sandra D's volition that because there's a scene where
Speaker 2: Wilbur and Grandpa start arguing about whether Wilbur is going
Speaker 2: to be successful in usingancy to open the gate and
Speaker 2: allow the old ones in. And I think she's just
Speaker 2: like right there, She's like in the room with them, right,
Speaker 2: m yeah, yeah. And Grandpa, I guess Grandpa has been
Speaker 2: turned against this ritual. He used to be for it,
Speaker 2: now he's against it. And he swings his staff at
Speaker 2: Wilbur and misses and then falls down the stairs to
Speaker 2: his death.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: And there was a great moment here though, where there's
Speaker 2: these creepy sound effects these birds in the background, and
Speaker 2: Sandra desques those birds, what does it mean, and Wilbur explains, well,
Speaker 2: they were trying to capture his soul as it left
Speaker 2: his body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was so weird. It's such an interesting addition.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: But then I love at the funeral for Grandpa, weitly
Speaker 2: here it must not be this. But for some reason
Speaker 2: when I so, townsfolk arrived to bust up the ceremony
Speaker 2: and it looked to me like it was implying that
Speaker 2: about thirty people got out of one pickup truck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's just suddenly a mob of town folk here
Speaker 1: to object to them carrying how to burial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they're like, this is a Christian cemetery. We
Speaker 2: dispose of our trash at the town dump. But then
Speaker 2: I think eventually the police come in and they're like, okay, okay,
Speaker 2: break it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, we can't possibly be supposed to feel
Speaker 1: anything but disdain for these town folk, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is bad. Like, even if you know Wilbur is
Speaker 1: the villain of the piece, he's just trying to bury
Speaker 1: his dad in the cemetery.
Speaker 2: Well, and some of elder gods that will destroy the world.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, well he's doing that too, but this is
Speaker 1: a side thing, you know, like like come on, come on, guys,
Speaker 1: leave this man alone.
Speaker 2: So Wilbert, you know, he still needs that necronomicon. He's like,
Speaker 2: you know, the professor wouldn't let me borrow the book
Speaker 2: for five minutes, so I guess I'm gonna have to
Speaker 2: go to the university library and steal it. And then
Speaker 2: there's a whole sequence where he does that. He breaks in,
Speaker 2: he tries to get the book, he gets into a
Speaker 2: fist fight with a security guard, and so they have
Speaker 2: a fist fight, and then the funny part is the
Speaker 2: guard wins kind of surprisingly, like he knocks will We're
Speaker 2: unconscious apparently. Then he goes to the phone, I think,
Speaker 2: to dial the police. But then Wilbur just picks up
Speaker 2: this big weap it's like a halbird that is on
Speaker 2: display in the library and stabs the guard and the
Speaker 2: guts with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a nice ending to a fight scene that, yeah,
Speaker 1: has this unexpected twist, but is also very like Old
Speaker 1: West style fighting, you know, like people getting punched and
Speaker 1: falling through tables and such. So it's a fun sequence
Speaker 1: and it's also I think a nice twist on what
Speaker 1: happens in the story. In the original short story, if
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, Wilbur breaks into the museum to try
Speaker 1: and steal the book and guard dogs kill him.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, so, which is clear? I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: you know, you can argue whether that worked in the
Speaker 1: original story, but it would not have worked in this story.
Speaker 1: We need Wilburt to be there at the finale. We
Speaker 1: don't need him to be done in by a German shepherd.
Speaker 1: And it adds to this additional twist. He's not only
Speaker 1: willing to break the laws of nature and all to
Speaker 1: bring about this resurgence of the old ones, he's also
Speaker 1: willing to kill for it, right right, Yes, but even
Speaker 1: then it was in self defense. Towards the end, it's
Speaker 1: still they managed to walk this line where it's not
Speaker 1: like he kills the cop in cold blood. He grabs
Speaker 1: the spear and then the cop rushes him and he
Speaker 1: like pulls it up in time to impale the security guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, there are several scenes in this movie where
Speaker 2: I think Wilbert is presented as having a kind of
Speaker 2: dangerous nichean beyond good and evil outlook. You know that
Speaker 2: he believes that moral concerns are just sort of like
Speaker 2: a petty folly. Like there's a part where Grandpa's trying
Speaker 2: to like convince him, like you can't do this, you know,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't do this, and then he says, I do
Speaker 2: what I want.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I think Wilburt maybe he rejects the idea of
Speaker 2: an aught or a should. You know, there is nothing
Speaker 2: I should or ought to do. There is what I will.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So at this point he's killed, he's crossed that line.
Speaker 1: But he also has an ecronomicon.
Speaker 2: Right, And so this sets the third act of the movie,
Speaker 2: which is going to be some twin monster rampage and
Speaker 2: a very slow moving ritual. So the final showdown is
Speaker 2: wilbur is setting up to do this ritual to open
Speaker 2: the gate to allow the old gods in, or the
Speaker 2: old ones, and they're going to come and destroy the world.
Speaker 2: This is probably going to involve human sacrifice of Sandra
Speaker 2: d on the altar. And then meanwhile his brother, Oh,
Speaker 2: he says at the beginning of the rituals, he's saying
Speaker 2: the name of these gods. He's singing like yogso Thoth,
Speaker 2: and he's got the necronomicon, and he says, I summon you,
Speaker 2: brother of darkness, I summon you. And his brother is
Speaker 2: his twin brother, is apparently this thing upstairs in the
Speaker 2: house that keeps rattling on the door, and it bursts
Speaker 2: forth from its confinement, and that goes out to roam
Speaker 2: around the town and get into all kinds of mischief,
Speaker 2: good natured mischief, some unspeakable, deadly mischief, the geometry of
Speaker 2: which is impossible to describe. Now, I will say, in
Speaker 2: some of these scenes where the monster is roaming around again,
Speaker 2: we're not really seeing it. We're seeing more from its
Speaker 2: point of view, and then getting a kind of audio texture,
Speaker 2: that heart beat sound that that allows that helps us
Speaker 2: know that something very dangerous is going on. And then
Speaker 2: we're getting these suggestive flashes of imagery that aren't I
Speaker 2: think are not to be understood as pictures of the
Speaker 2: monster itself. But in a way, the monster itself kind
Speaker 2: of can't be seen or can't be comprehended with human eyes,
Speaker 2: so it's just this presence that suggests other images.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and at times they do this with like it's
Speaker 1: like the weather, it's like rain or wind moving in
Speaker 1: it's it's it's I thought, really effectively done.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's a really nice shot of like visions
Speaker 2: of wind blowing dust over a winding road or wind
Speaker 2: blowing over the surface of a pond.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But of course it's gonna attack a bunch of the townsfolk,
Speaker 2: so we get, you know, scenes of that. There's like
Speaker 2: a nearby house that has these people they're about to
Speaker 2: have dinner. I think they're saying. They're saying a blessing
Speaker 2: over some kind of wretched ham. It's some of the
Speaker 2: same townsfolk who busted up the funeral earlier, and they
Speaker 2: hear these weird sounds. The house is kind of shaking.
Speaker 2: The man grabs his rifle and he goes out to investigate,
Speaker 2: and he shoots at something he sees in the barn,
Speaker 2: and then it attacks the house and everything is shaking,
Speaker 2: and we're to understand it doesn't go well. And then
Speaker 2: this is confirmed when Professor Armitage and the doctor from
Speaker 2: the town from earlier, doctor Corey, they show up at
Speaker 2: the house where the townsfolk have gathered. They see the
Speaker 2: remains of this family and they're like, oh no, we
Speaker 2: got to form another angry mob. Because they correctly assumed
Speaker 2: that the Weightlees are responsible, or at least that Wilbur
Speaker 2: is Wilbur and his monstrous twin brother, and they want
Speaker 2: to go get revenge. And Armitage is like, Wilbur Weiteley
Speaker 2: might be the only person who can stop the creature
Speaker 2: that did this. So he's trying to talk sense into them,
Speaker 2: you know, he's like, hold on, we need to figure
Speaker 2: out what's going on. But the shapeless being it attacks
Speaker 2: Talia Shire while she's driving a car. It attacks a
Speaker 2: posse who's hunting for it in the woods. Uh, And
Speaker 2: so they're there are these repeated scenes where people are
Speaker 2: sort of felled by psychedelic visual effects. And again I
Speaker 2: think it works pretty well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, again for a film that that can't or
Speaker 1: won't show, you know, an actual monster like this works
Speaker 1: really well, I think. I think. Ultimately, I feel like
Speaker 1: Lovecraft officionados are probably too hard on this film because
Speaker 1: like they're they're kind of pulling it off. They're they're
Speaker 1: pulling off this this unseeable, unknowable horror that you know,
Speaker 1: makes you crazy if it touches you sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Now, of course, this all comes down to a wizard battle.
Speaker 2: You got you gotta have a wizard battle to settle
Speaker 2: this problem. Armitage shows up at the sight of the
Speaker 2: Devil's hopyard where they're they're going to do the human sacrifice,
Speaker 2: and Wilbur's there, and so Armitage and Wilbur's start essentially
Speaker 2: yelling spells at each other. I think they're just like
Speaker 2: calling out love crafty and phrases at one another.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's I love it. It's super weird,
Speaker 1: especially since there are no real added effects like it.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing where if you saw actors
Speaker 1: doing this today, you would think, oh, well, this is
Speaker 1: before they added like the lightning and lights and lasers
Speaker 1: shooting off of them every time they say something. But
Speaker 1: none of that was added, and they really didn't have
Speaker 1: to because both actors are doing such a good way
Speaker 1: of saying I don't know of of saying the magic words,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like just their intensity as they're they're
Speaker 1: belting out these lines. It works really well, and you
Speaker 1: totally buy into the fact that, yeah, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: they're blasting out spells here. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think I think you're quite right that it especially
Speaker 2: has something to do with the audio mixing of this
Speaker 2: scene that makes it more unsettling than you would think
Speaker 2: a wizard battle should be.
Speaker 1: M hm.
Speaker 2: But ultimately Armitage wins the wizard battle. He's yelling out
Speaker 2: these phrases. I guess he must know from having studied
Speaker 2: the Necronomicon and Dean st well, he gets sort of
Speaker 2: like he gets I don't know something about these phrases
Speaker 2: getting his head, and he clearly gets like foggy and
Speaker 2: confused and frustrated. And then he gets struck by lightning and.
Speaker 1: Catches on fire and it falls off a cliff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and at the very last we do get a
Speaker 2: vision of this unspeakable evil, the Wilbur's brother. And this
Speaker 2: is the one moment where when we get this flash
Speaker 2: of its actual form. I think it looks like a beholder,
Speaker 2: doesn't it, Or at least it looks like illustrations I've
Speaker 2: seen of beholders.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we don't. It's even it's still in
Speaker 1: the big reveal. We don't see it all that clearly.
Speaker 1: So there is the sense of a beholder, there's a
Speaker 1: sense of a gorgon's head. But also it's just like
Speaker 1: color and madness.
Speaker 2: And so then after all the violence is done, things
Speaker 2: are coming back down, and the final thoughts are well,
Speaker 2: Armitage says, well, looks like Wilbur's twin took after the father,
Speaker 2: so like you were saying earlier, you know, he has
Speaker 2: his father's eyes. But then also we see Sandra d
Speaker 2: is okay, but it is suggested she may in fact
Speaker 2: be carrying the child of an interdimensional demon god.
Speaker 1: Now yeah, that's right, because we have that pause and
Speaker 1: then the creepy music, the heartbeat stuff comes in and
Speaker 1: we have like put an animation of a fetus that's
Speaker 1: visible there, which which I quite like because it implies
Speaker 1: like the next level of this curse is the generation
Speaker 1: of those born in the nineteen seventies, which being a
Speaker 1: child in the nineteen seventies, I like this because I'm
Speaker 1: watching the screen and like, that's me. I'm the baby.
Speaker 1: This is my generation that they're referring to. So in
Speaker 1: a way, like you know, people my age and you
Speaker 1: know and younger, like we are the sequel to the dunwichar.
Speaker 2: The generational curse of the old ones is that you
Speaker 2: will give less of a crap than any generation ever before.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's ahnomenous ending I thought it's a good,
Speaker 1: good place to land it there again, there are also
Speaker 1: all these shots of just a waves crashing on the
Speaker 1: on the coast. It's it ends in a nice spot,
Speaker 1: all right. So there you have it, the Dunwich Horror,
Speaker 1: which I quite enjoyed. I found this a very very,
Speaker 1: very fun film to watch. You might be wondering, well,
Speaker 1: where can I watch The Dunwich Horror. Well, you can
Speaker 1: buy or rent this movie most places you get your
Speaker 1: films these days. You stream it, you know, on all
Speaker 1: the major platforms. You can also pick it up on DVD. Sadly,
Speaker 1: there doesn't seem to be an awesome vinyl re release
Speaker 1: of the score, like I said earlier, but I really
Speaker 1: hope someone does that, maybe something like nice purple vinyl
Speaker 1: or something, or I mean really there are a number
Speaker 1: of wonderful colors used in the film, so you could
Speaker 1: swirl them all together in there.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I could see that, you know, if they
Speaker 2: put out one of those big collectors editions of this
Speaker 2: that that comes along with merch. In addition, it should
Speaker 2: come with a roll of wallpaper so you can put
Speaker 2: up the weightlely house wallpaper in your house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as you can. You can done which your your
Speaker 1: own home. I like it. Yeah, it's a very stylish movie,
Speaker 1: very stylish, very nineteen seventy, so I highly recommend it
Speaker 1: if this is your sort of film, all right, If
Speaker 1: you want to check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 1: this comes out every Friday and the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with artifact episodes
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays and listener mail on Mondays. But Friday that's
Speaker 1: our time to cut loose and discuss a weird picture.
Speaker 2: Like this one. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 2: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 2: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 2: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 2: or just to say hello, you can email us at
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