Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: We have another older episode of the show for you
Speaker 1: here today. This is going to be one that published
Speaker 1: three twelve, twenty twenty one. It is the nineteen forty
Speaker 1: special effects showcase Doctor Cyclops, from the director of King Kong.
Speaker 1: This is a lot of fun. It is a miniaturized
Speaker 1: people film. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird How Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormack, and today we're going to be
Speaker 3: talking about the nineteen forty size related thriller Doctor Cyclops.
Speaker 3: You know that line, that classic Hollywood line about how
Speaker 3: I stayed big it's the pictures that got small. Well,
Speaker 3: you can't say that about this movie, because this movie
Speaker 3: is really truly about actors getting small.
Speaker 1: That's right. This is our first nineteen forties film. I
Speaker 1: mean barely since it's a nineteen forty release. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one I was not familiar with. I've never
Speaker 1: heard of it, despite the fact that it has a
Speaker 1: pretty famous director who we'll get into more about in
Speaker 1: a second. But it's Ernest B. Showedsack, who if that
Speaker 1: name doesn't ring a bell, I think his most famous
Speaker 1: film will for you. It was, of course King Kong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this movie I thought was a real firecracker, Like
Speaker 3: it looks great, it has amazing special effects. The story
Speaker 3: isn't as complex as you might hope. But then again,
Speaker 3: I mean this was a I don't know, a horror
Speaker 3: thriller of the nineteen thirties and forties, of the Hayes
Speaker 3: Code era, so you can only expect so much moral
Speaker 3: and intellectual complexity. But just as a big special effects thriller,
Speaker 3: the kind of Transformers or Independence Day of nineteen forty,
Speaker 3: it's it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's also only the way you
Speaker 1: have to approach it. It is a it is a
Speaker 1: nineteen forty special effects fiasco, and the special effects very
Speaker 1: much come first. And you know, by today's standards they
Speaker 1: might not look as you know, as amazing. But if
Speaker 1: you but that's again only if you're looking at it
Speaker 1: as a modern viewer and not thinking about the history
Speaker 1: of filmmaking. Because I think if you, if you sit
Speaker 1: there and watch the film in its entirety and keep
Speaker 1: reminding yourself like this is nineteen forty you know, this
Speaker 1: is what had been done before with similar effects, and
Speaker 1: it will impress you.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think the special effects in this movie do
Speaker 3: look fantastic. I mean, I think they look so much
Speaker 3: better than the quote realistic CGI that floods the films
Speaker 3: of today.
Speaker 1: Well that's true, Yeah, I mean it. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's very polished, you know, using the tools of the day.
Speaker 1: It creates I think, some high quality visuals.
Speaker 3: So this is We've talked about a number of mad
Speaker 3: scientist movies, and I'm sure we will talk about many
Speaker 3: more mad scientist movies in the future. Mad Scientists are
Speaker 3: kind of the hub of the wheel of weird house cinema,
Speaker 3: and this particular mad scientist is a mad scientist who
Speaker 3: likes to shrink people with radiation.
Speaker 1: Yes, the villainous doctor Thorkle. And yeah, he's pretty great
Speaker 1: because he's you know, I guess his real defining characteristic
Speaker 1: is he's a complete megalomaniac. You know, he already feels
Speaker 1: himself to be a giant among tiny people, and his
Speaker 1: super science just enables him to make that, you know,
Speaker 1: an objective reality.
Speaker 3: Now, I think doctor Thorkel would probably shrink you to
Speaker 3: death for the way he pronounced his name. Because of
Speaker 3: the one of the funny things in this movie. So
Speaker 3: his name is spelled t h o r k e L.
Speaker 3: So I read that in like any other normal American
Speaker 3: English speaker, I would think Thorkele.
Speaker 1: Yeah. If I had to go to an appointment with
Speaker 1: doctor Thorkell, I would call and be like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: a patient of doctor Thorkle's.
Speaker 3: But the characters in this movie make a really special
Speaker 3: effort to always emphasize the second letter. So it's like
Speaker 3: sar Dough, no, mister, accent on the doe. Here we
Speaker 3: get thor Kel. No mister, it's doctor accent on the kel.
Speaker 1: Doctor thor Kel. Yeah. And in this picture, you can,
Speaker 1: I mean you can basically, well, here's the Elevator Pitch,
Speaker 1: a mad scientist working in the South American jungle, miniaturizes
Speaker 1: his colleagues when he feels his megalomania is threatened. So
Speaker 1: it's basically it's apocalypse now, but with doctor thor Kel
Speaker 1: instead of Colonel Kurtz. Science instead of war, and miniaturization
Speaker 1: instead of the horror.
Speaker 3: I'd say that's about accurate. Yeah, and well, and instead
Speaker 3: of Martin Sheen. It's a ragtag team of the world's
Speaker 3: greatest scientists and a mule guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And instead of spending like a large portion of
Speaker 1: the film about the journey, that journey is really quick
Speaker 1: in this movie. They just skippy right through it.
Speaker 3: Should we hit that trailer audio?
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's hear it.
Speaker 4: Then a crocodile becomes as huge as a prehistoric monster,
Speaker 4: a rifle as unwieldy.
Speaker 3: As a siege gun.
Speaker 4: A terrifying black cat whose jaws me death. A dog
Speaker 4: looms larger than an elephant, dead in the hands of
Speaker 4: a ruthless monster.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's talk about the people involved here. Really,
Speaker 1: the one we're going to spend the most time on is,
Speaker 1: of course, the director Ernest B. Shudsack.
Speaker 3: I know almost nothing about the life of shod Sack
Speaker 3: except that he is involved with one of the great
Speaker 3: early special effects and I don't know what you might
Speaker 3: call it science fiction horror films of the big studio era,
Speaker 3: which is King Kong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean really, King Kong. Despite being very much
Speaker 1: a genre film, it transcends genre like it is it is.
Speaker 1: That film is an icon of cinematic history itself. You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's kind of difficult to overstate its
Speaker 1: importance in the history of film. But he and certainly
Speaker 1: I think you, mister you Science Theater three thousand fans
Speaker 1: would agree it is a great eight movie. But Shodzak
Speaker 1: also directed another great Epe movie, and that would be
Speaker 1: Mighty Joe Young. So if you're not familiar with King
Speaker 1: Kong for reasons unimaginable, then perhaps you've heard of Mighty
Speaker 1: Joe Young.
Speaker 3: Did that get some kind of remake in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: Yes, it did. Goodness, I forget who was in it,
Speaker 1: but they had. Mighty Joe Young is a and is
Speaker 1: an enlarged ape as well, but not nearly as enlarged
Speaker 1: as King Kong.
Speaker 3: It's a medium enlarged ape.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think I've seen some account some comparisons.
Speaker 1: Just in the same way that Godzilla gets keeps getting
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger in films, King Kong also inevitably just
Speaker 1: gets bigger and bigger. But Mighty Joe Young was always
Speaker 1: a smaller giant ape.
Speaker 3: So some of this guy's big movies seem all focused
Speaker 3: on changes in size perspective, either really big creatures or
Speaker 3: really little creatures. Smaller than they're supposed to be. And
Speaker 3: this is funny because I think there were This is
Speaker 3: sort of the A list version of that kind of director,
Speaker 3: but there were also B list versions of that kind
Speaker 3: of director, because you get people like bert I Gordon,
Speaker 3: who made B movies, almost all of which are about
Speaker 3: creatures of unusual size, either like a person or a
Speaker 3: creature that gets shrunken down or creatures that get blown
Speaker 3: up real big.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, I think ultimately bird Eye Gordon
Speaker 1: was able to make some really interesting films, but they're
Speaker 1: generally not put on the same pedestal as King Kong.
Speaker 3: None of them look as beautiful as Doctor Cyclops does.
Speaker 3: Another thing that Doctor Cyclops really has going for it
Speaker 3: with the modern release, especially or at least the blu
Speaker 3: ray of it that we watched, it has three color
Speaker 3: Technicolor and the tech color is gorgeous. The colors are
Speaker 3: just dripping off the screen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in a similar way to Doctor X, though that
Speaker 1: was not technicolor. That was what two tone technicolor.
Speaker 3: Two color technicolor. Yeah, this is three colors. So this
Speaker 3: is like the color you know, color films that would
Speaker 3: come later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's a certain unreality to it. But it's
Speaker 1: beautiful and it certainly I mean, I find it more
Speaker 1: engaging than a lot of black and light films of
Speaker 1: the period. Just you know, I guess it depends, like
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to see mad Love and color. Mad
Speaker 1: Love belongs in black and white, like that is the
Speaker 1: world of that film, but this one really benefits from the.
Speaker 3: Color well and taking place in the jungle. I feel
Speaker 3: like there are a lot of shots in it that
Speaker 3: I wonder if they were only included to take advantage
Speaker 3: of that beautiful three color technicolor, Like like there are
Speaker 3: parts where it will just cut away to some kind
Speaker 3: of tropical bird that is squawking in a tree, and
Speaker 3: you know, we see all of its beautiful feathers.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know before three D there was there
Speaker 1: was technicolor.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again, it's quite quite a beautiful looking film. So let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about the director behind it again. Ernest b.
Speaker 1: Showed Zach who lived eighteen ninety three through nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: We're not going to really be able to touch on
Speaker 1: his entire biography here, but if you want a good one,
Speaker 1: you know, you can go to the usual places. I
Speaker 1: found Britannica had a nice one online. But here's some
Speaker 1: of the interesting points, sort of the bullet points of
Speaker 1: his life that I think are with driving home here. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, he ran away from home as a
Speaker 1: teenager and worked as a surveyor in San Francisco. He
Speaker 1: got a job as a cameraman from help with help
Speaker 1: from his brother in nineteen fourteen, and then during the
Speaker 1: First World War he served as a cameraman in the
Speaker 1: Signal Corps in France. He stayed in Europe after that
Speaker 1: he got involved in adventure filmmaking. So this is this
Speaker 1: is interesting because it makes sense given the nature of
Speaker 1: films like King Kong. But it also, you know, it
Speaker 1: seems to run, you know, against the grain if you
Speaker 1: think about his success in fiction, because earlier on it's
Speaker 1: less purely fictional. There's a certain documentary aspect to it,
Speaker 1: like fictionalized documentary work. So he served with the Red
Speaker 1: Cross in nineteen nineteen, helped refugees from the Russo Polish War,
Speaker 1: and he also filmed this conflict as well as the
Speaker 1: Greco Turkish War of nineteen twenty one through twenty two,
Speaker 1: and in this he essentially wound up working as a
Speaker 1: conflict journalist and was then sponsored by the New York
Speaker 1: Times as a cameraman on an around the world expedition. Wow,
Speaker 1: so he worked on this. He worked with a pilot
Speaker 1: by the name of Marion C. Cooper, and then began
Speaker 1: producing what they called natural dramas, which were a kind
Speaker 1: of combination of travelog and drama. This is super fascinating
Speaker 1: given what we've covered. Stuff to blow your mind before.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twenty five, he joined William Beebe's expedition to
Speaker 1: the Galapagos Islands as a cameraman. Ah.
Speaker 3: Now William Biebe was if you'll called the was he
Speaker 3: a marine biologist. He was a researcher who who got
Speaker 3: down into a basically a gigantic metal ball that just
Speaker 3: was dangled down deep into the ocean to see what
Speaker 3: kind of life could be observed through a tiny window
Speaker 3: in this ball at depths that had never before been
Speaker 3: documented firsthand. Yeah, the bathosphere horrifying because this ball had
Speaker 3: no means of self propulsion. It was not a submersible,
Speaker 3: It was not a submarine. It was just a hollow
Speaker 3: metal sphere and dangling by a chain. So if the
Speaker 3: chain breaks, you just sink to the bottom. Of the Ocean.
Speaker 1: Yes, but he was as we discussed in past episodes
Speaker 1: of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. He was also notable
Speaker 1: because he tended to surround himself not only with technicians
Speaker 1: on these expeditions, but also artists like people who could
Speaker 1: write about it, people who could illustrate what was going on.
Speaker 1: And it turns out Showed Sac was one of the
Speaker 1: creatives that he brought a board to document the work
Speaker 1: at least on one of the expeditions.
Speaker 3: Now, I think the bath fear of observations were not
Speaker 3: in the Galapago, so that was somewhere in the Atlantic
Speaker 3: of itself, what Bermuda, or somewhere in the Bahamas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe, So this would have been a yeah,
Speaker 1: this would have been a different journey. But still it's
Speaker 1: wonderful how these two came together. I wasn't expecting him
Speaker 1: to come up in this so anyway, from here Showed
Speaker 1: Sac and Cooper, they go on to produce a natural
Speaker 1: drama titled Chang, a Drama of the Wilderness from twenty
Speaker 1: set in nineteen twenty seven. This earned a nomination for
Speaker 1: Best Picture at the very first Academy Awards. He then
Speaker 1: directed The Four Feathers in nineteen twenty nine, based on
Speaker 1: the nineteen oh two novel, shot in California and the Sudan.
Speaker 1: And then he shot Rango in Sumatra, which was a
Speaker 1: film about and this just sounds like super ambitious for
Speaker 1: any filmmaker because it's about a boy and a rangutang
Speaker 1: and a tiger, filmed in thirty one. Again, then he
Speaker 1: shot The Most Dangerous Game in thirty two.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, wait, didn't we just talk about No, we
Speaker 3: talked about Ernest Dickerson's Survivor Is it Surviving the Game?
Speaker 1: Surviving the Game? Yep?
Speaker 3: The Iced Tea movie, which which is sort of a
Speaker 3: based on the similar concept the novella or novel The
Speaker 3: Most Dangerous Game, which is about a human who hunts men.
Speaker 1: Yes, and so it's been popular for a while. It's
Speaker 1: one of those those stories that's going to keep getting
Speaker 1: adapted in one form or the other. Now. From here,
Speaker 1: Showtech and Cooper moved on to what would be the
Speaker 1: most famous motion picture that they worked on, and that
Speaker 1: was King Kong of nineteen thirty three, and then they
Speaker 1: followed this up with the Sun of Kong, which also
Speaker 1: came out in nineteen thirty three, and then they did.
Speaker 1: They also did a movie titled Blind Adventure, which also
Speaker 1: came out in nineteen thirty three. So it was quite
Speaker 1: for these.
Speaker 3: Two regular Roger Corman over here. This is like Roger
Speaker 3: Corman's in nineteen fifty seven or whatever your year it
Speaker 3: was that he made like fourteen movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, an impressive year. They were really
Speaker 1: just firing on all cylinders. Now, in nineteen thirty five
Speaker 1: they made a film titled The Last Days of POMPEII,
Speaker 1: and this was an ultimately, at least commercially, a failed
Speaker 1: attempt at an historical epic. So after this, you know,
Speaker 1: they were kind of, I guess in some version of
Speaker 1: director's jail. He ended up doing smaller pictures. But then
Speaker 1: he got another shot at a big genre film, a
Speaker 1: special effects feature, and that is nineteen forty's Doctor Cyclops.
Speaker 1: And Cooper was an uncredited producer on this film. Now,
Speaker 1: of course we'll get back to selector Cyclops in depth here.
Speaker 1: But World War II broke out and should Zach was
Speaker 1: like a lot of people sucked into the war machine.
Speaker 1: A knew, and while testing photographic equipment at high altitude
Speaker 1: for the US Army Air Corps, he suffered a severe
Speaker 1: eye injury. I was trying to get like a firm
Speaker 1: account of it. If there's a good biography about showed Zach.
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to find one, like a you know,
Speaker 1: like a book length biography. I believe what happened is
Speaker 1: he accidentally dropped his face mask. I'm and I'm a
Speaker 1: little foggy on the exact nature of what the injury was,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about like some sort of a light
Speaker 1: blast based injury or of its pressure based, but the
Speaker 1: end result was severely damaged his eyesight. And he only
Speaker 1: directed a couple of additional films, really only one notable
Speaker 1: film after that, and this was Mighty Joe Young in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine, which featured Oscar winning special effects by
Speaker 1: O'Brien and Ray Harry Housen. Oh god, yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: another big name. And then he finally directed a portion
Speaker 1: of This Is Cinerama in nineteen fifty two, uncredited to
Speaker 1: promote the Cinerama widescreen projection process. But that was pretty
Speaker 1: much yet, like after this eye injury, you know, he
Speaker 1: just wasn't able and or you know, or didn't want
Speaker 1: to direct. I think it was, you know, more about
Speaker 1: ability and then he died in nineteen seventy nine. Cooper
Speaker 1: died in nineteen seventy three. He did a bit more
Speaker 1: work after Mighty Joe Young came out, including serving as
Speaker 1: executive producer on nineteen fifty six as The Searchers, directed
Speaker 1: by John Ford and starring, of course John Wayne.
Speaker 3: This is a fantastic coincidence how this story about his
Speaker 3: damaged eyesight connects to the plot of Doctor Cyclops. It
Speaker 3: almost makes me wonder, do you know what exactly the
Speaker 3: time of his injury was. Could it have been before
Speaker 3: Doctor Cyclops or was it after?
Speaker 1: I believe that's that's the weird thing about this. I've
Speaker 1: not been able to find like a firm date for
Speaker 1: this injury, you know, like a statement, you know, in
Speaker 1: this year or in this month this is when showed
Speaker 1: Sack suffered the eye injury. But it's it's my understanding
Speaker 1: that that the the eye injury occurred after Doctor Cyclops. Wow.
Speaker 3: Because so we'll get into this a little bit more
Speaker 3: when we discuss the plot. But one of the main
Speaker 3: uh situation points of Doctor Cyclops is that the the
Speaker 3: titular doctor uh doctor Thorkel is a is a brilliant
Speaker 3: scientist but he's limited by damage to his eyes. He
Speaker 3: has got poor eyesight already and relies on these really
Speaker 3: thick glasses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is this is just mysterious to me,
Speaker 1: Like it's either an amazing coincidence or I have it
Speaker 1: wrong and there is more connective tissue here, like you know,
Speaker 1: maybe he had you know, previously damaged his eyes in
Speaker 1: some fashion, or his eyesight was already fading. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure you know what the answer is here. But as
Speaker 1: it turns out, like his actual biography and in some
Speaker 1: of the plot elements in Doctor Cyclops do line up.
Speaker 3: Now. He did not write Doctor Cyclops though correct right.
Speaker 1: Doctor Cyclops was written by a writer by the name
Speaker 1: of Tom Kilpatrick who lived eighteen ninety eight through nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty two, and you can look him up on IMDb.
Speaker 1: But basically he wrote various crime in Western screenplays and teleplays,
Speaker 1: but nothing that really jumped out to me personally.
Speaker 3: I mean, the script here is not really anything to
Speaker 3: write home about, except in the skillful way that it
Speaker 3: string that it efficiently strings together excellent special effects set pieces.
Speaker 3: But you're not going to like run into interesting character
Speaker 3: development or like super witty dialogue in this movie. This
Speaker 3: is very much a sets and special effects driven film,
Speaker 3: but I will give the script credit for connecting each
Speaker 3: one of those things to the next in a very
Speaker 3: fast paced and enjoyable way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. All right, well let's talk about doctor Thorkel. In
Speaker 1: this film, he is played by an actor by the
Speaker 1: name of Albert Decker who lived nineteen oh five through
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight. He was a Broadway star turn film actor,
Speaker 1: and later in his life he served on the California
Speaker 1: State Legislature and largely transitioned back to stage. In his
Speaker 1: later career. He often played aggressive characters, and this is
Speaker 1: probably due to his great size. So he was six two,
Speaker 1: which granted isn't like super tall, but it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's reasonably tall. I'm six two or so, and I
Speaker 1: bought my head way too often.
Speaker 3: It's big in this movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think part of that too, is that
Speaker 1: not only is he six two, but he's he's got
Speaker 1: kind of a thick physique, like not you know, not
Speaker 1: obese or anything, but he has this kind of he
Speaker 1: looks kind of beefy, especially for a mad scientist in
Speaker 1: a movie. Usually they're a bit scrawnier and like doctor
Speaker 1: Thorkel looks like he could really throw down.
Speaker 3: You would not want to tangle with Thorkel, right.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, this guy Albert Decker played him. Notable roles
Speaker 1: for him include roles in Kiss Me Deadly and East
Speaker 1: of Eden, which was fifty five I believe, as well
Speaker 1: as his last film role, which was in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: nine's The Wild Bunch.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the hyper violent Sam Peckinpah movie in which I
Speaker 3: think he plays. He plays some kind of like railroad
Speaker 3: policeman or like a railway detective. He's hunting the outlaws
Speaker 3: in the movie. If I recall, Ah, that's one that
Speaker 3: I have.
Speaker 1: Somehow I managed to get through my twenties and thirties
Speaker 1: without seeing The Wild Bunch.
Speaker 3: It is a dusty, dirty, nasty, violent movie. It makes
Speaker 3: you need a bath. In fact, I would say the
Speaker 3: full vibe of that movie is some up. In one exchange,
Speaker 3: the outlaws arrive at the at the compound of this
Speaker 3: powerful guy, and the guy says to them like, you're filthy,
Speaker 3: you need baths. And one of the outlaws says, we
Speaker 3: don't want baths, we want women.
Speaker 1: It sounds delightful.
Speaker 3: One sentence that communicates a lot.
Speaker 1: All right, Well in this film, yeah, like like we've said,
Speaker 1: he's he's delightful. He's got this wonderful, imposing physical presence.
Speaker 1: He's got these you know, these scheming eyes that are
Speaker 1: accentuated by his his his glasses, bald head in evil mustache.
Speaker 1: And I have to say he was reminding me of
Speaker 1: somebody as I was watching this, and I figured out
Speaker 1: who it is. It's British actor Julian Barrett, who mighty
Speaker 1: boosche fans out there. You might recognize him as the
Speaker 1: actor who played Howard Moon, but he also showed up
Speaker 1: on Dark Place with Darth Morangi as a priest, okay,
Speaker 1: and he also was in something recently he was. He
Speaker 1: was the titular character in Mindhorn, which I've heard good
Speaker 1: things about.
Speaker 3: I never caught him in Dark Place, but I should
Speaker 3: go back and watch that whole series again in one sitting.
Speaker 1: It's ironically it is the ape heavy episode I believe.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Howard Moon or Julian Barrett same height as
Speaker 1: as Albert Decker, and I feel like Doctor Thorkel could
Speaker 1: have easily been a Julian Barrett character. I included a
Speaker 1: photos here if you can compare the two like they
Speaker 1: just they have very similar physicality facial features. Both are
Speaker 1: prone to wearing a mustache, So I include that for
Speaker 1: what it's worth.
Speaker 3: Yes, I can see and like Doctor Thorkel, he's gonna
Speaker 3: hurt you real bad.
Speaker 1: All right. So there are other humans in this film,
Speaker 1: and we'll touch on them with in less detail because
Speaker 1: there's not much else for non Doctor Thorkel characters to
Speaker 1: do in this film.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would say they execute their functions correctly,
Speaker 3: which is to move the plot from one fantastic set
Speaker 3: and prop sort of extravaganza to another.
Speaker 1: Yes, and do so, you know, with a serious look
Speaker 1: on their face. So the first one to mention here
Speaker 1: is Thomas Coley, who plays Bill Stockton. He lived nineteen
Speaker 1: thirteen through nineteen eighty nine. This was his very first
Speaker 1: film role, followed by mostly a lot of TV work.
Speaker 1: His partner was actor and writer William Rock and Roorick
Speaker 1: was a theater actor on Broadway who is also in
Speaker 1: Not of This Earth.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, So that was the nineteen fifty seven Roger
Speaker 3: Korman movie that we have covered on a previous episode
Speaker 3: of Weird House Cinema. It was I believe the b
Speaker 3: side to Attack of the Crab Monsters. So if in
Speaker 3: fifty seven you went out to a drive in theater
Speaker 3: to watch a sci fi double feature, you may well
Speaker 3: have seen Attack of the Crab Monsters and then Not
Speaker 3: of This Earth with this guy. What was his name again,
Speaker 3: William Rorick?
Speaker 1: Yeah, William Rourick.
Speaker 3: He was the doctor in the movie. I think, not
Speaker 3: to be mean, I think we did not draw a
Speaker 3: lot of attention to his performance in the movie because
Speaker 3: there's not much to say about it except his character.
Speaker 3: If you recall, he played doctor Rochelle, who was the
Speaker 3: blood clinic doctor who gets hypnotized by the aliens so
Speaker 3: that he's unable to talk about the alien's blood condition.
Speaker 3: So so other characters would you know. They'd be sitting
Speaker 3: at a table in a restaurant and the other characters
Speaker 3: would be like, don't you think it's strange that that
Speaker 3: man had alien blood? And Doctor Rochelle would be like,
Speaker 3: you guys want to get some appetizers.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yes, I wasn't the most memorable of roles, but
Speaker 1: Rock was in a number of interesting films, though several
Speaker 1: of which I've seen. He was in God told me
Speaker 1: to This was the with the Larry Cohen film about
Speaker 1: alien Messiah's. He was in Day of the Dolphin, he
Speaker 1: was in The Wasp Woman, and he was a friend.
Speaker 1: This is interesting biographically. He was a friend of author
Speaker 1: Iam Forrester and Coley and Rorick. Apparently they would like,
Speaker 1: you know, entertain him when he was in town, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. They'd go out and see shows and stuff.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's the connect They're all connected here to Koley.
Speaker 1: Coley is the one in this film, not Rorick, but
Speaker 1: the two of them apparently collaborated on various projects over
Speaker 1: the course of their careers and lives together.
Speaker 3: Coley plays the like sort of lead love interest in
Speaker 3: the movie. He's the only character who's hunky enough to
Speaker 3: potentially end up falling in love with the one female character,
Speaker 3: so you kind of know what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a very g golly role. And again this
Speaker 1: was his first screen role to boot, so the results
Speaker 1: are very wooden. There's just not much to this part here,
Speaker 1: but that still it seems like he had an interesting
Speaker 1: life and career. All right, let's talk about the what
Speaker 1: the sole female character in this film. The character is
Speaker 1: doctor Mary Robinson. The actor is Janice Logan was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifteen died in nineteen sixty five. She only
Speaker 1: appeared in six films, and this was her third. But
Speaker 1: here here's again a nice connection to the previous episode
Speaker 1: of Weird House Cinema. Her last two film roles were
Speaker 1: both Mexican films directed by Renee Cardona.
Speaker 3: The director of Santo in the Treasure of Dracula.
Speaker 1: Exactly, yes, a major name in Mexican cinema, so both
Speaker 1: were of these films were from nineteen forty four. One
Speaker 1: the translated name is The Black Ace and the other
Speaker 1: is Summer Hotel. And I was looking this up. The
Speaker 1: Black Ace also featured a Dutch occultist and magician named
Speaker 1: David Tobias Bamberg who built himself as Fu Manchu and
Speaker 1: Bamberg also co wrote it. But yeah, which I don't know.
Speaker 1: It sounds like he was sort of an occult star
Speaker 1: or would be star of the day, and so he
Speaker 1: just I guess he wound up in Mexico City and
Speaker 1: was like, Hey, let's do a movie anyway. Logan is
Speaker 1: also rather wooden in this role, but it's not like
Speaker 1: the film gives her much to do other than scurry
Speaker 1: around and try not to be grabbed by giant hands
Speaker 1: or eaten by giant cats. Then we have the character
Speaker 1: of doctor Bullfinch played by Charles Halton who lived eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy six through nineteen fifty nine. Actor of stage and film.
Speaker 1: I would say he has a little more to do
Speaker 1: in this. He's actually pretty funny because he's this stuck
Speaker 1: up professor through and through, even after he's been reduced
Speaker 1: to a tiny human wearing a handkerchief toga.
Speaker 3: Yeah. He refuses a lot of things in the movie,
Speaker 3: like he's constantly being told to do things and saying like.
Speaker 1: I refuse yes on scientific grounds, doctor Thorkel. I absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Yea, let's see. Then we have
Speaker 1: the character of Steve Baker played by Victor Chillian who
Speaker 1: lived eighteen ninety one through nineteen seventy nine. He was
Speaker 1: in films like Only Angels Have Wings and the ox
Speaker 1: Bow Incident. He wound up blacklisted from Hollywood, presumably for
Speaker 1: political beliefs, but he ended up doing a lot of
Speaker 1: TV and stage work instead after that. And I mean
Speaker 1: he's all right in this. He's also it's a very
Speaker 1: typical type of performance and role for this time period.
Speaker 3: He's the mule guy. He's all about the mules.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. Next, we have an actor by the
Speaker 1: name of Frank Jacanelli who plays the character Pedro. So
Speaker 1: this guy lived eighteen ninety eight through nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: He was an Italian born World War One vet who
Speaker 1: became a natralized US citizen, and he was a vaudeville
Speaker 1: performer later a USO tour manager. He played a lot
Speaker 1: of Italian characters, as one might admit, but he also
Speaker 1: expect rather but he also seemed to have a lot
Speaker 1: of roles in films playing stereotypical Mexican characters. And in
Speaker 1: this film he plays Pedro, which is very much a
Speaker 1: goofy stereotype character.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't say what nationality Pedro is supposed to be,
Speaker 3: but he is playing a Latin American character. Pedro who
Speaker 3: at least definitely in the first half of the movie
Speaker 3: movie as the butt some jokes yeah about like trying
Speaker 3: to find his lost horse, which has actually been shrunken
Speaker 3: with a shrink ray.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So you know, this was a you know, a
Speaker 1: casting situation that definitely made me sigh a bit. But
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the Yack and Ellie.
Speaker 1: I did find a page on Bewesterns dot com like
Speaker 1: bee Hyphenwesterns dot com that that has like seems to
Speaker 1: be the only place I could find online, Like you
Speaker 1: can only find much of a biography of him on IMDb,
Speaker 1: but this site gets a little more into like his
Speaker 1: what kind of audeville acts he was involved in, and
Speaker 1: he did seem to kind of make a career in
Speaker 1: places out of playing a Mexican stereotype, and certainly that's
Speaker 1: what more or less he's doing in this film. Now,
Speaker 1: another interesting character that is involved in this film ultimately uncredited,
Speaker 1: but there's a guy by the name of Charles Gemora
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen oh three through nineteen sixty one, and
Speaker 1: he's an uncredited makeup artist on this film. You familiar
Speaker 1: with this guy before Joe Well.
Speaker 3: I guess by his work, but not by name.
Speaker 1: Okay, So he was born in the Philippines. He was
Speaker 1: a Hollywood makeup artist who became known as the King
Speaker 1: of the Gorilla Men. And it's interesting how this came to be, Like,
Speaker 1: apparently he's a guy who would he would hang around
Speaker 1: outside the studio and he would he would offer to
Speaker 1: paint for you or draw for you, like he had
Speaker 1: sort of an innate and I'm guessing kind of like
Speaker 1: self taught artistic ability. And of course people eventually notice
Speaker 1: this and they're like, Oh, bring this guy in, we
Speaker 1: got some stuff to paint. Let's get him going. And
Speaker 1: and I guess he was up for anything. And at
Speaker 1: one point in one of these films, they busted out
Speaker 1: a gorilla suit and he's like, Hey, that should be me.
Speaker 1: I'm the right just the right height. I've got the
Speaker 1: physicality to carry this heavy suit. Let me get in there.
Speaker 1: And so that's what he did. And aside to doing
Speaker 1: a lot of he did a lot of monster makeup
Speaker 1: in other films. But he had and he has sixty
Speaker 1: makeup credits on IMDb, but he also has sixty acting credits,
Speaker 1: most of which are playing gorillas wearing gorilla costumes. And
Speaker 1: so if I do recommend looking him up because it's
Speaker 1: kind of amazing, Like if there was a gorilla costume
Speaker 1: in a film, this was often the guy that was
Speaker 1: wearing it. In addition to some you know, aliens here
Speaker 1: and there, he definitely did some alien costumes and other
Speaker 1: kind of like humanoid monster costumes. But his specialty was
Speaker 1: the gorilla costume.
Speaker 3: Oh and I see what do you know? He's in
Speaker 3: at least one adaptation of The Murders in the Room Morgue.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In addition to being an actor and an artist,
Speaker 1: he was also an inventor and he held, actually held
Speaker 1: a couple of patents, including a I would look these
Speaker 1: up on Google scholar, a sanitary pad holder, and a
Speaker 1: tissue dispenser. Wow. Yeah, so interesting fella. Now again, he
Speaker 1: was just a you know, makeup guy in this The
Speaker 1: two main special effects names were of Farcio Edward and
Speaker 1: Gordon Jennings. These were the two that were nominated for
Speaker 1: an OSCAR for the special effects in this film for
Speaker 1: the thirteenth Academy Awards. They ultimately lost to the Thief
Speaker 1: of Bagdad. But these are some impressive special effects. Like
Speaker 1: we said, they're impressive for their time. It's not the
Speaker 1: first time that we see miniaturized humans or giant animals
Speaker 1: in a film. Certainly Todd Browning's nineteen thirty six film
Speaker 1: The Devil Doll predates it, but this film makes some
Speaker 1: impressive use of supersized sets, giant hands, creative combinations of footage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the special effects in this film are really top notch.
Speaker 3: I was trying to think of earlier examples of really
Speaker 3: good looking special effects for miniaturized humans, and I recall
Speaker 3: the main example I could think of there are the
Speaker 3: excellent shrunken human effects in Bride of Frankenstein. Oh Yes,
Speaker 3: by James Whale, which was released in nineteen thirty five.
Speaker 3: Now you might remember in that movie when we first meet,
Speaker 3: you could argue the villain of the film, Doctor Septimus Pretorius,
Speaker 3: also just one of my favorite mad scientists in movies,
Speaker 3: Doctor Thorkel and doctor Septimus Pretorious. They're really up there
Speaker 3: in the canons of mad science in the first few
Speaker 3: decades of studio motion pictures.
Speaker 1: I love doctor Pretorius because in the Frankenstein film, Brider
Speaker 1: Frankenstein's he's such a mad science enabler, you know. Yes,
Speaker 1: Frankenstein is like, I can't do it anymore. I'm emotionally
Speaker 1: rotted from that last film, and he's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: we've got to get you back in there. We've got
Speaker 1: to get you back in there. You can do it.
Speaker 1: Let's do some evil.
Speaker 3: There's also a great part in Right at Frankenstein where
Speaker 3: we see doctor Pretorius just going down into a crypt
Speaker 3: just to have like a midnight snack. Like he goes
Speaker 3: down into a crypt at night for a picnic. He
Speaker 3: lays out a spread with like food and wine and
Speaker 3: stuff on a big tombstone. It's wonderful.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I forgot about that part.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I think it's like, right when we first
Speaker 3: meet doctor Pretorius in the movie, I think, what is it.
Speaker 3: Who is it who's playing doctor Frankenstein in the movie.
Speaker 3: Is it Colin Clive.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's Colin Clive.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So he's meeting with Colin Clive and he's like showing
Speaker 3: off his latest work, which are these jars of homemade homunculi.
Speaker 3: So he's got like tiny humans in jars, and I
Speaker 3: think he has like a tiny king in one glass vial,
Speaker 3: and a tiny queen and another. I don't really recall
Speaker 3: this special effect relating to the plot much. Maybe I'm
Speaker 3: forgetting how it connects, But no.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really. It's just like, look at what I
Speaker 1: can do. Yeah, I'm pretty great. You're great. Let's work
Speaker 1: together and you will do great mad sciencey things.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like one of those things that I
Speaker 3: suspect often happened in early Special effects driven movies like this,
Speaker 3: which is that somebody had figured out how to do
Speaker 3: a certain kind of effect in a way that looked good,
Speaker 3: so you just find a way to work it into
Speaker 3: the movie. It's like, well, we can do it, why
Speaker 3: not do it? So let's get a homunculus in this movie. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I didn't look deep into it. But as a
Speaker 3: side note, I think those homunculous effects in Bride of
Speaker 3: Frankenstein were done by John Fulton and David Horseley. Uh,
Speaker 3: and that was but it was done by like combining
Speaker 3: different different shots, so you'd have a you know, a
Speaker 3: shot of people inside full sized glass jars with a
Speaker 3: certain kind of background, and then that was matted over
Speaker 3: the full shot, you know, at normal distance, with with
Speaker 3: the actors looking huge in comparison.
Speaker 1: All right, well let's let's get into the plot of
Speaker 1: Doctor Cyclops.
Speaker 3: Okay, here's the full plot breakdown.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: You know, we always have to comment on the opening credits,
Speaker 3: and this movie also has excellent opening credits. Like a
Speaker 3: lot of the weird older movies we have watched. I
Speaker 3: feel like opening credits used to be really cool for
Speaker 3: for weird sci fi movies, and then they they got
Speaker 3: kind of whatever. You know, it'd just be some like
Speaker 3: words on a starfield background for a few decades, and
Speaker 3: then they just started doing away with opening credits altogether.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but for for while, certainly in this age, it
Speaker 1: feels like the opening credits were treated like the poster,
Speaker 1: you know, as if you might be walking by the
Speaker 1: projection screen and deciding whether you're going to stop and
Speaker 1: finish watching. I mean, that's the ultimate weird. I guess
Speaker 1: you get in the audience revved up, but it's like
Speaker 1: they've already paid their money, they're already in the seat.
Speaker 1: They're clearly they're not going to walk out yet, but
Speaker 1: I guess it's about just preparing them for what's to come.
Speaker 3: Well, there's actually a kind of visual continuity from the
Speaker 3: opening credits to the opening scene in this movie, because
Speaker 3: you've got While the credits are rolling, there is this
Speaker 3: flickering light effect that creates a kind of auroral unease
Speaker 3: that is then replicated again once you get to the
Speaker 3: opening scene. It's like the same shimmering, flickering light effect
Speaker 3: carries over into the scene of a bal deman in
Speaker 3: welding goggles who is leaning over a table examining a
Speaker 3: fluorescent green tube in a room lit by the shimmering
Speaker 3: green light. And of course this is doctor Thorkel, and
Speaker 3: the movie gets right to it because his colleague Mendoza
Speaker 3: enters the room, and of course, I my brain every
Speaker 3: time somebody said Mendoza, my brain kept going to the Simpsons.
Speaker 3: But his colleague Mendoza enters the room and he says
Speaker 3: to doctor Thorkel, how much longer will you struggle before
Speaker 3: you realize you can't do it? And thor Kel says,
Speaker 3: no longer, my dear Mendoza, because I have done it.
Speaker 3: Look for yourself. So, you know, they examine what it
Speaker 3: is that Thorkel has been looking at, and Mendoza is aghast.
Speaker 3: He has shaken. Thorkel says, there should be sufficient radium
Speaker 3: to tear it to shreds, and yet it's still alive.
Speaker 3: And we don't know what they're talking about, but Mendoza
Speaker 3: is horrified. He's terrified of the power of whatever they've discovered,
Speaker 3: and he says he starts saying like you must destroy
Speaker 3: your slides, you must burn your notes, and then we
Speaker 3: get some classic backstory through utterly implausible dialogue. You know,
Speaker 3: when somebody says something to another character that that person
Speaker 3: would have no occasion to say to them, just obviously
Speaker 3: for the benefit of the audience. So Mendoza says, when
Speaker 3: I discovered this gigantic radium deposit, I first thought of you,
Speaker 3: doctor Thorkel, my teacher of Doctor Thorkel, the great biologist.
Speaker 3: I sent for you to counsel me. I began to
Speaker 3: imagine here in the jungle, the Thorkell Institute, a palace
Speaker 3: of healing to which all might come. And it was
Speaker 3: very much like Grandpa Seth has been dead for three
Speaker 3: weeks now, and it's been hard on all of us,
Speaker 3: including me his daughter.
Speaker 1: That is correct Joe, my podcast partner who has podcasted
Speaker 1: with me for many years.
Speaker 3: At this point, but Thorkel is immediately dismissive of Mendoza's concerns.
Speaker 3: He's like, you know, bah, we now have the very
Speaker 3: cosmic force of creation itself. We can shape life like clay.
Speaker 3: And then Mendoza again with the classic sci fi movie line.
Speaker 3: He says, you are tampering with powers reserve to God,
Speaker 3: which is almost verbatim the last line of Bride to
Speaker 3: the Monster by ed Wood.
Speaker 1: You remember that part, Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3: The movie with Bella Legosi and Tor Johnson. And at
Speaker 3: the end of the movie, Bella's mansion explodes. I don't
Speaker 3: remember why. There's a giant octopus attack and the mansion explodes,
Speaker 3: and then a guy just kind of soberly looks at
Speaker 3: the camera and says he tampered in God's domain.
Speaker 1: So Mendoza is like, we shouldn't tamper in God's domain.
Speaker 1: But doctor Thorkel was like, yeah, that's what we're doing,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna do it.
Speaker 3: He literally says, he says, like, you're tampering with powers
Speaker 3: were served to God. And Thorkel says, that is good.
Speaker 3: That is just what I am doing. And so Mendoza
Speaker 3: tries to forbid it, but Thorkel he's tasted the God
Speaker 3: power now and there's no going back, so it is
Speaker 3: time to murder. And the Mendoza murder is a very
Speaker 3: cool scene. I thought. Thorkel shoves Mendoza's head through this
Speaker 3: radioactive green tube he's been looking at, and then there's
Speaker 3: a photographic effect where Mendoza's face is just gradually layered
Speaker 3: over by skull paint.
Speaker 1: I liked that. It's a weird scene. Apparently this one
Speaker 1: was removed from some TV airings of the film, so
Speaker 1: I don't know if they found it like maybe it
Speaker 1: was for time or it was just considered too graphic.
Speaker 1: There is a like a severity to it, like it
Speaker 1: firmly establishes doctor Thorkel as a guy who will murder,
Speaker 1: you know, for for his science. And we'll really not
Speaker 1: think twice about It's not like there was a struggle
Speaker 1: or some sort of accidents. It wasn't one of those
Speaker 1: situations where oh, I've stumbled into murder and now this
Speaker 1: is who I am. He's like, got to kill you now,
Speaker 1: and he does it right.
Speaker 3: So next we cut to some guys in a fancy
Speaker 3: study and it's it's a room that sort of reminds
Speaker 3: me of M's office in the Sean Connery James Bond movies.
Speaker 3: But weirdly, despite what you might assume about the sort
Speaker 3: of pipe tobacco drabness of such an environment, the first
Speaker 3: thing I couldn't ignore was how much the colors drip
Speaker 3: just in this scene in a study, because the opening
Speaker 3: scene is very much shimmering green and black. It's actually
Speaker 3: sort of closer to the look of the two color
Speaker 3: technicolor range in Doctor X, which we watched for a
Speaker 3: previous episode. Remember how that whole movie was very had
Speaker 3: a kind of diseased green and orange palette without the
Speaker 3: full range of full color Technicolor. This has all the colors.
Speaker 3: Now now that we're in the office and the greens,
Speaker 3: the reds, blue, and orange, the color is almost violent
Speaker 3: and it is really beautiful. It pops. But anyway, so
Speaker 3: we're in the study now and these two stuffy old
Speaker 3: guys are discussing attempts by Thorkel to recruit them by
Speaker 3: mail for research at his remote institute and the Amazon
Speaker 3: I think it's supposed to be in Peru. And this
Speaker 3: is doctor Bullfinch we're meeting. He's one of these two
Speaker 3: guys here, and they're discussing the pros and cons of
Speaker 3: joining doctor Thorkel's jungle institute. Pros are that he is
Speaker 3: the greatest living biologist, so be good to work with him.
Speaker 3: Cons are at he's a strange man, secretive about his experiments.
Speaker 3: You already get the impression that these guys suspect he
Speaker 3: may kill them. Uh, And I love the strong vibe
Speaker 3: from the very beginning that this is going to be
Speaker 3: like the fire Festival of scientific research. It's just like
Speaker 3: lure everybody to a remote location and then just watch
Speaker 3: it all go to hell.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Like it's it's pretty obvious where this is,
Speaker 1: at least in general, where this is going, Like mad
Speaker 1: scientist is up to bad stuff in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 1: where where there is no law but his own. Let's go,
Speaker 1: let's go hang out with him and see what happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then there's a sort of recruiting montage.
Speaker 1: These scenes are they're brief, there's not much to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, hey, if you paid your hotel bill, no,
Speaker 1: well better join up with us then, right.
Speaker 3: So we get doctor Bullfinch and then we get doctor
Speaker 3: Mary Robinson who's writing a letter saying she's joining the team.
Speaker 3: I think letter, Yeah, I think the letter says something
Speaker 3: like should should be no problem or something. And then
Speaker 3: we see the recruitment of a good for nothing, deadbeat
Speaker 3: geologist named doctor Bill Stockton. This is the guy played
Speaker 3: by Thomas Coley, and he has pulled in on the
Speaker 3: promise of having his mini IOUs remitted. So when we
Speaker 3: meet him, he's lounging in a patio recliner and I
Speaker 3: don't know if you noticed this did you notice that
Speaker 3: there are just in at least one of these shots,
Speaker 3: there are bugs crawling all over his lap.
Speaker 1: No, I did not notice that.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's easy to miss. It goes by pretty quick,
Speaker 3: and I don't think it's supposed to be like that.
Speaker 3: I think it's just something that happened to get caught
Speaker 3: by the camera. But in one of the shots there
Speaker 3: are at least three flies simultaneously. A couple are on
Speaker 3: his belt buckle, ones kind of to the side of
Speaker 3: his crotch. And it makes me wonder, like, what did
Speaker 3: he spill sugar water and his lap or something in
Speaker 3: an earlier take.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, is he suretless in the scene?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, no, he's got a shirt on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. I was thinking maybe they oiled him up
Speaker 1: a bit, you know. Okay, but who knows.
Speaker 3: But yeah, they're recruiting him because I think there was
Speaker 3: supposed to be another mineralogist or geologist and that person
Speaker 3: fell through, So now they're trying to get the deadbeat guy.
Speaker 3: But he's a handsome dead beat. And then finally they're
Speaker 3: out in the field in Peru and Bullfinch, Robinson and
Speaker 3: Stockton recruit a minor slash mule wrangler named Steve who
Speaker 3: has a lot of mule thoughts and he wants to
Speaker 3: get rich. And there's a mule haglin scene between Bullfinch
Speaker 3: and Steve, which is pretty funny. Steve's like, you can't
Speaker 3: have the mules. I need him for something, and then
Speaker 3: all these eggheads are like, but doctor Thorkel is the
Speaker 3: greatest living authority on organic molecular structure, and the muleman
Speaker 3: is not very impressed. But eventually they get him to
Speaker 3: go along by promising him riches and saying that he
Speaker 3: can come with them to I guess make sure the
Speaker 3: mules are okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: It's it didn't make tremendous amount of sense, but okay,
Speaker 1: he's coming.
Speaker 3: Along, right, So they journey through the jungle. They arrive
Speaker 3: at doctor Thorkell's compound Thorkel's assistant Pedro to inform him
Speaker 3: that they've arrived, and when Thorkel is interrupted, I just
Speaker 3: want to say he's wearing an awesome helmet slash suit.
Speaker 3: Rabbi attached a picture I found of the helmet for
Speaker 3: you to look at.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 3: It is it's just like it's just like a can,
Speaker 3: just like a straight up thick can with two eye
Speaker 3: holes surrounded by glass and then a kind of rounded top.
Speaker 3: It's not very elaborate, but it looks great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks kind of I mean, it reminds me
Speaker 1: a lot of some of the stock rocketmen and robot
Speaker 1: costumes of the of the day. You know. It looks
Speaker 1: a little bit like a medieval night as well.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's kind of the night guarding the bridge and
Speaker 3: Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: And so they get there and they all meet doctor Thorkel,
Speaker 3: and Doctor Thorkel is a creep from the first minute.
Speaker 3: They do not like ease into it. He's got the
Speaker 3: unholy combo of a huge head with tiny glasses, and
Speaker 3: he's he's huge in general. But it's just this like large,
Speaker 3: bulky bald man grabbing people by the arm and moving
Speaker 3: them around and saying like, I'm so glad you've come.
Speaker 3: He might as well be saying, you know what lovely
Speaker 3: cells you're made out of. And so we find out
Speaker 3: that doctor Thorkel sent for the assistance of the other
Speaker 3: scientists because of damage to his eyes. The damage to
Speaker 3: his eyes no longer allows him to use the microscope,
Speaker 3: but I was wondering, Wait a minute, then, if that's
Speaker 3: the only problem, why did he send for three different scientists?
Speaker 3: Then it almost seems like the implication is that doctor
Speaker 3: Thorkel thinks that if he had fully functioning eyes, he
Speaker 3: would be worth four scientists put together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense, or you know, or maybe it's
Speaker 1: it's he doesn't expect all of them to live that long.
Speaker 1: You know, it needs multiple sets of spare eyes.
Speaker 3: Well, this is weird because so here's a question I have.
Speaker 3: He is a creep from the beginning, but the movie
Speaker 3: does not suggest that he planned to kill them all along.
Speaker 3: Like the fact that he kills them does genuinely seem
Speaker 3: to be an unexpect to development for him. He kills
Speaker 3: them because they discover his secrets.
Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess he what he
Speaker 1: I think, has revealed that he he sort of needed
Speaker 1: a mineralist, a mineral specialist, uh to uh, to weigh
Speaker 1: in on some of his work. He needed somebody with
Speaker 1: a bio biology background. But I don't know about the professor,
Speaker 1: did he I mean just sort of brought him into
Speaker 1: to boast to him about like maybe part of it
Speaker 1: is like ultimately he needs an audience, like he's he's
Speaker 1: doing amazing thing. So yes, I need I need a
Speaker 1: basically a team of judges to come here and tell
Speaker 1: me how great I am.
Speaker 3: I think we're sort of rewriting the script as we go.
Speaker 3: But that's I think you're onto something there that that
Speaker 3: is part of it. Like he as a megalomaniac, he
Speaker 3: needs people to witness his greatness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that that's one of the downsides to working
Speaker 1: out in the jungle, is that in the jungie is
Speaker 1: you occasionally have to bring people in to recognize your greatness.
Speaker 3: Right, And so they're there and they recognize his greatness,
Speaker 3: but he wants them to get right to work. So
Speaker 3: he has them look at some stuff in a microscope
Speaker 3: and Stockton, the deadbeat hunk, he sees some iron crystals
Speaker 3: under the microscope. This is like minutes after they've arrived,
Speaker 3: and he says, yes, it's iron crystals in the microscope.
Speaker 3: And doctor Thorkel is like, ah, eureka, Okay, that's it.
Speaker 3: Well I'm done with you guys now. But Bullfinch, which
Speaker 3: is funny, I mean very funny, Bullfinch is mad. He
Speaker 3: immediately gets super indignant and starts yelling and he's like,
Speaker 3: you can't do this to us. At one point, Bullfinch
Speaker 3: is like, are you are you intimating that you brought
Speaker 3: us here just for five minutes of work? And Thorkel
Speaker 3: is like, I am not intimating. I am merely stating
Speaker 3: a fact. Which that's man. That's one of my favorite
Speaker 3: types of statements in English, the like I'm merely stating
Speaker 3: a fact like that wasn't a threat, it was a promise.
Speaker 3: I'm not suggesting anything. I'm merely stating a fact. I
Speaker 3: wonder when was the first instance of that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but yeah, this seems like at least
Speaker 1: an early variation on the theme.
Speaker 3: But anyway, Bullfinch and Robinson they are mad and they
Speaker 3: want to know what it is that that Thorp is
Speaker 3: working on before they leave. Steve the mule guy, he
Speaker 3: thinks he knows. He thinks the answer is that there
Speaker 3: is a mind full of precious ore somewhere around here.
Speaker 3: Stockton doesn't seem to care much. It seems like he's
Speaker 3: fine to just like get his bill settled and then leave.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: All he wants to do is lay around in a
Speaker 3: chair basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the other two It is kind of like
Speaker 1: they thought they thought this was going to be Thorkel
Speaker 1: at all. Yes, you know, they thought they were.
Speaker 3: Going to go author credit, Yes exactly.
Speaker 1: But no, there's only one author on Thorkel research, and
Speaker 1: that's doctor Thorkel.
Speaker 3: Now you might know more about this than me. I
Speaker 3: was kind of curious about this movie's abundance of unflattering pants.
Speaker 3: There are multiple characters wearing pants that have like big
Speaker 3: saggy butt and thigh areas that sometimes make it look
Speaker 3: like they're wearing like a weird sort of diaper or
Speaker 3: just sort of just have a saggy butt in the pants.
Speaker 3: Are these some specific kind of rugged outdoor pants of
Speaker 3: the era, like the go into the Jungle pants. I
Speaker 3: didn't know what the deal with this was.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just I just thought maybe that
Speaker 1: was the style of the day. You know, he just
Speaker 1: wore big balloony pants. But I could be wrong. Maybe
Speaker 1: the pants experts out there can weigh in.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Steve the mule guy goes out snooping at night
Speaker 3: the day before Thorkell has told them they're supposed to leave.
Speaker 3: Thorkell says you need to leave tomorrow, and so is
Speaker 3: that night, and Steve goes out snooping around. I think
Speaker 3: he wants to track down the mine. So while Thorkel
Speaker 3: is inside wearing his crazy helmet and doing science works,
Speaker 3: Steve is snooping around this big hole in the ground
Speaker 3: that has a giant like rigging over it and with
Speaker 3: some kind of rope dangling something down in the hole.
Speaker 3: And then he's almost caught by Thorkell. Thorkell comes out
Speaker 3: and Baker hides, and it is revealed that Thorkell is
Speaker 3: operating some kind of awesome giant copper ill in the
Speaker 3: Thorkel Super Deep borehole. He's like drilling down into the
Speaker 3: earth and getting something out of the earth. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think maybe it's the radium samples.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's this. They don't talk about it that much,
Speaker 1: but there's this sense that he's somehow absorbing radiation out
Speaker 1: of the ground itself, you know, by lowering this probe
Speaker 1: down into it. That's kind of the sense I was
Speaker 1: getting from it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then we see at some point Thorkel is
Speaker 3: alone in his lab later and it reveals that he
Speaker 3: has created a tiny pony. This is very much like
Speaker 3: the Septimus Pretorious images so there is somehow they've superimposed
Speaker 3: footage of a full sized pony kind of neighing and
Speaker 3: clumping around, but they have matted that onto the shot
Speaker 3: of Thorkel sitting at a table, and so it looks
Speaker 3: like the pony is on the table and it looks great. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but then later we check in. I guess this is
Speaker 3: The next morning, Bullfinch is examining some pig remains that
Speaker 3: he came across, and it claims he claims that he's
Speaker 3: discovered a new species of pig that is only four
Speaker 3: inches long at maturity. And Bullfinch tries to name the
Speaker 3: species after himself, like you do, and then Thorkell rolls
Speaker 3: up on them and he's immediately like, haha, you weak
Speaker 3: minded fool, you think you've discovered a new pig. And
Speaker 3: he said, I wrote down this quote. Strange how absorbed
Speaker 3: man has always been in the size of things.
Speaker 1: Because of course he knows what this is. This is
Speaker 1: not a new species of pig. This is just a
Speaker 1: normal pig that he shrank down.
Speaker 3: He's been shrinking pigs for months. And they're all here amazed,
Speaker 3: thinking they've discovered new species of pigs, and he's like, ah,
Speaker 3: you idiots. You don't understand pig shrinking. I'll tell you
Speaker 3: about pig shrinking. But Bullfinch retorts, he says that size
Speaker 3: is the chief difference between mammals. I wrote down this
Speaker 3: quote as well. He says, in all essentials, a mouse
Speaker 3: and a whale are identical. Yeah, so Bullfinch, I guess
Speaker 3: he's supposed to be like the second best biologist in
Speaker 3: the world. But I'm not sure about that one.
Speaker 1: There was a big gap between first and second greatest
Speaker 1: biologists of the time. I guess, yeah, No, I don't
Speaker 1: think there were. I think Gray Bao just in real
Speaker 1: life before these guys would have argued, no, a mouse
Speaker 1: isn't in a whale or not essentially the same creature.
Speaker 1: There are some major differences.
Speaker 3: But after this, I like this. Thorkel, like we said,
Speaker 3: even though he is very much a creep from the beginning,
Speaker 3: he does seem to give them another chance. He tries
Speaker 3: to send them away again. He's like, be on your way,
Speaker 3: but Bullfinch is just so mad. He refuses to leave
Speaker 3: until he finds out what's going on, and then Thorkel
Speaker 3: begins to threaten them. He's like, if you do not
Speaker 3: leave within the hour, you will remain at your own peril.
Speaker 3: So there's some snooping around After this, Thorkell goes back.
Speaker 3: I guess, assuming that there's they're gonna leave, but they
Speaker 3: end up investigating. They're too curious for their own good.
Speaker 3: They hear some horse sounds and they end up spying
Speaker 3: on Thorkel, appearing to like search around for a horse
Speaker 3: in tall grass. So they all start to think, Okay,
Speaker 3: Thorkell has gone mad, but Pedro explains that actually he
Speaker 3: has delivered a bunch of animals to Thorkel, and he
Speaker 3: doesn't know where they are now. He's delivered rats and
Speaker 3: chickens and dogs and cats, and he doesn't know where
Speaker 3: they are now except for there's this cat, Satanas, and
Speaker 3: oh my god, Satanas is a good cat.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Upon just mere introduction of Satanas by doctor Thorkel,
Speaker 1: I instantly laugh, in part because just seeing a cat
Speaker 1: just sitting there looking slightly bored in a film is
Speaker 1: always it a light but also because it doesn't take
Speaker 1: much to realize where this is going. You know that
Speaker 1: cat is going to try and eat a tiny person
Speaker 1: at some point in this film, oh yeah, which.
Speaker 3: Is a brilliant idea for for a horror movie. By
Speaker 3: the way, I mean, a cat of sufficient size to
Speaker 3: attack you is a terrifying proposition.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Like anybody who owns a cat can can
Speaker 1: attest to this because you know, sometimes they will they
Speaker 1: will hunt the feet of full sized adults like me. Uh,
Speaker 1: and their their speed, the reflexes are terrifying despite how
Speaker 1: much time they spend, you know, laying around doing nothing
Speaker 1: and sleeping. When they want to move, they can do
Speaker 1: so with just incredible speed. So it's easy to imagine
Speaker 1: yourself as a small creature and having to face you know,
Speaker 1: the ferocity of a domestic cat. You know, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: you wouldn't stand a chance your your only chance really
Speaker 1: would be that it would grow bored and torturing you
Speaker 1: to death.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I would say seek out water because
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of a lot of domestic cats
Speaker 3: don't don't really like getting too wet. I guess there's
Speaker 3: some exceptions, but you know they can be scared about
Speaker 3: getting too close to water. But then again, if you're
Speaker 3: very small, I guess water would probably like a shrunken
Speaker 3: human might very well be in extreme danger from water.
Speaker 3: We can talk about this more as we go on.
Speaker 3: But I recall again the JBS Halliday and Essay, you know,
Speaker 3: on being the right size, where he talks about how
Speaker 3: getting wet is an entirely different proposition for a small
Speaker 3: animal than it is for a larger animal, because like
Speaker 3: if if a rat gets wet, like a huge percent
Speaker 3: of its body weight is now clinging to the outside
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so there's this question like where did all
Speaker 3: the animals go, you know, all the animals that Pedro delivered,
Speaker 3: and where are they now? Pedro says, I don't know.
Speaker 3: But Satanas every day she gets more fat.
Speaker 1: She is really living her best life here. She's getting
Speaker 1: to kill, to hunt, and kill so many animals that
Speaker 1: she wouldn't get to otherwise.
Speaker 3: Shrunken pigs, shrunken horses. It's all gravy for Satanas.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But anyway, so they're packing up to actually leave this time,
Speaker 3: I think, But then they discovered that they keep finding
Speaker 3: re to stay. They discovered that the ore that they've
Speaker 3: been finding around this place contains radium, which at this
Speaker 3: time they're like, WHOA, that's worth a lot of money
Speaker 3: and it's very important for scientific research. I guess this
Speaker 3: would have been on the cusp of the era of
Speaker 3: the discovery of nuclear power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so certainly you know that. The scientists are like,
Speaker 1: this is great for science. And then mule guy is like, like,
Speaker 1: there's there's that's some expensive radium. I want a piece
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: Yes, get me the money. And so they start snooping
Speaker 3: around in Thorkel's stuff and then there's a big confrontation.
Speaker 3: They find records of him saying that he has shrunk things,
Speaker 3: and they're like, well, he's obviously lost his mind, and
Speaker 3: they and then he comes in and discovers them going
Speaker 3: through his stuff that they have a confrontation and he's like, here,
Speaker 3: well let me explain everything to you. Come into this
Speaker 3: room and look at my condenser. And so they all
Speaker 3: go in there, Robinson, Bullfinch, Steve Stockton, and Pedro.
Speaker 1: Yeah. At last he's like, Heyedro, get in here this room.
Speaker 3: Yeah sure, yeah, everybody cram into this into this room.
Speaker 3: Don't be suspicious. Just look at the condenser. And then
Speaker 3: he slams the door on them and shrinks them. And
Speaker 3: now we've reached the situation of the film. Everybody except
Speaker 3: Thorkel has been shrunk to about thirteen inches tall, and
Speaker 3: so After this, you know, they're trapped in a room
Speaker 3: having been shrunk, and Thorkel is like doing some playful diagnostics,
Speaker 3: saying like, wow, you know, oh your your vocal cords
Speaker 3: still work, and oh you're you're of this size, and
Speaker 3: he's crowing over his victory over them, while the rest
Speaker 3: of the main characters scamper around on the floor trying
Speaker 3: to hide and escape. And here's where the special effects
Speaker 3: just get wonderful, because a lot of what you have
Speaker 3: here are fully built sets to make actors that normal
Speaker 3: size appear to be like, you know, somewhere between like
Speaker 3: six and thirteen inches according to perspectives. So there were
Speaker 3: like giant chairs and they'll go up to one of
Speaker 3: the legs of the chair and crouch behind it, and
Speaker 3: giant books and things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it when films would do this, and
Speaker 1: I guess they still do variations on this. But I
Speaker 1: talked to a guy once in real life who had
Speaker 1: previously worked in special effects, and he had worked on
Speaker 1: the film Stephen King's Cat's Eye, which you might remember
Speaker 1: doesn't have any miniaturization occurring, but it does have a
Speaker 1: troll creature, which was of course played by like an
Speaker 1: adult in a full size costume. In order to make
Speaker 1: him seem like a tiny creature, they had to build
Speaker 1: like an enormous child's bed for this actor to prance
Speaker 1: around on. So I got to see some behind the
Speaker 1: scenes photos of that. He had an album and it
Speaker 1: was super cool.
Speaker 3: I love it. I love it. I really really missed
Speaker 3: the era of special effects through built sets and built environments.
Speaker 3: I do feel like something really is lost, no matter
Speaker 3: how good an animated environment can look. I mean, the
Speaker 3: green screen world, I do feel like has lost something beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a craftsmanship to it. I mean not to
Speaker 1: say there's not a craftsmanship in creating virtual environments, but
Speaker 1: there's a physical craft to it that perhaps is kind
Speaker 1: of lost. You know.
Speaker 3: One thing I noticed at the very beginning is that
Speaker 3: as soon as we come on the new characters, I
Speaker 3: guess they are too small for their original clothes now.
Speaker 3: So instead the characters have all replaced their original clothes
Speaker 3: with like togas. They're like little torn pieces of cloth
Speaker 3: that they're wearing like togas and stuff. And this really
Speaker 3: I think heightens the connection to the odyssey.
Speaker 1: That's right, And of course this the film will continue
Speaker 1: to it will let you know that it is referencing
Speaker 1: the Odyssey. It's going to be very direct about it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this may be the first sign that they're
Speaker 1: going in that direction. So I love this because they
Speaker 1: their clothes were not shrunk. Doctor Thorkel is picking up
Speaker 1: their clothes and putting them in a bag later. But
Speaker 1: I guess he left either are pristine handkerchiefs in there
Speaker 1: and some sewing equipment at scale for them, or he
Speaker 1: had pre arranged clothing made from handkerchiefs for them, one
Speaker 1: or the other, because they seem to fit rather well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so Thorkel says that, you know, he's like, well,
Speaker 3: I've been working for days without rest, and now I'm
Speaker 3: going to fall asleep. So he falls asleep, and while
Speaker 3: he's asleep, they escaped the room by building a tower
Speaker 3: out of books and using a match stick to draw
Speaker 3: back the bolt on the door. And then there's a
Speaker 3: there's a great moment I loved where they're trying to
Speaker 3: sneak around outside once they've gotten out, and there are
Speaker 3: some chickens just like ye, giant chickens and giant chickens
Speaker 3: that would be really scary. I mean, that's like a dinosaur.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would be terrified, Yes, like a big feathered
Speaker 1: t rex. And you know, I guess with any of
Speaker 1: these animals, you have to ask yourself, what is the
Speaker 1: threshold of miniaturization at which I am identified as potential
Speaker 1: prey by this animal?
Speaker 3: Right, And the chickens never try to eat them, but
Speaker 3: the implication is there, I mean I really do. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So if you were thirteen inches tall and you were
Speaker 3: walking past a chicken, I mean, that'd probably be like
Speaker 3: a a human walking past a dynonicus or something like
Speaker 3: therapod dinosaur, the predatory one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if it decided you were worth a pack, I
Speaker 1: mean that could that would be death.
Speaker 3: But they do a thing that really did make me laugh.
Speaker 3: They do the justac natural walk while they walk past
Speaker 3: the chickens, like pretend like we're supposed to be here,
Speaker 3: and then they get attacked by Satanas the cat, and
Speaker 3: they have to hide among a bunch of cactus, which
Speaker 3: I thought was a cool idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And Pedro's dog Tipo eventually comes to the rescue,
Speaker 3: chases off Satanas, and here we get we here we
Speaker 3: get the movie. I guess offering thoughts about how you
Speaker 3: would be treated differently if you were miniaturized by a
Speaker 3: cat versus by a dog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was fun because I've heard this this many
Speaker 1: times before, people commenting that, Okay, if you were to
Speaker 1: suddenly be you know, an inch tall or whatever, you
Speaker 1: your dog would'll be your friend, but your cat would
Speaker 1: just eat you immediately. And I don't disagree with that principle,
Speaker 1: though I do. If I'm gonna seriously consider the question,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wonder if a dog would be able to
Speaker 1: recognize you by side or by smell in a miniaturized form,
Speaker 1: like if you start asking hard scientific questions about all
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I am a dog lover, but I
Speaker 3: kind of think the dog would eat you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's we're more inclined to believe
Speaker 1: and want to believe. The dog would be like, oh, master,
Speaker 1: why are you so small? Let me help you, whereas
Speaker 1: there's no doubt with the cat, like the cat would
Speaker 1: be like, sorry, the table has turned, and you know
Speaker 1: what I have to do.
Speaker 3: The cat would one hundred percent each you. I feel
Speaker 3: like I'm at about eighty percent, and the dog would
Speaker 3: eat you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In a way, it's like that slight level of
Speaker 1: uncertainty that makes it more terrifying. Like if you were
Speaker 1: suddenly miniaturized in your home, you'd be like, oh crap,
Speaker 1: I got to avoid the cat at all costs because
Speaker 1: that is death. But then you're like, I don't know
Speaker 1: about the dog. The dog could be my savior, but
Speaker 1: the dog might just eat me anyway, or at least
Speaker 1: put me in his mouth for a while.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So after this we get a little interlude where we
Speaker 3: see the humans sort of adapting to their new scale,
Speaker 3: and it sort of turns into one of those recapitulation
Speaker 3: of the discovery of technology narratives like you get in
Speaker 3: stories like the Swiss Family Robinson. I think that's really
Speaker 3: part of the pleasure people get in a lot of
Speaker 3: castaway stories. Is they really like that, like watching people
Speaker 3: rebuild technological capability out of the materials available to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a Robinson Crusoe or to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: Flight of the Phoenix was like that. I think they
Speaker 1: remade it at some point, but the original was like
Speaker 1: a god, was it a be not to be twenty four?
Speaker 1: It was a b oh, it was a B twenty nine.
Speaker 1: Of course, B twenty nine crashes in the desert and
Speaker 1: then they have to take it apart and try and
Speaker 1: build a new airplane out of this four prop engine
Speaker 1: airplane and then fly out of the desert in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, obviously, the fact that this type of narrative recurs
Speaker 3: so much, I mean, I do think it's clear that, like,
Speaker 3: some people really enjoy watching this sort of thing happen.
Speaker 3: It's some kind of fantasy fulfillment. And this movie has
Speaker 3: stuff kind of like this, except instead of a desert
Speaker 3: island where you're trying to recreate known technology and solutions
Speaker 3: and stuff out of I don't know, coconuts or whatever.
Speaker 3: Instead it's on a tiny scale, so you see them
Speaker 3: figuring out how to use a needle as a giant drill,
Speaker 3: or a scissor handle as a sword and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Oh man, you know, I have to jump back in
Speaker 1: and say, I'm mistaken. It was not a B twenty
Speaker 1: nine and Flight of the Phoenix. It was a C
Speaker 1: eighty two. But I think I'm confusing it with some
Speaker 1: Disney film that came out where they the characters did
Speaker 1: a similar thing and turned a B twenty nine into
Speaker 1: a sailing vessel of some sort. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a trope. It's a fun thing that
Speaker 1: you see in a lot of films.
Speaker 3: Is that water World.
Speaker 1: They might have had one of these in water World,
Speaker 1: but it was a different film that I don't think
Speaker 1: I ever saw, but I vaguely remember the VHS box
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 3: Wait, it's the version of Noah's Arc made made with
Speaker 3: John Voight. I'm pretty sure that had some aircraft in it.
Speaker 1: Actually, I've looked it up, Joe, and it is the
Speaker 1: Last Flight of Noah's Arc from nineteen eighty. He had
Speaker 1: starred Elliott Gould and a B twenty nine.
Speaker 3: The Last Flight of Noah's Ark. You're not kidding.
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding. That was the name. It was a
Speaker 1: Disney film. I don't think this one has been added
Speaker 1: to Disney Plus yet.
Speaker 3: I was joking the John Voight Noah's Ark does have
Speaker 3: pirates in it, but I don't recall aircraft.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, anyway back to miniaturize people. They're making tools,
Speaker 1: they're rediscovering what they can use for a weapon, et cetera.
Speaker 1: They're making new clothes all while Doctor Thorkel is snoozing
Speaker 1: off his latest science bender.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and when he does wake up from the science bender.
Speaker 3: He has got a bit of a science hangovers. He's
Speaker 3: kinda he's kind of frisky, but he's also kind of mad,
Speaker 3: and he's like, what is he going to do with
Speaker 3: these these with these shrunken people, And doctor Bilfinch starts
Speaker 3: he's still just like mouth and off to Thorpell, he's like,
Speaker 3: he's like, we are prisoners in cyclops cave, again recalling
Speaker 3: the story from the Odyssey where Ulysses or he calls
Speaker 3: him Ulysses in the movie Ulysses may be better known
Speaker 3: today as Odysseus and his crew are captured within the
Speaker 3: cave of Polyphemus the Cyclops I don't remember on some
Speaker 3: island and they have to find a way to escape,
Speaker 3: and they end up blinding the Cyclops by stabbing in
Speaker 3: the him in the eye. But Odysseus has said that
Speaker 3: his name is no One, So when somebody comes to
Speaker 3: ask if the Cyclops needs help, the Cyclops says, no
Speaker 3: one is hurting me. Very clever, yes. But doctor Thorkel
Speaker 3: ends up catching Bullfinch in a net oh after a
Speaker 3: part where Bullfinch tells off a chicken, He's like, go away,
Speaker 3: you ridiculous vowl and Bullfinch, as always, is extremely uncooperative.
Speaker 3: Thorkel is like, he brings him inside to measure him
Speaker 3: in various ways, and then Thorkel expresses disappointment. This is
Speaker 3: privately just between him and Bullfinch. All the other people
Speaker 3: are still outside. He says, you know what, Your bodies
Speaker 3: are growing. Your bodies are reacting as if you have
Speaker 3: reverted to childhood, and you will eventually grow back to
Speaker 3: regular size. And Thorkel, of course can't allow this because
Speaker 3: then they would interfere with his work again. So Thorkel
Speaker 3: turns to murder once again. We've seen him. We've seen
Speaker 3: him murder to solve a problem at the beginning of
Speaker 3: the movie. And his eyes, his eyes become cold, and
Speaker 3: he's like, I'm gonna do it again. And he gets
Speaker 3: a cotton swab and puts it in some kind of
Speaker 3: chemical and smothers doctor Bullfinch with it and kills him.
Speaker 3: And there's like a giant fake hand for Bullfinch to
Speaker 3: be held in. It's pretty good.
Speaker 1: It's a great scene and again very brutal. You know,
Speaker 1: despite the sanitized nature of this film as a whole,
Speaker 1: it's just a cold murder of the of this professor,
Speaker 1: you know. But also during this scene, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about what the doctor Thorkel said about how you're gonna
Speaker 1: grow as if you were children into adult form again,
Speaker 1: which in this movie all it means is you're gonna
Speaker 1: get big again by the end of the film and
Speaker 1: the and it's saying like, if you had hidden, you
Speaker 1: would have just returned to normal anyway, but instead you
Speaker 1: came back to me and now it will kill you.
Speaker 1: But I had a moment there where I was imagining,
Speaker 1: like what does this mean? Because a baby is not
Speaker 1: like a miniature adult, you know, it changes a lot
Speaker 1: as it becomes a grown person. So I was trying
Speaker 1: to just contemplate, like what would that mean if you
Speaker 1: were a miniaturized person and then you grew, like what
Speaker 1: monstrous full sized forms would they grow into.
Speaker 3: You're gonna have skull plates fusing together again, Like what's
Speaker 3: going like?
Speaker 1: So I that was kind of a nightmare scenario that
Speaker 1: this film does not explore. But I had a moment
Speaker 1: there I was like, oh my.
Speaker 3: God, doctor Bullfinch say hello to a second round of
Speaker 3: baby teeth. Yeah, And then so we mentioned that scene
Speaker 3: is kind of brutal. There's another there's a lot of imployed,
Speaker 3: Like this is not a bloody film, but there's a
Speaker 3: lot of implied violence in it that is very brutal
Speaker 3: in its suggestions. So you see that the other humans
Speaker 3: after Bullfinch is murdered, they're hiding in this big thicket
Speaker 3: of cactus and then Thorkel comes out and I guess
Speaker 3: he's trying to kill them, and he starts chopping up
Speaker 3: the cactus with a shovel. It's messed up, but uh,
Speaker 3: we find when he chops it all up, and then
Speaker 3: finds they've escaped through a hole in the wall out
Speaker 3: into the jungle, and Thorkel taunts them over the wall,
Speaker 3: saying that they will never live half an hour out
Speaker 3: in the jungle, and sure enough there comes along a storm,
Speaker 3: which again to think about how terrifying of a threat
Speaker 3: a storm would be if you were tiny, if you
Speaker 3: were like, you know, six inches tall or a foot
Speaker 3: tall or whatever.
Speaker 1: This is, Yeah, I mean just on top of the
Speaker 1: jungle itself. Like when Thorkel said that, I was like, no,
Speaker 1: he's absolutely right, Like to go into the jungle at
Speaker 1: this size is just death, Like everything is going to
Speaker 1: potentially eat you.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But and then on top of that the storm right.
Speaker 3: And again this comes back to the hall day and
Speaker 3: essay I mentioned earlier on being the right size. The
Speaker 3: thing about how when you have a much larger surface
Speaker 3: area to mass ratio as smaller creatures do. There are
Speaker 3: advantages to that, Like you can fall off of a
Speaker 3: roof and probably not be hurt because you know the
Speaker 3: amount of air resistance provided by the surface of your
Speaker 3: body will be enough to keep you going pretty slow
Speaker 3: actually as you fall compared to the mass in your body.
Speaker 3: But the downsides are like getting wet is a terrifying
Speaker 3: proposition when you are tiny, Like the surface tension of
Speaker 3: water clings to you like a kind of slime. And
Speaker 3: so imagine, yeah, you're out in the jungle and the
Speaker 3: rain is coming down and there's rivulets everywhere. Very scary.
Speaker 3: So they end up coming across a boat in a
Speaker 3: river later on, and they try to use technology to
Speaker 3: free it, and they get attacked by a crocodilian. I
Speaker 3: think it's a crocodile, might have been an alligator. I
Speaker 3: didn't check the nose shaped too well, but the crocodile
Speaker 3: attack sequence is great. Trying to fend it off with fire,
Speaker 3: but they've got these like little tiny sticks that are
Speaker 3: on fire that are just not enough fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're just kind of dropping it on the creature
Speaker 1: and doesn't seem to particularly care.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then eventually, after they chase it off by
Speaker 3: throwing a bunch of flaming sticks on it, Thorkel returns.
Speaker 3: He comes and finds them, and again it's brutal. Pedro
Speaker 3: heroically leads his dog away from them, drawing off the smell,
Speaker 3: and so he saves the rest of the people, but
Speaker 3: Thorkel sees him and shoots him, and so Pedro has
Speaker 3: been murdered. And then after that, the rest of the
Speaker 3: people are hiding in some grass and Thorkel starts stomping
Speaker 3: through the grass, and then when he can't find them,
Speaker 3: he burns the grass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's this inferno that he starts here, just
Speaker 1: trying to flush them out. Yeah, but he doesn't quite work,
Speaker 1: because they find another place that they can hide themselves, right.
Speaker 3: They stow away in his specimen box, the box that
Speaker 3: he was going to put them in when he found them.
Speaker 3: And so Robinson, Stockton and Steve the mule Guy are
Speaker 3: the three people left alive, and they ride back in
Speaker 3: this box to Thorkell's hut, and once they get there,
Speaker 3: they get out and Stockton decides, no, I'm gonna stand
Speaker 3: my ground this time. I'm not gonna try to escape.
Speaker 3: We've got to kill Thorkel and the other to agree.
Speaker 3: So first they try to aim a shotgun like a
Speaker 3: cannon at his pillow in his bed, but then Thorkel
Speaker 3: doesn't go to bed. Instead he falls asleep in his chair.
Speaker 3: And then it really gets into the blinding of Polyphemus
Speaker 3: in the Odyssey because they steal his glasses. Remember it
Speaker 3: said at the beginning that he called them there because
Speaker 3: his eyes were so damaged he really couldn't see without
Speaker 3: his glasses. And they they know where he keeps his
Speaker 3: extra pairs of glasses because they find them when they're
Speaker 3: going through his stuff earlier, and they hide those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they stick them through like a hole on the
Speaker 1: floor of the wall. So now he has the only,
Speaker 1: only the one pair, and they remove those as well.
Speaker 1: So yeah, suddenly you have this this blinded polythemous trope
Speaker 1: going on here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so Thorkel is enraged. He's smashing, you know,
Speaker 3: he's running around trying to destroy them. He does recover
Speaker 3: one pair of glasses, but one of the lenses is smashed,
Speaker 3: and he says, now you can call me Cyclops because
Speaker 3: I have one good eye.
Speaker 1: Thank you for being clear about the title the film,
Speaker 1: Doctor thorp Kel.
Speaker 3: I think they could have done without that. Yeah, But
Speaker 3: so there's a final confrontation in the end. I won't
Speaker 3: spoil exactly how it happens, but they are victorious. They
Speaker 3: end up they end up defeating doctor Cyclops here and
Speaker 3: in the end, the three remaining characters they regrow to
Speaker 3: full size and they travel back to civilization. And the
Speaker 3: main things now we find are that Stockton and Robinson
Speaker 3: are now in love because of course, and we find
Speaker 3: that Steve the mule guy does not like cats. Like
Speaker 3: he sees a cat back in the town they go
Speaker 3: to and he's like, scram.
Speaker 1: Well, maybe you remember this. I watched it last week,
Speaker 1: and I think you watched it this morning. Did we
Speaker 1: ever get any real payoff with Satanas? Like, like, it's
Speaker 1: not like they had a big throwdown with the Like
Speaker 1: they didn't have a big fight with the cat. They
Speaker 1: didn't have to like slay the cat or I think
Speaker 1: the dog just chased Satanas off and that was it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm glad they didn't have to kill the cat
Speaker 3: because I mean, the cat's just being a cat.
Speaker 1: It's true, yeah, I mean, but but I also wonder
Speaker 1: like was that like maybe something they wanted to do
Speaker 1: but they just didn't have the effects, Like maybe that
Speaker 1: was just too much of an effects asked to have,
Speaker 1: like a big fight with a giant cat. I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Because of you know, there there were
Speaker 1: films that you know, they would later go more in
Speaker 1: that direction of having you know, the cat to aggressively
Speaker 1: go after tiny humans.
Speaker 3: Well like Cat's Eide the one you mentioned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: Well not a tiny human, an evil troll and the
Speaker 3: cat there is the hero going that's right, the evil
Speaker 3: tiny monster.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is this is absolutely a fun film.
Speaker 1: You know, there's not not a you know, tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of depth to it. There's not a huge amount of
Speaker 1: monster science to discuss about it. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: take various saying. You can certainly get really pedantic on
Speaker 1: the idea of miniaturizing organisms and then how does that
Speaker 1: miniaturize organism react and fit in with an immediate environment
Speaker 1: that it was not miniaturized, And depending on how small
Speaker 1: you go, those problems can be you can be quite extreme.
Speaker 1: But then there are other directions as well. You know,
Speaker 1: we found this interesting paper that we were both looking
Speaker 1: at titled Human Engineering and Climate Change by LALs Sendberg
Speaker 1: and Roche. This was from twenty twelve published in Ethics,
Speaker 1: Policy and Environment, and it's pretty wild read. You can
Speaker 1: find it for free online. I think we found it
Speaker 1: at BLC dot Arizona dot edu. And one of the
Speaker 1: things they get into is like, if you were to
Speaker 1: shrink humans down, they would have less of an environmental footprint,
Speaker 1: so it would ultimately be better for the environment.
Speaker 3: This paper is this is something doctor Thorkel would write.
Speaker 3: I started reading it and I was just like, what
Speaker 3: it is interesting, but it is nuts and I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, it seems like there may be more direct
Speaker 3: things that could be done about climate change than saying,
Speaker 3: like what if we were to shrink humans so that
Speaker 3: they consume fewer resources.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are other levers we should pull first. Certainly
Speaker 1: we shouldn't take the thor kelp that path, the thor
Speaker 1: Kel way on that particular problem.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's at least got to go like solar
Speaker 3: panels before shrinking.
Speaker 1: People absolutely all right, Well you might be wondering where
Speaker 1: can I watch Doctor Cyclops. Well, these things are always
Speaker 1: subject to change. But we actually had a hard time
Speaker 1: tracking this one down. We couldn't find it streaming anywhere,
Speaker 1: or for digital purchaser rental. We couldn't even find a
Speaker 1: We couldn't find a physical rental either. So we actually
Speaker 1: bought it on special edition blu ray from KL Studio
Speaker 1: Classics aka Keno Lorber. It's a brand new four K Master.
Speaker 1: It also has an audio commentary by film historian Richard
Speaker 1: Harlan Smith. I didn't I didn't have a chance to
Speaker 1: listen to it, but it sounds like it would be
Speaker 1: pretty cool. The box art on this one is great,
Speaker 1: Unlike some of the other previous releases that have come
Speaker 1: out that had kind of like cheesy box art, like
Speaker 1: this one has that that weird probe mechanism in the
Speaker 1: center that is lowered into the earth. You have a
Speaker 1: picture of doctor Thorkel there with it looks like lasers
Speaker 1: coming out of his eyes. It's pretty good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really good art.
Speaker 1: But then again, this is also a classic film by
Speaker 1: a notable director, so it's it's it's entirely possible. You
Speaker 1: might be able to catch this one on you know,
Speaker 1: one of like I don't know Turner Classic Movies or
Speaker 1: something to that effect. I know we've we heard from
Speaker 1: some people after we did our episode on Mad Love,
Speaker 1: chiming in and saying, oh, they're showing Mad Love tonight,
Speaker 1: so who knows. Maybe check your local listings. This is
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Well, let's do it. Then let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and call it done. We're done with Doctor Cyclops here.
Speaker 1: But this was a This was a fun one to watch,
Speaker 1: a fun one to discuss, and if if you would
Speaker 1: like to listen to us discuss other films. You can
Speaker 1: catch other episodes of Weird House Cinema every Friday in
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. So our
Speaker 1: core episodes are about science and culture and those published
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We do an artifact episode on
Speaker 1: Wednesdays listener mail on Mondays. But Friday that's when we
Speaker 1: get to cut loose and discuss some sort of weird
Speaker 1: cinematic gem, generally from Yesterdayear.
Speaker 3: That's right, so keep tuning in. Huge thanks as always
Speaker 3: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us to let
Speaker 3: us know feedback on this episode or any other, to
Speaker 3: suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact that's Stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: Your Mind dot com.
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