Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewinder. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb and we have a much older episode to
Speaker 1: share with you here today. This one is from ten
Speaker 1: twenty to twenty twenty one. I partially picked this one
Speaker 1: because we lost Ozzy Osbourne fairly recently. This is going
Speaker 1: to be the classic Mario Bava horror anthology film Black Sabbath. Enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick. And today it's that old anthology
Speaker 3: feeling once again. Rob. I know you're a horror anthology man.
Speaker 3: What is it about you that makes you gravitate towards
Speaker 3: the anthology?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean you're talking about two different things, of course,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about horror anthologies on TV and those
Speaker 1: in the film, Because on TVs it's like it's a
Speaker 1: different generally, it's a different story every week. And with
Speaker 1: anthology films like the one we're gonna be talking about today,
Speaker 1: you instead of getting one complete film, you get like
Speaker 1: three or four shorter pieces that are stitched together and
Speaker 1: been presented to you so I guess maybe part of
Speaker 1: it is just out of love for creepy short stories
Speaker 1: and the fact that that short stories don't have to
Speaker 1: obey the same rules as novels, and therefore and also
Speaker 1: short films don't have to obey the same rules as
Speaker 1: complete films. I guess it's also nice that they're only
Speaker 1: going to be They're only going to feel so long.
Speaker 1: You know, they're going to get to the point they
Speaker 1: can only be so drawn out. And it's also like
Speaker 1: a little sampler box. Like if an anthology film is
Speaker 1: coming at you and you know it's going to present
Speaker 1: you with, say three to four tales, Well you can
Speaker 1: figure there's going to be maybe one dud in the bunch,
Speaker 1: but at the very least you'll have one that's pretty good. Right,
Speaker 1: there's got to be like one central pillar holding up
Speaker 1: the roof of the thing.
Speaker 3: Well, another way I would come at it is that
Speaker 3: even if they're all bad, it's more fun to have
Speaker 3: bad variety than bad monotony.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I would say so, like you're into the
Speaker 1: badness and then you're out again, and then you're into
Speaker 1: some fresh badness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I would really come back to what
Speaker 3: you were saying about the comparison to the lengths of
Speaker 3: horror fiction. This came up in a recent episode where
Speaker 3: we were talking I think it was in the Thing
Speaker 3: from Another World, where we were talking about how it's
Speaker 3: hard to survey to be sure about this, but my
Speaker 3: feeling is that horror novels tend to gravitate more towards
Speaker 3: some semblance of a quote happy ending, maybe not happy,
Speaker 3: but some way in which the protagonist is at least
Speaker 3: partially victorious or escapes or something, whereas horror short stories
Speaker 3: tend more toward bleak and cruel endings or endings that
Speaker 3: are that are a really a mean and ironic twist
Speaker 3: of fate. And obviously I think there are a lot
Speaker 3: of reasons why people who enjoy horror fiction are drawn
Speaker 3: to endings of that sort, but they're harder to pull
Speaker 3: off at the end of a really long narrative where
Speaker 3: you're more invested with the characters, You've spent more time
Speaker 3: with them, and it hurts more to see them just
Speaker 3: sort of like ruined at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think another thing that you certainly see
Speaker 1: in short fiction is that sometimes short fiction exists in
Speaker 1: a space where it doesn't have to concern itself with
Speaker 1: the ins and outs of a complex plot or some
Speaker 1: sort of fantastic character arc. You know, our characters don't
Speaker 1: have to evolve and change and learn lessons about themselves.
Speaker 1: It can be more about trotting out an interesting idea
Speaker 1: or you know, or or or in the in the
Speaker 1: case of horror, just a just a fun monster or
Speaker 1: some you know, diabolical scenario, that sort of thing, right.
Speaker 3: I think you're correct. I think that the horror genre
Speaker 3: especially really does lend itself well to the anthology format.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are plenty of movies that are not
Speaker 3: horror that you could argue you are, in one way
Speaker 3: or another anthology films of a sort. I think one
Speaker 3: thing I've read is that is that pulp fiction was
Speaker 3: actually the concept for pulp fiction was partially inspired by
Speaker 3: the movie that we're going to talk about today. Of course,
Speaker 3: pulp fiction is not horror, but today's movie is today's
Speaker 3: selection for weird house cinema is the Mario Bava nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty three Italian anthology horror series Black Sabbath, or in
Speaker 3: Italian it's called e tre volti di la Pora. I
Speaker 3: had to look up what that means. It means the
Speaker 3: three Faces of Fear.
Speaker 1: Which is a more accurate title because if you're checking
Speaker 1: out Black Sabbath expecting witchcraft and you know, Satan worshippers
Speaker 1: dancing around a fire or some sort of like pagan
Speaker 1: ordeal or something going on, you're going to be disappointed
Speaker 1: because there is no actual Black Sabbath, real or imagined
Speaker 1: in this picture.
Speaker 3: No, I would say the closest we come to that,
Speaker 3: it still doesn't really get there. There's sort of that
Speaker 3: vibe in the middle segment of this movie, and by
Speaker 3: far my favorite the Wordulac, which is I think just
Speaker 3: an absolutely tremendous segment and I can't wait to talk
Speaker 3: about it. But yeah, at least the other two really
Speaker 3: don't have anything to do with that at all.
Speaker 1: Now, another interesting thing about the title for this film
Speaker 1: is that this is said to be where the band
Speaker 1: Black Sabbath got their name.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, And I think I could be wrong about this,
Speaker 3: but I remember hearing It's not even from them necessarily
Speaker 3: seeing the movie. I think it was like they walked
Speaker 3: past a movie theater and this was on the Marquee
Speaker 3: and they're like.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I think there's another version of the tale
Speaker 1: and I don't know how much. This sounds almost too perfect,
Speaker 1: so it sounds like maybe it was embellished. But I
Speaker 1: read a version where they were playing at a theater
Speaker 1: and then across the street Black Sabbath was playing and
Speaker 1: the line was far longer to get in to see
Speaker 1: the movie as opposed to getting in to see them play.
Speaker 1: And they're like, well, we need to do has changed
Speaker 1: our name. We need to be Black Sabbath, and then
Speaker 1: the people will line up for us.
Speaker 3: It's like when Patty and Selma proposed changing the name
Speaker 3: of Springfield the Seinfeld. You just look at what's popular
Speaker 3: now and try to leach off that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know which of those
Speaker 1: stories is true and to what extent, but certainly it
Speaker 1: would be. It's hard to imagine the band Black Sabbath
Speaker 1: without the name Black Sabbath because the theme runs so
Speaker 1: deep through all of their music.
Speaker 3: And before they were called Black Sabbath they were called Earth.
Speaker 3: That was not very convenient because I think there was
Speaker 3: another band at the time in that area called Earth.
Speaker 1: It has a different taste on the tongue. Initially, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're thinking about going to hear Earth, you have
Speaker 1: totally different expectations versus Black Sabbath.
Speaker 3: Well as a huge fan of the at least like
Speaker 3: the first six Black Sabbath albums. I don't really get
Speaker 3: into the d years very much, but like the first
Speaker 3: six Sabbath albums, I think are they're a mega You know,
Speaker 3: they're like one of those stone monuments from the ancient
Speaker 3: world and it's really hard to get under them. But
Speaker 3: I can't imagine how I would feel about them if
Speaker 3: they weren't by a band called Black Sabbath that's so
Speaker 3: wrapped up in the feeling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you imagine Nativity and Black by Earth? It
Speaker 1: just doesn't make sense war Pigs by Earth.
Speaker 3: However, I could propose an alternative, which is that if
Speaker 3: they wanted to drill in and get to the heart
Speaker 3: of what makes Mario Bava's Black Sabbath really great, they
Speaker 3: could have changed the name of their band to the
Speaker 3: word Youlaxe.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that's a fun name for a band.
Speaker 3: And it would imply that they've been in the mountains
Speaker 3: for five days and come back in a state of
Speaker 3: God knows what.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's go ahead and give everyone a
Speaker 1: taste of the trailer on this one. Because this is
Speaker 1: a pretty good trailer. I love the narration here.
Speaker 4: Do you believe in ghosts? This is the night twent
Speaker 4: Fear and horror walk hand in hand. This is Black Sabbath,
Speaker 4: starring the incomparable Boris Karloff, the personable Mark Damon, and
Speaker 4: lush and lovely women, even though one is from the
Speaker 4: nether world, a vampire of Bourdelac, a Black Sabbath as
Speaker 4: ancient as superstition, as modern as the telephone.
Speaker 3: So it's obvious from the trailer, but I don't think
Speaker 3: we mentioned that this movie has Boris Karloff in multiple capacities,
Speaker 3: so he is not only the star of one of
Speaker 3: the three segments in the anthology, but he's also sort
Speaker 3: of the pitchman. He is the company spokesperson at the
Speaker 3: beginning and end of the film, And.
Speaker 1: Of course this is perfect because in later years he
Speaker 1: also served as a horror host on televis you show
Speaker 1: such as Thriller and Out of This World. As I
Speaker 1: think we've often driven home though, like, there's such a
Speaker 1: wealth of TV horror anthologies out there, So, for instance,
Speaker 1: if you just glance at listings for Boris Karloff's Thriller,
Speaker 1: you'll see Oh it only went two seasons, but it
Speaker 1: went two seasons in the nineteen sixties, So those two
Speaker 1: seasons consist of sixty seven episodes.
Speaker 3: Wow, yeah, it gets crazy, And man, I thought it
Speaker 3: was long seasons. When you go back and watch a
Speaker 3: show from the nineties or something where there's like twenty
Speaker 3: episodes in the season, that seems like a huge amount.
Speaker 3: But wow yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, to be clear, Thriller aired sixty one I mean sorry,
Speaker 1: sixty through sixty one and sixty one through sixty two,
Speaker 1: so it actually aired in America at least before Black
Speaker 1: Sabbath came out, so that might have been part of
Speaker 1: the rationale here. It's like, well, audiences are used to
Speaker 1: Boris Karloff presenting material to them. He's already in it.
Speaker 1: Let's also get him up on the screen introducing this
Speaker 1: stuff for us.
Speaker 3: Well, you can hear it right in the narration of
Speaker 3: the trailer. There's the part where it says like starring
Speaker 3: the incomparable Boris Karloff. I guess he is incomparable. But
Speaker 3: then the other cast members they introduce are the personable
Speaker 3: Mark Damon, which I thought was hilarious, And then they
Speaker 3: say and lush and lovely women gone unnamed.
Speaker 1: Come on, dudes, and we will list to some of
Speaker 1: their names here in a bit. There are some nice
Speaker 1: performances in here.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, wait, I left off, though I think the
Speaker 3: trailer qualifies it says, so the women in this movie, Hey,
Speaker 3: we got beautiful women, even though one of them is
Speaker 3: from the nether world. I was trying to think back
Speaker 3: after having seen it, which woman is it talking about.
Speaker 3: I'm not even sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's not really one that's definitely from the nether world.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of bad, supernatural things happen to
Speaker 1: people and to some women in this motion picture, but
Speaker 1: I don't think any of them are from the nether world.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, I guess before we talk anymore about
Speaker 3: the actual contents of the movie, we should discuss some
Speaker 3: of the the connections. And obviously the place to start
Speaker 3: is with the director, Mario Bava.
Speaker 1: Mario Bava who lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen eighty. He
Speaker 1: was the director, but also collaborated on the screenplay. He
Speaker 1: was the cinematographer, He did matt paintings, he did special effects.
Speaker 1: This is the legendary Italian director with an unmistakable obsessive
Speaker 1: and phantasmagorical emphasis on visual composition. So you can just
Speaker 1: look up stills from his movies and I feel like,
Speaker 1: once you've gotten a taste of how Bava directs and
Speaker 1: how he composes a shot, a strong still from any
Speaker 1: of his films is just instantly identifiable. It just pops
Speaker 1: with a certain It's not only the color hue, because
Speaker 1: I want to stress it's not just a matter of oh, well,
Speaker 1: Mariobava used some cool gels here and there, like, No,
Speaker 1: it's the complete it's his use of light and reflections
Speaker 1: and just the overall composition of every every shot in
Speaker 1: the film.
Speaker 3: You ever see one of those animated movies in which
Speaker 3: there is a magical gem or artifact that glows with
Speaker 3: magic power, Mario Bava's movies are like that. There's something
Speaker 3: about the way they look that the frames from the
Speaker 3: movie glow with magic power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even when there's less of a reason for it
Speaker 1: to be glowing. So like I was thinking as I
Speaker 1: was watching this particular picture that it's it's like an
Speaker 1: alien civilization that communicates through like synesthesia is trying to
Speaker 1: speak through the picture.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like it's that obsessive, like the colors are clearly
Speaker 1: of great importance to Bava and all.
Speaker 3: Of this, though I will say that I totally agree
Speaker 3: with you. Color is a big part of it, and
Speaker 3: Bava frequently used sort of expressive colorful lighting, colored lighting
Speaker 3: in his movies that is not strictly realistic, meaning it's
Speaker 3: not reflecting a color you would actually expect to see
Speaker 3: if this scene were taking place in the real world,
Speaker 3: but rather colors that sort of reflect feelings coming through
Speaker 3: and reflect sort of other worldly, unseen influences. But there
Speaker 3: are also visual sensibilities he has where that kind of
Speaker 3: glowing comes through even when it's not in color. Like
Speaker 3: the example that comes to my mind is his earlier
Speaker 3: movie Black Sunday, which is in black and white and
Speaker 3: yet it still glows with magic power.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that one was from nineteen sixty and it is
Speaker 1: interesting to imagine this leap from black and white to
Speaker 1: color for Mario Bava, where they're like, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: you can shoot in color now, and you can imagine
Speaker 1: his excitement at being able to do so.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Bava's background is interesting. He was the son of early
Speaker 1: Italian cinematographer Eugenio Bava, and Mario trained as a painter,
Speaker 1: venturing into the world of cinematography as well in the
Speaker 1: late thirties in the early forties, but then he eventually
Speaker 1: started directing as well. It began with some documentary shorts
Speaker 1: and some uncredited directing work on some various genre films.
Speaker 1: But then in nineteen sixty that's when Black Sunday came out.
Speaker 1: He directed that, and that was a very well regarded
Speaker 1: and financially successful film, and so Black Sabbath is very
Speaker 1: much the color follow up to that. Thus the similar
Speaker 1: release title again kind of coming back to the studio
Speaker 1: thought here, it's like, well, Black Sunday did pretty good.
Speaker 1: Welcome we call the next one. Let's call it a
Speaker 1: Black Sabbath.
Speaker 3: There we go, Well, this may be if that is
Speaker 3: indeed where the title comes from. I got to say,
Speaker 3: this is the rare case where I would go with
Speaker 3: the marketing over the original because once again the three
Speaker 3: faces of fear, that may be more literally descriptive of
Speaker 3: what you're getting with the movie, but it doesn't really
Speaker 3: have the same punch to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Mario Baba directed into thenineteen seventies. Initially he retired,
Speaker 1: then he came back at the behest of a new
Speaker 1: generation of Italian horror filmmakers, including his own son, director
Speaker 1: of Lomberto Bava. He came back to direct nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: five Shock, and this would prove to be his last
Speaker 1: feature film, as he then died in nineteen eighty. But
Speaker 1: he directed a number of pictures, so we're not going
Speaker 1: to touch on them all, but I thought we might
Speaker 1: talk about a few of them here. One of them
Speaker 1: is Planet of the Vampires from nineteen sixty.
Speaker 3: Five, Rob, Can you see the Planet of the Vampire's
Speaker 3: poster right behind me on the wall?
Speaker 1: I do? I see that you have it right there
Speaker 1: up on the wall behind you, so you know obviously
Speaker 1: you're a fan. I finally got around to watching this
Speaker 1: in full this year, and I have to say it
Speaker 1: wasn't the most enthralling motion picture when it came to
Speaker 1: acting and the plot, but such a gorgeous science fiction
Speaker 1: film to watch. Like all of the visuals in it,
Speaker 1: he does an amazing job and devotes the vast majority
Speaker 1: of the film's energy and limited budget, I have to
Speaker 1: add to create highly effective and colorful alien landscapes Haunted
Speaker 1: spaceship Hallways also has just some incredible costumes.
Speaker 3: Absolutely so I love Planet of the Vampires, but I
Speaker 3: usually watch it without sound. It's a movie that I
Speaker 3: love to put on, like in the background while I'm
Speaker 3: hanging out with friends and listening to music. That's the
Speaker 3: ideal Planet of the Vampires experience for me, because it's
Speaker 3: one of those movies. It's a rub the fur movie.
Speaker 3: It's a movie that's not really about the plot or
Speaker 3: what happens in it. It is about the visual textures
Speaker 3: on screen, and that includes everything from like you single
Speaker 3: out the costumes. The spacefarers in the movie are wearing
Speaker 3: these bizarre black leather space suits with these leather helmets,
Speaker 3: and yeah, the lighting and the sets are just absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it reminds me of a quote that I
Speaker 1: ran across from Mario Bava where he said that horror
Speaker 1: films are seventy percent lighting. And I think he has
Speaker 1: a strong point. I mean, you definitely see that in
Speaker 1: his work. But we've talked about various examples on the
Speaker 1: show before where we say things like, oh, well, the
Speaker 1: monster costume wasn't great, but in this scene, the lighting's amazing,
Speaker 1: so it absolutely works well.
Speaker 3: Like in the Thing from Another World, Yeah, there was
Speaker 3: like if you look at the costume James Arness's wearing like, actually,
Speaker 3: in full lighting, it doesn't look very impressive, but they've
Speaker 3: found a way to make it look good within the
Speaker 3: narrative by either keeping him in silhouette backlits so you
Speaker 3: can't really see him, so he's just a frame, and
Speaker 3: or just by giving you quick glimpses of him where
Speaker 3: you can't really understand what's going on. Like, they make
Speaker 3: do in a very effective manner with some limitations in
Speaker 3: terms of costuming and makeup effects.
Speaker 1: Of course, Planet of the Vampires was highly influential. It's
Speaker 1: sometimes been asked, would we even have Alien and all
Speaker 1: the films that came after Alien had it not been
Speaker 1: for Planet of the Vampires, And perhaps not, you know,
Speaker 1: certainly Bava was a very influential filmmaker. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean one of the big things I think that's
Speaker 3: called out with respect to Alien is there's a scene
Speaker 3: in Planet of the Vampires, and Planet of the Vampires
Speaker 3: came much before it was nineteen sixty five, Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, sixty five.
Speaker 3: There's a scene where the astronauts are on this desolate
Speaker 3: planet and they go into a cave and they find
Speaker 3: a giant alien skeleton stretched out on this surface in there,
Speaker 3: very much like with the discovery of the Derylic spacecraft
Speaker 3: with the bizarre sort of alien skeleton fuse to the
Speaker 3: chair in Alien.
Speaker 1: So ultimately I think Black Sabbath moves along a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot better. It has better pacing than Planet of
Speaker 1: the Vampires. But there were still times in this film,
Speaker 1: as within as in Planet of the Vampires, where I
Speaker 1: felt myself disconnected from whatever was happening or supposed to
Speaker 1: be happening in the plot, but I was still completely
Speaker 1: drawn in to the visual world presented on the film.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. I mean I
Speaker 3: really appreciated the plot, especially in the word you lack,
Speaker 3: but through and through it looks pretty great.
Speaker 1: Another Bava film that I'm a fond of is Danger
Speaker 1: Diabolique from nineteen sixty eight. This is a stunning, stylish
Speaker 1: spy crime yarn starring John Philip Law and Adolfo Selly.
Speaker 1: People might remember him as the villain from Thunderball. The
Speaker 1: James Bond film. Terry Thomas is also in it. This
Speaker 1: was featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand back in
Speaker 1: the day, and it is indeed quite ridiculous, but stunning
Speaker 1: from a visual perspective. Basically, it has that sixties bond vibe,
Speaker 1: focused all on comic book crime and then turned up
Speaker 1: to about a thousand Bava style.
Speaker 3: I think it was actually the very last episode of
Speaker 3: the main run of Mystery Science Theater. That's right, it was,
Speaker 3: and kind of a strange choice there, because I don't know,
Speaker 3: I would actually argue that movie is not all that bad.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's silly in a way that a lot
Speaker 3: of these movies would be silly, but it's also I
Speaker 3: don't know, it's stylishly executed in a very pleasing way.
Speaker 1: I mean, the best films on Mystery Science Theater three
Speaker 1: thousand and often that the best episodes of Mystery Science
Speaker 1: three thousand revolve around movies that are on their own
Speaker 1: very watchable.
Speaker 3: I know you're thinking about Jack Frost.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think that's a great example. There are
Speaker 1: multiple example. I think when I think of my favorite episodes,
Speaker 1: there are often films that that I can and sometimes
Speaker 1: have watched on on my own, you know, without without
Speaker 1: the riffing. Now, Mario Bava was again highly influential, and
Speaker 1: one of his most famous students was Dario Argento. If
Speaker 1: you've ever seen Argento's nineteen seventy seven classic Suspiria, then
Speaker 1: you've certainly bathed your eyeballs in a very Bava inspired
Speaker 1: color scheme.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's it's pretty much unquestionable that Argento
Speaker 3: picked up where Bava left off with the expressive, colorful lighting,
Speaker 3: especially for his Jallo films.
Speaker 1: And I mentioned Mario's son, Lamberto Bava, he directed such
Speaker 1: films that went on to direct such films as nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five's Demons, which is excellent, along with a couple
Speaker 1: of sequels to that, nineteen eighty four's Devilfish, which is
Speaker 1: not so excellent. It's basically a Jaws cash in, one
Speaker 1: of many. But Lamberto Bava is still making movies. He
Speaker 1: had a horror movie starring Gerard Depardieu come out this year.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: Called Twins, I believe, and I had to check. It
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the Arnold movie.
Speaker 3: Okay, I gotta look that up.
Speaker 1: All right, Let's see a few other people involved in
Speaker 1: this film. Marcelo Fondato has a screenplay credit lived nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty four through two, an eight Italian screenwriter and direct
Speaker 1: and director. Though I don't really know any of their films.
Speaker 1: Then there's Alberto Bivillakua, who lived nineteen thirty four through
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, has a screenplay collaboration credit. Also was a
Speaker 1: screenwriter on Planet of the Vampires, as well as the
Speaker 1: satanic Panic documentary Witchcraft seventy, which was narrated by Jack Palance.
Speaker 1: Now the film, and certainly this comes out in the trailer.
Speaker 1: The film claims that the three stories in it are
Speaker 1: based upon fictions by Chekov, Tolstoy, and Snyder, and specifically
Speaker 1: it's supposed to break down like this, the Drop of
Speaker 1: Water by Ivan Chekhov, though seemingly connected to a story
Speaker 1: by Franco Lucentini, and then the Telephone by F. G. Snyder,
Speaker 1: And then a story not by Leo Tolstoy as that
Speaker 1: might lead you to belief, but won by Alexei Tolstoy.
Speaker 3: And this would be the one allegedly by Alexei Tolstoy,
Speaker 3: would be the wordlac, the one that is the one
Speaker 3: with Boris Karloff in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's talk about Boris Karloff. Then Boris Karloff
Speaker 1: plays Gorka in this and he's also the host. He
Speaker 1: lived eighteen eighty seven through nineteen sixty nine, A bona
Speaker 1: fide cinema legend, going beyond genre films and horror films
Speaker 1: and weird films. I mean, he's just one of these
Speaker 1: icons of cinema.
Speaker 3: His horror charisma is unmeasurable in this it's just off
Speaker 3: the screen.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. Karloff was a British actor, born William Henry Pratt,
Speaker 1: so you know, this is very much his stage name.
Speaker 1: Boris Karloff probably is just going to be forever associated
Speaker 1: with Frankenstein because he played the monster in James Wales's
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and then
Speaker 1: he went on to play the role in other pictures
Speaker 1: as well, including the excellent nighteen thirty five film The
Speaker 1: Bride of Frankenstein. Other key horror films from Karloff include
Speaker 1: thirty two's The Mummy, thirty four's The Black Cat, nineteen
Speaker 1: forties Black Friday, and much more.
Speaker 3: The Black Cat he actually stars opposite Bella Lagosi, and
Speaker 3: I think that was the first movie where they had
Speaker 3: both done that. And I actually haven't seen that one,
Speaker 3: but I've been meaning to see it for a long
Speaker 3: time and apparently it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I've heard great things about it. I've heard that it
Speaker 1: holds up really well, so I have checked that out now.
Speaker 1: Karloff was also famously the non singing voice of The
Speaker 1: Grinch in the nineteen sixty six animated version from Chuck Jones.
Speaker 1: So the thing about Karloff is that he worked a lot.
Speaker 1: And even though he's best remembered for his horror roles today,
Speaker 1: he acted in a wide variety of films. He worked
Speaker 1: stage and screen, he did television. We already mentioned his
Speaker 1: horror host gigs.
Speaker 3: He did a lot, yes, and I will say that.
Speaker 3: So I just saw this movie Black Sabbath for the
Speaker 3: first time this week, and I gotta say this is
Speaker 3: a new favorite Karloff role for me. We'll discuss the
Speaker 3: details of the word Olac in a little bit, but
Speaker 3: he plays this wild, hairy, wind blown patriarch of the
Speaker 3: Carpathian Mountains who has this demonic energy and it's so
Speaker 3: so powerful. I don't know exactly how he's doing it,
Speaker 3: but in every line he feels so at home, truly,
Speaker 3: like a man just hardened by the wilderness who has
Speaker 3: met something unspeakable upon the Mountaintop.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's really able to channel a lot of energy
Speaker 1: through this role. And it's especially interesting considering that this,
Speaker 1: again is late career Karloff. He was seventy five or
Speaker 1: seventy six at the time when they filmed this. But
Speaker 1: he's still incredible and apparently it was just always a
Speaker 1: pleasure to work with. I noticed that that Bava singled
Speaker 1: him out as being just a great guy to work with. Now,
Speaker 1: another interesting late Karloff film. I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: seen this one. Joe. Peter Bogdanovitch did a film in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight called Targets.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have seen this one, in which Karloff essentially
Speaker 3: plays himself. I mean, he plays a character, but the
Speaker 3: character he plays is named like named like Doris Orlock
Speaker 3: or something, and he's an aging horror film star and
Speaker 3: he has to go up against like a crazed mass murderer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like he ends up confronting an active shooter at
Speaker 1: a drive in movie theater. It's it's a serious, serious
Speaker 1: film from a young Peter Bogdanovitch would of course go
Speaker 1: on to direct The Last Picture Show, but he was
Speaker 1: one of Roger Corman's crew at the time, and for
Speaker 1: this film, Corman apparently told Bogdanovitch that he could make
Speaker 1: any kind of film he wanted to. There were just
Speaker 1: two things he needed to make sure off. One he
Speaker 1: had to use stock footage from nineteen sixty three's The Terror,
Speaker 1: and he had to use Boris Karloff for the two
Speaker 1: days of filming that he still owed Corman. But as
Speaker 1: it was, it worked out. Karloff loved the script and
Speaker 1: shot a total of five days and refused additional pay.
Speaker 1: So it's a fun story man. But also I remembered
Speaker 1: it as being a good movie. I haven't seen it
Speaker 1: in a long time, but I remember being impressed with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: A good friend of mine showed me this movie many
Speaker 3: many years ago, back before I really was in the
Speaker 3: weird house cinema mode. I think I didn't know who
Speaker 3: Roger Corman was at the time or anything, but I
Speaker 3: remember being very enthralled and impressed by it. It's a
Speaker 3: very stark, scary, realistic kind of movie, different than, very
Speaker 3: different than the stylish fantasy horror that Woris Karloff did
Speaker 3: for most of his career.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, should we talk about the personal mark Damon? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, as he's introduced in the trailer The Personable Mark Damon.
Speaker 3: I'd say he's a seven or eight on the personability scale.
Speaker 1: Yeah he's I guess he's the closest that we have
Speaker 1: to like a male hero character in the whole picture
Speaker 1: plays the carried what Vladimir drf Durfe.
Speaker 3: He plays a count or some kind of aristocrat who
Speaker 3: rides through this village in the word you Lac Again.
Speaker 3: I guess we'll discuss more of the plot details of
Speaker 3: that in a bit, But yeah, he's the closest thing
Speaker 3: the movie has to sort of a dashing leading man.
Speaker 3: But even in that story, I don't know if he's
Speaker 3: exactly that, because he comes off to me is in
Speaker 3: that story is kind of glib, callow and confused, not
Speaker 3: really recognizing the weight of the supernatural power he's up against.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's doomed, this guy. But Mark Damon is interesting though,
Speaker 1: because of the first all. I was born nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: still alive as of this recording, and still active. Not
Speaker 1: as an actor though at least not since I think
Speaker 1: he retired in the late seventies or I'm not sure
Speaker 1: about the late say, at some point in the seventies,
Speaker 1: he retired from acting, and I think did a few
Speaker 1: little bits here and there, the most recent being in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, but he's continued to produce. He's been
Speaker 1: a producer or an executive producer on sixty seven pictures
Speaker 1: in counting, and those titles that he has a credit
Speaker 1: on include Dos Boot, The Never Ending Story, Clam The
Speaker 1: Cave Bear, Nine and a half Weeks, Short Circuit, Flight
Speaker 1: of the Navigator, The Lost Boys, Beastmaster two, not one,
Speaker 1: but two different Universal Soldier sequels, and then just a
Speaker 1: bunch else. So seems kind of like a big money
Speaker 1: player in Hollywood.
Speaker 3: Maybe he's the producer who came in and demanded that
Speaker 3: The Lost Boys feature more footage of that saxophone guy.
Speaker 3: It could be like, I want ten minutes a saxophone guy,
Speaker 3: at least.
Speaker 1: Now. Acting wise, Damon was also in Roger Corman's nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty film House of Usher, which starred Vincent Price, and
Speaker 1: he has one writing credit. And I found it interesting
Speaker 1: because it's The Devil's Wedding Night from nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: on which Joe Diamato apparently did some uncredited directing, which
Speaker 1: is always a great sign. And then Damon plays not one,
Speaker 1: but two different roles in it. So I looked it up.
Speaker 1: The poster looks fabulous. It looks very nineteen seventies international horror.
Speaker 3: Okay, featuring the personable George Eastman.
Speaker 1: No, there's no George Eastman in this one, though, I
Speaker 1: will say that Mario Bava directed at least one film
Speaker 1: that had George Eastman. I can confirm at least one
Speaker 1: George Eastman project.
Speaker 3: Was he in Bay of Blood?
Speaker 1: No, he was in What Rabid Dogs? He might have
Speaker 1: been in Bay of Blood. There's a little Eastman just
Speaker 1: sprinkled throughout the cinematic universe. All right, let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of the other players in these three different segments. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of these are actors that I'm not really
Speaker 1: familiar with, and there aren't a lot of titles that
Speaker 1: they were in that really connected with me. So there's
Speaker 1: not a lot to really to go through here. But
Speaker 1: let's start with her. Susie Anderson, who played what's the
Speaker 1: what's his character's name, Stenka.
Speaker 3: Stink, which no offense to people who actually have that name,
Speaker 3: but in English, that name does sound funny because it
Speaker 3: sounds like stinker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but this is a. This is I guess, our
Speaker 1: gorgeous love interest for Damon's character. She was born nineteen
Speaker 1: forty Croatian actor who worked during the nineteen sixties. And
Speaker 1: then there's Rika Deliana who plays Maria born in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four. Greek actor with extremely expressive eyes, or at
Speaker 1: least Mario Blava was able to shoot her in many
Speaker 1: scenes where she has really expressive eyes. She's the mother
Speaker 1: I believe in these sequences, and we'll discuss her in
Speaker 1: a bit, But she had a long career, mostly in
Speaker 1: Greek cinema and TV.
Speaker 3: Now these are all actors who are in the word
Speaker 3: lax segment, but there are a couple of other segments
Speaker 3: of the movie that I guess we've been focusing on lust.
Speaker 3: Do we want to mention some of the actors in
Speaker 3: these segments before coming back to describe them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the Telephone, which we'll discuss, has a very
Speaker 1: small cast. The main character is Rosy played by Michelle Mercier,
Speaker 1: who is a French actor who worked across multiple decades,
Speaker 1: born nineteen thirty nine, still alive as of this recording.
Speaker 1: And then the other major character in that is Mary
Speaker 1: played by Lydia Alphonsi, who was born in nineteen twenty eight,
Speaker 1: also still alive as of this recording Italian actor who
Speaker 1: was active well into the nineteen nineties. Her last film
Speaker 1: was the much acclaimed Life Is Beautiful from nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: and she also appeared in a Steve Reeves Hercules movie
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 3: So I don't really love the Telephone. We can explain
Speaker 3: more about our feelings about the individual segments in a bit.
Speaker 3: The Telephone was definitely my least favorite of the three,
Speaker 3: but I do really like Lydia Alphonsi in it because
Speaker 3: she does a very good job of acting creepy.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right. And then finally we have the segment
Speaker 1: the Drop of Water. I'm going to highlight three different
Speaker 1: actors in this. There's Jacqueline Peru, who lived nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: three through two thousand and five, plays Helen Chester, so
Speaker 1: she was a French actor active from the early forties
Speaker 1: through the nineteen seventies. And she's the mother of French
Speaker 1: actor and director Jean Pierre Lude, who starred in The
Speaker 1: Four Hundred Blows. There's also a character in this that
Speaker 1: is referred to as the Maid, and it's played by
Speaker 1: Milli no last name Milli, who lived nineteen oh five
Speaker 1: through nineteen eighty was an Italian singer, actress, and cabaret
Speaker 1: performer and apparently something of a pop star of the day.
Speaker 3: So she's older when this movie was made. So she
Speaker 3: plays a maid who sort of comes and goes while
Speaker 3: the main character, played by Jacqueline Peru, is sort of
Speaker 3: contemplating doing something very ill advised with respect to the
Speaker 3: spirit world. But the maid is this kind of mundane
Speaker 3: in floats, flitting in and out of the room while
Speaker 3: this deliberation goes on.
Speaker 1: And then finally there is a neighbor character in this
Speaker 1: played by Harriet Medine who lived nineteen fourteen through two
Speaker 1: thousand and five, an American actor who relocated to Italy
Speaker 1: with the USO after World War Two. She has a
Speaker 1: pretty great filmography, with such titles as Death Race two thousand,
Speaker 1: which is a fun flick we've talked about that before,
Speaker 1: The Witches of Eastwick, Schlock and The Terminator, in which
Speaker 1: she plays the role of customer customer where I was
Speaker 1: trying to figure I was looking around, you know, short
Speaker 1: of actually watching Terminator again, I'm not sure. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine she's in the gun. She's probably in one of
Speaker 1: those sequences where the terminator steals a bunch of stuff,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the Terminator is just him robbing
Speaker 1: places so he can have robbing people in places so
Speaker 1: he can have closed guns.
Speaker 3: They weren't the good guy played by Michael Bean robbing people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a whole sequence. It's just naked dudes committing
Speaker 1: various crimes and robberies.
Speaker 3: Maybe she's walking out of Dick Miller's gun store when
Speaker 3: Arnold Schwarzenegger's walking in that possibility.
Speaker 1: She wrote, she bought the last plasma rifle.
Speaker 3: I was just remembering the part in Terminator. That's actually
Speaker 3: really great when Schwarzenegger rips that guy out of the
Speaker 3: phone booth and he doesn't really harm him. It's just
Speaker 3: a guy on a phone at a phone booth and
Speaker 3: the terminator grabs him by the shoulder and sort of
Speaker 3: throws him down on the sidewalk so he can use
Speaker 3: the telephone book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty good. I mean, why would would the
Speaker 1: terminator a machine use any more force or effort than
Speaker 1: was necessary in any given task.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you can hear the guy going, you got
Speaker 3: a serious attitude problem.
Speaker 1: Man, that's good, all right. Finally, the music on this
Speaker 1: film is interesting because from one thing, you have two
Speaker 1: different scores. The original score was by Italian jazz band
Speaker 1: leader Roberto Nicolossi, but American International Pictures replaced his score
Speaker 1: with one by Less Baxter, who is, of course the
Speaker 1: king of exotica, and also later did the minimal electronic
Speaker 1: score for Frogs.
Speaker 3: Oh I remember that now?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's I guess it's
Speaker 1: a memorable score, but it's it's not very It's not
Speaker 1: an exotica score for frogs. And this also is not
Speaker 1: particularly exotica music either. It's certainly not electronic. But I
Speaker 1: liked it well enough because I could pick up on
Speaker 1: some Baxter sensibilities in it. But it made I was
Speaker 1: curious after that, because I'm thinking, well, what did it replace?
Speaker 1: Because we can all think of examples where a score
Speaker 1: has been replaced by something superior and also cases where
Speaker 1: a score has been replaced by something maybe less effective,
Speaker 1: you know, for a different audience. So I was listening
Speaker 1: to the Nickelosi score a bit and it sounded good
Speaker 1: as well. I don't know, I liked I liked them both.
Speaker 1: Maybe Baxter score is a little bit more dramatic and
Speaker 1: a little bit more you know, American.
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, to be honest, I just
Speaker 3: did not really notice the music much at all, So
Speaker 3: I don't have much of a comment on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if I would have really looked
Speaker 1: at it that closely had had it not been for
Speaker 1: the Less Baxter connection. Uh, because I have I do
Speaker 1: listen to a fair amount of like Less Baxter and
Speaker 1: some like Bostonova music. Uh, generally like very late afternoon.
Speaker 1: There's a point in the late afternoon where where you know,
Speaker 1: I have to put aside the synth music and the
Speaker 1: and the rock music, and only Exotica or Bostonova will do.
Speaker 3: The tiki drink hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess, even though generally I'm not I'm not
Speaker 1: actually having a tea drink. I'm generally like cooking supper
Speaker 1: or something. But it feels right, it feels appropriate. All right,
Speaker 1: Now that we've got all that out of the way,
Speaker 1: let's get back into the plot of these three horror
Speaker 1: stories that look fabulous, have great people in them, but
Speaker 1: ultimately have some interesting ideas as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, so I would say, and you have you
Speaker 3: and I may have had some different reactions to these,
Speaker 3: but I would say that this is an interesting movie
Speaker 3: to recommend because while there are three segments, and in
Speaker 3: my opinion, one of them is astonishingly good, another is
Speaker 3: quite good, and the third for me, I found kind
Speaker 3: of boring and unpleasant. But there's still I think some
Speaker 3: interesting things to talk about with it. And while I
Speaker 3: think that there were different releases of this movie that
Speaker 3: put them in different orders, the version I saw starts
Speaker 3: with the one of the three that was for me
Speaker 3: by far the weakest. So this would be The Telephone.
Speaker 1: Ah, yes, the Telephone.
Speaker 3: So the Telephone, unlike the other two, is a more
Speaker 3: realistic story and the basic premise is pretty simple. It
Speaker 3: is a psychological thriller about a young woman who is
Speaker 3: terrorized by a threatening, voyeuristic creep who won't stop calling
Speaker 3: her on the phone. And so I gotta say this
Speaker 3: is the one I didn't really super enjoy. I like
Speaker 3: it picked way up with the second one for me
Speaker 3: when you get to the word to lact This one
Speaker 3: kind of has a lot of things I don't really
Speaker 3: love about Italian horror movies of this period, and not
Speaker 3: as much of the stuff that I do love.
Speaker 1: It's weird because, especially from the trailer, you get the
Speaker 1: impression that they moved the telephone to the opening because
Speaker 1: they thought it would connect with audiences more like maybe
Speaker 1: they thought audiences didn't want this gothic horror tale. Instead
Speaker 1: they would want something that's tied into technology and you know,
Speaker 1: feels more cutting edge and dangerous. And yet at the
Speaker 1: same time I was reading it, sounds like American International
Speaker 1: Pictures they asked them to cut down on some of
Speaker 1: the what they would have probably thought of it as
Speaker 1: dangerous aspects of that opening segment. Supposedly AIP asks for
Speaker 1: lesbian romance aspects of the segment to be reduced and
Speaker 1: that a supernatural element be sort of implied. But I
Speaker 1: have to say, at least in the version I watched,
Speaker 1: I mean, I still got this that there was some
Speaker 1: sort of past romantic connection between the two female characters,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember anything supernatural in this segment. It
Speaker 1: seemed very based in the real world, though of course
Speaker 1: through that fabulous Bava lens.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, to be honest, now that I think about it,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure which version of the movie it was
Speaker 3: that I saw. One thing I've seen comparing them is
Speaker 3: that the I think it was the original Italian version
Speaker 3: had the more beautiful colors, and that the American release
Speaker 3: might have had some more muted colors. The version I
Speaker 3: saw had very beautiful colors, so I'm thinking. And the
Speaker 3: version I saw, of course was in Italian with subtitles.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the same here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if there is a dubbed version
Speaker 3: of the movie.
Speaker 1: I think there is, but I didn't I wasn't able
Speaker 1: to find when I rented it. I rented it through Well,
Speaker 1: I went into to Apple, and then I did a
Speaker 1: like a seven day trial of AMC Plus and that's
Speaker 1: how I got to watch it. And then when I
Speaker 1: pulled it up, I was expecting it to be dubbed,
Speaker 1: but then I saw that as oh it's in Italian
Speaker 1: with no option for other audio channels and it just
Speaker 1: sub titles. But I greatly enjoyed it. But I see
Speaker 1: examples of people saying that they grew up watching a
Speaker 1: version in which they hear Boris Karloff's actual voice, So
Speaker 1: that makes me think there is a dubbed version of it,
Speaker 1: but this was not it. So with the telephone, I'd
Speaker 1: say that I guess I kind of like the simplicity
Speaker 1: of it. It does proceeded a very slow pace, but
Speaker 1: then it has some very nice twists in it. It
Speaker 1: does not have that gothic feel that the second segment has,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't have that supernatural sense of other worldliness.
Speaker 1: The interiors in the segment are, at first glance a
Speaker 1: lot more muted. We spend a lot of time with
Speaker 1: beautiful women with perfect skin and kind of porcelain colored
Speaker 1: garments moving through wedding cake colored apartments. But even this
Speaker 1: is very finely crafted and wonderfully punctuated by various colorful
Speaker 1: items in the background. I don't know if you noticed
Speaker 1: this or not, Joe, but it'll be like, you know,
Speaker 1: everything's this kind of wedding cake porcelain world, and then
Speaker 1: there'll be like one jade statuette on a shelf in
Speaker 1: the background, and somehow, like through that Mario Bava magic,
Speaker 1: it makes the whole thing pop. And I don't even
Speaker 1: notice that I'm that the pp plot is moving along
Speaker 1: so slowly because I'm just admiring.
Speaker 3: The shot or the red telephone.
Speaker 1: Red telephone, And then you know, it moves at a
Speaker 1: slow pace, and then alarming things will happen. There's a
Speaker 1: great creepy eyes peering in through the window of the
Speaker 1: apartment that that scene really shook me when I saw it.
Speaker 3: Oh, this movie is all about windows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, windows, mirrors as well, but certainly windows. And I
Speaker 1: think I think you see that in other Bava films
Speaker 1: as well, lots of mirrors, people looking through class and
Speaker 1: it makes sense given his his focus on the visual medium.
Speaker 3: So I think you sort of raised the idea that
Speaker 3: this segment is kind of a proto Jallo film, and
Speaker 3: I wanted to explore that idea a little more so
Speaker 3: for people who are familiar. Jallo films are a particular
Speaker 3: subgenre of Italian murder mystery thrillers that were popular in
Speaker 3: the sixties through the eighties. And some of the big
Speaker 3: name directors of jallo you might recognize our Dario Argento.
Speaker 3: Usually his supernatural movies like Suspiria are not usually considered
Speaker 3: Jallo films that they share a lot in common with them. Stylistically,
Speaker 3: usually Jello films are thought to be to have basically
Speaker 3: realistic causation. They're not like about witchcraft and magic and stuff.
Speaker 3: They're about like a murderer who wields a Razor Blade
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 1: Like what the woman with a crystal Wait, is it
Speaker 1: the Bird with a crystal plumage?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bird with the crystal plumage. I mean, Argento made
Speaker 3: these naturalistic Jello films as well, Bird with a Crystal Plumage,
Speaker 3: Deep Red, Cat of Nine Tales, Tenebrae. These are all
Speaker 3: Jallo films he did. But other big names in Jello
Speaker 3: or Sergio Martino, Luccio Fulci, and the director of the
Speaker 3: movie we're talking about today, Mario Bava. Bava was the
Speaker 3: director of Blood and Black Lace from nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 3: just one year after Black Sabbath, and I think Blood
Speaker 3: and Black Lace, I think is often considered sort of
Speaker 3: the archetype of the early Jallo movie that a lot
Speaker 3: of Jallo descends from. Blood and Black Lace.
Speaker 1: I'd love to watch that one someday because I'd noticed
Speaker 1: just today that it has Cameron Mitchell in it.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's right, it does. It's been a little while
Speaker 3: since I've seen it, so I don't remember much in
Speaker 3: particular about what he does in it. But yeah, anyway,
Speaker 3: one of the things I noticed is that Blood and
Speaker 3: Black Lace I think has a lot of stylistic similarity
Speaker 3: with the telephone segment in this movie, except the stylization
Speaker 3: is turned way up, so I'll get back to that
Speaker 3: in just a minute. But to discuss some of the
Speaker 3: main characteristics of jallo movies, They very often feature a
Speaker 3: murderer who strikes again and again, whose identity is unknown,
Speaker 3: often masked or with their face hidden in shadow, and
Speaker 3: they will very often wear a similar outfit like a
Speaker 3: long trench and black gloves and maybe a hat. In
Speaker 3: jallo movies, the murders are usually sort of creative or grizzly,
Speaker 3: or of a creepy and squeamish nature, so they're usually
Speaker 3: not just going to be like the killer shoots somebody
Speaker 3: with a gun. They might kill somebody with a barber's
Speaker 3: razor or a needle or something. Jeala movies also tend
Speaker 3: to be kind of voyeuristic and sexually charged, off in
Speaker 3: mixing sexuality and violence in an unsettling way, and to
Speaker 3: varying extents, they tend to be highly stylized. Not all
Speaker 3: of the directors or like this, but a lot of
Speaker 3: them are. They'll use these lurid colors and creative cinematography.
Speaker 3: This is typically the opposite by the way of what
Speaker 3: I would say, are the dominant trends in murder mystery films,
Speaker 3: say in the United States, which I think are overwhelmingly
Speaker 3: They tend toward a gritty, realistic or muted look with
Speaker 3: kind of matter of fact camera work. It's like they're
Speaker 3: trying to make it look like real life, whereas Italian
Speaker 3: jello films tend to love these you know, weird red
Speaker 3: and purple gel lights and tilted camera angles and shots
Speaker 3: reflected in a mirror and all kinds of stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to say nothing of the music, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah. Famously, like the Argento Jallo movies have had
Speaker 3: wonderful scores, usually that you know, involve Goblin or Argento
Speaker 3: himself in some way. There's another strange recurring detail that
Speaker 3: I notice in a lot of Italian jella movies, especially
Speaker 3: the movies of Dario Argento. But a really common recurring
Speaker 3: thing is that the protagonist will witness an image or
Speaker 3: a scene early on in the movie that contains some
Speaker 3: clue that would serve as the master key to solving
Speaker 3: the mystery. And this, this scene or this memory keeps
Speaker 3: replaying in their mind, but they're unable to recall or
Speaker 3: figure out what that key detail is until the final resolution.
Speaker 3: So I think about the museum murder scene and the
Speaker 3: bird with the crystal plumage, the face in the hallway
Speaker 3: in deep red, and so forth.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 3: So looking back through this lens, is the telephone sort
Speaker 3: of a short form proto Jallo in a way. I
Speaker 3: think it kind of is. It has some of that
Speaker 3: same naturalistic terror mystery sensibility. It has a clue detail
Speaker 3: in the room except the protagonist. I don't know if
Speaker 3: she sees it. I don't think she does. But I'm
Speaker 3: thinking about the zoom in on the eyes in the
Speaker 3: window looking through the blinds, which is very creepy. It
Speaker 3: does have that creepy, voyeuristic and sexually charged sensibility, which
Speaker 3: I do not always enjoy in these movies, to be honest,
Speaker 3: though it is not as stylized as a lot of
Speaker 3: later Jallo, which I would have enjoyed more. I mean,
Speaker 3: I kind of wish Baba had played up his visual
Speaker 3: sense more in this segment. But with blood and black
Speaker 3: lace that comes later, I almost wonder if Bava sort
Speaker 3: of cross fertilized different parts of his own creative process
Speaker 3: after Black Sabbath, like if he started thinking Okay, what
Speaker 3: if I did a store that was more like this
Speaker 3: set in the modern world. It's sort of a naturalistic
Speaker 3: mystery terror like the telephone, but I filmed it with
Speaker 3: that otherworldly visual sensibility that I used in the Wordillac,
Speaker 3: where everything glows with magic power.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting, Well let's talk about the word of lock
Speaker 1: or the Vertilac here?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, are we gonna? Are we gonna war? Are
Speaker 3: we gonna va?
Speaker 1: What did? What should they use in the film? I
Speaker 1: thought I was hearing a v but but we could
Speaker 1: go either way. I don't think the monster's mind.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go VA. Let's let's let's assume that's authentic
Speaker 3: and then try it. We could be wrong, but yeah,
Speaker 3: how about the Vertillac. So the Vertilac I think, picking
Speaker 3: up after the first segment, which I which I didn't
Speaker 3: especially love, the Vertillac I think is extraordinary. It's this
Speaker 3: Carpathian Gothic tale where these auroras of weird color just
Speaker 3: dripped from the crags. Like I said earlier, it's a
Speaker 3: new you know. It goes on my list of favorite
Speaker 3: Boris karlaf for roles. He plays this shaggy, wild purple
Speaker 3: Kurt Vonnegut type you notice he looks like. And this
Speaker 3: whole segment is just full of awesome Slavic twang and
Speaker 3: this Menace of the Hills absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1: The visual world that Bava creates in here that maybe
Speaker 1: isn't noticeable right at first, but then just really leeches in.
Speaker 1: He creates this dark domain that is occupied entirely by
Speaker 1: fog and ruins and desolate farmhouses, multiple just absolutely creepy
Speaker 1: scenes and sequences. Yeah, I absolutely loved it. In fact,
Speaker 1: if you have never watched this film and you're going
Speaker 1: to pick it up, I give you I think you
Speaker 1: should watch it in its entirety. But if you need to,
Speaker 1: you can go ahead and skip the telephone and go
Speaker 1: straight to this, straight to the Verdelac.
Speaker 3: So to do a very quick plot description on it,
Speaker 3: I don't want to spoil it everything about it, but
Speaker 3: it begins with the personable Mark Damon, who is he
Speaker 3: plays an aristocrat, he's a counter something. I don't recall
Speaker 3: exactly what he is, but he's riding through the mountains
Speaker 3: and he's clearly in a rural, rustic area and he
Speaker 3: comes across a corpse just lying there by a riverside.
Speaker 3: And so this is a corpse that's had its head
Speaker 3: removed and it has been stabbed through the heart with
Speaker 3: a very distinctive dagger, and so he's like, oh, I
Speaker 3: guess I gotta do something about this. So he picks
Speaker 3: up the corpse and he carries it with him to
Speaker 3: a nearby village. Or I don't know if it's even
Speaker 3: a village. It might just sort of be the compound
Speaker 3: of one family, you know, under the heading of this
Speaker 3: one patriarch in his house.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3: So, Yeah, he comes to this house out in the
Speaker 3: mountains and he goes in to meet the people who
Speaker 3: live there, and he says, hey, I found this corpse,
Speaker 3: and immediately they know what's going on. They're like, oh, yes,
Speaker 3: that is our father's dagger you found through the heart
Speaker 3: of this corpse, and that's because our father has gone
Speaker 3: out to kill the Wordillac. Or well, let's see, do
Speaker 3: I remember did they establish that the being he was
Speaker 3: trying to kill they knew was a Wordillac or did
Speaker 3: they just think it was a local highwayman and murderer
Speaker 3: that their father was going out to kill. There was
Speaker 3: sort of blurring of the lines.
Speaker 1: There, Yeah, there was both, because there clearly this region
Speaker 1: is dealing with a serious vertilac problem. But then the
Speaker 1: verdilac has also been identified as a particular individual who
Speaker 1: is also a notorious highwayman.
Speaker 3: Right, so from this they conclude, Oh, okay, our father
Speaker 3: succeeded in his quest. You know, he went out into
Speaker 3: the mountains to find this criminal, this highwayman and kill him.
Speaker 3: And here's his body. But where's Pop. You know, you
Speaker 3: would think you would have come back by now. And
Speaker 3: so the family members here they include the I believe,
Speaker 3: the two sons and the daughter of Boris Karloff's character,
Speaker 3: and then the oldest son's wife and child as well,
Speaker 3: And so they tell the story while our father went
Speaker 3: out into the mountains to hunt down this this brigand
Speaker 3: and possible supernatural menace, the vertiloc and and kill him.
Speaker 3: And then he but they but he warned us, if
Speaker 3: I come back after five days, don't let me in
Speaker 3: because then I'm going to be a word of lo
Speaker 3: act probably by that time. And there's a great plot
Speaker 3: device of ambiguity, because when does Boris Karloff show up
Speaker 3: right at the toll of midnight on the fifth day,
Speaker 3: So he's like coming in right on the line and
Speaker 3: you don't know one way or another.
Speaker 1: Yeah, though, I mean, I think one of the one
Speaker 1: of the messages of this, this whole sequence here is
Speaker 1: that if Grandpa says he he might be a VERTI
Speaker 1: loac just go ahead and assume he's a vertiloc, because
Speaker 1: it's going to be the safe assumption. Some of you
Speaker 1: might be wondering, is is a vertilock really a thing? Well?
Speaker 1: I did look it up, and according to folkloris Carol Rose,
Speaker 1: who I often refer to with my monster career, is here,
Speaker 1: it's actually more werewolf than vampire. But in the Slavic
Speaker 1: tradition the two concepts are kind of interlocked. One version
Speaker 1: at least was that when a were wolf is killed,
Speaker 1: it transforms into a vampire that could then reassume the
Speaker 1: form of a wolf, and vdiloch apparently means wolf's hair.
Speaker 1: But in this movie what we see is essentially a
Speaker 1: take on the vampire legend with a fun twist. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's fun depending on which end
Speaker 1: of it. If you're just enjoying the horror of it,
Speaker 1: it's I guess it's fun. If you're a character in
Speaker 1: the story, not so fun. And that is that the
Speaker 1: monster when it comes back, when it takes on the
Speaker 1: form of those that is killed, it's going to be
Speaker 1: drawn most to those that it loved in life. Those
Speaker 1: are going to be the ones that it focuses all
Speaker 1: of its monstrous intensity on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a vampire as betrayer of trust. Not
Speaker 3: just a vampire that needs blood anybody's blood, just got
Speaker 3: to have a meal of blood. This is a vampire
Speaker 3: that specifically comes for its loved ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Which I was thinking about this a little bit
Speaker 1: because again, the pacing of the film I think invites
Speaker 1: contemplation and also an enjoyment of the visuals. But like,
Speaker 1: what is wonder what the sequence and what this this
Speaker 1: legend is, Like what does it say about like love
Speaker 1: and bereavement, you know, the twisted way that our strongest
Speaker 1: positive emotions can become negative emotions. And then ultimately, is
Speaker 1: this story advising us not to love anybody because because
Speaker 1: that alone would protect us from monsters?
Speaker 3: Well, that's a good question. And then I want to
Speaker 3: take that a step further. A lot of horror movies
Speaker 3: have very weakly earned love stories, where you know, the
Speaker 3: characters fall in love with each other, you don't really
Speaker 3: see a lot of reason for them to. You know,
Speaker 3: you don't see a lot of like scenes of chemistry
Speaker 3: of them, you know, finding things they like about one another.
Speaker 3: It just kind of happens because the script says so
Speaker 3: this story, the Vertiloc has a couple of characters who
Speaker 3: seem to fall in love with each other very quickly
Speaker 3: and in this sort of weakly justified way. But I
Speaker 3: wonder if that's not intentional in this case, saying something
Speaker 3: about like falling you know, loving too easily, and there
Speaker 3: being a kind of danger in that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, the character that Damon plays, you do kind
Speaker 1: of feel that, right. It's like, like, what do you do.
Speaker 1: You're so in you're in love. You just met her,
Speaker 1: and you're so in love with her that you are
Speaker 1: going to risk incurring the wrath of her you know,
Speaker 1: undead transformed family. Uh it seems it seems foolish, and
Speaker 1: it seems like, uh, as a fool in a short
Speaker 1: horror work, you are going to be punished for this foolishness.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and it also says something about family. I think,
Speaker 3: because again this will be a minor spoiler, I don't
Speaker 3: think it'll ruin your enjoyment of the segment, which you
Speaker 3: can enjoy even if you read the whole plot ahead
Speaker 3: of time, but warning to spoil the ending. So I
Speaker 3: think it is basically the fact that Mark Damon's character,
Speaker 3: he comes in, he very quickly and maybe unjustifiedly falls
Speaker 3: in love with Stenka, and then Sedenka apparently sort of reciprocates,
Speaker 3: you know, she likes him too, and you get the
Speaker 3: impression that it's interesting that at first Mark Damon's character
Speaker 3: is not really threatened by the Verdilac because he's not
Speaker 3: a member of the family and it only wants its
Speaker 3: own family. But it's once she reciprocates his feelings and
Speaker 3: they fall in love with each other that then he
Speaker 3: is also subject to the threat of having his blood drank,
Speaker 3: drink and drunk, you know, of being attacked by this
Speaker 3: supernatural creature. It's once there is a bond of love
Speaker 3: between him and her that now he is fair game
Speaker 3: for this monster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's there's probably something telling in
Speaker 1: there about attachments, but at the same time, it's like
Speaker 1: he's he clearly is loving strongly and loving deeply, albeit
Speaker 1: very briefly. So maybe it's all worth it. It's worth
Speaker 1: all the anguish and death because the love was that strong.
Speaker 1: It seems to have there is a sort of a
Speaker 1: bittersweet romantic element to the to the way this this
Speaker 1: wraps up.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but I mean, overall every everything else we've
Speaker 3: said about the Verdiloc, the atmosphere is just amazing, and
Speaker 3: there are such wonderful scenes of looking out the window
Speaker 3: and maybe seeing Boris Karloff in his in his purple
Speaker 3: Kurt Vonnegut with the with the shaggy furry hood. Oh god,
Speaker 3: it's just so so good.
Speaker 1: Oh. The sequence with the child crying for the mother,
Speaker 1: well that's super creepy. That one gave me the shivers. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: Another great thing about this sequence is it has a
Speaker 1: great decapitated head. So at this point in my life
Speaker 1: and my film film Going Life, and I imagine you're
Speaker 1: much the same, Joe, I've seen a vast spec of
Speaker 1: decapitated head effects, ranging from just the laughable to the
Speaker 1: you know, at times shockingly realistic. Though it's interesting to
Speaker 1: think of like realistic and non realistic decapitated head effects
Speaker 1: because I think most all of us don't have anything
Speaker 1: to judge it against, you know, And I think that's
Speaker 1: ultimately a good thing. We can't really we don't look
Speaker 1: at a decapitated head and go like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: that's not what a decapitated head looks like. I saw
Speaker 1: a decapitated head this morning.
Speaker 3: To get out my faces of death videos.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but at any rate, I love even a hokey
Speaker 1: beheading effect. But this film has has not one, but
Speaker 1: two beautifully disturbing corpse head sculpts. And these were actually
Speaker 1: created by Mario Baba's father, Eugenio Bava, which I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting. They're both absolutely beautiful and of course terrifying.
Speaker 3: Well, speaking of beautiful and terrifying corpses, we got to
Speaker 3: also mention the third segment in this movie, A Drop
Speaker 3: of Water, which for me, the Vertiloc is the standout.
Speaker 3: But a Drop of Water I thought was also very,
Speaker 3: very good, and it has, I got to say, one
Speaker 3: of the creepiest movie corpses I have ever seen, along
Speaker 3: with a wonderful twist and some really great set and
Speaker 3: lighting choices.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one again. The telephone things are a little
Speaker 1: maybe more subdued, but still pretty brilliant. But subdued for Bava,
Speaker 1: Vertiloc colorful and wonderful and out there. This one too,
Speaker 1: is just just absolutely touching your eyeballs with its color scheme.
Speaker 3: Specifically, the thing that stuck with me most about the
Speaker 3: Drop of Water. There were two things. One is that
Speaker 3: it has this marvelous, creepy corpse design, but the other
Speaker 3: was that the main character in this plays a nurse
Speaker 3: who lives in an apartment that has this oval shaped window,
Speaker 3: and outside the window is a constantly gently seeing green light.
Speaker 3: And I don't know what exactly that was supposed to
Speaker 3: be in terms of realism. I think there's a quick
Speaker 3: shot from outside at first where it's raining out, and
Speaker 3: maybe it's supposed to be some kind of rotating sign
Speaker 3: or something. I'm not quite positive, but the effect within
Speaker 3: the apartment is these pulses of green that are I
Speaker 3: just love it. I love it. I want to live
Speaker 3: in that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That window is absolutely amazing. It's like a horizontal
Speaker 1: oval shape and it has this kind of like iron
Speaker 1: lattice work cross in the middle of it. I have
Speaker 1: never seen anything quite like it. And yeah, and then
Speaker 1: this pulsating light. So this was very much a sequence
Speaker 1: in the film where I think I was a little
Speaker 1: uncertain about like what was supposed to be happening. And
Speaker 1: you know what's supposed to be pulling me along character
Speaker 1: wise or plot wise. But I could not look away
Speaker 1: from that window, and it was reminding me of something too,
Speaker 1: And I realized it was reminding me of a scene
Speaker 1: from the ninth, teen ninety seven sci fi film Event Horizon,
Speaker 1: which which I know you've seen as well, Joe. There's
Speaker 1: a sequence where there is a corpse floating aboard the
Speaker 1: Event Horizon spaceship, and it's floating in front of this
Speaker 1: cross shaped window that has kind of bluish greenish space
Speaker 1: lights pulsating behind it.
Speaker 3: And you think it was influenced by this short.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it was, because, for starters, Event Horizon
Speaker 1: is a film that is not shy about taking inspiration
Speaker 1: from other films. I love it, but like you, like,
Speaker 1: you see the DNA of these other films in it.
Speaker 1: It's all about that, And so yeah, I'm wondering if
Speaker 1: the cinematographer on Event Horizon, an individual by the name
Speaker 1: of Adrian Biddle, who worked on Aliens and Judge Dread
Speaker 1: and various other films. I wonder if this particular scene
Speaker 1: is kind of a nod to Bava, because it feels
Speaker 1: Bava esque you know, it feels it feels like it
Speaker 1: might be a slight tip of the hat.
Speaker 3: Event Horizon could be an interesting movie to come back
Speaker 3: to because I find it to be a very, very strange,
Speaker 3: an unusual combination of very inspired and very hack.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, there's a there.
Speaker 1: I loved Event Horizon when it came out, and then
Speaker 1: when I rewatched it several years ago, there were still
Speaker 1: things I absolutely loved about it, but some things were
Speaker 1: I kind of sighed and groaned at. But still it
Speaker 1: has a place in my heart.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess you could say, much like The Telephone.
Speaker 3: The plot of A Drop of Water is pretty straightforward.
Speaker 3: So a nurse is called out to the apartment of
Speaker 3: a woman that she has been taken care of who
Speaker 3: has just died. And this woman apparently was involved in
Speaker 3: the occult. I think they say that she died during
Speaker 3: a seance. Yeah, And so then the nurse must go
Speaker 3: into the room where her dead body is laying and
Speaker 3: help prepare the corpse. But when she goes into the room,
Speaker 3: she notices that the kidaver here has a splendid, very
Speaker 3: expensive looking piece of jewelry on it, a beautiful ring
Speaker 3: that has maybe a sapphire in it or something, and
Speaker 3: she looks at it and it's like, well, is this
Speaker 3: just you know, is this ring going to go to waste?
Speaker 3: Is this expensive piece of jewelry just gonna go into
Speaker 3: a coffin and then rot in the ground. I could
Speaker 3: grab that thing and take it with me. And then
Speaker 3: you get the sense that the nurse is sort of
Speaker 3: living in poverty like that she could she could use
Speaker 3: a big cash in at the pawn shop.
Speaker 1: She needs buy some curtains to put over that creepy window.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly to.
Speaker 1: Sleep at night.
Speaker 3: So she grabs the ring, but of course I don't
Speaker 3: know if you want to grab the ring off the
Speaker 3: corpse of a lady who just died while being involved
Speaker 3: with the occult right, And so the rest of this
Speaker 3: segment has some wonderful scenes of the haunting of a
Speaker 3: guilty conscience, and then there's also an excellent twist at
Speaker 3: the ending of this segment.
Speaker 4: Two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, i've kind of downplayed the like the plotting of
Speaker 1: Bava films, I guess in general here, but but but yeah,
Speaker 1: I think all three sequences have some fun, some some
Speaker 1: fun plot twists, and some fun developments. You know that
Speaker 1: you don't really know where everything's going to go, and
Speaker 1: things don't follow a clearly defined path, which which is
Speaker 1: rather pleasurable.
Speaker 3: I agree. So I mean, as we were saying at
Speaker 3: the beginning, horror anthologies are often kind of you know,
Speaker 3: your different segments are going to be of different quality.
Speaker 3: But I would say, after, I guess if we're wrapping
Speaker 3: up here at the end, I really enjoyed two out
Speaker 3: of three segments. But if you only check out one
Speaker 3: of the segments from this movie, definitely I would say
Speaker 3: the Vertillac, the Vertillac, the vertill Act.
Speaker 1: Yeah, come for the Vertillac, stay for the drop of water,
Speaker 1: and find something to love in the telephone. Oh but
Speaker 1: then also we should we have to come back to
Speaker 1: our host here because one of the fun things about
Speaker 1: the American International Pictures A release of it is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: we added us this intro bit from Boris Karloth, and
Speaker 1: apparently they filmed some segments of Orris Karloff that would
Speaker 1: have gone between each of the segments, but they didn't
Speaker 1: use those. So we just go from segment one to
Speaker 1: segment two to segment three. But then when segment three ends,
Speaker 1: we come back to Boris Karloff, and weirdly enough, he's
Speaker 1: he's like in his he seems to be in costume
Speaker 1: from the vertiloc He's riding a horse, but he has
Speaker 1: this kind of almost crip keeper esque, you know, javial
Speaker 1: atmosphere about him. And I can't even remember what he's
Speaker 1: telling us because as he's saying, you know, wrapping up
Speaker 1: for everybody, we pan out and we have this kind
Speaker 1: of holy Mountain moment where we pan out and we
Speaker 1: see that it's a set. We see a camera man,
Speaker 1: we see people holding up these bushes that are supposed
Speaker 1: to be you know, rushing past him as he rides
Speaker 1: this horse, and we see that the horse itself is
Speaker 1: just a saddle on, like a fake horse rump that's
Speaker 1: that's being put into motion. And it's such a weird ending.
Speaker 1: I was thinking about it. It's like, why did we
Speaker 1: punctuate this film Black Sabbath, this trio of horrifying tales,
Speaker 1: each with a dark ending. And I was wondering if
Speaker 1: it was because they thought, well, you know, nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: three audiences don't want to go home feeling depressed. They
Speaker 1: need to go home with a smile on their face,
Speaker 1: so we need this, we need a fund in ending,
Speaker 1: we need Boris Karloff reminding them that it's all just
Speaker 1: a movie. It's no, none of this is real. It's
Speaker 1: it was weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not really sure what motivated that ending. Maybe
Speaker 3: just yeah, like you're saying, send them home with a
Speaker 3: smile on their face. But I loved it. Rachel and
Speaker 3: I both really appreciated the pulling back to see especially.
Speaker 3: The best part of it for me was the people
Speaker 3: running around with the potted plants to move them in
Speaker 3: front of the camera to simulate the horse actually traveling
Speaker 3: through stuff in the foreground.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's something I guess thinking to other horror host environments,
Speaker 1: like you need to do one of two things. Either
Speaker 1: you have the horror host punctuate the terror or this
Speaker 1: Cerebriel nature of it, you know, like the voiceover for
Speaker 1: the Outer Limits is all about really driving home the
Speaker 1: serious message of the piece, you know, or if you're
Speaker 1: watching Twilight Zone, it's all about reminding you of how
Speaker 1: dark and mysterious things really are. But the Cryptkeeper, he
Speaker 1: just comes back to make several punny jokes, and so
Speaker 1: you know, what Cora Karloff is doing here is very
Speaker 1: much in the cryptkeeper mode of lightning the mood. I feel,
Speaker 1: all right, well, we're gonna go ahead and close this
Speaker 1: one out, but we recommend everybody. Yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: Halloween season, so if you need a nice gothic atmospheric
Speaker 1: film to watch, check out Black Sabbath. This is also
Speaker 1: a fine one, you know, just to play visually in
Speaker 1: the background. If you just want some really strong visuals,
Speaker 1: this one's This one's good to go. Black Sabbath is
Speaker 1: widely available for digital rental or purchase. Again, I watched
Speaker 1: it on Apple TV by doing a free preview of
Speaker 1: AMC Plus, but it's also widely available on disc and
Speaker 1: clean it, including Keino Classics. They have a blu ray
Speaker 1: of it, though. I guess we'll leave the research to
Speaker 1: you figuring out what version you're about to purchase or rent,
Speaker 1: because yeah, we both watch the Italian language version subtitled,
Speaker 1: but I think there is a dubbed version as well.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the availability on that is. I
Speaker 1: can't speak to it.
Speaker 3: Personally, I can't comment on that, but I do think
Speaker 3: there are different versions that have different levels of sort
Speaker 3: of color saturation and all that. Try to find one
Speaker 3: with the really intense colors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the most important thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The colors speak volumes. The colors speak in ways that
Speaker 1: the dialogue and the subtitles are going to are going
Speaker 1: to pale in comparison to all Right, Well, we'll be
Speaker 1: back next week with another I think thoroughly halloweeny selection.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, you can listen to Weird House
Speaker 1: Cinema every Friday and the Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed We're primarily a science podcast with core episodes
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Artifact on Wednesday, listener mail on Monday,
Speaker 1: but on Fridays we take a little time to just
Speaker 1: discuss a weird film like Black Sabbath.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 3: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 3: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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