Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And today's movie on Weird
Speaker 3: House is the nineteen seventy six Greek or greek Ish
Speaker 3: horror film The Devil's Men, also known as Land of
Speaker 3: the Minotaur. And I'm going to say right at the top,
Speaker 3: this is definitely not one of the best or most
Speaker 3: riveting films we have watched for Weird House Cinema, though
Speaker 3: I think it will still make for a fun episode.
Speaker 3: I almost feel like we were kind of tricked into
Speaker 3: it because there are a lot of names here that
Speaker 3: really want to invite you into the labyrinth. It stars
Speaker 3: Donald Pleasance and Peter Cushing. It's also got Luwan Peters
Speaker 3: and a score by Brian Eno.
Speaker 2: I think that was the kicker, that was the what
Speaker 2: really drew us in. We're like, oh, oh, Brian Eno
Speaker 2: scored this film. Well, of course we want to take
Speaker 2: a closer look as we'll discuss it's I mean, this
Speaker 2: is exceedingly noteworthy, and ultimately I think this is the
Speaker 2: factor that makes this such an interesting hidden gym there
Speaker 2: are a few other production notes that I think make
Speaker 2: it stand out. Again, you mentioned it is a Greek
Speaker 2: or a greek Ish horror film. It was a Greek
Speaker 2: American co production essentially, and we'll get into some of
Speaker 2: those details. But yeah, it has two big stars, it
Speaker 2: has this fabulous score, and unfortunately it doesn't necessarily have
Speaker 2: a lot else to recommend it, but it's still going
Speaker 2: to be fun to talk about.
Speaker 3: The score is really good. I feel like it is
Speaker 3: deserving of a much better movie. It's a modest score, Like,
Speaker 3: there's not a whole lot of it in the film.
Speaker 3: There are like I think maybe like two or three
Speaker 3: main musical motifs that are used multiple times throughout the movie,
Speaker 3: but they're good and they're deserving of a more thought
Speaker 3: full set of images to accompany the sounds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my only critique on the score is that I
Speaker 2: wish there was more of it, because there are plenty
Speaker 2: of scenes where there's no Brian eno. And then also
Speaker 2: I wish it was louder because it is it's so
Speaker 2: subtle that it also actually, at least in my viewing,
Speaker 2: and who knows, you know, stereo settings and so forth.
Speaker 2: I felt like the score wasn't loud enough. The score
Speaker 2: could have been a little louder.
Speaker 3: I agree, and that a lot of the scenes with
Speaker 3: music were just using the same music over and over.
Speaker 3: But did you notice the script had a similar quality.
Speaker 3: There's a very copy paste quality to Land of the Minotaur,
Speaker 3: where characters would have whole scenes where they were only
Speaker 3: saying lines that they had already said in earlier scenes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is not a film where anybody gets any
Speaker 2: good lines. Nobody, whether you're the star top Build, Donald Pleasants,
Speaker 2: whether you're the evil cult leader Peter Cushing, even if
Speaker 2: you're one of the various other smaller players in the picture,
Speaker 2: you don't really to get any cool lines. Nobody has
Speaker 2: anything really cool to say in this movie. Most people
Speaker 2: don't really have anything cool to do in this movie.
Speaker 3: Rob, I'm gonna have to disagree with you about the lines,
Speaker 3: because you were forgetting the part where the character Milo
Speaker 3: says where the devil did the whole village get to?
Speaker 3: And Donald Pleasant answers him You've answered your own question
Speaker 3: to the devil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess we should hit on. An important fact
Speaker 2: concerning this movie at this point is that it is
Speaker 2: essentially a Satanic cult movie of the nineteen seventies, except
Speaker 2: instead of it being outright Satan, there's like some slap
Speaker 2: dash minotaur cult stuff added in instead. But they don't
Speaker 2: even really commit to that, Like they don't even go
Speaker 2: all in on some sort of like ancient religion or
Speaker 2: mythology of crete or some sort of imagined minotar religion.
Speaker 2: Like at one point Donald Pleasant is like, ah, Satan Minotar.
Speaker 2: It's all the same.
Speaker 3: It's all all the same stuff, same thing. There's a
Speaker 3: whole speech about it. Is like the Force with a
Speaker 3: thousand faces and no face at all. It's been around
Speaker 3: since before humankind. Some have called it Mephistopheles, the Devil,
Speaker 3: the Mino Taar. It's all the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So just one of the many ways in which
Speaker 2: this film, you know, is competent and has a lot
Speaker 2: of talented people in it and people doing a very
Speaker 2: professional job, but it doesn't go for it in any
Speaker 2: of the ways that you might expect one of these
Speaker 2: other films to do, both in a positive way in
Speaker 2: a negative way, Like it doesn't even really go for
Speaker 2: any of the really exploitive stuff you might expect. I mean,
Speaker 2: the worst we get is like maybe a little bit
Speaker 2: of blood and then it looks pretty good. We get
Speaker 2: some you know, some basic seventies sexism, but that's about it.
Speaker 2: It's not really an exploitation film at all.
Speaker 3: No, there are scenes where characters just stand around and
Speaker 3: take phone calls naked for no reason.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, and they are very naked in those scenes,
Speaker 2: and I guess the actors involved can be commended for that.
Speaker 2: But that's about the extent now.
Speaker 3: I think, as is often the case with lackluster films,
Speaker 3: a lot of the blame here goes to the script.
Speaker 3: It's just like, not the most engaging story of all time.
Speaker 3: But on the other side, like what is working pretty
Speaker 3: well here? It does have a pretty good cast, though
Speaker 3: most of them are not giving I think, the best
Speaker 3: performances of their careers. It does have that nice Brian
Speaker 3: Nino score, and we'll talk more about that as we
Speaker 3: go on. It also has some really good locations, like
Speaker 3: a lot of the outdoor shots and the stuff in
Speaker 3: the caves and all that. I'm like, oh wow, okay,
Speaker 3: so like they you know, they got permits, I guess,
Speaker 3: to shoot in some very pleasant and interesting looking scenery.
Speaker 2: Yes, solid cave locations, some very gorgeous scenes of the
Speaker 2: Greek countryside. And also I thought they have a pretty
Speaker 2: nice like cult layer set that they built some sort
Speaker 2: of like, you know, sort of gothic dungeon cult kind
Speaker 2: of a set that that's pretty good.
Speaker 3: Now, may we compare and contrast with the other cult
Speaker 3: of Human sacrifice movies that we featured on the show,
Speaker 3: And I guess in order to do that we need
Speaker 3: to remember what all of those are. There is, of course,
Speaker 3: The Devil Rides Out from nineteen sixty eight. That is
Speaker 3: the one that is based on the novel by Dennis Wheatly.
Speaker 2: Is that his name correct? Yeah? And I think one
Speaker 2: of the things about The Devil Rides Out, because it's
Speaker 2: based on that Wheatly novel, is that it aspires to
Speaker 2: a sort of and we discussed this in that in
Speaker 2: Our Weird House on this it aspires to a sort
Speaker 2: of almost documentary feel like Wheatley and or this movie
Speaker 2: is trying to warn you about the real threat of
Speaker 2: the cult, and this movie is just making it all up.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're both, yes, But in The Devil Rides
Speaker 3: Out there, I don't know, there are more interesting dynamics
Speaker 3: about good and evil and all that in this one.
Speaker 3: It's just kind of like the moral of the story
Speaker 3: is that, well, there is a devil, and the devil's
Speaker 3: real and you got to defeat him.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there are all sorts of interesting rules that
Speaker 2: are employed in the Devil rides out, like magic has
Speaker 2: has rules and laws to it, and there are all
Speaker 2: these different examples that were that weakly clearly took out
Speaker 2: of like old witchcraft, grimours and so forth. And again
Speaker 2: you just don't have that in this movie.
Speaker 3: Oh there's another interesting thing, and the Devil rides out
Speaker 3: about how some people have the power, have the fortitude
Speaker 3: to explore the occult without being seduced and destroyed by it,
Speaker 3: and others don't. If they start learning about the occult,
Speaker 3: it's just going to suck him in and they will
Speaker 3: be overpowered. Like Christopher Lee, he can read all the
Speaker 3: occult tons, but simon, you better not read them.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, there is one classification of human that is
Speaker 2: safe in this movie, as we find out, it is
Speaker 2: of course the children.
Speaker 3: So the children here can read the occult tomes unharmed.
Speaker 3: But if you're Peter Cushing and you read them, you
Speaker 3: will not only end up leading a minotar cult, you
Speaker 3: will literally explode at the end of the film. That
Speaker 3: brings me to the second point of comparison. Another movie
Speaker 3: we've talked about on Weird House is The Devil's Rain
Speaker 3: from nineteen seventy five, which is only one year before
Speaker 3: this movie came out. I can't help but notice that
Speaker 3: comparison and the similarity with the titles. So this is
Speaker 3: The Devil's Men, also known as Land of the Minotaur.
Speaker 3: I don't remember which titles for what region, but somewhere
Speaker 3: it was called The Devil's Men. That was The Devil's Rain.
Speaker 3: Both are about a cult doing human sacrifice in a rocky,
Speaker 3: arid landscape. And so I wonder if The Devil's Men
Speaker 3: was trying to use a similar title and a somewhat
Speaker 3: similar ending to kind of steal some of that melt
Speaker 3: juice from the Ernest Borg nine hit.
Speaker 2: Probably so yeah, because The Devil's Men is the US
Speaker 2: released title which came after The Minotaur or Mino tar
Speaker 2: Oh release of the UK, is.
Speaker 3: That it I thought it was the other one around.
Speaker 3: I thought it was The Devil's Men in the UK
Speaker 3: and Land of the Menotaur in the US.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, you could be right. Now, now you have me
Speaker 2: flipped I'm Lost in the Labyrinth. Now it's one of
Speaker 2: the two.
Speaker 3: Now those are the two main satanic cult movies we've
Speaker 3: covered that I can think of others. Oh well, treasurer
Speaker 3: of the Four Crowns had a cult. I don't know
Speaker 3: if that was satanic. It was instead based around that guy.
Speaker 3: What was his name, like, like Johnny the cult leader.
Speaker 3: He had a name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't even remember the name of that guy.
Speaker 2: I can picture him though. This is an interesting dynamic
Speaker 2: to point out because I think the Devil Rides out
Speaker 2: in The Devil's Reign are both a lot more entertaining
Speaker 2: compared to The Devil's Men. Yeah, and I think those
Speaker 2: are ultimately perhaps better movies. You know, this is all subjective.
Speaker 2: I would say Treasure of the Four Crowns is definitely
Speaker 2: a worse movie than The Devil's Men, but it is
Speaker 2: more fun to watch because it is so stupid and
Speaker 2: the Devil's Men it's like on one one it's not
Speaker 2: you know, it kind of falls into that sort of
Speaker 2: lukewarm category in some ways because it's not it's not
Speaker 2: bad enough or stupid enough. It doesn't have wonky enough
Speaker 2: performances to really make it fall into that, you know,
Speaker 2: cheesy movie territory, but it doesn't again, just doesn't really
Speaker 2: go for it in so many other areas.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have the wall to wall mad cap three
Speaker 3: D effects of Treasure of the Four Crowns.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, imagine if this said three D would have
Speaker 2: worked in a few scenes.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I wonder if I can know which
Speaker 3: ones your thinking of three D nostrils blasting fire in
Speaker 3: your face?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Now beyond that, did the Blind Dead movie we did
Speaker 3: have a cult? I don't remember if that had a
Speaker 3: blood cult or not.
Speaker 2: Well, the Templars are depicted as a blood cult in that,
Speaker 2: and of course the whole setup is they were a
Speaker 2: blood cult, then they're all dead, and then like the
Speaker 2: lone troublesome occultist in town helps them return from the dead.
Speaker 2: Way we talked about return to the Blind Dead. So
Speaker 2: I can't really speak to Tomb of the Blind Dead
Speaker 2: the first one because I haven't seen it forever. But yeah,
Speaker 2: similar stuff going on. But I think even more key
Speaker 2: is that while this movie is filmed in Greece, it
Speaker 2: still has a similar feel compared to the Blind Dead movies.
Speaker 2: You know, dry, dusty walls and ruins used as a
Speaker 2: backdrop for some sort of in a cult story.
Speaker 3: Now there's one thing I think some of the better
Speaker 3: satanic cult movies do that most of the movies we've
Speaker 3: talked about don't really do. I guess the Devil rides
Speaker 3: Out sort of did is show the advantages one gets
Speaker 3: from worshiping the devil. So that's, you know, classically there
Speaker 3: in like Rosemary's Baby, it's like, you know, you make
Speaker 3: a pact with the devil. Oh, hey, suddenly I'm financially
Speaker 3: doing better and I'm getting a part in this play
Speaker 3: and all the you know, the devil is in exchange
Speaker 3: for your worship and the evil deeds you do in
Speaker 3: his service, he sort of does favors for you. He
Speaker 3: does some magic to help you along with to attain
Speaker 3: your goals. A lot of these movies don't even have that,
Speaker 3: so you're kind of left wondering, like, what's in it
Speaker 3: for the cultists? Why are they worshiping a minotaur or
Speaker 3: a devil? I don't even see that they're getting anything
Speaker 3: out of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess sometimes it's in the performance,
Speaker 2: like you know, borgnine looks like he's having a good time,
Speaker 2: and of course that when to be fair, there is
Speaker 2: the whole plot line that's established that they have been
Speaker 2: alive for over one hundred years because maybe centuries I
Speaker 2: don't recall, but they have vastly extended their lives because
Speaker 2: of their pact with the devil. In this, I guess
Speaker 2: we sort of assume wealth has something to do with it,
Speaker 2: but otherwise we don't see any real results.
Speaker 3: I don't know, a lot of these cultists don't seem
Speaker 3: all that wealthy, Like Peter Cushing's character is wealthy, but
Speaker 3: most of them are like, oh the town, the innkeeper
Speaker 3: and the guy who works in the grocery store, they're
Speaker 3: in the cult. What are they are they doing all
Speaker 3: that hot?
Speaker 2: I guess it's a pyramid scheme, you know, That's all
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 3: Gotten the cult too late. They're trying to get some
Speaker 3: more recruits into their downline.
Speaker 2: Mm hm.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine the pyramid scheme pitch? But it's in
Speaker 3: the minotaur voice from the movie, like the statues talking
Speaker 3: saying bring me three to five of your Facebook friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can very well imagine that. In the accoumpning
Speaker 2: booklet for the Blu Ray that we'll mention here in
Speaker 2: a minute, Andrew Graves mentions some other influences. He mentions
Speaker 2: the Devil rides Out, He mentions the Devils. Also mentions
Speaker 2: the Wickerman from seventy three, which I thought is another
Speaker 2: great comparison, because the wicker Man, of course, is like
Speaker 2: the English folk carror film, you know, par excellence. You know,
Speaker 2: it's the one that you think of when you think
Speaker 2: of like the lineage of British folk car and this
Speaker 2: movie kind of aspires to a kind of Greek folk
Speaker 2: car but again doesn't really go for it, you know,
Speaker 2: doesn't really give us something that we can latch onto here.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, again, because it has so little interaction with
Speaker 3: any actual Greek mythology or any of the particulars or
Speaker 3: the feel of the minotaur itself. As we said, it
Speaker 3: is just sort of like, oh the minotaur, that's just
Speaker 3: another kind of devil. That's you know, there's a devil
Speaker 3: in one of his forms is it's a bullhead horns,
Speaker 3: and there's not much else to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So a lot of missed opportunities here with this film,
Speaker 2: but there's there's still some fun stuff to talk about here.
Speaker 2: My elevator pitch, I don't have a great one here,
Speaker 2: but I just went with ambient six sixty six. Music
Speaker 2: for satanic minotar cults.
Speaker 3: Yeah, music for blood gutters.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The actual tagline, or one of the taglines for
Speaker 2: the film I thought was extremely deceptive. Half man, half
Speaker 2: beast trapped in a world forgotten by time. Huh. Great,
Speaker 2: not this movie, but it sounds great.
Speaker 3: I feel like it would be equally appropriate if that
Speaker 3: were the tagline for Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, let's go ahead and listen to the
Speaker 2: trailer audio. It is a pretty fun trailer. I don't
Speaker 2: actually recommend watching the trailer if you intend to see
Speaker 2: the film in full, because it does that thing where
Speaker 2: they take whatever action they can find in this movie
Speaker 2: and they cobble all of it together into this trailer,
Speaker 2: like you see stuff from the finale in there as well.
Speaker 2: But still it's a fun one. So let's have a listen.
Speaker 4: Madden, come with us. If you dare on a terrifying
Speaker 4: journey through cells of madness, haunts of horror and fear,
Speaker 4: Come with us to this forsaken monument of crumbling stones,
Speaker 4: which echoes the desolate cries of the Descend with us
Speaker 4: to the forbidden chambers of the ancient pagan gods of wrath,
Speaker 4: where the Devil's Men perform the secret ritless of the
Speaker 4: Land of the Mento. Those who enter the forbidden chamber
Speaker 4: of the Minotaur must die. The Land of the Minotaur.
Speaker 4: Donald bless us as the man of God who defies
Speaker 4: the dark and sinister powers that curse this land and
Speaker 4: all who venture into it. The Devil has many faces,
Speaker 4: and many helpless too.
Speaker 2: Come out of.
Speaker 4: Peter Cushing as the red Prince of Evil who lures
Speaker 4: young lovers into the deadly embrace of the Devil's Men.
Speaker 4: The old customs remain, and the ancient gods live off.
Speaker 4: The bullets cannot stop them, No really power can stop them.
Speaker 4: The Land of a Minotaur the most terrifying film of
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy seven. Coming to this theater soon. Don't miss it.
Speaker 2: All right. I want to take issue with this trailer's
Speaker 2: claim that this is quote the most terrifying film of
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven. Note that it was released in the
Speaker 2: UK and Greece in seventy six, and then in the
Speaker 2: US and seventy seven, Because if this state were true
Speaker 2: at all, it would mean that The Devil's Men is
Speaker 2: more terrifying than such films as Alukarda, Blue Sunshine, The Deep,
Speaker 2: Demon Seed, Eraser head House, The Incredible Melting Man, The
Speaker 2: Island of Doctor Moreau, Cronenberg's Rabid Rituals, Rolling Thunder, The Sentinel,
Speaker 2: Mario Baba's Shock, Shock Waves, Sorcerer, and Suspiria. Wow. So granted,
Speaker 2: it's you know, pure marketing. Everything's fair in marketing. If
Speaker 2: no one else is going to say you have the
Speaker 2: most terrifying film with seventy seven, you might as well
Speaker 2: say it. But I don't think a strong case can
Speaker 2: be made for The Devil's Men over these films.
Speaker 3: Now when it comes to ways of watching The Devil's
Speaker 3: Men or the Land of the Minotaur. This is actually
Speaker 3: a movie I became aware of a while back. It
Speaker 3: might have been when we did our core episodes on
Speaker 3: the Minotaur myth, I'm not sure. Sometime in the past
Speaker 3: few years I found out about this and the streaming
Speaker 3: version I found of it online. At the time, I
Speaker 3: wanted to watch, but the quality was like so bad
Speaker 3: it looked unwatchable. But there's actually a very nice blu
Speaker 3: ray or DVD whichever it is that we watched it.
Speaker 3: But I guess it was a Blu ray and it
Speaker 3: looked really good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a terrific Blu ray release from Indicator.
Speaker 2: I don't think they put out a lot of copies
Speaker 2: of this is one of these, like limited to however
Speaker 2: many thousand in the US, but it, you know, reasonably priced.
Speaker 2: Includes a new two K restoration from the original negative,
Speaker 2: two different cuts of the film, lots of other extras,
Speaker 2: so you know, whatever faults you might have with the
Speaker 2: movie itself, like this is a This is a great
Speaker 2: presentation of it and has some great background. There's some
Speaker 2: commentary tracks, so I highly recommend it if you if
Speaker 2: you are inclined to view the movie. We're going to
Speaker 2: pass our copy of it onto Videodrome here in Atlanta
Speaker 2: after we're done with it, so you might be able
Speaker 2: to rent it from them if you happen to be local.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get into the people involved in this movie.
Speaker 2: And I'm gonna go ahead and apologize at the top here.
Speaker 2: We're dealing with some Greek names here, and it's entirely possible,
Speaker 2: if not likely, that I'm going to mispronounce something. The
Speaker 2: director is Costas Karagaianis, who lived nineteen thirty two through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three, a very established Greek director of various genres,
Speaker 2: but this was his first and only horror film. He'd
Speaker 2: done some thrillers, it looks like. But in some of
Speaker 2: the commentary I've read, a lot of people touch on
Speaker 2: this that this is the only time he dipped his
Speaker 2: toes in horror, and perhaps it shows in his unwillingness
Speaker 2: or I don't know, just inability. I don't know how
Speaker 2: you want to look at it, but the fact that
Speaker 2: it doesn't really go after those horror moments the way
Speaker 2: that other horror films would have. So, you know, because
Speaker 2: while he draws on a lot on various setenic called
Speaker 2: horror films, the horror, the tear, the suspense elements in
Speaker 2: this film often feel a little bit blunted. We get
Speaker 2: some great ambiance in places, and certainly with the aid
Speaker 2: of ENO's score, we get a strong dreamlike flavor to
Speaker 2: various scenes, but I feel like these scenes are often lacking,
Speaker 2: again in that special something to push them over the
Speaker 2: top and make them actually memorable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, I think I mean, for one thing,
Speaker 3: I think we have something of a problem that, like
Speaker 3: the the main monster in this film is actually just
Speaker 3: a statue, and it's not that scary looking of a statue.
Speaker 3: It's sort of more on the funny looking side. And
Speaker 3: so that's the main monster. And then we've got some
Speaker 3: cult members who where you know, anytime you put somebody
Speaker 3: in creepy cult robes with hoods, that looks creepy, but
Speaker 3: they're they're still not really used much. I mean, they're
Speaker 3: like some scenes where they they like peek in a
Speaker 3: window to scare some but then they like pull their
Speaker 3: head back out of the window when the person sees them,
Speaker 3: and it just looks funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean yeah, because there are shots where the
Speaker 2: cult members are scary and you see those eyes behind
Speaker 2: the mask and all, but yeah, other times not so much.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they're bulletproof, and that's never explained either.
Speaker 3: Dumble Pleasance makes reference to that almost as if it's
Speaker 3: like a known thing about cult members. He's like, they
Speaker 3: can't be destroyed by At one point, I think he says,
Speaker 3: the force of an automobile is not enough to destroy
Speaker 3: them because they hit a cult member with the car.
Speaker 3: But he's fine.
Speaker 2: I guess that's the this is the benefit. This is
Speaker 2: the fringe benefit for worshiping the Minota. Now Cagan is here.
Speaker 2: His other big films for the Greek market included nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three's Tango of Perversion, nineteen seventy four's Death Kiss,
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy seven's Dangerous Cargo. Again, this was partially
Speaker 2: a Greek production, but you had outside money coming in.
Speaker 2: Interestingly enough, I think some Getty money was involved in
Speaker 2: funding this particular picture.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 2: They were involved in the film production for a while there. Huh.
Speaker 2: All right. The rider here is Arthur Rowe, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three through nineteen ninety eight, an American rider
Speaker 2: with TV writing credits going back into the early nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: eventually including episodes of such shows as Kuljak, The Knight Stalker,
Speaker 2: The Bionic Woman, and Fantasy Island. Those last two he
Speaker 2: was also a producer on those. He wrote three other
Speaker 2: screenplays that made it to that made it to film.
Speaker 2: Those include nineteen seventy one Zeppelin, nineteen seventy two's The
Speaker 2: Magnificent Seven Ride. I assume it's a sequel. It sounds
Speaker 2: like it's an actual ride though, but you know, like
Speaker 2: you were with the ride at Universal Studios. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's it's a movie. I don't know anything about it. Also,
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy six Coljack TV movie Demon and the Mummy.
Speaker 3: Was there supernatural stuff in Coljak Yeah? Yeah, Oh okay,
Speaker 3: I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that was a fun show back back back
Speaker 2: in the day. I I mean, I didn't watch it
Speaker 2: back in the day, but I watched it at some point,
Speaker 2: like on sci Fi Channel in nineties.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I've never seen it. I assumed it was
Speaker 3: an earthy, realistic cop thriller.
Speaker 2: Yeah what Darren McGavin, I believe played the lead in that.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get down into the cast of this film, though,
Speaker 2: top billing goes to Donald Pleasants, who plays Father Roach
Speaker 2: in this lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen ninety five. This
Speaker 2: is our first Donald Pleasants film, famous British actor of stage,
Speaker 2: screen and TV. He was reportedly offered the villain role
Speaker 2: for this picture but said nope, he would only do
Speaker 2: it if you got to play the hero, as he
Speaker 2: was a bit burnout. I'm playing the villains at the time,
Speaker 2: because of course he's a member of the Bond Villain Club.
Speaker 2: Having played the Bond villain Blowfield in nineteen sixty seven's
Speaker 2: You Only Live Twice.
Speaker 3: It's blow Fell, Drob. I know you're not a Bond fan,
Speaker 3: but it's Blowfeld. He Blowfel, not Blowfield. Blowfeld hu Bofield.
Speaker 2: Sounds like more of an actual name. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Blowfeld is Springfield exactly. He has a secret volcano layer
Speaker 3: and you Only Live twice. And you only live twice
Speaker 3: is the one where Blowfeld feeds his victims to piranhas.
Speaker 3: So he has like a bridge leading to his office,
Speaker 3: and when you're walking over the bridge, if he's unhappy
Speaker 3: with you, he presses a button, the bridge collapses and
Speaker 3: you fall into the Piranha pit.
Speaker 2: Hmm. I remember enjoying this one as a child, watching
Speaker 2: it on Turner channels and stuff. I think there's what
Speaker 2: a airplane that folds into a suitcase. There are ninjas,
Speaker 2: and then there's a lot of a lot of racial
Speaker 2: stuff that probably hasn't aged well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is a really unfortunate whole sequence where they
Speaker 3: attempt to turn James Bond Japanese and yeah, it's it's weird,
Speaker 3: but the villain stuff in it is pretty good.
Speaker 2: Now I think you can see the impact of that
Speaker 2: role on subsequent Donald Pleasant's villain rolls. You know that
Speaker 2: sort of detched, gray eyed mastermind sort of performance, which,
Speaker 2: again Pleasants is a solid professional, So it's solid stuff
Speaker 2: even in some really lackluster films. But the thing about
Speaker 2: Pleasance is he did a lot more than just those
Speaker 2: villain roles. We see in this film, a kind of
Speaker 2: hint of what was to come with his Doctor Loomis
Speaker 2: performance in the Halloween franchise. He had a memorable role
Speaker 2: in the Great Escape from nineteen sixty three, which was
Speaker 2: itself quite fitting because Donald Pleasant served in the RAF
Speaker 2: during World War II, was captured and imprisoned in a
Speaker 2: German prisoner of war camp.
Speaker 3: Oh I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he has a pretty interesting filmography, but just
Speaker 2: considering horror and sci fi, his credits include a nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty six TV adaptation of nineteen eighty four nineteen sixties
Speaker 2: The Flesh and the Fimes with Peter Cushing, Circus of Horrors,
Speaker 2: and the Hands of Orlock in nineteen sixty nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: six is Fantastic Voyage, THHX eleven thirty eight and nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one one Tales that witness Madness in seventy three,
Speaker 2: From Beyond the Grave and Mutations in seventy four, an
Speaker 2: adaptation of Dracula in seventy nine, The Puma Man in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty Puma Man. Puma Man is a great example
Speaker 2: of him being asked to do the Bond villain thing
Speaker 2: in a movie that is clearly not the best.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to remember whether the villain role I'm thinking
Speaker 3: of him in is the one from Puma Man or
Speaker 3: the one from Warrior of the Lost World.
Speaker 2: That's right, because that's another one where he does the
Speaker 2: same thing, is asked to do the same That's eighty
Speaker 2: three Sandwich. In between these two, You've got to Escape
Speaker 2: from New York. In eighty one, that's a rather different
Speaker 2: role for him.
Speaker 3: He plays the President of the United States of America.
Speaker 2: I remember reading about him talking about that role where
Speaker 2: he's like, yeah, Carpenter asked me to play this role,
Speaker 2: and so I had to work out why a British
Speaker 2: person would become President of the United States and had
Speaker 2: all this background material, and then he asked if Carpenter
Speaker 2: wanted to read it, and Carpenter is like, now, I'm good,
Speaker 2: but I like that commitment. The professionalism.
Speaker 3: You know, the part when he's getting into the egg
Speaker 3: shaped escape pod from Air Force one and he says like, man,
Speaker 3: God being with you all.
Speaker 2: It's a I mean, it's a pretty good performance in
Speaker 2: Escape from New York. You know he especially later on
Speaker 2: in the film where he's he's a little it's more
Speaker 2: of a raw performance, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Other filmsles see eighty twos Alone in the Dark Phenomena
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty five. This is the Dario Argento film, right.
Speaker 3: That's right with him and Jennifer Connelly and one of
Speaker 3: the craziest giallo plots of all time.
Speaker 2: Let's see To Kill a Stranger in eighty six, Warrior
Speaker 2: Queen in eighty seven, Specters and Prince of Darkness in
Speaker 2: eighty seven. And in nineteen eighty eight, he's in that
Speaker 2: nos Faratu in Venice movie. This is the one where
Speaker 2: Klaskinski was asked to reprise his role as nos Faratu,
Speaker 2: asked to shave his head and report to set, and
Speaker 2: he was like, I'm not shaved my head this time.
Speaker 2: And obviously there were a lot of problems with that movie,
Speaker 2: but not pleasants. You can count unpleasants. He's a rock.
Speaker 3: You know, if we ever wanted to do a John
Speaker 3: Carpenter movie, I feel like we could do Prints of Darkness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that one would be a good selection. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's put a pin in that one. Consider coming back
Speaker 2: to it. Great cast, weird film. Yeah, now real quick.
Speaker 2: A few other things on Pleasants. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: touch on everything he was in because again, all sorts
Speaker 2: of different genres, but I will say he has a
Speaker 2: very fun and very spirited role as a blue collar
Speaker 2: police inspector in nineteen seventy two's Deathline. That it's one
Speaker 2: of those terrific performances that completely elevates a film and
Speaker 2: also is very much against type, at least for what
Speaker 2: many of us might expect of Donald pleasants. If you're
Speaker 2: a pleasance fan, check that one out. It's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. I've also heard great things about his performance
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventy one Australian new wave thriller Wake
Speaker 2: and Fright from seventy one. A lot of people hold
Speaker 2: that up is kind of an excellent buried gem.
Speaker 3: Oh never heard of it?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Another thing, did you mention that he appears not only
Speaker 3: in the first Halloween movie but in many Halloween sequels,
Speaker 3: including sequels after he was killed in the previous film.
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, I'm not as familiar with the various
Speaker 2: Halloween sequels past two. I think.
Speaker 3: Okay, so you remember at the end of Halloween two,
Speaker 3: he's definitely dead, right, just explodes, huge ball of fire.
Speaker 2: He's dead. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Part three, no doll. Pleasants, totally story, we know.
Speaker 2: I kind of forget that it's part of the Halloween
Speaker 2: franchise because it's Yeah, obviously I'm familiar with three.
Speaker 3: Right, Four he's just back. He's back, just some I think,
Speaker 3: some scars on his face, and then I don't remember
Speaker 3: what happens to him at the end of four, but
Speaker 3: he's back again in five.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. Also, just real quick, I'll note that he
Speaker 2: also did a lot of TV. He was on the
Speaker 2: original Twilight Zone, the original Outer Limits, and then much
Speaker 2: later at the Bradbury Theater. Pretty good, pretty good. I
Speaker 2: believe four of his daughters went into acting as well,
Speaker 2: with the most notable being Angela Pleasants, who did quite
Speaker 2: well for herself on stage, screen and TV. She's been
Speaker 2: in a load of things.
Speaker 3: One last thing you didn't mention, Donald Pleasance was the
Speaker 3: spirit of dark and lonely water.
Speaker 2: Yes, of course this was a like a public service
Speaker 2: TV bit right that was warning children to stay away
Speaker 2: from the dark and lonely water, stay away from those
Speaker 2: green pools, lest dark fate fall upon you.
Speaker 3: I think we talked about this in our episodes on
Speaker 3: Jinny Green Teeth.
Speaker 2: But yes, yeah, stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 3: Episode Yeah, narrated by Donald Pleasance.
Speaker 2: All right, again, Peter Cushing is in this playing Barren CHLOROPHYX.
Speaker 2: We're not gonna spend a lot of time talking about
Speaker 2: Cushing here in this part because we've covered Cushing before.
Speaker 2: He lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen ninety four, kind of
Speaker 2: a weird, weird house cinema standard at this point. I
Speaker 2: think the first time we discussed him was in our
Speaker 2: episode on shock Waves, which came out the same year
Speaker 2: as this. You know, this is what can you say?
Speaker 2: This is Hammer's Doctor Frankenstein, this is Star Wars's Grand
Speaker 2: Moth Tarkan. So he's always solid, whether he's playing a
Speaker 2: villain or a hero. Though this is, as Graves points
Speaker 2: out in the material on the Blu Ray later day Cushing,
Speaker 2: during which he's generally more memorable and smaller, more intense
Speaker 2: roles rather than bigger villain roles or you know, more
Speaker 2: pronounced roles like this.
Speaker 3: I want to say he seemed especially angular in this film.
Speaker 3: Like Cushing always has a striking face with very sharp features,
Speaker 3: but in this movie, it's just ridiculous his head. I
Speaker 3: was trying to think what it reminded me of, and
Speaker 3: I realized he looks like a Boss from the original
Speaker 3: Star Fox video game, where it's just polygons, the angles,
Speaker 3: the corners. It's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can see the comparison. It is a very
Speaker 2: stark face. I mean, when he was a younger man,
Speaker 2: he still had a very stark face, and here he's
Speaker 2: you know, he's leaner, he's older. You know. I think
Speaker 2: at this point he'd been through some you know, some
Speaker 2: intense personal loss. His wife of many years had died
Speaker 2: earlier in the seventies, and I think that kind of
Speaker 2: cast a shadow on him personally for a good decade there,
Speaker 2: if not the rest of his life. But again, consummate professional,
Speaker 2: very talented, even in a role like this that isn't
Speaker 2: really asking him to go beyond any anywhere, you know,
Speaker 2: even even though he doesn't really do anything all that
Speaker 2: memorable it's still nice when he's on screen. All right?
Speaker 2: Who else is in this thing? Okay? We have lou
Speaker 2: N Peters playing Laurie. Lou N Peters lived nineteen forty
Speaker 2: six through twenty seventeen, also sometimes known as Carol Keys,
Speaker 2: beautiful blonde English actress and singer. She started out on
Speaker 2: TV in the late sixties, but eventually became a hammer
Speaker 2: horror star after appearing in nineteen seventy one's Lust for
Speaker 2: a Vampire and Twins of Evil, which had Peter Cushing
Speaker 2: in it.
Speaker 3: Peter Cushing plays a kind of witch finder inquisitor sort
Speaker 3: of character in that he's the very stern church like
Speaker 3: uncle of the twins of the titular Twins of Evil.
Speaker 2: Ah are the twins themselves evil? Or are they just
Speaker 2: aw of evil?
Speaker 3: Only one of them is evil? One becomes the sort
Speaker 3: of vampire bride of Count Carnstein.
Speaker 2: Is that what he is?
Speaker 3: He's the guy in the So there's like an evil
Speaker 3: count in the movie who is a Satan worshiper. He
Speaker 3: has dinner parties where he lifts his goblet and says
Speaker 3: to Satan, and he seduces one of the two twins,
Speaker 3: and that and she becomes evil, but the other one
Speaker 3: is good.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, all right. Her other Lun Peter's other horror
Speaker 2: credits include the Flesh and Blood Show from seventy two,
Speaker 2: Vampira from nineteen seventy four, but I have to stress
Speaker 2: not the seemingly lost German TV movie Vampira, directed by
Speaker 2: George Morse, starring Grisha Huber and with an early score
Speaker 2: by Tangerine Dream. I'd love to get my hands on this.
Speaker 2: If you have a copy of this, email us. But
Speaker 2: no Peters was in the Vampira movie that is also
Speaker 2: known as Old Dracula.
Speaker 3: I don't know that one.
Speaker 2: It's not supposed to be very good. Her TV credits
Speaker 2: include two episodes of Doctor Who and a memorable gag
Speaker 2: on Faulty Towers. I included a screenshot from this for
Speaker 2: You Hear Joe, as well as one of her album covers.
Speaker 2: So yeah, she was quite a fairly successful back in
Speaker 2: the day.
Speaker 3: Love Countdown is the Leun Peters album.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's wearing like gold pants.
Speaker 3: Gold pants, yellow top, blonde hair, sort of gold background
Speaker 3: with gold lettering it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right. We also have a character named Milo
Speaker 2: that's going to be important, played by Kostas Kara Georgis,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen thirty eight through nineteen eighty nine. So
Speaker 2: his character in this is an American playboy who spends
Speaker 2: the first couple of scenes naked in New York, not
Speaker 2: on the streets, like in a like a penthouse apartment.
Speaker 2: But the actor is a Greek leading man.
Speaker 3: He looks like he's in a room at the playboy mansion,
Speaker 3: but in all of his scenes in his room there's
Speaker 3: like church organ music playing in the background. Did you
Speaker 3: notice that?
Speaker 2: I didn't notice that.
Speaker 3: What's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So this may be his best known international film,
Speaker 2: but his other works include nineteen sixty two Sky, nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy three's Love on a Horse, and nineteen seventy seven's
Speaker 2: Dangerous Cargo, which we referenced earlier. He's kind of a young,
Speaker 2: prematurely gray or white haired fella, and I think he's
Speaker 2: ultimately he's good in this, but again it's this is
Speaker 2: a hard film to gauge anyone's talent on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think the actor is bad. I think
Speaker 3: it's a very poorly written part. His character is very flat,
Speaker 3: like he just has basically one type of line, which
Speaker 3: is I'm a detective. I need facts, stop with your
Speaker 3: day dreaming.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like a private detective that I this film.
Speaker 2: I'm really floored by what the actual connections between any
Speaker 2: given character is to another. Like, yes, we have this
Speaker 2: basic idea that Donald pleasants, this kind of Catholic priest
Speaker 2: has like this, this long standing relationship with these these
Speaker 2: young folk that have gone out all over the world.
Speaker 2: But I don't know what that was like he was
Speaker 2: he a teacher, did he raise them? I don't. I
Speaker 2: just don't know.
Speaker 3: They don't make it seem like that. So yeah, but
Speaker 3: it's very perplexing. He he's father Roach. Father Roche sorry
Speaker 3: for Roche, is an Irish priest living in Greece who
Speaker 3: constantly has American archaeology students coming to live at his
Speaker 3: house while they do archaeology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in his main finding characteristics are, you know, likes
Speaker 2: the young people, he's hip with the young people, loves
Speaker 2: God of course, hates minotar.
Speaker 3: Cults, hates the devil. He's really not into the devil.
Speaker 3: But yeah, also, like you said, it would be one
Speaker 3: thing if he was like, oh, yeah, I run a
Speaker 3: hostel for traveling students or something, but it's not like that.
Speaker 3: It's like he knows all of these students from long before.
Speaker 3: He's like, oh, I remember you when you were just
Speaker 3: a child. So does he Where does he know him from?
Speaker 2: Was there another movie we were supposed to have watched
Speaker 2: or something?
Speaker 3: You know, I think they're trying to set up a
Speaker 3: sequel to this movie at the very.
Speaker 2: He did do that at the end, yeah, where they're like,
Speaker 2: well the evil is defeated for today.
Speaker 3: But he turns to Milo and he's like, I may
Speaker 3: need your help in films yet to come.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if the Getty money continues to pour in, we
Speaker 2: may have another adventure.
Speaker 3: But also so that those are our three main characters
Speaker 3: when we've got father, Father, Roche, Milo and Laurie that
Speaker 3: they're they're the three main casts starting at like a
Speaker 3: third of the way in. But also, this movie has
Speaker 3: too many characters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a whole bunch of other characters who
Speaker 2: really don't do much other than behave in a sexist
Speaker 2: manner and then get kidnapped by minotar cults. So we
Speaker 2: have Bob Belling playing Tom Belling lived I believe nineteen
Speaker 2: forty four through nineteen seventy seven. These dates are not
Speaker 2: listed on the major databases, but I spoken around. I
Speaker 2: think they're correct, but they could be incorrect. American actor
Speaker 2: and model who worked extensively in Greece for a while,
Speaker 2: appearing in at least five films, but I'm to understand
Speaker 2: he also did some modeling work. Three of his films
Speaker 2: were all released in seventy six. This a kind of
Speaker 2: Greek jallo film called The Hook, and a notorious video
Speaker 2: nasty titled Island of Death, about a pair of British
Speaker 2: newlyweds who seem like they're just on a honeymoon and
Speaker 2: enjoying life, but then they go on a religious, murderous
Speaker 2: rampage through rural Greece. It's kind of universally reviled and
Speaker 2: was seemingly his final film before his possible untimely death. Again,
Speaker 2: I'm not one hundred percent sure on these dates, but
Speaker 2: that seems to be the story.
Speaker 3: I noticed in this movie when I was first watching it,
Speaker 3: I saw an actor. I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: Brad Douriff's in this. It wasn't Brad Dourif, but at
Speaker 3: certain angles, this actor looks a lot like Brad Douraf,
Speaker 3: except more with a kind of football player physique.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he has a great look, you know,
Speaker 2: like clearly he's he's like a cut leading man type
Speaker 2: with this kind of like rugged seventies hair and face. Again,
Speaker 2: he doesn't really get to do much in this and
Speaker 2: once he's kidnapped by the Minotaur cult, like that's it.
Speaker 2: You're tied up for the remainder of scenes.
Speaker 3: I guess you wouldn't think that brad Dorof could so
Speaker 3: easily with a few tweaks go into like total hunk mode.
Speaker 3: But yeah, he's pretty close already. Sorry, we just got
Speaker 3: sidetracked with a significant off mic conversation about which guy
Speaker 3: was which, whether which Tom was witch character and Ian
Speaker 3: was which character. But I think all the stuff you
Speaker 3: just said we are talking about the same guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There, the secondary young people are easily confused in
Speaker 2: this film, all right. We also have an actor named
Speaker 2: Jane Lyle who plays Milo's girlfriend dates unknown British model.
Speaker 2: I think she plays the wife in Island of the
Speaker 2: Dead opposite Belling. These are her only film credits, though
Speaker 2: there is also sometimes a third credit nineteen seventy eight's
Speaker 2: Erotic Nightmare. Is she a great actor? Probably not, but
Speaker 2: to be fair, she's given very little to do in
Speaker 2: this film other than be naked in that penthouse in
Speaker 2: New York. One last person of note is that this
Speaker 2: film also features Jessica Dublin playing Miss Zagross. She lived
Speaker 2: nineteen eighteen through twenty twelve, another American actor who is
Speaker 2: working in Europe at the time. Her credits go all
Speaker 2: the way back to nineteen sixty nine, but then with
Speaker 2: a lot of early work in eurocinema, she appeared in
Speaker 2: The Hook, Death Has Blue Eyes, The Devil's Men. Of course,
Speaker 2: She's also an Island of Death all in seventy six.
Speaker 2: But then she eventually moves back to the States and
Speaker 2: appears in the nineteen eighty eight horror movie The Rejuvenator,
Speaker 2: and also several trauma films, including Trauma's War in eighty
Speaker 2: eight and Toxic Avenger two and three in eighty nine.
Speaker 3: Haven't seen those, and please don't tell me we're going
Speaker 3: to start doing trauma films.
Speaker 2: I you know, off the top of my head, I
Speaker 2: don't know that I've ever watched one in its entirety.
Speaker 2: I remember seeing parts of them on TV back in
Speaker 2: the nineties. But yeah, so listener recommendations, let us let's happen.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're you know, they embrace the cheese, and
Speaker 3: I feel like they're the kind of film that, on
Speaker 3: paper would be something that we should enjoy, but I
Speaker 3: just don't like them.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's talk about the music. What do
Speaker 2: you want to talk about first? You want to talk
Speaker 2: about eno or do you want to talk about the
Speaker 2: theme song that we get at the credits?
Speaker 3: Oh? Man, how about that rockin theme song?
Speaker 2: Yeah? This is It's titled The Devil's Men, with music
Speaker 2: by Carl Jenkins, who I think, unless I'm confused here,
Speaker 2: I believe as a Welsh composer born nineteen forty four,
Speaker 2: lyrics by Carol Ann Barrett. And then the singer is
Speaker 2: Paul Williams, though not that Paul Williams, a different Paul.
Speaker 2: This is the English blues and rock singer Paul Williams
Speaker 2: who was in the band Zoot Money and Juicy Lucy.
Speaker 2: Juicy Lucy apparently also featured future Whitesnake guitarist Nick Moody.
Speaker 3: Juicy Lucy's album titles sound like spinal tap albums. One
Speaker 3: of them is pretty much called Smell the Glove. It's
Speaker 3: I don't really I'm not familiar with this band much,
Speaker 3: but this track was rockin it felt like, you know,
Speaker 3: it had a little bit of I was trying to
Speaker 3: think what reminded me of Black Sabbath about it, and
Speaker 3: I think maybe it was the drums. It had some
Speaker 3: kind of more interesting, kind of jazzy drum fills like
Speaker 3: Bill Ward does on some Black Sabbath songs. But it
Speaker 3: also had this driving, kind of up tempo beat and
Speaker 3: some really good synth, and the singer on it sounds
Speaker 3: like the guy from Jethro Tull.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see that comparison. It's kind
Speaker 2: of catchy.
Speaker 3: I kind of like it Devil Devil's Mayh.
Speaker 2: But of course, the main attraction here is this terrific
Speaker 2: score by Brian Eno born nineteen forty eight. Eno is,
Speaker 2: of course, the legendary British musician, composer, record producer and
Speaker 2: visual artists. I got it. I'm tempted to say bet
Speaker 2: perhaps best known for his ambient work, but I mean
Speaker 2: it's really too limiting to say that, because he's I mean,
Speaker 2: his work encompasses pop, rock, funk, electronica, all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 3: I was just trying to remember when I first became
Speaker 3: aware of who Brian Eno was and I think I
Speaker 3: discovered him through his collaborations with David Bowie. So I
Speaker 3: think like when I was in high school, I first
Speaker 3: heard some of those three Berlin albums. I heard like
Speaker 3: low and I was like, oh wow, what is all
Speaker 3: this real? Like spooky, haunting synthesizer, And I found out
Speaker 3: Brian Eno had been a collaborator on these albums and
Speaker 3: was partially responsible for the sound and direction of them.
Speaker 3: But yeah, God, where do you start with Eno? That's
Speaker 3: my personal story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean he he played synth and roxy
Speaker 2: music from seventy through seventy three. He's still active today,
Speaker 2: still producing, still writing, you know, still building up that legacy.
Speaker 2: When now I guess it's in a way it's easier
Speaker 2: to just sort of like hone in on his work
Speaker 2: with film over the years, because when it comes to film,
Speaker 2: his tracks and tracks that he's produced have been featured
Speaker 2: on various soundtracks. His track an Ending Assent from the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three album Apollo Atmospheres and Soundtracks has popped
Speaker 2: up in more films and TV shows than I can list.
Speaker 2: Absolutely amazing ambient track. He has also had composed isolated
Speaker 2: tracks for films over the years, including the prophecy theme
Speaker 2: from David Lynch's Dune in eighty four and from the
Speaker 2: beginning from Dario Argento's Opera from eighty seven. He's also
Speaker 2: composed a number of tracks for non existent films, and
Speaker 2: I'm not deep enough on the background of these tracks
Speaker 2: to know which ones were were in fact tracks he
Speaker 2: composed for films that don't exist, that are kind of
Speaker 2: like in the spirit of score composition, and I think
Speaker 2: some of them were also like originally intended for film
Speaker 2: product projects and they didn't come together. But you'll find
Speaker 2: these on nineteen seventy eight's Music for Films and nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty threes Music for Films, Volume two. But as far
Speaker 2: as complete eno scores for films where like he's doing
Speaker 2: the soul score work, he did some scores for Derek
Speaker 2: Jarman Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones in two thousand and
Speaker 2: nine and also the two thousand and five film The Jacket.
Speaker 2: His score for The Devil's Men aka Land of the
Speaker 2: Minotaur was I believe, his first full score and for film,
Speaker 2: and his only his second composition for film, following a
Speaker 2: short nineteen seventy film titled Berlin Horse. In terms of
Speaker 2: his discography. This comes out in seventy six, so it's
Speaker 2: following his work with Robert Fripp on seventy five's Evening Star.
Speaker 2: This is an album that JJ was talking to me
Speaker 2: about and recommended that I listened to and indeed is awesome.
Speaker 2: This also comes out after his solo album seventy four
Speaker 2: is Here Come the Warm Jets, seventy four's Taking Tiger
Speaker 2: Mountain By Strategy, seventy five's Another Green World, and nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five's Discrete Music. The weird thing about this score, though,
Speaker 2: is despite the fact that it's Eno, I don't think
Speaker 2: it has ever been released, and none of the acts
Speaker 2: are seemingly featured on his release film Music nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: six through twenty twenty. So I'm not sure if it's
Speaker 2: a rights thing or if it's a situation where ENO
Speaker 2: is not you know, doesn't look back on this music favorably.
Speaker 2: But I mean, to my ear, I think it sounds
Speaker 2: wonderful and it seems like the sort of film score
Speaker 2: that film fans would jump at, and also Eno complete
Speaker 2: as would jump at.
Speaker 3: I agree, and you know, I was thinking about this.
Speaker 3: I can't say for sure because I knew about ENO's
Speaker 3: involvement before I started watching the movie, but I feel
Speaker 3: like the music here is so distinctively Eno that I
Speaker 3: might have identified it even if I hadn't known. Like,
Speaker 3: the first track we hear in the movie is actually
Speaker 3: very simple. It only has a few elements. There's kind
Speaker 3: of a lower droning pad, like a robot moaning softly,
Speaker 3: and then there is there's what sounds kind of like
Speaker 3: a tape loop effect, introducing little rhythmic hiccups and interruptions
Speaker 3: in the drone, and then there's a soft higher part
Speaker 3: that's basically just stepping back and forth between two notes.
Speaker 3: So it's a pretty simple track, but I think it's
Speaker 3: just unusual for a movie of this kind, and its
Speaker 3: mood imbues what you're seeing on the screen with so
Speaker 3: much more interest and emotional paradox than would be there otherwise,
Speaker 3: Like it is at the same time calming and unnerving.
Speaker 3: It kind of feels like it's safe to settle down
Speaker 3: and go to sleep, but also it suggests a question
Speaker 3: like is there danger?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean really in the opening scene there's about
Speaker 2: to be a Satanic sacrifice, but the music does kind
Speaker 2: of imbue you with that feeling of like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: feeling kind of chill about this. Then you kind of
Speaker 2: reflect on that and compare that feeling to what's actually
Speaker 2: happening on the screen. A dreamlike quality sets in.
Speaker 3: So there's not a ton of it, but I think
Speaker 3: it's a very very good score.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, you know, I would like to hear it
Speaker 2: in isolation, but I dotter maybe Brian, you know, has
Speaker 2: different thoughts in the manner, and you know you can't
Speaker 2: argue with you know.
Speaker 3: All right, we're going to talk about the plot a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get into the plot.
Speaker 3: As I've mentioned before, I love a film that begins
Speaker 3: by showing you its papers. The disc release here debuts
Speaker 3: with a certificate showing that The Devil's Been has been
Speaker 3: reviewed by the British Board of Film Sensors and has
Speaker 3: been rated X. And I was thinking, really, it doesn't
Speaker 3: seem that off the charts to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I say, this film does not really have
Speaker 2: any exploitive elements to it. I mean, there's a little
Speaker 2: bit of a full nudity, but it's even so it's
Speaker 2: very tame compared to other like naked films of the seventies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know, so the rated X. But who
Speaker 3: are we to question right X? So saith the right
Speaker 3: Honorable the Lord Harleck KCMG, president of the British Board
Speaker 3: of Film Sensors, and so I briefly got interested. I
Speaker 3: was like, wait a minute, his name's on this movie.
Speaker 3: Who is the right honorable the Lord Harleck KCMG. If
Speaker 3: my googling has not led me astray, this is William
Speaker 3: David ormsby Gore, the fifth Baron Harleck, who lived nineteen
Speaker 3: eighteen to nineteen eighty five, who was a member of
Speaker 3: the UK House of Lords and a diplomat, including he
Speaker 3: was ambassador to the United States during the Kennedy administration,
Speaker 3: and he was an associate of the Kennedy family. Apparently
Speaker 3: he proposed marriage to Jackie Kennedy in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 3: but she turned him down, and somehow that led to this.
Speaker 3: So he years later was overseeing the review and classification
Speaker 3: of fine films like this one.
Speaker 2: So he's like, what's this one here? Minotaz rated X,
Speaker 2: no menotas on my watch.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he actually watched the films. He
Speaker 3: may have just been president of the organization. I like
Speaker 3: to think he watched every film personally anyway. The movie
Speaker 3: proper opens with a deep blue night sky, a full moon,
Speaker 3: and dark tree branches looming in the foreground, and there
Speaker 3: is ambient music. There are owls and insects chirping in
Speaker 3: the dark, and then we see figures walking through the
Speaker 3: night around a Greek city on a hill, or maybe
Speaker 3: not a city, more like a Greek village on a hill.
Speaker 3: There are men in multicolored robes and hoods, like inquisitors,
Speaker 3: marching between the houses and climbing up the rocks to
Speaker 3: a secret cavern.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like we said earlier, these various shots of like
Speaker 2: the Greek countryside and Greek cities and so forth, Greek ruins,
Speaker 2: they look good. I mean, it's attractive looking. I mean,
Speaker 2: even though some of the footage I looked at from
Speaker 2: Island of Death like nothing else you can say like
Speaker 2: this looks looks like a cool place to visit.
Speaker 3: Agreed, I like the rocky crags. And here's where we
Speaker 3: get that eno track I was describing a minute ago.
Speaker 3: But your classic cult sacrifice scene starts to unfold. There
Speaker 3: is an ancient stone temple with columns and archways and
Speaker 3: menacing statues of bullheads and double bladed axes, and then
Speaker 3: somebody cranks a wheel and the giant statue of a
Speaker 3: minotaur emerges from beneath the floor. And this isn't just
Speaker 3: any minotar statue. This one has full blow torch nose,
Speaker 3: jets of flame blasting out of each of his nostrils.
Speaker 2: That's right. It's a magical, technological marvel. I think it
Speaker 2: also has genitalia, which I think was also pointed out
Speaker 2: on the the IMDb parental notes for this film.
Speaker 3: That's what got it an X rating. The full frontal
Speaker 3: mintar statue.
Speaker 2: Nut a Minita penis rated X.
Speaker 3: You know one thing about the minotar statue on its nose.
Speaker 3: Rachel and I were watching this, and she pointed out
Speaker 3: that she could see the texture of the paper mache
Speaker 3: on the on the nose. They're like, you can see
Speaker 3: sort of strips of cloth and paper.
Speaker 2: That's a good note. I was noticing the texture, but
Speaker 2: I didn't, like instantly identify what it was. But I
Speaker 2: was thinking about the fact that I guess most of
Speaker 2: the people that originally saw this film would not have
Speaker 2: seen that texture. You know, there's so much that's lost
Speaker 2: in the prior projection of these films.
Speaker 3: I guess I imagine this primarily playing on television, but
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe.
Speaker 2: Not not without X rating.
Speaker 3: Oh that's a good point. Okay. So acolytes in red
Speaker 3: and green satin robes. They light fires in a semicircular
Speaker 3: trench on the floor. It's surrounding not an altar, but
Speaker 3: three stone reclining chairs.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right.
Speaker 3: Some cultists bring in a man and a woman who
Speaker 3: are dressed not like the rest of the cult. They're
Speaker 3: wearing just seventies straight clothes and looks like we've got
Speaker 3: some victims. So they're placed on these stone recliners. Peter
Speaker 3: Cushing appears and he is the head cult member. He
Speaker 3: stands in the middle of the room in a red
Speaker 3: robe with a big gold minotaur chain around his neck,
Speaker 3: and he says, we cover our faces in sight of
Speaker 3: our Lord. And then every and the cult repeats his words,
Speaker 3: and they all pull masks down over their faces, and
Speaker 3: the minotaur statue is just snorting so much fire.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah again, Minotaur statue looks good, strong atmospheric opening.
Speaker 2: I feel like I love the set. I like the
Speaker 2: multi colored robes that seemingly hint at different ranks in
Speaker 2: the colt. So this is not just a black robes
Speaker 2: in the darkness kind of a cult. You know, they
Speaker 2: put a little color into it. I looking back in
Speaker 2: these sequences, though, they are revealing that all the villagers
Speaker 2: are members of the cult. I don't think I necessarily
Speaker 2: got that the first way through, But there's not like this.
Speaker 2: It kind of takes the punch out of any revelation that, oh,
Speaker 2: all the villagers are in the cult. Like, no, you
Speaker 2: know that from the get go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're all pretty much there. And then you know what,
Speaker 3: not just the adults, the kids too, because there is
Speaker 3: a young girl in a cult robe. She comes up
Speaker 3: to the two people in street clothes on the stone
Speaker 3: recliners and she stabs them in the heart with a knife.
Speaker 3: And I think I saw a comment somewhere online and
Speaker 3: asking is that the director's daughter in that role? And
Speaker 3: I have no idea, but I want to believe that.
Speaker 2: Well. Either way, it's just super creepy. I love it.
Speaker 3: So the human sacrifice is done, the people are dead.
Speaker 3: I guess that was for the minotaur. Did he like it?
Speaker 2: There's no way to know. It doesn't. Again, there's nothing
Speaker 2: you can even compare to in the like the classic
Speaker 2: more or less canonical minotar myth, Like what does this
Speaker 2: do for relations between you know, the the an ancient
Speaker 2: crete and the rest of the of of the ancient world,
Speaker 2: Like there's none of that, Like nobody's been thrown into
Speaker 2: a labyrinth. We have nothing to go on here.
Speaker 3: Oh but there's a hilarious choice here.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, the opening titles. The letters for the opening
Speaker 2: title blast out of the freeze frame minotaur's nostrils, just
Speaker 2: an absolutely excellent choice.
Speaker 3: Right, so it snorts out the I don't know, snort's
Speaker 3: the right word that implies the air is going in
Speaker 3: it like uh sneezes out the letters that formed the
Speaker 3: Devil's men, and then freeze frame on the fire. It's
Speaker 3: like duh. And then there were some legitimate chortles at
Speaker 3: that moment on our couch, but because it sounds like
Speaker 3: the kind of idea like a seven year old would have,
Speaker 3: you know. And then the words come out of the
Speaker 3: monster's noseholes. Yeah, so that's good. And you might think
Speaker 3: this is the part since there's a freeze frame that
Speaker 3: you you know, cut to the uptempo rock theme, But no,
Speaker 3: not at all. Instead, we transition to a different ambient track,
Speaker 3: another big spooky mood. I guess it's Eno again, And
Speaker 3: this one is actually very spare, with a lot of
Speaker 3: space in it, and the main motif is made of dissonant,
Speaker 3: swelling synth chords that sounded to me like a choir
Speaker 3: of ancient mummies sighing on the other side of a wall.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It immediately pulls you back in and you're like,
Speaker 2: oh no, he knows being real serious here, so I'm
Speaker 2: gonna serious too.
Speaker 3: But okay, on to more action. Now we're in the daytime,
Speaker 3: children running through the streets kicking a soccer ball.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I see these kids come running through the
Speaker 2: streets though in a dusty European town, and I immediately
Speaker 2: assume they're going to start pelting the local hunchback with
Speaker 2: rocks or cabbages or something. That probably says more about
Speaker 2: my viewing habits than anything. Yep.
Speaker 3: So there's a local police inspector. He's receiving a phone call.
Speaker 3: It's from a man named Father Roche, and that's Donald
Speaker 3: Pleasance again playing an Irish priest living in Greece. Father
Speaker 3: Roach is like, hey, how come so many people keep
Speaker 3: disappearing in your village? He mailed this cop a letter
Speaker 3: and a photo of two students who had been there
Speaker 3: and went missing recently, And what do you know, it's
Speaker 3: the two people from those Stone Recliners that we saw
Speaker 3: being sacrificed to a menotaur. But he doesn't know that.
Speaker 3: So the police inspector says to him, you can't expect
Speaker 3: me to keep track of every person who goes missing
Speaker 3: in my jurisdiction, and okay, And Father Roche suggests that
Speaker 3: they may have been victims of murder, and the police
Speaker 3: inspector gets real mad and says, why don't you stick
Speaker 3: to your job and I'll stick to mine. And I disagree.
Speaker 3: I think they should trade jobs.
Speaker 2: I want to point out, and this is something I
Speaker 2: didn't get at first. But the police inspector is clearly
Speaker 2: one of the cultists, Like this actor was clearly one
Speaker 2: of the cultists, pulling a hood over his face for
Speaker 2: the for the sacrifice. So there's no there's no you know,
Speaker 2: suspicion or mystery here. Like he's clearly in with the cult.
Speaker 3: Everybody's in the cult, everybody. So we see Father Roche
Speaker 3: in his humble office and he's pondering a gold trinket
Speaker 3: on his desk, which is a little bull head hmmm.
Speaker 3: And then we see him going about his business. So
Speaker 3: he walks on the hillside and he talks to the locals.
Speaker 3: We see him kneeling alone in a tiny rustic chapel
Speaker 3: and praying, and then we see him writing a letter.
Speaker 3: By the way, there are a lot of letters, handwritten
Speaker 3: letters in this movie. He's writing it to Milo Kea
Speaker 3: in New York. And so then and then we fade
Speaker 3: to New York, just like come up on the New
Speaker 3: York skyline.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so far this movie set itself up again kind
Speaker 2: of like a full car movie. But no, it's more
Speaker 2: of a globe trotter apparently.
Speaker 3: I guess. So when we first meet Milo, he is
Speaker 3: lying naked on a bed with pink sheets and pillows,
Speaker 3: smoking a cigarette. His chest hair is catching a shaft
Speaker 3: of sunlight. Milo, he creates the impression of kind of
Speaker 3: shaggy cad. He's got puffy gray hair. Though he's a
Speaker 3: young guy. He's one of those young guys with gray hair,
Speaker 3: dark eyebrows, and a very sarcastic, almost mean kind of edge.
Speaker 3: He's hanging out with his lady friend in this bedroom.
Speaker 3: That's just crammed with candles and liquor bottles and stuff.
Speaker 3: But again, this is the room where there's church or
Speaker 3: music playing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And when we check in with him again in
Speaker 2: New York, it seems to be the same room, the
Speaker 2: same setting, still naked. So it implies that whatever his
Speaker 2: job is supposed to be, the only thing he does
Speaker 2: in New York is sex pretty much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he's hanging out here. He gets the letter
Speaker 3: from father Roche like his lady friend is like, oh,
Speaker 3: there's mail for you, and so he opens it up
Speaker 3: and he's reading it. She sees him reading the letter
Speaker 3: and is jealous. When she sees him reading, she's like,
Speaker 3: who is she? And she takes the letter and then
Speaker 3: she reads it and she's like, oh, it's just that
Speaker 3: unwell irish priest that you are constantly exchanging letters with.
Speaker 3: And my love is like, Okay, maybe he's gone a
Speaker 3: little too far with some of his minotaur theories, but
Speaker 3: lay off him. This is a direct quote. He's the
Speaker 3: best friend I ever had.
Speaker 2: Oh, no additional detail on that, really, but he seems sincere.
Speaker 3: How do they know each other? Well? She says these things?
Speaker 3: He he keeps writing you about students disappearing, being swallowed
Speaker 3: up by some ancient magic or something. It's crazy, it's medieval.
Speaker 3: And Milo says, yeah, I don't really believe him, but
Speaker 3: you know, he's a good guy. Even though and even
Speaker 3: though Father Roche is a good guy, and he's asking
Speaker 3: Milo to come out to Greece to help him investigate
Speaker 3: the missing students, he will not do it. He's going
Speaker 3: to stay here in New York and mostly just stay
Speaker 3: in bed and in fact, never even put his clothes
Speaker 3: on or leave the house.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, very little to suggest he wears clothes in
Speaker 2: America at all.
Speaker 3: I think he's supposed to be a private detective.
Speaker 2: I guess that makes as much sense as anything.
Speaker 3: Sure, so there's more globe trotting. A group of three
Speaker 3: archaeology students show up at Father Roche's house to stay
Speaker 3: there while they're doing some kind of field work.
Speaker 2: Oh this is where they drive up in the Australia van, right,
Speaker 2: the super confusing van that says Australia on the front.
Speaker 2: And at this point in the film, I was like,
Speaker 2: are we in Australia. I don't know, we were just
Speaker 2: in New York. Maybe this is truly an international picture
Speaker 2: going on? Here. But I think the idea is that
Speaker 2: this is like the hippie fun bus that has brahas
Speaker 2: driven to Australia.
Speaker 3: I think it has the names of other countries on
Speaker 3: different parts of the van as well. I think it
Speaker 3: just says Australia on the front. But okay, we got
Speaker 3: the three archaeology students here, we got Tom. Well, actually, no,
Speaker 3: I think maybe I'm getting the names mixed up. I
Speaker 3: was gonna say Tom is the one with the dark
Speaker 3: hair and the beard who looks like a member of
Speaker 3: Still Water. But if you're correct, you're saying that was
Speaker 3: actually Ian.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Ian is played by Nico's Verlicus, who is an
Speaker 2: actor and I think a director as well. He's still
Speaker 2: I think he's still around and had a pretty big career.
Speaker 2: But yeah, just a very handsome, like Greek Jesus or
Speaker 2: Hercules type of a figure here.
Speaker 3: Okay, that you're saying that's Ian, So that would make
Speaker 3: Tom the one who looks like football Brad Doriff, Yes, okay.
Speaker 3: And then you've got Beth who has long hair, big
Speaker 3: radiant smile, very short short So we were joking at
Speaker 3: Rachel and I were noticing that, like there's a scene
Speaker 3: where she's standing next to one of these guys who's
Speaker 3: wearing such huge jeans that they're basically jincos, and there's
Speaker 3: like enough material in his pants to make a whole
Speaker 3: second pair of pants for her. Yeah, but so anyway,
Speaker 3: Father Roche takes them inside. He's going to feed him
Speaker 3: some food. And here, oh boy, we get a table
Speaker 3: setting scan. We love to examine movie set food more
Speaker 3: closely than it was meant to withstand. So Father Roche
Speaker 3: cooks his three guests a big skillet of food of
Speaker 3: some kind, and it looked to me like the skillet
Speaker 3: had whole unchopped basically raw tomatoes in it, and then
Speaker 3: some kind of steaming white substance. And at one point
Speaker 3: Ian gets served out of the pan and it looks
Speaker 3: like Donald Pleasants reaches in with the spoon and like
Speaker 3: serves some food, but what comes out is just one
Speaker 3: huge floppy lasagna sheet onto his plate and not much else.
Speaker 2: Well, you know it's served with love, though, so you
Speaker 2: don't you don't question it. But it could just as
Speaker 2: easily have been a meal served up by like a
Speaker 2: harsh witch in another movement than just as fitting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is baba, ye got let's eat it. So
Speaker 3: the main point of their meeting here is that Father
Speaker 3: Roche tries to talk them out of going to the
Speaker 3: village where they're headed. They want to go do archaeology,
Speaker 3: but he's like, no, students keep disappearing there, and so
Speaker 3: he thinks he's talked to them out of it. Everybody
Speaker 3: goes to bed, and then the students, of course, they
Speaker 3: sneak out and they go to the village anyway, They
Speaker 3: go to the Village of Death and camp their intents.
Speaker 3: They know no fear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we know how this is going to
Speaker 2: turn out for them, though, there's no question.
Speaker 3: And then meanwhile we see Father Roche almost it's like
Speaker 3: he's playing with minis or something. He's got a parchment
Speaker 3: map and all these shapes and lines on it, and
Speaker 3: he's arranging the minotaur trinkets on it.
Speaker 2: Mm yeah, yeah, I guess they are kind of like mini's.
Speaker 2: This would have really been more Peter Cushing's thing, who
Speaker 2: was a famously, you know, a a miniature soldier enthusiast
Speaker 2: and painted them and so forth. A man after my
Speaker 2: own heart.
Speaker 3: So while they're camping, either Tom or Ian, whichever one
Speaker 3: it is, writes a letter to somebody named Laurie, another
Speaker 3: blonde woman, telling her this is gonna be the third
Speaker 3: similar looking blonde woman of the movie, telling her about
Speaker 3: his quest for knowledge of the past and asking her
Speaker 3: to come join them in Greece. And the next morning
Speaker 3: he gives the letter to Beth, asking her to mail
Speaker 3: it when she goes into town to buy groceries.
Speaker 2: You know, in this film, we will later find out
Speaker 2: that the only thing that really works against the cultest
Speaker 2: is God's stuff. So it is kind of weird in
Speaker 2: retrospect that he's reaching out to all of these archaeologists
Speaker 2: and non church people when really he should have just
Speaker 2: brought in one or two other priests and they could
Speaker 2: have knocked this cult out in an afternoon.
Speaker 3: But he doesn't even know it's a cult yet. He
Speaker 3: doesn't know that he's just looking to find the secrets
Speaker 3: of ancient Greece. Oh okay, oh waiter, are you talking
Speaker 3: about Father? Are you talking about Father Roche bringing people in?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh, I'm sorry, I was confused. I thought you
Speaker 3: were talking about either Ian or Tom the guy riding No.
Speaker 2: No, no, they're basically I mean, they're just they're just
Speaker 2: ponds in this whole scale but right, right, right, But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think Father Roach should have brought in like one
Speaker 2: or two other priests and he could have handled everything
Speaker 2: in just like an hour or two.
Speaker 3: I apologize I was confused, Yes, exactly right. He should
Speaker 3: have known better. He even says it later when when Milo,
Speaker 3: So he's the guy who summons Milo. Milo just wants
Speaker 3: to shoot a gun at everything, and he's like, you fool,
Speaker 3: you fool, that will not work, called us a bulletproof.
Speaker 3: But Beth goes into town to buy groceries. Oh and then,
Speaker 3: by the way, while they're the three of them are
Speaker 3: hanging out, there's a creepy guy with binoculars up on
Speaker 3: the cliffs above watching them, and the we get the
Speaker 3: Brian Eno mummy size going and so we know something
Speaker 3: is really wrong here. And the guy watching them, he's
Speaker 3: some sort of chauffeur. He's in a uniform driving a
Speaker 3: fancy black car.
Speaker 2: M yes, and this'll find out as Peter Cushing's driver.
Speaker 3: So, while Beth goes into town, Tom and Ian explore
Speaker 3: the ruins of an ancient temple, and while wandering around
Speaker 3: among the weathered stones and the columns, they find a
Speaker 3: secret doorway covered with the double axe symbol and then
Speaker 3: they open it up. Passageway leads down into a cave
Speaker 3: full of stalactites and stalagmites, interesting rock formations. It actually
Speaker 3: is a beautiful cave. And so they're wandering around the
Speaker 3: caverns and they find a couple of dead bodies wrapped
Speaker 3: in a red cloth, and what do you know, it's
Speaker 3: the two people from Father Rosch's photograph. And then we
Speaker 3: get a minotaur jump scare. There's a minotaur statue just
Speaker 3: right there at him, fire nose blasting, and it says
Speaker 3: those who enter the forbidden Chamber of the Minotaur must die.
Speaker 3: Camera zooms in on Tom and Ian's faces. They appear
Speaker 3: to be taking this news rather stoically. They just kind
Speaker 3: of like boom, okay, and then it fades out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of perplexed.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess that would be just con fusing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in this bright, bright cave, which just so brightly lit.
Speaker 3: It is quite you're right, I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's a beautiful cave. So it's like you
Speaker 2: want to show everything. It's kind of like the reverse.
Speaker 2: If your your cave set is barely cutting it, you're
Speaker 2: gonna turn those lights way down. But when it's this beautiful,
Speaker 2: actual cave environment, yeah, light it up.
Speaker 3: So we see Beth shopping in town. She gets a
Speaker 3: kind of icy reception from this lady she meets. There's
Speaker 3: like a lady with redhair pushing a baby carriage, and
Speaker 3: the lady buys some meat and then puts it in
Speaker 3: the carriage with the baby, and Beth is like, cute baby,
Speaker 3: and the woman just gives her dagger eyes. And then
Speaker 3: outside the market, Beth meets Peter Cushing and he is
Speaker 3: a very polite, courteous, genteel man. He's wearing a wool
Speaker 3: jacket and a nice suit. And Beth drops a bag
Speaker 3: of what looks like cheese puffs or something in the street,
Speaker 3: and he picks it up for her and then has
Speaker 3: his chauffeur help her with her grown.
Speaker 2: Doesn't she call it like, oh, my product or something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think she says, my package, my package, Yes,
Speaker 3: my package, but it's a bag of cheeseballs.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, you know, I guess if you're in
Speaker 2: the in the presence of Peter Cushing, you know, you
Speaker 2: may scramble your words. And afterwards she's like, oh, why
Speaker 2: did I call my cheese puffs, my package, Oh my god,
Speaker 2: so embarrassed.
Speaker 3: Well, she explains that she's an archaeology student. She's here
Speaker 3: to do archaeology, and he says, well, I am baron Corrafax.
Speaker 3: This castle is my castle and you're on my land.
Speaker 3: And it's like, oops, oh, I guess we didn't clear
Speaker 3: that with him ahead of time. But he says, don't
Speaker 3: worry if you're genuinely interested. This is one of the
Speaker 3: oldest pagan sights in the country. Her answer to this is,
Speaker 3: are you a real baron? He says, it's an ancient
Speaker 3: title in his own land, which is Carpathia, but now
Speaker 3: he lives here, and I got so true ripped up here.
Speaker 3: We had to pause it and try to figure out
Speaker 3: is he saying hereditary titles and lands are transferable from
Speaker 3: Carpathia to Greece, Like, can you trade in your Carpathian
Speaker 3: barony for a Greek castle?
Speaker 2: Well, European royal families. It's complicated, right, yes.
Speaker 3: Yes, you see it is because I am my own cousin. Well, anyway,
Speaker 3: so he's friendly. He offers to help her and her friends,
Speaker 3: and then she drives away. She asks for her package
Speaker 3: and he gives her the cheese doodles and then she
Speaker 3: drives away, and then the Mummy starts sighing in the
Speaker 3: Eno score and he gives a devilish look, so we know, oh,
Speaker 3: he's up to no good. And when she gets back
Speaker 3: to her campsite, Tom and Ian are nowhere to be
Speaker 3: found and the tents are gone, so she goes to
Speaker 3: look for them at the Temple Ruins. We see her
Speaker 3: later that night walking outside the baron's estate and then
Speaker 3: dudes in cult robes just kind of wander up to
Speaker 3: her and she screams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's genuinely worried there because like Tom and Ian
Speaker 2: don't seem to know how food works, and they're out
Speaker 2: there alone without cheese doodles, and it's just gone from
Speaker 2: from from bad to worse here.
Speaker 3: They do genuinely seem like they're like, oh, no, we
Speaker 3: need Beth to cook for us and otherwise we will starve. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so we transitioned to a plane landing, and let's get
Speaker 3: a good look at that plane. Oh it's it's on
Speaker 3: the runway now, Okay, now it's turning around. Did you
Speaker 3: see the engines? Here are the jet engines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get some good globe trotting stock footage.
Speaker 3: And we meet another blond lady. This is Laurie, who
Speaker 3: either Tom or Ian wrote the letter to and she
Speaker 3: goes to stay at Father Roche's house. She's like, Hey,
Speaker 3: what happened to my boyfriend? Why didn't he meet me
Speaker 3: at the airport? And Father Roche is like, I have
Speaker 3: had enough of students disappearing. We've got you know, we've
Speaker 3: got to put a stop to this. So he finally
Speaker 3: commits to doing the charges of a long distance call
Speaker 3: to call Milo at his house on the phone and
Speaker 3: demand he come to Greece to investigate. And then like
Speaker 3: the very next moment, Milo's there in Greece.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like, Milo, I need you to put pants on.
Speaker 2: I need you to find your passport, and he does.
Speaker 3: Milo doesn't own pants, so I'm sure he has to
Speaker 3: send out for some. So then we get the three
Speaker 3: of them driving in a car on a country road
Speaker 3: and Milo is driving fast and recklessly, and Donald Pleasantce
Speaker 3: is like, I'd have taken the bus if I'd known
Speaker 3: you were such a speed demon. And this is a dynamic.
Speaker 3: I said earlier that this is a movie where the
Speaker 3: same conversations just happen over and over again, and this
Speaker 3: is definitely one of those things. There's like, there are
Speaker 3: like four different scenes where they are driving a car
Speaker 3: and he's driving too fast and they talk about it,
Speaker 3: how he's driving too fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because we come back to this later where
Speaker 2: he's like, yeah, way, they're just talking about the same
Speaker 2: thing again, more driving, more moving from point A to
Speaker 2: point B.
Speaker 3: Another conversation that repeats many times is Milo saying I'm
Speaker 3: just a simple private detective, ideal in facts, not demons
Speaker 3: and devils, And of course Father Roache is like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, you'll learn soon enough. So they're driving around
Speaker 3: I guess they're trying to start their investigation, and they
Speaker 3: stumble across a funeral where there is a sudden, weird,
Speaker 3: psychic mind meld between Laurie and the local girl. Wait
Speaker 3: a minute, was that the girl wielding the knife in
Speaker 3: the cave earlier?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, another nice scene of this girl staring
Speaker 2: blank expression at the camera. I think eno music kicking in,
Speaker 2: making it nice and creepy and dream like. I like it.
Speaker 3: So they stay at the local inn, and then later
Speaker 3: this night there is a scene that's really funny where
Speaker 3: Laurie is like in the bath and then the cult
Speaker 3: members I guess are trying to come get her. They're
Speaker 3: like one's coming in the door and another one's coming
Speaker 3: in the window, and she sees them. And then when
Speaker 3: they see that she sees them, they like run away,
Speaker 3: so they like retract their heads through the doors and
Speaker 3: the windows and like slam them shut. And we see
Speaker 3: this happen about seventeen times. So Laurie's like, hey, there
Speaker 3: were guys in weird hoods trying to get me in
Speaker 3: the bath and Milo doesn't believe her. He's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: you were just dreaming or something.
Speaker 2: He deals in facts, that's.
Speaker 3: Right, But yeah, nothing she says is even supernatural or anything.
Speaker 3: She's just like, guys attacked me while I was in
Speaker 3: the bathroom. Is like, that is a perfectly factual seeming statement.
Speaker 3: So the next day they explore the temple ruins. They
Speaker 3: find the passageway, they go down into the caverns, they
Speaker 3: find the sacrifice room. There is a chandelier trap where
Speaker 3: Milo saves Donald, Pleasance and Laurie from a falling chandelier
Speaker 3: and they they I think, Milo goes up to like
Speaker 3: the rope that has frayed and says, oh, is this
Speaker 3: an act of God? And then Donald Pleasant says, there's
Speaker 3: someone here. I can feel him all around me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a great set in this The chandelier
Speaker 2: trap is one of the few action sequences in the
Speaker 2: whole picture, so of course it's in that trailer, but
Speaker 2: I do love the set.
Speaker 3: Let's see so skipping over a few things here, Roche
Speaker 3: and Milo. Oh, there's one point where they go and
Speaker 3: speak to the baron at his house. He like sends
Speaker 3: a car for them, and not a lot comes out
Speaker 3: of the scene. The baron is We learn that he's
Speaker 3: an exile from his home country, and they kind of
Speaker 3: play trade some pleasantries, and then we see the lady
Speaker 3: with the baby from the grocery store and she says
Speaker 3: she is staying with Baron Korafax, And we see the
Speaker 3: baby playing with this gold artifact and Donald Pleasant says
Speaker 3: it's an odd toy, and Cushing says it is old,
Speaker 3: but not odd. It is the liberis and Donald Pleasant says,
Speaker 3: I know it is the ancient symbol of the Minoan priesthood.
Speaker 3: And then later he explains to Milo when they're alone
Speaker 3: after they've left the house, he says, I didn't want
Speaker 3: to say too much. But it's also a symbol of
Speaker 3: human sacrifice. And then Milo's is like, shut, it was
Speaker 3: just a toy. I only want facts. By the way,
Speaker 3: remember that Milo said Donald Pleasants is the best friend
Speaker 3: he's ever had.
Speaker 2: And again Milo's supposed to be a detective, but the
Speaker 2: tech detective work in this film is pretty shoddy. We
Speaker 2: don't feel I don't really never felt like we really
Speaker 2: have a detective story. It's the investigation portion of the
Speaker 2: film is just just feels kind of sloppy and with
Speaker 2: lacking in direction.
Speaker 3: So they come back to the end that night. Oh
Speaker 3: and by the way, there's a recurring theme with like
Speaker 3: this woman from the village who wants to talk to them,
Speaker 3: but every time she wants to talk to them, one
Speaker 3: of the like the police inspector, will pop up from
Speaker 3: behind a bush and kind of grunted her menacingly, and
Speaker 3: then she'll get scared and run away. So that happens
Speaker 3: a few times, and then they find her dead at
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is Jessica Dublin, by the.
Speaker 3: Way, Okay, missus Zagros, Yeah all right. And then also
Speaker 3: this night we see Laurie getting chased through the woods
Speaker 3: by people in cult robes, like they're chasing her. And
Speaker 3: then Milo goes and he hears her screaming, so he
Speaker 3: goes and finds her in the woods and she's like,
Speaker 3: there were men chasing me and Milo's like, no nonsense,
Speaker 3: probably just a cow got loose in the woods.
Speaker 2: Geez. Yeah, the film is there. Again, it doesn't get
Speaker 2: into like really big sexism, but there's just like a
Speaker 2: pervasive film of sexism over the entire thing, you know,
Speaker 2: Like again, doesn't really get into exploitation territory, but it's
Speaker 2: like nobody listens to the female characters at all.
Speaker 3: All of the young men at least do not listen
Speaker 3: to any of the women. Yeah, yes, I guess Donald
Speaker 3: Pleasants is sort of he's listening.
Speaker 2: He's listening to everybody. He's hip, he's hip with the
Speaker 2: young folk here.
Speaker 3: So when the three of them get reunited, they let's see,
Speaker 3: they learn, Oh, the whole village is deserted because Roach
Speaker 3: had been going out trying to find somebody to help them.
Speaker 3: I guess I think maybe because they heard Laurie screaming,
Speaker 3: but he can't find anybody, so all deserted. There's no power.
Speaker 3: The houses are dark and empty, so they go up
Speaker 3: to their rooms at the end with candles. But then
Speaker 3: Milo goes back down to the bar because he says
Speaker 3: he's gonna have a drink I guess in the dark,
Speaker 3: and Laurie is scared. She says, there there were people
Speaker 3: in the woods, like some human fiend. And here Donald
Speaker 3: Pleasant is listening to her. He's like, I know. And
Speaker 3: this is where he gives his speech about the devil.
Speaker 3: The force acting here is older than mankind, the power
Speaker 3: without a face. It may have been known as Mephistopheles
Speaker 3: or Beelzebub or whatever else, but it is all the same.
Speaker 3: It is the devil.
Speaker 2: Yeah again it's devils, minotaurs and yeah, all the same thing.
Speaker 2: Doesn't matter. I'm opposed to it. Let's go stop it.
Speaker 3: So he goes back downstairs, so there's a lot of
Speaker 3: just kind of going up and downstairs. Here he goes
Speaker 3: back down to Milo, and this is where they have
Speaker 3: the exchange about where the devil. Did the whole get too,
Speaker 3: and he's like, you said it yourself, the devil.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: But then it finally reveals where the three archaeology students
Speaker 3: from thirty minutes ago were they are in a cave,
Speaker 3: still alive, being held prisoner by Peter Cushing, and he
Speaker 3: stands in front of them without saying anything, but the
Speaker 3: minotaur talks to them. The statue says, only one thing
Speaker 3: can save you now, or I guess it does a
Speaker 3: creepy voice. Only one thing can save you now. Father
Speaker 3: Roche must die. He has entered my forbidden chamber, and
Speaker 3: I think he's sort of talking mostly to Beth, and
Speaker 3: Beth has a vision of herself stabbing Donald Pleasance with
Speaker 3: a knife and she's like, oh no, you know it
Speaker 3: wants me to kill Father Roche and she says she
Speaker 3: won't do it. But Cushing and his chauffeur are both
Speaker 3: standing there and they laugh like ha ha ha ha
Speaker 3: ha ha, and they just wander away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a creepy sequence, but nothing's really done
Speaker 2: with it, and like nothing really evolves out of this moment.
Speaker 3: There actually a lot of scenes in this movie where
Speaker 3: nothing changes plot wiseing nothing new has happened.
Speaker 2: But you keep watching because you know there's going to
Speaker 2: be a showdown. You know that there's going to be
Speaker 2: some sort of payoff of the end, right, so we.
Speaker 3: Start getting there, so Roche and Milo. They see more
Speaker 3: cult figures moving around or I guess maybe Milo season
Speaker 3: for the first time, and then they chase after them.
Speaker 3: They chase the cult members, then the cult members chase them,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of chasing around. They get the
Speaker 3: two non cult members get locked into some kind of
Speaker 3: walled garden and we see a ceremony beginning where Cushing
Speaker 3: is saying the old customs remain and the ancient gods
Speaker 3: live on, which isn't much of a catechism, I don't know,
Speaker 3: but everybody repeats this. They're saying all the same things
Speaker 3: he's saying. And then we see the archaeology students. They're
Speaker 3: tied to poles like prisoners of the Ewoks and brought
Speaker 3: in put on the recliners, and Ian and Beth get
Speaker 3: deposited on stone recliners and the girl stabs them in
Speaker 3: the heart or maybe it's Tom and Beth, whichever Ian
Speaker 3: or Tom, so they're dead. And later Donald, Pleasance and
Speaker 3: Milo just walk up on these recliners and find them there.
Speaker 3: I don't know how they got to where this was,
Speaker 3: but so they're driving around and at some point they
Speaker 3: hit a cultist with their car and then they uncover
Speaker 3: his face and I think it's the police inspector. Is
Speaker 3: that who you thought it was?
Speaker 2: I think I think it is, yes.
Speaker 3: And he smiles. He's like aha, and he gets up
Speaker 3: and he runs away, and Roche says, yes, he was
Speaker 3: at the edge of death, but it takes more than
Speaker 3: the force of an automobile to destroy them. And I
Speaker 3: was thinking, where did he get this info? He's like
Speaker 3: Van Helsing, but instead of knowledge on vampires, he has
Speaker 3: knowledge on Minotaur cult members.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're sort of bland powers, bland but impressive, like, yes,
Speaker 2: you can survive a gunshot, but it feels like the
Speaker 2: kind of thing that would have been impressive in like
Speaker 2: a an action adventure serial from the thirties. You know,
Speaker 2: that's like the level of threat in magic we're dealing
Speaker 2: with with these cult members.
Speaker 3: So the next day in the village, everybody is going
Speaker 3: about their business, but now Roche and Milo are walking
Speaker 3: amongst these people in the streets and they realize all
Speaker 3: of these people are members of the Minotaur Cult.
Speaker 2: By night, finally putting Linen two together here.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, how who would have thought? Also, they realize, whoops,
Speaker 3: Laurie has been cult napped in the night, so now
Speaker 3: she is she's been taken by them, and they know
Speaker 3: she's probably going to be sacrificed the next night. So
Speaker 3: the so they're they're trying to figure out what's going on,
Speaker 3: and Milo is like, wow, finally finally he recognizes something
Speaker 3: as up when Laurie is gone, so he he starts
Speaker 3: The police inspector comes in the door of their room
Speaker 3: at the end, I guess and is like, hey, what's up,
Speaker 3: and Milo just starts beating him up and punching him
Speaker 3: in the face, throwing him down the stairs until he
Speaker 3: is stopped by Peter Cushing, who is like, hey, why
Speaker 3: are you beating up a police inspector? And then Cushing
Speaker 3: pulls a shotgun on him. So it's barren with a
Speaker 3: shotgun here, and what's the deal with it. He says
Speaker 3: he's going to give them one minute to do something,
Speaker 3: maybe to get out of the inn or something, and
Speaker 3: then he counts down a few seconds but then shoots
Speaker 3: the clock. It's really kind of a squib of a scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so many squibs in this movie where yeah, it
Speaker 2: doesn't there's not really any kind of payoff. It's unclear
Speaker 2: exactly like why we were here, But you keep watching
Speaker 2: because you know you're gonna get to that big showdown.
Speaker 2: There's gonna be a show There's got to be a showdown.
Speaker 3: Oh, we're basically there. So Roche and Milo drive away.
Speaker 3: Milo pulls a gun out of the glove in the car,
Speaker 3: and Donald Pleasance is like, haven't you learned anything? Do
Speaker 3: you really think you can stop this with bullets? There's
Speaker 3: only one force that can fight them, And so Donald
Speaker 3: Pleasance and Milo stop at a roadside chapel to get weapons,
Speaker 3: so they get a crucifix and holy water and all
Speaker 3: this for the final showdown.
Speaker 2: I did like that we got to see the sourcing
Speaker 2: of the holy water. I feel like this is one
Speaker 2: thing the film does well. More often than not, you
Speaker 2: see the holy water in a vampire movie or what
Speaker 2: have you, it's you know, it's already been collected. It's
Speaker 2: just in a little bottle as if you get it
Speaker 2: that way and you store it that way. But I
Speaker 2: kind of like that we saw the collection of the
Speaker 2: holy water in a way. It it's one of the
Speaker 2: few moments in the film where they successfully build towards
Speaker 2: something else.
Speaker 3: I agree. I like this scene also also we see
Speaker 3: Peter Cushing go to the temple to speak to the minotaur,
Speaker 3: and the minotaur, unsurprisingly wants him to kill the priest.
Speaker 3: He's like, bring me Father Roach. I don't know why
Speaker 3: he's so interested in Father Roach. I think it's because
Speaker 3: he entered his forbidden chamber and is still alive. But
Speaker 3: that's also true of Milo and of Laurie, who I
Speaker 3: guess the cult has now in custody.
Speaker 2: You know, time was a minotaur would take care of
Speaker 2: this problem itself. You know, that was kind of the
Speaker 2: classic situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, but now he's got to get Peter Cushing
Speaker 3: to do his work for him.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: So there's a final showdown. Milo and Roach go back
Speaker 3: to Stop. You know, there's a ceremony going on. You
Speaker 3: can imagine exactly what it is. There are no real
Speaker 3: surprises at all at the end of this movie. There's
Speaker 3: a big ceremony and they've got Laurie there, and then
Speaker 3: they've got whichever one of the archaeology students it was
Speaker 3: that's still alive, either Tom or Ian. Those two are
Speaker 3: still alive and they're going to be sacrificed.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The girl with the knife is there ceremonies going on.
Speaker 3: Milo busts in into the ceremony with a gun, but
Speaker 3: the cult is basically don't care. They just sort of
Speaker 3: ignore him while he's like blam blaming at them, and
Speaker 3: they just grab him, you know, because they're in vulnerable
Speaker 3: to bullets. Of course, only a greater power can stop them,
Speaker 3: so they tie him up to the third recliner at
Speaker 3: the front of the temple, and I guess they're going
Speaker 3: to sacrifice him too. The minotaur statue once again reiterates
Speaker 3: those who enter the forbidden chamber of the Minotaur must die.
Speaker 3: And then Roche bust he comes in and he defeats
Speaker 3: them all. How does he do it? Does he is there?
Speaker 2: Any? Is there?
Speaker 3: Like a big twist? What is it he's gonna do?
Speaker 3: He holds up a crucifix and he says some Latin
Speaker 3: he's like in nomine patrees, and then the minotaur and
Speaker 3: all of the cult members explode like just shrapnel everywhere.
Speaker 2: The least little bit of religion down here, least little
Speaker 2: bit of Christianity down in the Minotaur's layer, just explodes.
Speaker 2: Everyone except for the coldest children. So anybody in I
Speaker 2: think the children are all wearing white robes. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: if you have any other color of robe, you just
Speaker 2: completely explode.
Speaker 3: The green, the purple, the red, they're all exploded.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just completely blasted. You know. It's kind of like
Speaker 2: a low rent version of the Devil's Rain. Instead of
Speaker 2: having them like slowly painstakingly melting for you know, a
Speaker 2: good fifteen minutes or what have you, it's just a
Speaker 2: few quick explosions and they're done.
Speaker 3: But I think this is kind of funny because the
Speaker 3: creepy cult girl was the one who actually physically did
Speaker 3: all the murders, like she put the knife in the people.
Speaker 2: But she's okay, an innocent She's an innocent Joe.
Speaker 3: That's right. So she and the other kids they wander out,
Speaker 3: and you know, Milo's like, how come they didn't explode?
Speaker 3: And Father Roche explains. He says, they are young, their
Speaker 3: souls are incorruptible, but the fight against evil goes on.
Speaker 3: One day, Milo, I may need your help again. They
Speaker 3: are setting up a sequel, and then it cuts straight
Speaker 3: to the rock track. You know, let's get a sample
Speaker 3: of that, Jja.
Speaker 2: So groovy. What kind of globe trotting adventures are these
Speaker 2: two going to get into? In the next film that
Speaker 2: they didn't make.
Speaker 3: Oh, maybe they'll go back to Roche's home of Ireland
Speaker 3: and there will be a banshee and we'll learn about
Speaker 3: how banshee is just the same thing as the Devil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like I think that would be the template Satanic
Speaker 2: cult that's worshiping the Banshee. And then they do a
Speaker 2: film where they go to somewhere in the US and
Speaker 2: it's like a Satanic cult that's worshiping Bigfoot, just whatever,
Speaker 2: just which as yes, yes, I mean in all cases
Speaker 2: it's obviously the Devil. And then they go to one
Speaker 2: and it's like it's a Satanic cult and they're worshiping
Speaker 2: Oh Jesus, oh this is just a church. Then they're like, okay,
Speaker 2: cancel this, this is just another church.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, I think this is definitely not one of
Speaker 3: the best films we have covered, But you know what,
Speaker 3: I had a great time on today's episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a fun one. I also want to
Speaker 2: drive those explosions when the cult members explode, it's not gory,
Speaker 2: it's just kind of they just kind of explode. It's
Speaker 2: like they're like drift foot. They're yeah, so yeah, this
Speaker 2: is a this is a fun one. It's a hard
Speaker 2: it's hard to recommend this one too, folks, unless you were,
Speaker 2: you know, the completest on any of the talents involved here.
Speaker 2: I think if you're if you're a big Brian Eno fan,
Speaker 2: it's worth checking out. Again. If you're a huge Donald
Speaker 2: pleasant for Peter Cushion fan and you just must see everything,
Speaker 2: then give it a go.
Speaker 3: It's I think this is a good This is a
Speaker 3: good movie to put on while you're doing something else.
Speaker 3: That's something I like to do sometimes if I'm like
Speaker 3: hanging out with people, I put on a silly movie
Speaker 3: on low volume that's not too visually arresting. This is
Speaker 3: a good.
Speaker 2: One, Yeah, I think. I think. In fact, I have
Speaker 2: a neighbor who had these years and years ago. I
Speaker 2: think he was playing this in his backyard. So yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's it's pretty good to play in such
Speaker 2: a setting, and you know, the Greek connection is pretty cool.
Speaker 2: I like getting to check Greek cinema off to some
Speaker 2: degree on the Weird House Cinema International checklist.
Speaker 3: This was the one.
Speaker 2: Well, we're not doing Island to Death, that's for sure,
Speaker 2: but we always, you know, we invite a recommendation from listeners.
Speaker 2: So if there is another example of weird Greek cinema
Speaker 2: that we should consider, write in and let us know. Yes,
Speaker 2: of course, all right, well we're gonna go ahead and
Speaker 2: close this one up. Just a reminder that Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set
Speaker 2: aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film here on Weird House Cinema. If you want to
Speaker 2: see a list of all the movies we've covered over
Speaker 2: the years, you can go to a couple of places.
Speaker 2: We have a profile on letterbox dot com that's L
Speaker 2: E T T E R box d dot com. We're
Speaker 2: weird House. There there's a list where you can see
Speaker 2: all the films we've covered over the years, and I
Speaker 2: also blog about these movies. That's Immuta Music dot com.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, do suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 3: email us at contact that Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com.
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