Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today we're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about the nineteen fifty eight British sci
Speaker 1: fi horror classic Fiend Without a Face. Uh, this is
Speaker 1: truly a kind of international venture because this is a
Speaker 1: British film about an American Atomic Air Force base in Canada. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is This is also independently financed if I remember correctly.
Speaker 1: And hey everybody, we're classing it up a bit here
Speaker 1: today because this is a Criterion collection. Um. I think
Speaker 1: the only previous Criterion collection film we've watched was Godzilla
Speaker 1: versus Hidora. Um. And now, if you're wondering, well, what
Speaker 1: is the Criterion collection criteria, it is quote unquote important
Speaker 1: classics and contemporary are films. So today's film is about
Speaker 1: a bunch of dudes shooting brain monsters with handguns in
Speaker 1: a truly marvelous fashion. I will say that the special
Speaker 1: effects of the last like fifteen minutes of this movie,
Speaker 1: it's hard to believe that they were released in a
Speaker 1: movie of nineteen fifty eight, Like, uh, this is a
Speaker 1: movie mostly about invisible monsters, but once you finally see
Speaker 1: the monsters revealed in their true form at the end
Speaker 1: of the movie, they are these amazing stop motion brain
Speaker 1: creatures and they are Ray Harryhausen level. It's like top
Speaker 1: notch stop motion effects. And also gore that is absolutely disgusting.
Speaker 1: It's like when the when the military buzz cuts are
Speaker 1: shooting these brains, there is just chunky salsa flying out
Speaker 1: of the bullet holes. It is gross. Yeah. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the sound effects are wonderful to lots of squeaky sound
Speaker 1: effects for these guys when they're crawling around, but also
Speaker 1: when they're inevitably shot or busted up with an axe.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah that the effects here really feel ahead of
Speaker 1: their time. Um, you know, there may be some I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are some other films you can compare them
Speaker 1: favorably to. But like, just for my own part, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking Brainstorm Monster. I also think of The Tingler. The
Speaker 1: Tingler came out the following year in nine nine, and
Speaker 1: I love The Tingler. That's a great film, great monster
Speaker 1: but and and and it's it's effectively portrayed on the
Speaker 1: on the screen. But the like the the effects gap
Speaker 1: between how we see The Tingler and how we see
Speaker 1: these creatures. Uh, it's it's pretty pretty wide. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would also say a major difference is that the main
Speaker 1: actor in The Tingler is Vincent Price, who I mean, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta love Vincent Price. The main actor in this
Speaker 1: movie is much more down the middle of the kind
Speaker 1: of guy who was always the stock hero in these
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties sci fi horror movies. Absolute flat top dolt,
Speaker 1: just a gray bucket filled to the brim with skim milk.
Speaker 1: What is it about these fifties movies having the most
Speaker 1: boring square hero almost every time? Oh? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it very much seems to have been the style of
Speaker 1: the day. I mean, I'm instantly reminded of fifty ones,
Speaker 1: the Thing from Another World, which is just wall to
Speaker 1: wall with interchangeable guys that look like this. But in
Speaker 1: terms of characters, I did enjoy a bit of the
Speaker 1: character texture in uh Fiend without a Face, because this
Speaker 1: central rectangle man is surrounded by a really interesting cast
Speaker 1: of weirdos. There's this guy named either Gibson or Gibbons
Speaker 1: I don't remember, but he's like the town constable who
Speaker 1: has this baffling accent. He sounds like he's from Mars like.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he sounds Irish, sometimes he sounds Canadian, sometimes he
Speaker 1: sounds like New York. I really could you tell what
Speaker 1: was going on with this guy? I could not. In general,
Speaker 1: the accents in this this movie, we're we're kind of varied.
Speaker 1: At times, you felt more like you're in a European
Speaker 1: setting supposed to a Canadian setting. But yeah, you've got him.
Speaker 1: You've got the sandwich man. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: noticed the sandwich man, the guy who's in the military
Speaker 1: base trying to sneak bites of bologna when the commander
Speaker 1: isn't looking. Uh. And then you've got the psychic scientists.
Speaker 1: This is our second movie in a row with an
Speaker 1: awesome crank. And then finally, of course all the atomic
Speaker 1: radiation stuff with the workers in the reactor corps who
Speaker 1: look like they're wearing oiled up leather trench coats. Yea,
Speaker 1: So is this a great movie all around? Not? Really
Speaker 1: does have some really great monsters in it, But does
Speaker 1: it meet the criterion criterion? Is it an important classic? Uh? Yeah? Sure?
Speaker 1: Why not? Sure? Why not? I mean I find it
Speaker 1: comforting that Criterion collection has a film like this in there,
Speaker 1: because again, otherwise, you know, I love Criterion Collection. I
Speaker 1: think they you know, they do a great job, and
Speaker 1: some of their additions are fabulous. But either we're all
Speaker 1: just um, you know, awesome Samurai films and Fellini pictures. Uh,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be the same. It's nice that you have
Speaker 1: room for not only Cronenberg, but also a picture like this.
Speaker 1: You gotta let the camp in. Yeah, and those middle
Speaker 1: category movies too, that they do a lot of the
Speaker 1: ones that are kind of artsy but also kind of
Speaker 1: pulp trash, Like I feel like Night of the Hunter
Speaker 1: is kind of in that middle category. I've got the
Speaker 1: Criterion of that and it's great. Oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: they also a Son of the White Mayor. The first
Speaker 1: time I watched it, I watched it on the Criterion channel.
Speaker 1: They're streaming product. So yeah, they have a lot of
Speaker 1: animation on there. There's a lot of weird stuff in there.
Speaker 1: So if you if you know, they don't don't assume
Speaker 1: that it is just Samurai films and Fellini. There's there's
Speaker 1: room for a lot of other stuff. Not to say
Speaker 1: Samurai films and Fellini are not awesome and cannot be
Speaker 1: super weird as well. Now, before we get into discussing
Speaker 1: some of the themes of this movie, what what's the
Speaker 1: elevator pitch? I believe it is. Your brain is gross,
Speaker 1: your brain is a monster? Oh man? How best to
Speaker 1: quickly summarize this? There is like an atomic air base
Speaker 1: somewhere in northern Canada. It's like way up in Manitoba,
Speaker 1: and it's being operated by the US military. They're running
Speaker 1: some kind of radar experiments and they've got a big
Speaker 1: nuclear reactor, and people in the local town or mad
Speaker 1: because of the nuclear reactor. Their cows are giving sour milk.
Speaker 1: People start mysteriously dying when they're being attacked by some
Speaker 1: kind of invisible creature. And eventually the culprit is linked
Speaker 1: to the psychical experiments of a crazy old crank who
Speaker 1: specializes in what was they call it psychic investigations or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's kind of leeching radiation off of the research
Speaker 1: facility to further these ends. But I think this movie
Speaker 1: actually gives us a great opportunity to talk about a
Speaker 1: problem faced by many horror movies that go this route,
Speaker 1: which is how do you handle an invisible monster? Uh? Now,
Speaker 1: even in a movie with a generally visible beast, the
Speaker 1: question of how much you should show and how early
Speaker 1: you should show it, I think it's a very important one.
Speaker 1: I tend to air more on the side of showing
Speaker 1: less of your monster, especially early on, even though I
Speaker 1: love to see a good monster. You know, it's good
Speaker 1: for the pacing of the film, keep the mystery alive long.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you've got to have some
Speaker 1: interesting imagery in the movie to to excite the mind,
Speaker 1: to sort of titillate the your your sense of horror.
Speaker 1: You know, you need some swatches of fur to rub,
Speaker 1: So you've got to show a little bit of the monster.
Speaker 1: A movie with an invisible monster can't exactly do this
Speaker 1: by showing you like bits or flashes of the monster,
Speaker 1: so they have to provide that texture some other way.
Speaker 1: And maybe this can be through sound design, like we
Speaker 1: can't see it, but we can hear it. Uh. Sometimes
Speaker 1: this is through using environmental effects, like seeing things moving
Speaker 1: around because of the monster or monster, or seeing footsteps
Speaker 1: or something. And I think this movie, uh, it's most
Speaker 1: memorable once you can finally see the brains that are
Speaker 1: attacking everyone, But it actually has some earlier scenes that
Speaker 1: do work very well with this invisibility criterion. One image
Speaker 1: that really worked for me was the scene where the
Speaker 1: Invisible Monster cuts a slit in a screen door, which
Speaker 1: I think is all done with stop motion, but it
Speaker 1: looks fantastic and it's very creepy. Yeah, that's a great sequence,
Speaker 1: and it's it's our first I think it's our first
Speaker 1: real taste of the stop motion mastery to come well.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think about movies that do invisible
Speaker 1: monsters really well and thinking what techniques do they use,
Speaker 1: how do they do it. One recent example that came
Speaker 1: to mind is the remake of the universal horror classic
Speaker 1: The Invisible Man. This version started Elizabeth Moss, and I
Speaker 1: think this is a fantastic example. This movie works especially
Speaker 1: well because the invisibility of the villain is not just
Speaker 1: a blunt, practical aid to his evil plans, but it's
Speaker 1: sort of a cohesive theme that's interwoven through the story.
Speaker 1: Like it poses questions that people, you know, many people
Speaker 1: would face at some point. What do you do when
Speaker 1: the thing that is threatening you is something that nobody
Speaker 1: can see, and if you can't see it yourself, how
Speaker 1: do you know it's real? And not just a figment
Speaker 1: of your imagination. Uh. And this place directly into the
Speaker 1: mechanics of the film, like they're they're really scary scenes
Speaker 1: in it, and they work by creating lots of uncertainty.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of did we really just see that?
Speaker 1: Or did I hear something weird? There are several memorable, long,
Speaker 1: uneasy shots of empty rooms that there's nobody in the room,
Speaker 1: nothing is moving. You're just seeing the empty room for
Speaker 1: it for a long time, and you keep wondering, is
Speaker 1: something going to happen? Am I going to see anything?
Speaker 1: Am I gonna see something move? And the tension created
Speaker 1: by that ambiguity is horror gold. Yeah, I've heard great
Speaker 1: things about about this one. I haven't seen it yet,
Speaker 1: and I have to have to say I was probably
Speaker 1: a little bit turned off of the idea of invisible
Speaker 1: man movies in general because of Paul Verrhoven's Hollow Man
Speaker 1: Pictures years and years ago. Uh that is. I love
Speaker 1: Paul Verehoven, but that movie is a travesty. It is horrible.
Speaker 1: But I love Elizabeth Moss, So you know, some some
Speaker 1: solid invisible man effects I'd be in for that. It's
Speaker 1: it's weird to think about invisible man movies because I
Speaker 1: don't know that it's very it's a very appealing concept,
Speaker 1: obviously we keep coming back to it. Um. But then
Speaker 1: to have a non visual enemy, you have to have
Speaker 1: these visual clues to really drive home what's happening. And
Speaker 1: then I also think about various ghost films and hologram
Speaker 1: people movies where you have somebody who is invisible to everybody,
Speaker 1: but the viewer can see them. And for some reason,
Speaker 1: I was just wondering, like, does that work just as
Speaker 1: well as having some sort of really cool invisible person affect? Um,
Speaker 1: could you do an adaptation of the Invisible Man and
Speaker 1: just say, actually, we're going to see the invisible man
Speaker 1: the whole time, um, and that will just be our
Speaker 1: point of view for things. Oh yeah, I see what
Speaker 1: you're saying. Just so like it's understood that the characters
Speaker 1: can't Well, actually, I can think of a movie that
Speaker 1: is sort of like that, which is Predator. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: so in Predator there are scenes where the alien has
Speaker 1: its invisibility cloak on, and like we the audience can
Speaker 1: see there's something there, it's not I mean, we can't
Speaker 1: see the full design of the creature, but we can
Speaker 1: see a kind of blurry humanoid outline. The audience is
Speaker 1: able to see this in a way that the characters can't. Really.
Speaker 1: I think there's only like one character in the movie
Speaker 1: who can kind of see something when none of the
Speaker 1: others can. But there's actually a way. I would say
Speaker 1: that Fiend Without a Face and Predator have something very
Speaker 1: similar in common. Both are movies with invisible monsters that
Speaker 1: create a kind of boundary crossing revelatory moment in the
Speaker 1: final act of the film when the invisibility is is
Speaker 1: turned off. Basically like for most of the runtime in
Speaker 1: both movies, the monsters are invisible, but then in the
Speaker 1: last fifteen minutes or so, the invisibility fails and we
Speaker 1: get to see their true form, and that transition is exciting.
Speaker 1: It makes it feel like the movie is kind of
Speaker 1: ascended into a different place, at different level of steaks.
Speaker 1: It creates this escalating sense of horror that I think
Speaker 1: would not be the case if the monsters had just
Speaker 1: been fully visible from early on. Yeah. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: works well like that because that's like you said earlier,
Speaker 1: that's that's often the case with monsters in general. Uh,
Speaker 1: don't show a lot of the monster early on. Maybe
Speaker 1: you even rely on a lot of like monster point
Speaker 1: of view shots and uh, and shots that sometimes obscure
Speaker 1: completely the creature that will be revealed in full later
Speaker 1: on in the picture. Yeah, it's nice to get little
Speaker 1: glimpses or clues, like I think in in Predator, there's
Speaker 1: a scene early on where we don't see the creatures
Speaker 1: full form, but we see I think, like we see
Speaker 1: from its point of view and we see like it's
Speaker 1: arm after it's been injured or something. And then with
Speaker 1: the brains in this movie, we never see them in
Speaker 1: full but like at one point we see one I
Speaker 1: think moving through a puddle of paint or something, and
Speaker 1: and you see the trail that it leaves. Yeah, Predator
Speaker 1: and Fiend Without a Face are are also similar in
Speaker 1: that some movies put off as long as possible showing
Speaker 1: you that monster because, let's face it, the monster effect
Speaker 1: is not that great. But both Predator and Fiend without
Speaker 1: a Face have amazing monsters, you know, given the time
Speaker 1: periods that these films were released in, and also like
Speaker 1: the budgetary constraints, uh, certainly on Fiend without a Face. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like both both of the effects look amazing when they're
Speaker 1: finally revealed, which is almost something of a surprise in
Speaker 1: a film. It's kind of like in Um Friday the
Speaker 1: Thirteenth New Blood when the mask comes off Jason and
Speaker 1: it looks so amazing. Okay, there's part of me that
Speaker 1: doesn't expect the sub mask makeup to be that good.
Speaker 1: You might expect something more like in Jason Takes Manhattan,
Speaker 1: where he's like a cute gray muppet. Okay, Well, before
Speaker 1: we go any further, maybe we should hear some trailer audio. Brain,
Speaker 1: let's go. That's not all The entire spinal cord is missing.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. This is if some mental vampire at work.
Speaker 1: Does it come from another country or another world? This
Speaker 1: terrifying menace that G two must destroy before it's too late.
Speaker 1: Image is fading, Sir, There it goes again. Central, How
Speaker 1: can they stop this invisible force whose only warning is
Speaker 1: a weird, blood chilling sound. Only two people still alive
Speaker 1: can help this agent find the answers, the girl who
Speaker 1: could be a spy and the scientist who could be
Speaker 1: the destroyer of the entire human race. We're facing a
Speaker 1: new form of life, but nobody understands. I believe it
Speaker 1: feeds on the radiation from your atomic plants, and that
Speaker 1: it's evil to stop him. There's only one way shut
Speaker 1: down your atomic If I can get through, I can
Speaker 1: blow out the control room. All right. Yeah, that's a fun,
Speaker 1: fun trailer um including the phrase science gone wild, which
Speaker 1: I guess is more more of a pure statement at
Speaker 1: the time. Um. I mean, another thing I think it's
Speaker 1: worth appreciating about this is I think Fiend Without a
Speaker 1: Face was really pushing what you could get away with
Speaker 1: in terms of mainstream film content, in like the level
Speaker 1: of terror and explicit gore and stuff. And this is
Speaker 1: really unusual for the time period. I can't really think
Speaker 1: of any other movie like it. No, No, it definitely
Speaker 1: stands out. So let's get into some of the people
Speaker 1: responsible for this baby. So the director was Author Crabtree,
Speaker 1: who lived nine hundred British filmmaker who learned his craft
Speaker 1: under a young Alfred Hitchcock. Um. Hitchcock wasn't that much
Speaker 1: older than him, but but that's what we apparently learned
Speaker 1: to learn his craft. His first film was Madonna of
Speaker 1: the Seven Moons, and after a string of pictures in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen fifties, he switched to directing TV, directing
Speaker 1: episodes of such shows as the Adventures of Lancelot Uh
Speaker 1: and The Adventures of Robin Hood even nine Ivanhoe starring
Speaker 1: Roger Moore. What wow, that sounds dry. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a dry cracker. Yeah. So towards the end of crab
Speaker 1: Tree's career and he retired by he moved into B
Speaker 1: Pictures for just hand full of pictures to sort of
Speaker 1: round out his career. But as psychotronic film scholar Michael
Speaker 1: Weldon points out, Crabtre really hit it out of the
Speaker 1: park with the last two two hits in a row
Speaker 1: from Mr Crabtree, Michael Weldon writes, because he directed Fiend
Speaker 1: without a Face in nineteen eight, followed in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: nine by Horrors in the Black Museum, a hypno murder
Speaker 1: film starring Michael Goff. Now, I have not seen that
Speaker 1: other one, and also I can't vouch for this because
Speaker 1: I don't remember what the source was. But sometime a
Speaker 1: while back, I know I was reading about this movie
Speaker 1: somewhere and recall the claim that Crabtree was not exactly
Speaker 1: happy to be working on Fiend without a Face and
Speaker 1: may have tried to Did he try to abandon the
Speaker 1: production or something. Um, I don't I don't have details
Speaker 1: on that. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me. This is
Speaker 1: a guy who had not been doing B movies most
Speaker 1: of his career and was just kind of, I think,
Speaker 1: finishing things up career wise. Uh. But you see, that
Speaker 1: is sometimes the case with with directors actors. You know,
Speaker 1: you look back on on some of some of these
Speaker 1: individuals and you might say, remember them for a certain picture,
Speaker 1: but that picture wasn't really big on their radar at
Speaker 1: the time. It was just like the next step then
Speaker 1: before they moved on to this or that. Uh. So's
Speaker 1: it's always interesting, like what pictures really stand out in
Speaker 1: the filmography? Uh, you know, even though they might not
Speaker 1: have been super important to that individual at that time.
Speaker 1: But there's no arguing with the results. This one's this
Speaker 1: one's fun. Yeah. All right. Now, as far as the
Speaker 1: screenwriter on this goes, we'll get to the source material
Speaker 1: in just a second, but the screenwriter was Herbert J. Later,
Speaker 1: who was born in nineteen twelve died in ninety three.
Speaker 1: And Joe, do you remember when we were talking about
Speaker 1: the Nazi zombie movie shock Waves from seven and we
Speaker 1: discussed the weird subgenre of Nazi zombie movies, and we
Speaker 1: pointed to two earlier films with Nazi undead stuff in them.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this seems to be a a rich vein
Speaker 1: of exploitation movie material undead Nazis in one way or another. There. Yeah, well, uh.
Speaker 1: One of the films we mentioned was the nineteen forty
Speaker 1: three John Carradine film titled Revenge of the Zombies, but
Speaker 1: the other was the nineteen sixties six film titled The
Speaker 1: Frozen Dead, in which a mad scientist keeps the heads
Speaker 1: of Nazi war criminals alive so he can reattach them
Speaker 1: to new bodies. Well, Herbert J. Leader wrote and directed
Speaker 1: that movie. He also directed episodes of Meet the Press
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen forties, and wrote and directed nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven's It, starring Roddy McDowell. That's it with an
Speaker 1: exclamation point, not to be confused with it with a period,
Speaker 1: right or it or the question mark or the thought
Speaker 1: provoking Lee open ended it with the semi colon. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: all right, But like I said, this was this was
Speaker 1: an adaptation of a of a existing work. That existing
Speaker 1: work was was a short story titled The Thought Monster
Speaker 1: by Amelia Reynolds who lived nineteen o three through nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight. She was a groundbreaking female classic old author
Speaker 1: who pinned the Thought Monster in ninety She wrote numerous
Speaker 1: works of short fiction, many of which I'm to understand
Speaker 1: or detective stories, though I have to admit I don't
Speaker 1: think I've read any of her work unless I am.
Speaker 1: You know, it's possible, given she wrote a number of things.
Speaker 1: Maybe I read something in a in a compilation at
Speaker 1: some point and I've completely forgotten about it. Yeah. Her
Speaker 1: story was originally published in Weird Tales, and I think
Speaker 1: you mentioned detective stories. I haven't read it in full,
Speaker 1: but I found the full text and I did quickly
Speaker 1: scan through it looking for some how some scenes might
Speaker 1: align with scenes in the movie. And it looks to
Speaker 1: me like the original story is more sort of detective
Speaker 1: oriented than the movie is. I mean, the movie has
Speaker 1: your standard military square as the leading man. In the movie,
Speaker 1: he's named Major Cummings. In the original story, it seems
Speaker 1: like Cummings is not a military dude, but a quote
Speaker 1: psychic investigator who arrives in town to get to the
Speaker 1: bottom of these strange murders. Yeah, now that sounds are
Speaker 1: like a like a weird tale sort of story, and
Speaker 1: get a psychic investigator in there, Rob, do you mind
Speaker 1: if I read an exerpt from this story featuring a
Speaker 1: trope that has come up on this show a number
Speaker 1: of times before. Oh, all right, so this is from
Speaker 1: the Thought Monster. That afternoon, Cummings called upon Dr Bradley,
Speaker 1: who was the coroner. I am going to make a
Speaker 1: strange request, doctor, he began, I'm going to ask that
Speaker 1: you permit me to photograph the eyes of this poor man.
Speaker 1: The doctor, greatly mystified, gave his consent. In the case
Speaker 1: of a violent death, Cummings explained, as he set up
Speaker 1: his apparatus, an image of the last thing seen is
Speaker 1: usually photographed upon the retina of the eye. I want
Speaker 1: to see whether a carefully developed enlargement won't show us
Speaker 1: that image. At Bradley's interested request, he promised to let
Speaker 1: him know the results of the experiment two or three
Speaker 1: hours later. Therefore, he returned to the doctor's office. I
Speaker 1: have drawn a blank, he confessed. The eye shows absolutely nothing,
Speaker 1: but objected the doctor. I thought it was he saw
Speaker 1: that killed him. Your theory didn't work, then asked Bradley, sympathetically.
Speaker 1: No Cummings answered, And yet I don't see how it
Speaker 1: could have failed in a case of this kind. There
Speaker 1: is one alternative. Perhaps there was nothing for the dying
Speaker 1: man to see. M hmmm, oh yeah. This is a
Speaker 1: fun um bad science concept that famously pops up in
Speaker 1: the nineteen two film Horror express uh Spanish horror film
Speaker 1: that we've referenced a couple of times on the show, right,
Speaker 1: the idea that you could find the killer's identity by
Speaker 1: looking at the retina of the dead person, because the
Speaker 1: killer was the last thing they saw. But here, uh,
Speaker 1: they try to use that, but then it doesn't work
Speaker 1: because I mean, in actuality it doesn't work, but also
Speaker 1: because the monsters themselves are invisible. And this connects to
Speaker 1: a recurring theme that's in the movie and the story
Speaker 1: as well, which is that the people who died die
Speaker 1: with expressions of such terror on their faces. It appears
Speaker 1: they have been scared to death. All right, now, I've
Speaker 1: already had a lot of talk about the military square
Speaker 1: or the psychic investigator, Major Cummings. Who who's the actor
Speaker 1: who plays this guy? This is Marshall Thompson who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen five through nine all American actor. You couldn't get
Speaker 1: more all American for the nineteen fifty cinema than this guy. Um,
Speaker 1: he's like a football hamburger. Yeah, he's kept thinking of
Speaker 1: him as his major milk died here. He's just just
Speaker 1: I don't know, but um, yeah, he's uh. Looking at
Speaker 1: his filmography, he's not a guy who's really familiar with
Speaker 1: but he seems to have two major wings to his filmography,
Speaker 1: cult films and family movies about animals. Oh boy, So
Speaker 1: first the cult stuff. He appears in Cult of the
Speaker 1: Cobro from nineteen fifty five, this movie. Of course, he's
Speaker 1: also from It, The Terror from Beyond Space from nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight and First Man into Space nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 1: Way is that the same IT with Roddy McDowell. I
Speaker 1: think it might be the same IT as as before.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine there are two IT exclamation point movies.
Speaker 1: I just didn't have the But weirdly enough, it's not
Speaker 1: IT colon, so it exclamation point colon The Terror from
Speaker 1: Beyond Space. Wait a minute, the years don't match up.
Speaker 1: These might be two different IT with an exclamation points. Yes,
Speaker 1: you were correct, it's pretty separate. Movies that have it
Speaker 1: exclamation point. Well, all right, I guess you know it's
Speaker 1: a solid title now that it exclamation point with Rody McDowell.
Speaker 1: I will say, I have not seen it, but it
Speaker 1: has a great looking monster in it. The monster costume
Speaker 1: looks like something. Um, it's it's pretty pretty intimidating, looks
Speaker 1: kind of like a space money anyway. So those are
Speaker 1: those are Thompson's more cult of films. Now onto the
Speaker 1: animal movies, and this is probably where some of you
Speaker 1: probably know this guy if you're if you're familiar with
Speaker 1: some of these older films. He did a horse movie
Speaker 1: called Gallant Best and forty six, and then he went
Speaker 1: on to star in nine Clarence the Cross Eyed Lion,
Speaker 1: and then the TV series he spinoff of That Doctor,
Speaker 1: which ran for eighty nine episodes, um, which I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, major TV show like eighty nine episodes is
Speaker 1: like half a season, So I don't know how long
Speaker 1: it actually ran, off the top of my head, but
Speaker 1: eighty nine episodes by today's standards, certainly substantial. He later
Speaker 1: directed some Flipper episodes and pops up as the character
Speaker 1: just referred to as director in Samuel Fuller's Serious two film,
Speaker 1: White Dog, starring Christy McNichol and Paul Winfield. Okay, but
Speaker 1: but other cast members I mentioned This movie also has
Speaker 1: a crank, and it much like the loyalized Grasp, is
Speaker 1: the loweralized grasp. Remember had the the Professor who had
Speaker 1: a lab just full of animals wandering around, and he
Speaker 1: figured out that if you inject a severed human hand
Speaker 1: with something and then shine a light on it, it
Speaker 1: will turn into a lizard hand. But then if you
Speaker 1: stab it with a radioactive knife, it turns into a
Speaker 1: pile of nothing. And that was his breakthrough. This movie
Speaker 1: has a crank who discovers that you can turn your
Speaker 1: thoughts into an external zombie like creature that goes around
Speaker 1: sucking out people's brains. Yeah. Like, basically he develops a
Speaker 1: tool pa. You know. It's kind of like psychic projection monster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I do have to stress again, you know, the
Speaker 1: plot leading up. It's not like one of these movies
Speaker 1: where oh, just skip to the last third team minutes
Speaker 1: because the rest is direct like they do. It's stuffy
Speaker 1: by too many of today's standards, But I feel like
Speaker 1: they do a pretty good job establishing uh conflict within
Speaker 1: a given environment, you get a feel for where this
Speaker 1: movie is happening, uh and so forth. So I ultimately
Speaker 1: like all of this stuff, even though watching it or
Speaker 1: sort of rewatching it. Uh the other day, I was.
Speaker 1: I was excited to get to the Brain monsters, but
Speaker 1: I still had to appreciate the path that we took
Speaker 1: to get there. Yeah. Like I said earlier, I mean,
Speaker 1: so the main military characters are kind of boring, but
Speaker 1: they're also kind of weird in certain ways. That will
Speaker 1: sin when we talked about the plot and the broader
Speaker 1: cast of characters, including the scientists and some of the
Speaker 1: townspeople I think are positively wacky by by standards. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and this guy playing Professor R. E. Wallgate uh Naston Reeves. Oh,
Speaker 1: this guy's a lot of fun. He live through nine one.
Speaker 1: I think it's my favorite performance in the whole film
Speaker 1: because he has this great, weird kind of crunch jaw delivery,
Speaker 1: and he comes off as kind of a protagonist slash
Speaker 1: sort of antagonist blend of JR. Tolkien and Chancellor Palpatine.
Speaker 1: That's good. Yeah, And I have to say the Palpatine
Speaker 1: thing connection here for me came largely from a line
Speaker 1: he has in which Barbara, his assistant, uh, says, I
Speaker 1: didn't know you had a laboratory. He mentions he has
Speaker 1: a laboratory, and he's like, it's not a story the
Speaker 1: Jedi would tell you. But anyway. Reeves had a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty two credits according to IMDb, and acted from
Speaker 1: one through nine seventy. He appeared in The forsythe Saga
Speaker 1: in the sixties and is also known among you know,
Speaker 1: some classic film fans for his role in house Master
Speaker 1: from thirty eight. He also pops up on The Avengers,
Speaker 1: The Prisoner and the film School for Scoundrels from nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: which I believe was remade in recent years the Dennis
Speaker 1: the Menace Academy of of Pranks and Hijinks. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think he played a lot of like stuffy, upper crust characters. Well,
Speaker 1: I found him quite lively and enjoyable in this movie,
Speaker 1: even though his character is supposed to be I think,
Speaker 1: like physically and mentally depleted. He's sort of on his
Speaker 1: last legs when we meet him. But yeah, he has
Speaker 1: this very pleasing mixture of uh, you know, a kind
Speaker 1: of jovial, benign British aristocratic personality kind of like the
Speaker 1: way Bertrand Russell talked, h if you've ever seen tapes
Speaker 1: of him, but then also mixing yeah, like you say,
Speaker 1: some Palpatine, like a little bit of edge of sith. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a good line to walk with this character, because,
Speaker 1: like I said, he turns out being responsible for the
Speaker 1: mental vampires that are going around invisibly sucking people's brains
Speaker 1: out through holes in the back of their head. All right, now,
Speaker 1: I mentioned Barbara. This is the character's name. Is Barbara Grizzle.
Speaker 1: Grizzle Grizzle, Um, Barbara Grizzle. That would be that'd be
Speaker 1: more of a Cronenberg character. But anyway. She's played by
Speaker 1: Kim Parker, who lived nineteen thirty two through two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten. She was an Austrian refugee who acted in
Speaker 1: a number of mostly I think British films between fifty
Speaker 1: four and fifty nine, including The Good Companions, The Man
Speaker 1: Without a Body and a number of you will know
Speaker 1: this film nineteen fifty six gave us fire Maidens from
Speaker 1: outer Space or fire Maidens off outer Space. This was
Speaker 1: featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand back in the day,
Speaker 1: and I remember it as being pretty fun. Not a
Speaker 1: good film by any stretch of the imagination, but but
Speaker 1: very enjoyable as a as as a bad movie. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I've seen this episode. It was in
Speaker 1: one of the early seasons. This was. This was a
Speaker 1: Joel episode and who I only vaguely remember. Like it
Speaker 1: had fire maidens in it. They were from outer space,
Speaker 1: and there was some sort of poorly executed beast man
Speaker 1: who was kind of like a charred skinned monster. Okay,
Speaker 1: now you're gonna have to help me, Joe with some
Speaker 1: of these others because I'm gonna name some people. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna name some characters, and I don't necessarily know which
Speaker 1: interchangeable military dudes some of these people were. Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: do my best, but I'm not sure about any of this. Okay,
Speaker 1: So there's a captain, Captain al Chester in this film,
Speaker 1: and that character is played by Terry Kilburn. I think
Speaker 1: maybe this is like the little the Jimmy Olsen guy
Speaker 1: who's Major Cummings little buddy. Yes, I think that would
Speaker 1: make sense. So this this is actually a really fun connection.
Speaker 1: So this guy was born in and as of this
Speaker 1: recording is still alive at age. I think gonna turn
Speaker 1: this year. Um and uh. He started out as a
Speaker 1: child actor in Hollywood. He acted on screen from nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight through nineteen sixty nine. Um. He famously played
Speaker 1: Tiny Tim in nineteen thirty eight at Christmas Carol. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Other film roles of note include ninety nine is Goodbye Mr.
Speaker 1: Chips in nineteen sixty two is Lolita. And he was
Speaker 1: a longtime partner of American actor Charles Nolty, who lived
Speaker 1: ninety three through two thousand and ten. Well, if he
Speaker 1: is the character I'm thinking of, he appears to be
Speaker 1: having a great time in this movie. Again, not a
Speaker 1: super not a superior part on the page, I would say,
Speaker 1: except for right at the beginning he gets to accuse
Speaker 1: our leading man of abusing drugs like it's the first
Speaker 1: line in the movie. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get back to
Speaker 1: that all right now. Now I do remember this character.
Speaker 1: We also have Dr Bradley. Dr Bradley is played by
Speaker 1: Peter Madden. Madden lived nineteen o four through nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: British actor who appears in nineteen sixty Reads from Russia
Speaker 1: with Love James Bond film is the Message, and he
Speaker 1: also pops up on The Avengers, and he plays the
Speaker 1: Undertaker in the opening sequence of The Prisoner. Other films
Speaker 1: of note in his filmography include Frankenstein Created Woman, The
Speaker 1: Kiss of the Vampire, and Doctor Shivago. Okay is this
Speaker 1: guy that wait, which doctor is this? Is he the
Speaker 1: local doctor or is he the military doctor? That is
Speaker 1: a good question that I am not prepared to answer.
Speaker 1: But he's one of those two doctors. Okay, yeah, there,
Speaker 1: I believe they're both both of the two doctor characters
Speaker 1: are kind of like these locals, what can you do? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: is he the doctor who gets to say, Okay, here's
Speaker 1: what happened to this dead man. His brains and spinal
Speaker 1: cord were sucked out through two holes in the back
Speaker 1: of his head. I think that's the military doctor who
Speaker 1: says that, Yeah, this is the one of the very
Speaker 1: gaunt face. Oh okay, So I think he's the local
Speaker 1: doctor and who like counters that guy by saying, but
Speaker 1: I don't know of any animal in these parts who
Speaker 1: would suck out someone's brain and spinal cord through their neck. Alright.
Speaker 1: One other actor of note, and it's this characters Sergeant
Speaker 1: Casper played by Michael Balfour, who lived nineteen eighteen through Again.
Speaker 1: I'm not exactly sure which military dude this was, but
Speaker 1: he has two very notable credits. He plays a scientist
Speaker 1: and Tim Burton's batman, and he was the first murderer
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventy one adaptation of William Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Speaker 1: The two murderers are not huge roles in Macbeth, but
Speaker 1: it's solid Hinchman work, and I have to say I
Speaker 1: was delighted to see in the one Macbeth adaptation from
Speaker 1: Joe Cohen um B movie action star and former Shall Khan,
Speaker 1: Brian Thompson plays one of the murderers. So but one
Speaker 1: of the many great reasons to check out that film.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, you just reminded me that I haven't seen
Speaker 1: this yet. Uh, and I would like to. Is Francis
Speaker 1: mcdormandes Lady Macbeth. Yes, awesome. Yeah, you've got Denzel washing Ten.
Speaker 1: Just just a wonderful cast top to bottom and beautifully
Speaker 1: shot in black and white, very dream like. I loved it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta see that now. As far as the music
Speaker 1: goes on this one, This was composed by Buckston Or
Speaker 1: who lived nine n Scottish born composer who did nine
Speaker 1: film scores for various genre films, including The Haunted, Strangler,
Speaker 1: Corridors of Blood, First Man Into Space, Doctor Blood's Coffin,
Speaker 1: and The Snake Woman. He also did some soundtrack work
Speaker 1: on Doctor Who in nineteen sixty four and nineteen sixty five. Okay,
Speaker 1: now we should probably mention whoever did the stop motion
Speaker 1: effects in this movie because they are tremendous. Yes, yeah, again,
Speaker 1: tremendous effects of these stop motion brain monsters and a
Speaker 1: few other stop motion effects. Peter Nielsen also has a
Speaker 1: special effects credit on this But for the most part
Speaker 1: we're looking at the Austrian duo of Rupele and Nordhoff.
Speaker 1: So that never heard of him? Yeah, I had not
Speaker 1: heard of them either, But uh, the this is Flow
Speaker 1: Nordhoff who of nineteen fourteen through nine eight seven and
Speaker 1: Carl Ludwig Rupal born nineteen fifteen. I'm assuming Ruple is
Speaker 1: deceased because he would be a hundred and six or
Speaker 1: a hundred and seven by now, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find a date for his death if he
Speaker 1: is in fact dead. So these two were apparently based
Speaker 1: out of Munich, and I was looking into their bios
Speaker 1: a little bit. Ruple apparently directed a trio of short
Speaker 1: propaganda films for the Nazis under the Third Reich in
Speaker 1: the late thirties and early forties. I could not find
Speaker 1: out much about them, but his name comes up three
Speaker 1: times in the book Hitler's Third Reich of the Movies
Speaker 1: by Rolf Geeson. Uh though kind of in passing. It's
Speaker 1: so at least based on what I was. You know,
Speaker 1: when I was looking through this book, it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like he was a major figure. But he did. He
Speaker 1: did direct a few things. Now, Nordhoff does not come
Speaker 1: up in that book, and according to IMDb, wasn't active
Speaker 1: in film until nineteen fifty three, and Nordov actually directed
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty seven anti totalitarian animated short film titled
Speaker 1: Hands Up, Mr. Ras Nici, for which he was also
Speaker 1: an animator. He also directed a short animated film in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty titled uh d Un, and then Rupel and
Speaker 1: Nordhoff worked together on the Star of Africa and fifty
Speaker 1: seven by director Alfred uh Weidenmann. Nordhoff was also a painter.
Speaker 1: Nordhoff's full name was Florence Fuchs von Nordhoff, and there
Speaker 1: is a short bio about him on the website for
Speaker 1: the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Uh. It mentions that he
Speaker 1: served in World War Two. Uh, it does not say
Speaker 1: it does. It does not give any details on that service.
Speaker 1: But based on what I was looking at, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's like it's not like these two seem to
Speaker 1: really go on from this film to do like a
Speaker 1: lot of special effects work. But like again, the stuff
Speaker 1: the work in here is is tremendous, like I can
Speaker 1: only imagine, like this stop motion animation inspired other stop
Speaker 1: motion artists future. Okay, well, so are you ready to
Speaker 1: talk a bit about the plot? Let's do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's zoom in on the opening. Uh. Interesting way
Speaker 1: of approaching it, since the opening for this film is
Speaker 1: incredibly bland but also abrupt abruptly bland. Yes, yes, uh
Speaker 1: silent ominous opening on military airfields and airplanes. Uh. I
Speaker 1: got a note for if you are going to go
Speaker 1: back in time and make movies in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: here's one way to mix it up. Don't pad your
Speaker 1: movie out with shots of airplanes flying around, landing and
Speaker 1: taking off. It's not that interesting. I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know what people were into about this. That stock footage
Speaker 1: is one way to pad it out. You don't need
Speaker 1: to pad it out though, I mean, like shorter movies
Speaker 1: are good. This movie actually we haven't mentioned this yet,
Speaker 1: but this is great, great uh in the range of
Speaker 1: drive in movie link. This is a seventy four men
Speaker 1: it movie, and I give it credit for that. There
Speaker 1: is absolutely no reason to make your movie longer than
Speaker 1: it needs to be. It should be exactly as short
Speaker 1: as you can get it with it doing what you
Speaker 1: wanted to do anyway. Okay, so back to this military airfield.
Speaker 1: So we see a soldier. He's like a guard with
Speaker 1: a rifle, having a smoke by a fence. And there's
Speaker 1: a sign on the fence that gives us some that
Speaker 1: gives us some set up. It says US Air Force
Speaker 1: Interceptor Command, Experimental Station number six, Winthrop, Manitoba, Canada. So
Speaker 1: Winthrop is the name of this small local town. And
Speaker 1: there's no music, almost no sound effects really. In the beginning,
Speaker 1: there's like a spy plane flying overhead, and we see
Speaker 1: radar antennas swiveling around above the base, and then the
Speaker 1: guard begins to hear something a sound. We will we
Speaker 1: will hear many more times throughout the film, kind of scuffling, crunching,
Speaker 1: sound like somebody walking around in a vat of kick cereal.
Speaker 1: Rachel and I were calling it captain crunch noises. She
Speaker 1: she was saying, like, man, this movie is making me
Speaker 1: hungry for Captain Crunch. And I get what she's saying,
Speaker 1: because every time the monsters show up, it's crunch crunch.
Speaker 1: But it was it's good branding. It's like, when that
Speaker 1: sound occurs, you a know that is it is unnatural.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really sound like anything you should be hearing
Speaker 1: in the woods or in a barn or wherever the
Speaker 1: action is taking place. And then when you hear it subsequently, subsequently,
Speaker 1: you know what's up. Right, So the guard goes to investigate.
Speaker 1: There's a scream, and then he comes across there's a
Speaker 1: dead guy in the woods. And then we get the
Speaker 1: title fiend without a face. For some reason in the
Speaker 1: title screen, fiend and face are done with like electric
Speaker 1: electric bolts. U. I was wondering why that is, Maybe
Speaker 1: because the the the atomic power station in the movie
Speaker 1: plays a role. Yes, this is these are atomic radar bolts,
Speaker 1: not not lightning bolts or thunderbolts. It's easy to make
Speaker 1: that mistake. So we get the credits, and then a
Speaker 1: lot of footage of military aircraft s seaming around at
Speaker 1: high speed and taking off and landing and stuff on
Speaker 1: the local runways. And we learned some stuff about the setting.
Speaker 1: This appears to be a foreign US military base up
Speaker 1: in northern Manitoba. We learned it's very rural, far away
Speaker 1: from the nearest big city. Uh. And then we meet
Speaker 1: our lug hero with a flat top haircut. This is
Speaker 1: Major Cummings and his little buddy. Again, we couldn't remember
Speaker 1: which character this is, so maybe this is Captain somebody
Speaker 1: or Sergeant somebody that it's his buddy here and his buddy.
Speaker 1: This is nearly the opening line of the film. I
Speaker 1: think there's like maybe some little comment right before it,
Speaker 1: but pretty much the first thing said by a human
Speaker 1: is cummings buddy saying, you ever think of trying sleep
Speaker 1: instead of benz adrine. You might like it. And while
Speaker 1: he's saying this, he is like pouring Major Cummings a
Speaker 1: drink of some clear liquid out of a Florence flask,
Speaker 1: like a boiling flask you would use in a lab. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is great. I immediately chuckled. And from the context,
Speaker 1: you don't have to even be told what benzadrin is.
Speaker 1: But bensador was a brand name for amphetamine soul fate,
Speaker 1: which was used and I think ultimately abused from the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties through the nineteen seventies. So major Cummings here,
Speaker 1: though portrayed, is like a straight lace baby face. Uh,
Speaker 1: is just tied on speed through presumably most of the film. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's there's a later scene where he's doing his research
Speaker 1: and he's just pounding Benny's and speed reading books on
Speaker 1: experimental neuroscience and psychology. It's a It's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing where I guess, this is just like I said,
Speaker 1: he's just supposed to be a normal military guy, but
Speaker 1: by today's standards, like this is this is kind of crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: before we learn literally anything else about him, we learned
Speaker 1: that he is jacked on bensadrin and uh, and I
Speaker 1: think this is I think the way it's positioned in
Speaker 1: the movie is to is not to say, hey, this
Speaker 1: guy is abusing drugs and isn't in his right mind.
Speaker 1: It's to show us, Wow, he's really busy. You know,
Speaker 1: he has a lot of work to do. This is
Speaker 1: his his his his work. At think it's just so
Speaker 1: strong that he just hasn't slept in weeks. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we got to find out who is this guy who
Speaker 1: died in the woods, that's what they're talking about, and
Speaker 1: we learned that it is a character named Jacques Grizzle. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, Major Cummings knows all about him here because
Speaker 1: they immediately had the FBI send over a file on
Speaker 1: this guy. This happens multiple times in the movie. It
Speaker 1: basically presupposes that the FBI, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Speaker 1: has just files they can send over on random Canadian citizens.
Speaker 1: The same thing happens later with Dr Walgate. Just send
Speaker 1: over the FBI file. But yeah, there's neither of these
Speaker 1: people are implied to have any criminal record, and they're
Speaker 1: not even Americans. They're like just random Canadian people. But
Speaker 1: the FBI know all about them. And you know, this
Speaker 1: is something that again kind of like the Benza draina.
Speaker 1: It could be played up is weird later on, like
Speaker 1: there's this Canadian town where the FBI has elaborate files
Speaker 1: on everyone. Isn't that crazy? But in this film just
Speaker 1: presented as yep, this is how it works. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: just that's the way of the world. There's nothing remarkable
Speaker 1: about it. So the military men are all immediately suspicious
Speaker 1: of this dead guy of Jack Grizzlee. What was he
Speaker 1: doing out in the woods at three in the morning.
Speaker 1: They're like, what was he doing out there farming? Um
Speaker 1: and uh? And they're talking about him. They're saying, who
Speaker 1: can forget the look on that dead man's face? Again,
Speaker 1: it's implying that there was an expression of such horror
Speaker 1: that that his death is implied to be understood as unnatural. Uh. Here,
Speaker 1: I just want to remark, we get our first meeting
Speaker 1: while in a thrilling scene of them walking across the
Speaker 1: office to go talk to the coroner, we we meet
Speaker 1: sandwich Man, the man who is trying to hide his
Speaker 1: bologna sandwich from the commander. Yeah, he's quite a specimen.
Speaker 1: Sandwich Man is later killed by the brain creatures in
Speaker 1: the last act of the movie. Tragically. I wanted sandwich
Speaker 1: Man to make it, but so they have. They have
Speaker 1: a talk with I guess the the um doctor on
Speaker 1: the base or the corner or something, and they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: was this death caused by radiation? Well, they need an
Speaker 1: autopsy to find out, but the locals don't want an autopsy.
Speaker 1: Uh So Cummings has to go meet with the colonel,
Speaker 1: and the colonel is already in a meeting with the
Speaker 1: local town's mayor who was named Hawkings and the sister
Speaker 1: of the dead man, Barbara Grizzle played by Kim Parker,
Speaker 1: who you could barely tell is there because her brother
Speaker 1: was killed by a monster in the woods. She she's
Speaker 1: very matter of fact about everything. Well, maybe she had
Speaker 1: a Mark Hamill character come up to her and break
Speaker 1: it to her and say, I'm sorry, but your brother
Speaker 1: died in the woods and it was weird. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, what did he know about the giver?
Speaker 1: But actually no, they do suspect to the brother of
Speaker 1: having a forbidden knowledge because the colonel during this meeting,
Speaker 1: he brings up the fact that Kim Parker's brother here
Speaker 1: had a notebook with him containing notes on the flight
Speaker 1: time of airplanes leaving the base. Okay, so that this
Speaker 1: raises a serious specter. Was he some kind of communist
Speaker 1: spy hiding in Manitoba? Well no, Barbara ends up making
Speaker 1: the colonel look absolutely foolish by showing how this was
Speaker 1: part of her brother's attempt to document a connection between
Speaker 1: the fighter jet flight times and his cows being unhappy.
Speaker 1: So all the local farmers are irate at the military
Speaker 1: base because they think that the airplanes are making their
Speaker 1: cows spew nasty milk. So the Colonel is sort of humiliated,
Speaker 1: and then Cummings gives Kim Parker a ride home. He
Speaker 1: is obviously like romantically interested in her, which is weird
Speaker 1: given the circumstances um but he's like, at one point
Speaker 1: on the right, he's like driving her in a jeep
Speaker 1: down this road through the woods, and he's talking about
Speaker 1: the guys at the military base, and he's like, we're human,
Speaker 1: we're not monsters from outer space. Now Here we have
Speaker 1: sort of the opening of the mystery, and more characters
Speaker 1: will be attacked by unknown creatures throughout the film. But
Speaker 1: I guess here, I'm not going to go scene by scene,
Speaker 1: but maybe we can focus on some things that were interesting.
Speaker 1: One thing I want to talk about is the nuclear
Speaker 1: reactor scenes. So for example, there's a scene later where
Speaker 1: the Colonel and Major Cummings are trying to use radar
Speaker 1: to like I think they're trying to scan the entire
Speaker 1: globe so they can get you know, use this one
Speaker 1: radar station to see every flight going on in Russia.
Speaker 1: But something is draining the power from their atomic reactor,
Speaker 1: so the radar isn't working the way it's supposed to be,
Speaker 1: and they're like, what could it be. Well, they call
Speaker 1: up their friend who works in the reactor core, who
Speaker 1: again is wearing what looks like I guess this is
Speaker 1: supposed to be some kind of radiation shielding, like a
Speaker 1: leadline suit or something, but he it looks like a
Speaker 1: kind of slick leather trench coat. I don't know. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: And there there of course, like push it for more power,
Speaker 1: take out those rods. We want the reactor at a
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty percent, and the guy is like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's danger us, but I'll do it. Meanwhile, local farmers
Speaker 1: are repeatedly just attacked by invisible monsters. We see, uh,
Speaker 1: we see a lady going to feed her chickens and
Speaker 1: then she's like attacked by something we can't see in
Speaker 1: the barn. And then her husband comes and then he's
Speaker 1: attacked as well. They finally do an autopsy on these people,
Speaker 1: and the scientists confirm they say, the brain is gone, Yes,
Speaker 1: sucked out like an egg through these two holes. Uh.
Speaker 1: The spinal cord is missing too, And the doctor at
Speaker 1: the army base says, I'm a doctor, not a detective colonel.
Speaker 1: There's nothing about this in the books. Major Cummings had
Speaker 1: the best explanation so far, mental vampire. And I think
Speaker 1: this is where the doctor we were talking about earlier
Speaker 1: comes in and he's like, rubbish, there are no animals
Speaker 1: around here that suck out people's brains. I mean, it
Speaker 1: is really hard to imagine how this works. Two holes
Speaker 1: in the back of the head and the entire brain
Speaker 1: and spinal column are somehow sucked out through that hole
Speaker 1: and then but are not like liquefied presumably in the process,
Speaker 1: because we see these brains and spinal columns crawling around
Speaker 1: later in the film with just like extra tentacles coming
Speaker 1: out of them. Yeah. We get more scenes of Major
Speaker 1: Cummings uh being overly friendly with with Barbara. There's one
Speaker 1: scene where he goes to visit her house and he
Speaker 1: just like knocks on the door and it's open and
Speaker 1: he comes in and oh, she's getting out of the
Speaker 1: shower and a towel and and he and it's oh,
Speaker 1: it's so embarrassing, but she's unfazed by it. She's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: let me put something on. And meanwhile, you can peruse
Speaker 1: this book called the Principles of Thought Control that's sitting
Speaker 1: on my table here by our e Walgate, who again
Speaker 1: is our our our, our, our our brain expert that
Speaker 1: we'll be getting to in a minute. Right. So wal
Speaker 1: we find out that Barbara works for Walgate. She like
Speaker 1: transcribes all of his notes and helps him write his books. Oh.
Speaker 1: Also this very same scene, so like she leaves the
Speaker 1: room for a minute, he's looking at these books. She
Speaker 1: comes back having put a row open everything on and uh,
Speaker 1: and they're like being very flirty and then he I
Speaker 1: think he's leaning into to kiss her, but then some
Speaker 1: guy barges in and it's this guy, Constable Gibbons or Gibson,
Speaker 1: and this is the guy with the the baffling accent,
Speaker 1: and he's a little bit Scottish sounding, yeah, a little
Speaker 1: bit yeah, And he's immediately totally hostile to this guy. Um,
Speaker 1: he's like, have you found that g I killer yet? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know it was probably one of you guys, probably
Speaker 1: some some wacko from this base. Oh, and then they
Speaker 1: immediately start punching each other. Now, eventually Gibbons ends up
Speaker 1: leading like a posse to go find the He again
Speaker 1: thinks it is a g I from the U. S
Speaker 1: Air base that has gone rogue, and so they're like
Speaker 1: looking for him in the woods with the posse. Uh,
Speaker 1: so they're on the hunt. And then Gibbons disappears from
Speaker 1: the hunt, and then later he returns stumbling into a
Speaker 1: town meeting, apparently having had his brain and partially sucked out.
Speaker 1: He's just like vacant died and like, oh yeah, just
Speaker 1: kind of stammering. It's it's actually kind of a disturbing
Speaker 1: scene because it's just like, oh, this this guy. We
Speaker 1: didn't like this character particularly, I mean he was kind
Speaker 1: of violent and possessive, but now we I mean, we
Speaker 1: didn't want to see this happen to him. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: there's another scene where eventually I don't remember how he
Speaker 1: gets there, but uh, Major Cummings is investigating something and
Speaker 1: he ends up at the tomb of someone in town
Speaker 1: and he gets trapped inside a crypt. Yeah, he wanted
Speaker 1: to check out it's a body of one of the victims,
Speaker 1: and he ends up going into this crypt. And so
Speaker 1: this is wonderful sequence in the film, which feels like
Speaker 1: we have accidentally trespassed into some sort of a gothic
Speaker 1: horror movie, you know, because and it's playing into the
Speaker 1: whole mental vampire thing, you know, the two wounds on
Speaker 1: the back of the neck. Because suddenly we follow him
Speaker 1: down into what seems like a perfect setting for a
Speaker 1: vampire's tomb. There is even a sarcophagus with a lidded jar,
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, we're just we're like, okay, I guess
Speaker 1: it's a vampire movie. Now it's vampires, and one is
Speaker 1: surely going to jump out, but no, Instead what happens
Speaker 1: is somebody locks him in the crypt, which I think
Speaker 1: actually it provides a pretty interesting I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: really buy this crypt his air tight maybe, but he
Speaker 1: starts like running out of air and it's a desperate
Speaker 1: scene where he's trying to get out. Uh he only
Speaker 1: barely makes it when his friends come and open the
Speaker 1: door up from the outside. Yeah. I really like this
Speaker 1: sequence too. There's some great stuff with the candle. The
Speaker 1: candle is fading because it doesn't have enough oxygen, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that goes out there he's gonna be in
Speaker 1: this lightless, airless environment. He's going to be entombed as
Speaker 1: a corpse. But yeah, then they free him at the
Speaker 1: last second. But how do we find uh, we got
Speaker 1: to find out who locked him in the crypt. Well,
Speaker 1: eventually it is discovered to have been doctor Wallgate, and
Speaker 1: this leads into the revelation of the nature of the monsters.
Speaker 1: So so what's basically what's the scheme, rob can you
Speaker 1: lay it out? Okay, it's he has a whole sequence
Speaker 1: where he explains that he's doing these experiments, essentially creating
Speaker 1: Tulpa's like I can if I focus my brain and
Speaker 1: I make this face, I can create this thing that
Speaker 1: goes about doing my bidding. And you know, as is
Speaker 1: often the case with things like tupas and thought projected monsters,
Speaker 1: they start getting out of hand, they get a little
Speaker 1: too powerful. And the whole time he's doing this by
Speaker 1: sort of timing his experiments with some of the radiation
Speaker 1: based radar experiments that are going on. Like he's I
Speaker 1: don't think he's actually doing any um like capital e
Speaker 1: espionage here, but he's he's a smart dude, and so
Speaker 1: he he reads scientific journals. He's able to figure out
Speaker 1: what they're doing there and able to figure out how
Speaker 1: to time his experiments just right. So he's benefiting from
Speaker 1: that radiation I think before. Yes, so he's trying to
Speaker 1: harness the radiation from when the reactor is at maximum
Speaker 1: capacity for their radar experiments. He's trying to use that,
Speaker 1: I think before he's creating these tulpa like things. He's
Speaker 1: just trying to do telekinesis, right, like the first time,
Speaker 1: just try some thing with his brain, Like he's trying
Speaker 1: to turn a page in a book with his brain,
Speaker 1: which he eventually is able to do. And then he
Speaker 1: keeps ratcheting that up to bigger and bigger acts of telekinesis,
Speaker 1: and then eventually the thought escapes his head and becomes
Speaker 1: its own entity. And then it starts going around and
Speaker 1: sucking out people's brains, and then there's just brains of plenty,
Speaker 1: their brains all over the place. Right, And so these
Speaker 1: are as we've been saying invisible for most of the film,
Speaker 1: but when made visible, which they do by cranking up
Speaker 1: the radiation, I believe, yes, they just okay, they think
Speaker 1: we can see them if we push the reactor to
Speaker 1: even more beyond maximum capacity, so fantastic. It's such a
Speaker 1: characteristically nineteen fifties movie trope by the way, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like Charles B. Griffith saying, does it have to
Speaker 1: be atomic radiation and Corman says, yes, I guess that
Speaker 1: was the case here, So it's atomic radiation plus. Also, uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a psychic powers thriller. It's one about the
Speaker 1: occult manifestations of human and thoughts, which I would say
Speaker 1: that sub genre is less confined to a particular time
Speaker 1: and place in history. It's less the nineteen fifties thing.
Speaker 1: You know, there's always horror about the idea of what
Speaker 1: if thoughts were more powerful than we imagined? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: these when made visible, these again look like squirming brains
Speaker 1: with the spinal column is like like a worm's body
Speaker 1: or something. And it has added tentacles and kind of
Speaker 1: antenna on top of it. It's a fabulous stop motion
Speaker 1: creature and it does like true I joked about the
Speaker 1: the the elevator pitch being your your brain is gross, um,
Speaker 1: but it is kind of that. It's kind of this
Speaker 1: this monster design that's just like, look at the brain
Speaker 1: and this attached spinal cord. Look at this. This anatomic illustration.
Speaker 1: This is disgusting. Uh, and this is apparently what we are.
Speaker 1: We are this brain. What if that brain was just
Speaker 1: crawling around, uh, trying to break through shutters and leaping
Speaker 1: onto women, the back of women's necks and wrapping their
Speaker 1: spinal cord around their neck. X wouldn't that be horrifying?
Speaker 1: Oh it's like the face hugger an alien, except it's
Speaker 1: going for the back of your head instead of the front.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about that connection. I wonder if you know,
Speaker 1: there are all sorts of papers talking about just how
Speaker 1: the design of the xeno morse varying forms come into being,
Speaker 1: and you know, and you know, of course they're very
Speaker 1: key individuals involved in that process, including the late h
Speaker 1: rug Eager. But I wonder, I don't remember anyone ever
Speaker 1: pointing to fiend without a face. But yeah, the face
Speaker 1: huggers and the fiends have a lot in common. But yeah,
Speaker 1: basically this this scene turns into a Night of the
Speaker 1: Living Dead style siege on a house where all the
Speaker 1: human characters barricade themselves inside and the brains are attacking
Speaker 1: from every from every angle, trying to get through the windows.
Speaker 1: I think at one point they come down the chimney
Speaker 1: um uh and uh. And this leads into that great
Speaker 1: line from that clip you shared for me where the
Speaker 1: movie it came from Hollywood, where dan Ackroyd shows a
Speaker 1: clip from this movie and says, we just sprayed for
Speaker 1: brains last week. Yeah, that that was the first place
Speaker 1: I saw any of these sequences that was in. It
Speaker 1: came from Hollywood, where there's a There are different sections
Speaker 1: in that film about different types of old movies, and
Speaker 1: one of them that probably my favorite, is the brains
Speaker 1: section where dan Ackroyd plays this mad scientist character kind
Speaker 1: of like hosting this segment and it's just a super um,
Speaker 1: just a super intense performance. But then he sets up
Speaker 1: all these wonderful clips of brains and brain monsters from movies.
Speaker 1: So yeah, again, these brains just run a muck. They're
Speaker 1: trying to break into the cabin. They're breaking into the cabin,
Speaker 1: they're attacking people, They're they're murdering people. Meanwhile, they're trying
Speaker 1: to get over there to shut the radiation off. Right,
Speaker 1: isn't that the idea? Well shut it? I think this
Speaker 1: movie has a very poor understanding of how atomic reactors work.
Speaker 1: So I think their idea is if we blow up
Speaker 1: the control station of the nuclear reactor, then it will
Speaker 1: stop going and the power will stop, and these things
Speaker 1: will lose their their power because they're being fed by
Speaker 1: the radiation somehow. I'm not a nuclear engineer, so you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong about this, right in and let me know.
Speaker 1: But I I'm pretty sure that destroying the control station
Speaker 1: of a nuclear reactor would have the opposite consequences. It
Speaker 1: would be more likely that the reactor would like continue,
Speaker 1: would go out of control and melt down, rather than
Speaker 1: it would like stop running, and then they would be
Speaker 1: even more visible and more powerful. But of course you
Speaker 1: know what's gonna happen ultimately, Yeah, they do get to
Speaker 1: blow up the reactor or whatever shuts it all down,
Speaker 1: the brains will really lose their power, and they don't
Speaker 1: just fall to the ground lifeless, and you know, then
Speaker 1: somebody has to come around and collect the brains. No,
Speaker 1: they melt away into basically just greasy spots on the floor.
Speaker 1: And it's a stop motion effect. And it's wonderful, wonderful
Speaker 1: stop motion sequence. And I think it's saying something because
Speaker 1: sometimes these transition effects and stop motion even in much
Speaker 1: later films can look a little awkward, but I thought
Speaker 1: these look tremendous. Oh yeah, yeah, I totally agree. The
Speaker 1: dissolving is it looks so gross. So there you have it,
Speaker 1: fiend without a face. Uh yeah, it's a fun flick.
Speaker 1: It's worth worth checking out. Uh. And like I said,
Speaker 1: it's Criterion Collection. Um, there's so there have been a
Speaker 1: number of DVDs of this put out over the years,
Speaker 1: but the two thousand ten Criterion Collection Edition is as
Speaker 1: I think definitely want to pick up. It's not out
Speaker 1: on Blu Ray, but the the Criterion Collection Edition is
Speaker 1: also available to rent or buy digitally, and I watched
Speaker 1: the Criterion Collection version as part of the AMC Plus
Speaker 1: subscription on Prime at least here in the States as
Speaker 1: of this recording. Uh. You can also stream it on
Speaker 1: the Criterion channel, which I mentioned earlier, which I have
Speaker 1: subscribed to in the past, and I highly recommend if
Speaker 1: you want to dive into a lot of films again,
Speaker 1: Samurai Pictures, Felini Pictures, but then also all sorts of
Speaker 1: weird and wonderful things you didn't even know existed. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and close it out here, but
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there if you
Speaker 1: have thoughts on fiend without a Face, brain, monsters in general,
Speaker 1: any of the people or things we mentioned in this
Speaker 1: episode right in we would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Reminder that Weird How Cinema publishes every Friday in the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed were primarily a
Speaker 1: science podcast, but this is our data set aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. I
Speaker 1: blog about these motion pictures at Samooda Music dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also go to Stuff to Blow your Mind
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Speaker 1: can check out the stuff to Blow your Mind merch section,
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Speaker 1: the fur toe bag. Whatever you want to put rub
Speaker 1: the fur on, you can do it. Hich Thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
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Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
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