Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: last week on Weird House Cinema we talked about the
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty four fantasy short film Quest, directed by Saul
Speaker 3: and Elaine Bass, and that was a real good time.
Speaker 3: If you haven't heard that episode yet, I recommend you
Speaker 3: go back and check that out. But this week I
Speaker 3: kind of wanted to stick to the theme of short films,
Speaker 3: especially weird short films. In the thirty minute run time zone,
Speaker 3: that's about how long Quest was. So today we're going
Speaker 3: to be talking about a picture that I've had on
Speaker 3: my list for a while, the surreal genre Defying nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two made for TV Spanish short film La Cabina
Speaker 3: or The Telephone Box, directed by Antonio Mrcero. Now, much
Speaker 3: like Quest, The telephone Box you can really do in
Speaker 3: a one sentence plot description. It is very light on
Speaker 3: plot machinations, not a lot of dialogue, not a lot
Speaker 3: of information to process except for weird little images and
Speaker 3: things to kind of wonder how you should read as
Speaker 3: the situation develops, but instead of a plot per se,
Speaker 3: this movie really does have more of a situation, and
Speaker 3: that situation is a man gets stuck inside a telephone
Speaker 3: booth and he can't get out. And warning, before we
Speaker 3: say anything else, this movie does have some major twists
Speaker 3: and surprises, and we're going to be talking about all
Speaker 3: of that. So if you want to watch it unspoiled,
Speaker 3: you should pause here and go do that. The film
Speaker 3: is available to stream for free online, including in what
Speaker 3: looks to me like an official upload on YouTube by
Speaker 3: the television station that owns the rights to it, which
Speaker 3: I think is RTVE out of Spain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, RTV Archivo. That's how I watched it. And
Speaker 2: outside of that, I'm not aware of an actual physical
Speaker 2: release for this film, though of course sometimes short films
Speaker 2: like these do get included as extras on the release
Speaker 2: of full features, but this seems to be the best,
Speaker 2: if not only, way to watch it right now, at
Speaker 2: least internationally.
Speaker 3: So again, the situation that takes place in this film
Speaker 3: is a man gets stuck in a telephone box and
Speaker 3: he can't get out. Now, what's really interesting about this
Speaker 3: story is the way the situation develops, both in terms
Speaker 3: of tone, and I would say, ultimately in terms of genre.
Speaker 3: I said at the top this was a genre defying film,
Speaker 3: and I think you could quite reasonably ask how one
Speaker 3: would classify it if you were going to have to
Speaker 3: shelve it at the video store. Where does this go?
Speaker 3: I've seen write ups that do classify it as a
Speaker 3: comedy and write ups that classify it as horror. I
Speaker 3: think it's a lot easier to say it is horror
Speaker 3: if you had to pick one, but a lot of
Speaker 3: writing about this notes that it is both. And while
Speaker 3: I think it certainly is both, I think it would
Speaker 3: be quite misleading to call Lacabina a horror comedy. That
Speaker 3: would give the wrong impression, because horror comedy is a
Speaker 3: well established hybrid genre. But in thinking about this question
Speaker 3: of what to call Lacabina, I realized that almost all
Speaker 3: so called horror comedy movies are built the same way,
Speaker 3: and that is, the bones are horror and the flesh
Speaker 3: is comedy. So in a horror comedy movie, the plot,
Speaker 3: the setting, the characters, and situations will almost entirely be
Speaker 3: those of the horror genre. And then what makes it
Speaker 3: a comedy is that we get ironic reversals on the
Speaker 3: expected imagery or tone, maybe through dialogue or the behavior
Speaker 3: of the characters. You will get changes that twist the
Speaker 3: basic horror situation and make it funny. When I make
Speaker 3: a mental list of horror comedy movies, I think this
Speaker 3: basic format applies to all of them, all the ones
Speaker 3: I can think of Evil Dead, to Grimlins, Grimlins to
Speaker 3: Sean of the Dead, Cabin in the Woods, etc. It's
Speaker 3: really hard to think of a movie that people think
Speaker 3: of as horror comedy that doesn't basically work like that,
Speaker 3: built like a horror film, but then furnished and decorated
Speaker 3: with comedy.
Speaker 2: I think Trimmor's is a great example of this. Tremors
Speaker 2: is a film that doesn't do anything in its structure
Speaker 2: and plot that really screams comedy, but the characters are
Speaker 2: fun and funny yes at times, and therefore you get
Speaker 2: plenty of chuckles in there, and you can, I think,
Speaker 2: accurately call it a horror comedy to some degree.
Speaker 3: I think that's a great example, and I think there's
Speaker 3: a reason that horror comedies are usually built like this.
Speaker 3: Comedy by nature works by subverting expectations. So I think
Speaker 3: the laugh moment in a comedy routine comes from your
Speaker 3: brain recognizing some kind of incongruity. I think that's not
Speaker 3: how that works, or that's not what's supposed to happen,
Speaker 3: or that's not the right way to respond, and so forth.
Speaker 3: So when you merge comedy with another genre of storytelling,
Speaker 3: the script to follow is pretty clear. You change or
Speaker 3: subvert the expectations of that other genre in amusing ways.
Speaker 3: So maybe you play with the tone like it's a
Speaker 3: horror situation, but the moment, the moment where things would
Speaker 3: normally be very serious, something silly happens. Or maybe you
Speaker 3: satirize the genre itself, like you invert horror tropes in
Speaker 3: a way that reveals something about the reason that writers
Speaker 3: invoke them, which undercuts their power. So in you know,
Speaker 3: this is what you get more of in movies that
Speaker 3: are satires on horror itself, like Happin in the Woods.
Speaker 3: So I think that's the way it almost always works.
Speaker 3: The other element in the genre hybrid, be it horror
Speaker 3: or fantasy or whatever, is the setup, and then the
Speaker 3: comedy is by its very nature. The twist on that.
Speaker 3: The short film we're going to be talking about today
Speaker 3: is I would argue the extremely rare inverse of this
Speaker 3: blueprint in lack of beina, the bones are comedy and
Speaker 3: the flesh is horror.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that is a very valid point. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because everything about the premise even just screams comedy. You
Speaker 2: hear it and you're like, all right, I'm ready to
Speaker 2: hear this joke. You don't know that the joke's punchline
Speaker 2: is going to be so bleak and horror centric. But
Speaker 2: it initially seems to have the structure of comedy, the
Speaker 2: structure of.
Speaker 3: A joke exactly right. So it's a comedy situation. In fact,
Speaker 3: we could explore more about this as we go on,
Speaker 3: but it feels to me like a very old, classic,
Speaker 3: almost silent film era style of comedy situation. It makes
Speaker 3: me think of Charlie Chaplin.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, yeah, it's very mind too, of course, like this,
Speaker 2: the mind act is oh, I'm stuck in a box,
Speaker 2: and that's the basic plot here. Yeah. In fact, I
Speaker 2: believe the filmmakers when they were casting it, initially one
Speaker 2: of them was pushing for them hiring a mind like
Speaker 2: let's get somebody who can who can do that level
Speaker 2: of wordless pure body acting.
Speaker 3: And the main actor that is cast in the film
Speaker 3: is the guy who gets stuck in the box does
Speaker 3: have a lot of mimelike skills. So the setup of
Speaker 3: the plot is an absurd, humiliating physical situation where there's
Speaker 3: like a mechanical problem to solve. Again, this is like
Speaker 3: a Charlie Chaplin scene. So you're stuck in a box
Speaker 3: and we watch various stereotyped characters come along and try
Speaker 3: and fail to solve the problem in amusing ways. However,
Speaker 3: if this movie had just been a comedy that delivered
Speaker 3: on that premise, I don't think it would be all
Speaker 3: that well remembered. Not like the comedy elements are not good,
Speaker 3: but it just wouldn't stand out in the way that
Speaker 3: it actually does. This movie made a big impression on
Speaker 3: a lot of people. We can talk more about its
Speaker 3: cultural impact in a bit, but I think it is
Speaker 3: the horror twist that really makes this movie memorable to
Speaker 3: people and is what makes it kind of masterful. So
Speaker 3: as the comedy scenario drags on, there is a very gradual,
Speaker 3: almost imperceptibly increasing tone of menace and despair, and moment
Speaker 3: by moment, the situation just becomes less funny and a
Speaker 3: little weirder. And more ominous, until by the final moments
Speaker 3: we are in full throttle nightmare territory. And I honestly
Speaker 3: cannot think of another film that pulls off this kind
Speaker 3: of revolution in genre and tone across its run time.
Speaker 3: It's a really interesting project, has a very unique effect
Speaker 3: on the viewer, and I can't think of anything else
Speaker 3: quite like it.
Speaker 2: The only picture that's coming to my mind that does
Speaker 2: something even kind of like this is Terry Gilliams Brazil
Speaker 2: with of course it's actual ending, not the fairy tale ending,
Speaker 2: but the right bleak ending that that we get in
Speaker 2: that picture, which is one of the things that makes
Speaker 2: it so memorable. Like there's so much in Brazil that is,
Speaker 2: you know, stupid and absurd and outright comedic, but we
Speaker 2: land in a very dark place, in a very contemplative place,
Speaker 2: and I think it's one of the reasons that Brazil
Speaker 2: resonates so strongly with everyone.
Speaker 3: I think that's a really good point of comparison, though
Speaker 3: I would say it's different because I think the bleak
Speaker 3: and ominous stuff is there from the beginning in Brazil,
Speaker 3: but throughout the runtime it's also like earlier on especially,
Speaker 3: it's a lot funnier, and then it just ends in
Speaker 3: like its bleakest point, whereas this is a movie that
Speaker 3: starts it's not scary or bleak at all at the beginning.
Speaker 3: It starts off completely lighthearted and then ends where it does.
Speaker 2: Now we've mentioned absurdity a couple of times, and I
Speaker 2: think absurdity is also key to understanding The Telephone Box.
Speaker 2: I think it makes wonderful use of absurdity in multiple ways,
Speaker 2: and I think we are generally primed to in interpret
Speaker 2: absurdity in terms of comedy, at least at first. Maybe
Speaker 2: there's some sort of scenario though, where if absurdity, if
Speaker 2: you're continually bombarded with absurdity, it eventually becomes horror. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure, but I think one of the film's great
Speaker 2: merits is that on the whole as even though we
Speaker 2: have an absurd premise, from the get go, it's pretty
Speaker 2: much played straight. We have some goofy moments, some physical comedy,
Speaker 2: but even those goofier moments I think are played with
Speaker 2: a realistic air and deliberately avoid going full cartoon on anything.
Speaker 2: And we'll touch on some examples of this when we
Speaker 2: get into the plot later, and then of course at
Speaker 2: the center of it all, our unfortunate man, our gray
Speaker 2: man trapped in the phone booth played by Jose Lewis
Speaker 2: Lopez Vsquez, who we'll get to here in a minute,
Speaker 2: is portrayed just very believable, very relatable. It has this
Speaker 2: quiet dignity and frustration and embarrassment that just steadily gives
Speaker 2: way to these darker emotional states.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right, And I think I'm
Speaker 3: not the first to point this out. You know, people
Speaker 3: have written before about the kind of surprising overlap between
Speaker 3: comedy and horror and the way I think they can
Speaker 3: both stem from absurd situations that you know, the genres
Speaker 3: do have a lot in common, Like they both deal
Speaker 3: with the with the building and then the release of tension.
Speaker 3: That's the structure of a joke, and that's the structure
Speaker 3: of a scare in a horror movie. And as you
Speaker 3: were just pointing out, with like the situational absurdity in
Speaker 3: the film, a lot of times the difference but like
Speaker 3: the same events could be shown as comedy or as horror,
Speaker 3: And really all that it takes to make a difference
Speaker 3: between the two is your perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, So.
Speaker 3: Another thing I wanted to bring up about Lacabino or
Speaker 3: the telephone Box is that this is not an obscurer movie.
Speaker 3: Actually certainly not obscure within Spain. You know, we on
Speaker 3: a weird House. We cover stuff most people have never
Speaker 3: heard of, and we cover stuff that's pretty well known.
Speaker 3: This is actually sort of both because I think many
Speaker 3: English speaking listeners will probably never heard of it. But
Speaker 3: in Spain, I think lots of people saw this on TV,
Speaker 3: certainly back when it came out. Lots of people who
Speaker 3: are adults now saw it on TV when they were kids,
Speaker 3: having no idea what it was, and it left a
Speaker 3: powerful impression on them. This is one of those movies
Speaker 3: where there's like a lot of Internet search traffic of
Speaker 3: people asking what was the horror movie where the guy
Speaker 3: gets stuck in a phone box? And then they come
Speaker 3: across this and find these web pages about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think, as we've discussed before, that's one of the
Speaker 2: brilliant things about broadcast horror television is that so many
Speaker 2: of us watched something or part of something and it
Speaker 2: just stuck in our heads and we had no idea
Speaker 2: what it was. And it's only much later via the
Speaker 2: Internet that were able to find out. Oh yeah, I was,
Speaker 2: that's what it was. It was in my case like Nasaka,
Speaker 2: it was Nasica or various horror movies that I saw
Speaker 2: parts of.
Speaker 3: We may have mentioned this on the show before, but
Speaker 3: I remember having a conversation with my dad about this
Speaker 3: where he was remember from when he was a kid
Speaker 3: seeing something on TV that really scared him, and just
Speaker 3: talking through it, we were able to figure out what
Speaker 3: it was, and it was an episode of Boris Karloff's
Speaker 3: thriller that was an adaptation of the story Pigeons from Hell.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yes, the short story by Robert E. Howard.
Speaker 3: But anyway, coming back to the telephone box, something quite
Speaker 3: interesting about this was that it was something of a
Speaker 3: cultural sensation. It was kind of the talk of the
Speaker 3: town in Spain when it first aired in December nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two, and I was reading an article about this
Speaker 3: movie called Lacabina Creating Horror from the Absurd. This was
Speaker 3: published in an online magazine called The Artifice, written by
Speaker 3: a contributor just called Amius. I guess that's like a
Speaker 3: pseudonym or something. But in this article, which is definitely
Speaker 3: worth a read for a lot of the background on
Speaker 3: the film. The author talks about how the movie gave
Speaker 3: rise to so it was not only talked about a lot,
Speaker 3: it gave rise to a kind of urban legend in Madrid. Basically,
Speaker 3: I think the idea was that people in Madrid were
Speaker 3: becoming trapped in phone boxes and later being kidnapped by
Speaker 3: sort of agents in shadowy uniforms, and nobody knew where
Speaker 3: they were taken, and so this actually would cause people
Speaker 3: to be afraid. And maybe whether or not they'd actually
Speaker 3: seen this short on TV, maybe they just heard about
Speaker 3: the kind of rumor of this thing happening secondhand, and
Speaker 3: so they go into a phone box to make a
Speaker 3: call and leave their legs sticking out to keep the
Speaker 3: door from shutting.
Speaker 2: I love that they made phone boxes scary, which we should.
Speaker 2: This would probably is probably a good point in the
Speaker 2: podcast to mention for our younger listeners high zoomers. A
Speaker 2: phone box or a telephone booth is a is a compartment,
Speaker 2: sometimes open on one or more sides, but sometimes it
Speaker 2: can be sealed with a door, and there is a
Speaker 2: pay telephone in there, a telephone that you would put
Speaker 2: money into in order to place calls and could receive
Speaker 2: calls if you've watched enough older films, especially like noir films,
Speaker 2: you know, payphones off and feature into the plot. So
Speaker 2: I'm half joking and having to remind everyone what it is.
Speaker 2: But I also found it an interesting experience to watch
Speaker 2: this film that is so centered around a phone booth
Speaker 2: and really asking myself, have I ever actually used one
Speaker 2: in my life? And I'm not sure that I have
Speaker 2: ever used a fully enclosed phone booth before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure I've used payphones when I was younger,
Speaker 3: but I don't know if they were ever the kind
Speaker 3: that were enclosed in a glass box.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is something just unique about the idea that
Speaker 2: I must seal myself into this space in order to
Speaker 2: then have this disembodied conversation with another place. There's almost
Speaker 2: kind of a magic act going on there, which I
Speaker 2: think they're tapping into a little bit here.
Speaker 3: Well, you want privacy for your call, but I mean,
Speaker 3: does it feel private when everybody can see you from
Speaker 3: all sides?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean I nowadays with everyone. I mean,
Speaker 2: it seems like this was a national expectation for folks.
Speaker 2: People are gonna have phone calls out in public. They
Speaker 2: want privacy, but now we know they don't really want privacy.
Speaker 2: People have all sorts of hyper sensitive phone calls out
Speaker 2: in front of tons of people. So it turns out
Speaker 2: it really didn't matter.
Speaker 3: Okay, I got another bizarre cultural legacy of this movie.
Speaker 3: Also mentioned in that same article on the Artifice, in
Speaker 3: what seems to me like a quite bizarre marketing choice,
Speaker 3: there's a Spanish telecom company called Telefonica which actually released
Speaker 3: TV ads after this special that were a parody of it,
Speaker 3: using the star of the movie in the ads. That
Speaker 3: will seem even more bizarre to you after we discuss
Speaker 3: the whole plot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as that Artifice article kind of gets into, it's
Speaker 2: really kind of brilliant. It's like, uh oh, they've made
Speaker 2: telephone booth scary. What do we do? We embrace it,
Speaker 2: We turn it into a commercial. Even though from angles
Speaker 2: that seems a little tone deaf, it actually reminds me
Speaker 2: of some of the Severance branded ads out there right
Speaker 2: now for stuff like zip Recruiter, where they're just like, Yep, Severance,
Speaker 2: that's great, let's attach our brand to that. When Severance
Speaker 2: is in many ways like a really cutting look at
Speaker 2: workplace culture and and you know what it does to
Speaker 2: us and what we do to ourselves there.
Speaker 3: So I'm a surfboard company. Let's make a Jaws themed commercial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know, But then again, I guess
Speaker 2: any publicity is good publicity, so they go for it.
Speaker 3: Now. Actually, the story of the ad for this telephone
Speaker 3: company gets even stranger because that article talks about how
Speaker 3: the movie itself, the short film may have been in
Speaker 3: part inspired by a telephone company ad that aired in
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixties and also had the star of this
Speaker 3: film in it. So, so there was a phone ad,
Speaker 3: and then the guy from the phone ad was in
Speaker 3: a movie that turned a telephone box into horror, and
Speaker 3: then the telephone company made another ad that was a
Speaker 3: spin off of the horror movie.
Speaker 2: Right, And I think there's also some possible connection to
Speaker 2: a nineteen sixty spy movie that had somebody in a
Speaker 2: phone booth in the phone booth gets put on the
Speaker 2: back of a truck, that kind of thing. But the
Speaker 2: ultimate finished product here goes in original and terrifying directions.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Also this in the not obscure category. This movie
Speaker 3: won awards. It won an International Emmy in nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: three for Best Fiction. This was apparently the first Emmy
Speaker 3: ever for a Spanish director.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as we'll get into, many of the people
Speaker 2: involved in this picture were top notch professionals who were
Speaker 2: recognized certainly within Spain but also internationally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so major cultural legacy. There's some kind of there was,
Speaker 3: at least at some point a kind of campaign to
Speaker 3: get a monument put in place that's like a phone box,
Speaker 3: you know, in Madrid, to recognize this movie. There's like
Speaker 3: telephone booth graffiti that people have found for somebody like
Speaker 3: illustrates the man from the movie being trapped on the
Speaker 3: inside of a phone booth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's rather telling. The article points out that
Speaker 2: Charlie Brooker of Black Mirror fame was inspired by this
Speaker 2: short film, which should tell you everything you need to
Speaker 2: know about the ultimate trajectory of this piece.
Speaker 3: This is very nineteen seventy two Black Mirror. Okay. Now,
Speaker 3: we would normally play some trailer audio here, but I
Speaker 3: don't think this thing ever had a trailer, at least
Speaker 3: as far as I can tell.
Speaker 2: Not that I could tell. So in a lieu of
Speaker 2: a trailer, go watch it. Just go watch it and
Speaker 2: come back, or if you know you're not going to
Speaker 2: watch it, or you don't like to go into films
Speaker 2: without full spoilers, then carry on and watch it later. Joe,
Speaker 2: what's your elevator pitch?
Speaker 3: Here? Well, if the tagline for Jaws was You'll never
Speaker 3: go in the water again, this is gotta be You'll
Speaker 3: never go in a phone booth again. Right.
Speaker 2: I think that works. I think that works.
Speaker 3: All right? We talk about the connections.
Speaker 2: Yes, So let's start at the top with the director
Speaker 2: who also has a writing credit on this. As we
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, it is Antonio Marcero or Marciro. I'm not
Speaker 2: sure which pronunciation is most accurate here, but he lived
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty six through twenty eighteen Spanish film and TV
Speaker 2: director whose work was well regarded domestically and internationally. His
Speaker 2: directorial work spanned from nineteen sixty through two thousand and
Speaker 2: seven and included such acclaimed films as nineteen eighty eight's
Speaker 2: Wait for Me in Heaven, about a man selected against
Speaker 2: his will to serve as Franco's double, nineteen eighty eight
Speaker 2: It's a Time for Defiance, a romance set during the
Speaker 2: Spanish Civil War, and two thousand and three's The Fourth
Speaker 2: Floor about seriously ill youths at a Spanish cancer ward.
Speaker 2: As for his other genre films, there's nineteen seventy five
Speaker 2: Bloodstains in a New Car, a kind of follow up
Speaker 2: to this film, I think in some ways has the
Speaker 2: same lead actor. Oh and then there is a nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty three kids monster mash film, a monster mash in
Speaker 2: that it has a franking stense monster, has a dracula,
Speaker 2: a were wolf, and so forth. It's titled good Night
Speaker 2: Mister Monster, and I'm glad to report that it does
Speaker 2: feature Paul Nashi as the were wolf. I'm also to
Speaker 2: understand that it is a disco musical with some rocky
Speaker 2: horror aspirations.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I gotta see that. Well, I should have
Speaker 3: thought of it when I picked this movie. But there
Speaker 3: have to be multiple Paul Nashi connections, right, We're gonna
Speaker 3: get several, aren't we?
Speaker 2: There are yes? And also that's I mean, for better
Speaker 2: or worse, That's how I end up grounding any Spanish cinema.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, how many decrease the separation are we
Speaker 2: from Paul Nashi?
Speaker 3: So I found a quote of Antonio Mercero's where he's
Speaker 3: trying to describe the themes of his own work, and
Speaker 3: he basically says in all of his movies there are
Speaker 3: three elements. He says, in all my works, I have
Speaker 3: used three consps, pain, love and humor. It's a strange cocktail,
Speaker 3: I know, and often I've asked myself how I could
Speaker 3: mix elements potentially so different from one another. But in
Speaker 3: practice they have been landmarks in developing my creations. And
Speaker 3: you know what, yep, that's they're all three are here
Speaker 3: in the Telephone Box less love than anything else, but
Speaker 3: there is a bit of love, and the bit of
Speaker 3: love makes the horror much more painful. And of course
Speaker 3: there's humor too, So check on all three, all right.
Speaker 2: The other writer credited here is jose Lewis Garci born
Speaker 2: nineteen forty four, claimed Spanish writer and director who directed
Speaker 2: four films nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars,
Speaker 2: begin The Beginning at nineteen eighty two and that one
Speaker 2: actually won Double Feature in eighty four, Course Completed in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty seven, and The Grandfather in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: He's also credited with a handful of horror films from
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties, but I couldn't find out much about
Speaker 2: these but he he's certainly best known for his dramas,
Speaker 2: his comedies, and his social commentary. Now our star really
Speaker 2: the when I say star in the short thirty minute film,
Speaker 2: he's pretty much like the I mean, he's the focal
Speaker 2: point the whole time. He is our gray man. He
Speaker 2: is the man trapped in the telephone booth. It's his
Speaker 2: performance within the telephone booth that is. And again we
Speaker 2: barely hear from him. He is mostly sealed in there.
Speaker 2: There is no sound. It's just a pure visual, mime
Speaker 2: like performance.
Speaker 3: He has a few lines at the beginning, yeah, but
Speaker 3: almost no dialogue for this protagonist.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This is again Jose Leuis Lopez Vasquez, who with
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty two through two thousand and nine a claim
Speaker 2: Spanish actor who's largely comedic work eventually shifted towards the
Speaker 2: serious during the nineteen seventies. He worked in theater initially
Speaker 2: before working his way into cinema with various odd jobs
Speaker 2: in cinema, and then his career really began to take
Speaker 2: off in the nineteen fifties. So today's film certainly emerges
Speaker 2: during a prominent part of his career when he's switching
Speaker 2: into more for the most part into more serious roles
Speaker 2: and finding a great deal of success there. Some of
Speaker 2: his most critically well received films are from this time period.
Speaker 2: In fact, he won two Chicago International Film Festival Awards
Speaker 2: for his performances in the early seventies, particularly two films
Speaker 2: of note, The First I've Seen It attributed to nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy and other places to nineteen seventy one, a film
Speaker 2: titled The Anchises Would, a well regarded folk horror film
Speaker 2: about historical Spanish serial killer and self professed werewolf Manuel Blanco.
Speaker 2: Roma Santo Vasquez plays a fictional character based on accounts
Speaker 2: of this individual from the novel by Carlos Martinez Barbito.
Speaker 2: It's a serious role and only his I think, second
Speaker 2: big non comedic role, following the Acclaims aological thriller Peppermint Frape.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty eight, The Anchises Woods earned him numerous nominations,
Speaker 2: and then in nineteen seventy two he was in a
Speaker 2: film titled My Dearest Senorita. This was a groundbreaking Spanish
Speaker 2: film dealing with sex change and intersexualism, in which Fasquez
Speaker 2: plays Adella, who becomes Juan. I haven't seen this film
Speaker 2: and so I can't speak for how well at Sinsibela
Speaker 2: sensibilities concerning sex and gender matchup with where we are today,
Speaker 2: but it apparently broke new ground at the time, especially
Speaker 2: in Spain, as such subjects had largely been banned under
Speaker 2: the oppressive Franco regime. And during this time there's like
Speaker 2: a sort of and this is also discussed in that
Speaker 2: article we referenced earlier, during this time period, there's kind
Speaker 2: of a breaking down of some of those strict rules
Speaker 2: concerning media as Spain is beginning to sort of reach
Speaker 2: out and try and sort of fit in with the
Speaker 2: larger European world around them. And so, you know, a
Speaker 2: few years earlier, film like this would not have been released,
Speaker 2: but Vesquez's performance here earned widespread acclaim, and the film
Speaker 2: itself was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the
Speaker 2: forty fifth Academy Awards. So these two films were instrumental
Speaker 2: in his shift to more dramatic work, including nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: one's The Garden of Delights seventy fives, Zorito Martinez seventy
Speaker 2: Six's Este Signor di Negro. But of course, as far
Speaker 2: as connections go, you might be wondering, Okay, did he
Speaker 2: work with any of the Spanish cinema mainstays from the
Speaker 2: time period that we've discussed on the show before, And
Speaker 2: the answer is yes, So Frank Bronna multiple times, Lewis
Speaker 2: Barbou multiple times, Helga Line, Yes, I think at least
Speaker 2: one or two pictures there. And indeed there is a
Speaker 2: Paul Nashi connection as well. So Nashi I think had
Speaker 2: an uncredited part in the nineteen sixty six film that
Speaker 2: Veasquez also appears in. But Vasquez definitely appears in a
Speaker 2: pair of Nashi written and directed films, though sadly they're
Speaker 2: from Paul Nashi's late period. So there's a family drama
Speaker 2: titled My Friend the Vagabond, and then that's from nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four, and then there's a nineteen eighty five film
Speaker 2: titled Operation Mantis that is like a slapstick spy movie
Speaker 2: that I think was just negatively received across the board.
Speaker 2: He did all the genres, didn't they Yeah, at one
Speaker 2: point or another. I've got his horror box sets, but
Speaker 2: I don't see his slapstick spy movies. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: the horror I think is by most accounts, the best
Speaker 2: I think that's also where Paul Nashy's heart ultimately was,
Speaker 2: And some of these other genres are often things he
Speaker 2: was getting into later in his career when Gothic horror
Speaker 2: had lost its popularity in Spanish cinema. So yeah, these
Speaker 2: are generally not as well received and or are not
Speaker 2: as widely known outside of Spain.
Speaker 3: I think that he's done at least a couple of
Speaker 3: movies about characters who are either actors or filmmakers and
Speaker 3: just want to keep doing universal style monster movies and
Speaker 3: there's pressure for them to do like action and stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now I can't speak for how Vesquez performs in
Speaker 2: those two pictures, but in fact, in any other picture.
Speaker 2: This is the only thing I've seen Vesquez in, But
Speaker 2: now I want to see more of him because he's
Speaker 2: so good in the telephone Box again, the quiet dignity
Speaker 2: in the face of all this inconvenience and embarrassment, the
Speaker 2: gradual erosion of his resolve as the situation steadily descends
Speaker 2: into panic and terror. You know, it's all They're all
Speaker 2: wordless and soundless within this soundproof sarcophagus, and we know
Speaker 2: next to nothing about his character, and yet we feel
Speaker 2: we know him so well by the end of it,
Speaker 2: you know, just based on the nuances of the performance
Speaker 2: and also some of these nice key supporting details, like
Speaker 2: you know, obviously there's as we'll discuss, like there's this
Speaker 2: love for his son, and there's this photograph of his family.
Speaker 2: But also I like, I really love the detail of
Speaker 2: his colorful tie. Yeah, it really felt like otherwise he's
Speaker 2: wearing this kind of you know, just boring business suit,
Speaker 2: but he has this really nice tie that makes him
Speaker 2: feel like a guy who has found this one small
Speaker 2: way to allow his individualism to burst free and shine,
Speaker 2: you know, and it's very much filtered and held back,
Speaker 2: but you can get a sense of his inner light. Oh.
Speaker 3: I think the tie is a great detail. Not to
Speaker 3: contradict to you, but you described it as colorful. It
Speaker 3: is visually interesting, but it's actually rather earth toned. It's
Speaker 3: basically brown and black.
Speaker 2: I interpreted it as kind of an orange, but.
Speaker 3: Oh well, maybe it is kind of orange. I mean,
Speaker 3: but it's not like you know, rain the whole rainbow.
Speaker 3: It's like a kind of brown or orange and black.
Speaker 3: But it does have these very striking expressive designs on it.
Speaker 3: It's like these kind of watery swirls in a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, kind of ya waves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, folks, we just had to scroll down to
Speaker 3: our screenshots to make sure we're describing the tie correct.
Speaker 3: I don't know they could so it is like black,
Speaker 3: but it is the other color, like could be brown
Speaker 3: or maybe orange or maybe gold. It's a little hard
Speaker 3: to tell in the light quality because it's like under
Speaker 3: a really bright sun, which is another thing about this character.
Speaker 3: He's stuck in a glass box in the middle of
Speaker 3: like right under this noonday sun. So he's like baking
Speaker 3: in there, but he's got this tie on and yeah,
Speaker 3: it's I don't know what you call this pattern, but
Speaker 3: it's like these kind of spirals or swirls that look
Speaker 3: kind of like, I don't know, dabs of paint almost
Speaker 3: maybe made with the fingers or something.
Speaker 2: It's interesting, all right, More on the necktie in a bit,
Speaker 2: Okay that there There are other actors in the picture,
Speaker 2: but mostly it's a one man show, though I do
Speaker 2: want to mention the burly man, the sort of like
Speaker 2: heavy set strong man that comes to try and bust
Speaker 2: him out of the phone booth. This character is played
Speaker 2: by Tito Garcia, who lived nineteen thirty one through two
Speaker 2: thousand and three, I wrote ton Spanish character act whose
Speaker 2: credits include various westerns, also the Jess Franco film The
Speaker 2: Awful Doctor Orloff, and a pair of nasty films nineteen
Speaker 2: eighties Human Beasts, Oh, and nineteen eighty one's Night of
Speaker 2: the Werewolf, which we previously covered on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: He's one of the two grave robbers that accidentally reawakens Voldemartininski.
Speaker 3: Okay, I've seen both of those. Night of the Werewolf's
Speaker 3: a lot better. Human Beasts didn't love that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of a nasty one and also but in
Speaker 2: very action oriented in its early goings. Yeah, but I
Speaker 2: have to say Garcia is good here. This could have
Speaker 2: easily been a real over the top, blueto stole performance,
Speaker 2: and I guess it is. But there are these nuances,
Speaker 2: you know, like this guy's trying to do the right
Speaker 2: thing despite of the onlookers, but also kind of because
Speaker 2: of the onlookers. Yeah, and it all comes off quite
Speaker 2: believable in my estimation.
Speaker 3: I want to talk later on when we get into
Speaker 3: some of the themes about the way the film portrays
Speaker 3: the people who stop to help the guy in the box. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think there's interesting stuff about the choices there.
Speaker 2: Now getting into the music here. Early on in the picture,
Speaker 2: the subtitles generously refer to the music as jazz, and
Speaker 2: I'm guessing it's probably stock music. But it also kind
Speaker 2: of works perfectly because it feels energetic but lifeless, you know,
Speaker 2: it's this sort of humdrum modernity, like this is what
Speaker 2: we have done to jazz. And later on in the
Speaker 2: picture we have a rather kind of startling shift in tone.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've been building up to it, but there
Speaker 2: is this shift in tone, and we get a shift
Speaker 2: in the music as well, and suddenly we're utilizing the
Speaker 2: music of German composer and educator Carl Orff, who lived
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety five through nineteen eighty two, best known probably
Speaker 2: for Carmina burana, which has been used to great effect
Speaker 2: in many a film, including John Borman's ex Caliber. His
Speaker 2: music has also been used in such pictures as nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy Three's bad Lands by Terrence Malick. This film makes
Speaker 2: use of a cantata from his operetta Trianfo diafrediti.
Speaker 3: Now, initially the use of this composition did lead to
Speaker 3: a legal dispute. Orf tried to sue Marso because he
Speaker 3: said that one of his compositions was used without permission.
Speaker 3: Marcero pleaded that it was an accident. He said he
Speaker 3: used it. He had meant to ask for permission and
Speaker 3: then forgot to, and he settled out of settled out
Speaker 3: of court with Orf. Apparently they met up and they
Speaker 3: watched the film together, and they came to some kind
Speaker 3: of agreement, and then Orf approved the use of his music.
Speaker 3: But initially that was a bit of a sticky point
Speaker 3: about this. Unclear to me if Marcero actually did just
Speaker 3: forget and it was an accident, an honest mistake, or
Speaker 3: if he was trying to get away with something. I
Speaker 3: don't know. Either way.
Speaker 2: I do feel like the orph music is used really
Speaker 2: well here. He kept us the sense of the transcendent,
Speaker 2: the tragic, and much more.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, unimpeachable choice to use four effect in the film.
Speaker 3: And just wish he had wish he had gone to
Speaker 3: Orf at first.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's get right into the plot.
Speaker 3: All right, So you can kind of divide this movie
Speaker 3: into three parts. There's the opening that takes place in
Speaker 3: the phone booth within a plaza in Madrid. And then
Speaker 3: there's the middle part that's sort of a journey, and
Speaker 3: then there is the climax, which is when we descend
Speaker 3: and descend into the underworld. So the first third, as
Speaker 3: I said, takes place in a plaza in Madrid. It's
Speaker 3: a real place apparently called the Plaza del Conde del
Speaker 3: vaer de Sushil, And the credits play in this blood
Speaker 3: red typewriter font all lowercase over views of the city
Speaker 3: framed by tall, blocky apartment towers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently this is a rather nice part of Madrid,
Speaker 2: a traditional district with an aristocratic architectural flare, according to
Speaker 2: Torismo Madrid. So I take the word for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like an elegant part of the city.
Speaker 3: So as we first come in, we're looking up at
Speaker 3: the sky at the tops of the buildings, but then
Speaker 3: the camera pans down to the plaza, which is in
Speaker 3: one sense, yes, it is quite pleasant, like it is
Speaker 3: surrounded by trees, as this big yard where kids can
Speaker 3: play soccer. But in another sense, at least in the
Speaker 3: way it is framed, it's kind of claustrophobic because we
Speaker 3: see it boxed in on all sides by these nondescript
Speaker 3: high rises.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like there's a weird sense of balance here,
Speaker 2: an uneasy balance, but balanced nonetheless. So like the apartment
Speaker 2: complexes are modern and nice, thus pacifying. Apparently government pressure
Speaker 2: to include a sense of modern Madrid to showcase to
Speaker 2: the world. Yes, but on the other it's kind of like, well, okay,
Speaker 2: whatever you may have lost to these sort of stacked
Speaker 2: confines of apartment living, at least you have these nice
Speaker 2: green spaces and pluses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should have mentioned this earlier. But yeah, as
Speaker 3: you said, showing off the beautiful modernizing Madrid was apparently
Speaker 3: a requirement to satisfy the government sensors, you know, the
Speaker 3: kind of ministry that they didn't know if this script
Speaker 3: was going to get a proove to be made a
Speaker 3: made for TV movie, And it did. But one of
Speaker 3: the conditions was, okay, you got to make Madrid look nice.
Speaker 3: You know, we got good stuff going on here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as we'll discuss, as is often the case, government
Speaker 2: mandates for the arts can often be twisted around and
Speaker 2: weaponized in very inventive ways. And then that may be
Speaker 2: what's going on here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there may be a kind of malicious compliance with
Speaker 3: the sensors. So at first when we come in, the
Speaker 3: soundscape here is chirping birds and the grinding of motors
Speaker 3: and machinery. It's early in the morning, and the first
Speaker 3: thing we see in terms of action is a dark
Speaker 3: green flatbed truck rolling into the plaza with a bright
Speaker 3: red new telephone box as its cargo. The truck slows down,
Speaker 3: backs up to the edge of the yard, and then
Speaker 3: four men in telephone company uniforms get out. They unload
Speaker 3: the box, carry it to the middle of the plaza,
Speaker 3: and efficiently install it. And I want to note that
Speaker 3: nothing really feels ominous at this point. There's no indication
Speaker 3: that this is a horror movie. The birds are chirping,
Speaker 3: the music is bright, almost whimsical. It feels much more
Speaker 3: like the opening of a lighthearted family comedy than a
Speaker 3: horror film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like we said, the sun is bright. You get
Speaker 2: the sense that there's no danger here because everybody's at
Speaker 2: work or at school, like, nobody's creeping about. It's just
Speaker 2: people here on official business. And especially given the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies feel to everything, I was reminded of a lot
Speaker 2: of live action sesame street shorts. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 2: I just needed a child's narration about telephones or the
Speaker 2: letter P.
Speaker 3: This is how they make saxophones.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The only thing that potentially registers as threatening to me,
Speaker 3: and it didn't when I first watched this was only
Speaker 3: upon rewatching. The only thing that is potentially threatening is
Speaker 3: the camera angle, because instead of watching this scene from
Speaker 3: the ground, we begin with the camera way up above,
Speaker 3: of surveying everything from a distance in the sky, as
Speaker 3: if we were watching like security camera footage or something.
Speaker 3: And this could allow to set in a kind of
Speaker 3: subconscious awareness of the scene in the plaza as being
Speaker 3: monitored by distant and unfeeling observers, which is a powerful
Speaker 3: kind of horror feeling to create within fiction when you
Speaker 3: take like a mundane scene or activity, something that is
Speaker 3: not unsettling by itself, but then suddenly give the impression
Speaker 3: that it is being watched unsympathetically. It reminds me of
Speaker 3: the excellent opening sentence of HG. Well's War of the Worlds,
Speaker 3: where he says, quote, no one would have believed in
Speaker 3: the last years of the nineteenth century that this world
Speaker 3: was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than
Speaker 3: man's and yet as mortal as his own, that as
Speaker 3: men busied themselves about their various concerns, they were scrutinized
Speaker 3: and studied, perhaps most as narrowly as a man with
Speaker 3: a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and
Speaker 3: multiply and a drop of water.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, that's a good point. This may be ultimately
Speaker 2: because I had some sense of where things were going,
Speaker 2: but I also found it a tiny bit foreboding that
Speaker 2: the box is carried around via inserted staves, like it's
Speaker 2: the Arc of the Covenant or something, you know. I
Speaker 2: don't know, I just I don't see workmen carrying things
Speaker 2: around like this. Maybe this is accurate, or maybe it
Speaker 2: is kind of a nod to something strange.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure. Yeah, with the poles inserted, it's like
Speaker 3: the Arc of the Covenant, or like a palan quinin
Speaker 3: which is especially funny slash disturbing when there is actually
Speaker 3: a person inside the box. So they're being carried like
Speaker 3: a king accepted as they're not being treated well.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And there are a number of visual comparisons
Speaker 2: that end up being made between the box and other
Speaker 2: things in the world. We'll discuss as we proceed.
Speaker 3: So anyway, the phone company guys install the box. They
Speaker 3: bolt it down to the earth and they get in
Speaker 3: their truck and drive away, and we see the box
Speaker 3: just left in the middle of the square. It is
Speaker 3: the brightest object in the frame. The door is hanging
Speaker 3: open invitingly. It looks absolutely jolly. And after this we
Speaker 3: get a kind of slice of life of the residents
Speaker 3: of the local buildings. In the morning, we see a
Speaker 3: gardener out watering the plants in the plaza with a hose.
Speaker 3: Children running around, playing and chasing after each other before
Speaker 3: they have to go to the school bus. There are
Speaker 3: some nuns out on a walk. We see this cool guy, Rob.
Speaker 3: I've got a screenshop for you to look at. Here's
Speaker 3: a guy with a button up shirt with a big
Speaker 3: seventies collar and big sunglasses. I like his look.
Speaker 2: He's got some books there. It has to return those
Speaker 2: to the library or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I bet their books on the occult. They've got
Speaker 3: to be interlibrary loan for the Necronomicon. So eventually we
Speaker 3: meet our protagonist again. He is an unnamed middle aged
Speaker 3: man in a business suit with this seventies tie with
Speaker 3: the cool design on it. He is bald on the
Speaker 3: top of his head, with a horseshoe of dark hair
Speaker 3: and a mustache. And from what I've read, I think
Speaker 3: this guy is supposed to look like a sort of
Speaker 3: stereotyped character, a stereotypical urban businessman in nineteen seventies Spain.
Speaker 3: This is our gray man. And the gray man is
Speaker 3: not alone. He is leaving home in the morning with
Speaker 3: his son, who's a boy of maybe ten or twelve
Speaker 3: or so, and his son is out bouncing a blue
Speaker 3: soccer ball. So the sun is like kicking the soccer
Speaker 3: ball around and at one point he kicks it and
Speaker 3: it flies into the new phone booth because the door
Speaker 3: is just hanging right open, and upon rewatch. I was
Speaker 3: horrified because I forgot about this moment, but I remember
Speaker 3: at this part. The boy he goes into the phone
Speaker 3: booth to retrieve the ball, and he stops for a
Speaker 3: second like he's messing around. I think he's dawdling before school.
Speaker 3: And he goes to pick up the phone receipt and
Speaker 3: his dad comes over is like, come on, no, get
Speaker 3: out of there, and the boy does, and he never
Speaker 3: closes the door again. There is still if you don't
Speaker 3: know what's coming. There's nothing overtly frightening at this point.
Speaker 3: It's only on rewatch that this moment becomes tense. But
Speaker 3: the boy points out that the phone booth is new,
Speaker 3: and the father acts almost as if he would not
Speaker 3: have noticed that fact otherwise. So they walk off to
Speaker 3: catch the school bus. The father gives his son a
Speaker 3: kiss and says goodbye for the day, and then while
Speaker 3: walking back the way he came, the gray man stops
Speaker 3: beside the phone booth and he seems to remember that
Speaker 3: he needs to make a call, so he steps inside.
Speaker 3: And I noticed this also on rewatch. We never learn
Speaker 3: who he was planning to call or what he was
Speaker 3: calling about, never find out.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was probably something mundane and boring, Like
Speaker 2: he's like, ah, I forgot I'm supposed to call about
Speaker 2: those tickets for the weekend, or I forgot to call
Speaker 2: about the laundry. You know, nowadays, we would stop halfway
Speaker 2: between point A and pot B pull out her cell
Speaker 2: phone and send that quick email or text message. And
Speaker 2: I assume that's just what's going on here.
Speaker 3: But when the man lifts the receiver in the phone booth,
Speaker 3: he does not hear a dial tone, so he starts
Speaker 3: fiddling around with the phone, trying to make it work. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: behind his back, the door to the box quietly folds shut.
Speaker 3: It's just like a venus flytrap closing on its prey.
Speaker 3: And still there is nothing yet to let you know
Speaker 3: this is horror. The man just keeps messing around with
Speaker 3: the phone to try to figure out what's wrong. Eventually
Speaker 3: he gives up and he tries to leave, but now
Speaker 3: the door is closed and it will not open, and
Speaker 3: he pushes and pulls and it is not going anywhere.
Speaker 3: And then he just stands back and folds his arms, like,
Speaker 3: oh brother, this is all I need very much. In
Speaker 3: the mime school of posture.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so at this point again, yeah, there's no
Speaker 2: musical sting to drive home what's happening. The ceiling of
Speaker 2: the phone booth is this low key and natural as
Speaker 2: can be. And initially it's just like, oh goodness, yeah,
Speaker 2: I've got one more thing now I have to do
Speaker 2: in my day, and it's get out of this phone booth.
Speaker 2: But you know, it seems like I've just got to
Speaker 2: figure this out.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: It's like there's a latch or there's something. This will
Speaker 2: just take a minute.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so his initial struggles give rise to I
Speaker 3: think some of the most famous images from the movie,
Speaker 3: images you see clipped out around the internet, ones that
Speaker 3: are reproduced, and stills and graffiti and on the poster.
Speaker 3: It's just the man struggling in this situation. He looks
Speaker 3: around the inside of the box. He's probably trying to
Speaker 3: find some kind of release mechanism or something that he's
Speaker 3: pressing on the corners and searching up and down, but nothing.
Speaker 3: The door is locked and there is no apparent way
Speaker 3: to get out. So next a couple of men come along.
Speaker 3: There is a guy in a polo shirt and then
Speaker 3: an older man and a jacket, and they come along
Speaker 3: walk past the box, and the man in the box
Speaker 3: pantomimes to them that he needs help getting out, and
Speaker 3: so the two men stop to try. I think it's
Speaker 3: worth noting that in their performance they never seem to
Speaker 3: care all that much. They do not act like they
Speaker 3: are concerned for the man. They do stop to help,
Speaker 3: but for example, the first thing they do is they
Speaker 3: go to the man and they suggest that he try
Speaker 3: pushing on the door. Then when that clearly doesn't work,
Speaker 3: they start trying to pull on the door from the outside,
Speaker 3: but it's not moving, and then they declare, well, we're
Speaker 3: late for work, and they move on, leaving the man behind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the guys are basically like, look, we've done exactly
Speaker 2: as much as the Social contract Demand's office, and then
Speaker 2: they move on. And this is a vibe that's going
Speaker 2: to continue throughout the film, where different people attempt to help,
Speaker 2: their actions always very much within the neuro confines of
Speaker 2: what society and or their job requires of them.
Speaker 3: And the thing I want to emphasize is it's true
Speaker 3: of them and basically everybody else who comes along. They
Speaker 3: do briefly stop to try to help, but it never
Speaker 3: feels like they see him or like they're concerned for him.
Speaker 3: It's just kind of like, oh, here's a little problem, eh, okay,
Speaker 3: can't fix it, see.
Speaker 2: You, Yeah, And they never seem to appreciate any real danger.
Speaker 2: And of course we don't truly begin and our main
Speaker 2: character doesn't truly begin to understand the danger till later.
Speaker 3: So in the meantime, while these guys are pulling on
Speaker 3: the door, several spectators sort of gather up around the scene.
Speaker 3: There are some adult women coming back from the store,
Speaker 3: they stop to look at him from a distance. There's
Speaker 3: a group of evil children who begin pointing and laughing
Speaker 3: at him, and they gather outside the door to the box.
Speaker 3: They're mocking him. They're saying, like, what's wrong with you? Man?
Speaker 3: And one of them says, should we throw you peanuts?
Speaker 3: And the children run in circles around the box, hooting
Speaker 3: at him, and they're just having the time of their lives.
Speaker 3: This is hilarious. Yeah.
Speaker 2: How many Spanish films have we seen at this point
Speaker 2: where mobs of children mock an adults predicament. I think
Speaker 2: this is at least the third one.
Speaker 3: That's the mainstay of Paul Nashy movies. Also, yeah, it's
Speaker 3: just mobs of evil children.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe it also showed up in the Tomb
Speaker 2: of the Blind Dead film that we watch. It's like
Speaker 2: Spanish Spanish children in these movies are just out to
Speaker 2: shame and harass.
Speaker 3: So I think it's kind of interesting to note all
Speaker 3: of the different characters who become part of the crowd
Speaker 3: around the man in the box. So there's a guy
Speaker 3: carrying an ornate cushioned chair on his head. I think
Speaker 3: he might he's supposed to be a mover maybe maybe
Speaker 3: somebody is moving into one of these apartment buildings, and
Speaker 3: he stops and he puts the chair down in the
Speaker 3: in the yard, just to watch the scene. And then
Speaker 3: there's a man who's or it's a young man I guess,
Speaker 3: going around selling pastries from a tray. He gets robbed. Later,
Speaker 3: a couple of movers are unloading a large, polished mirror
Speaker 3: that has like baroque framing on the outside, and they
Speaker 3: stop and they put the mirror down to watch what's happening.
Speaker 3: A few women nearby they sit down on a bench
Speaker 3: and begin knitting and they're knitting. That's when you really
Speaker 3: know you're in trouble. And so next we get to
Speaker 3: the large man, Tito Garcia. Here he's this big guy
Speaker 3: carrying an athletic bag. I think it's a Puma brand bag.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I guess he's going to the gym or
Speaker 2: just came back from the gym.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a weightlifter guy. And he comes to the
Speaker 3: rescue and he's like, Okay, everybody, get out of the way.
Speaker 3: I'm the strongest. I'll get this thing open. And he
Speaker 3: tugs and he tugs, and it's played a bit for comedy.
Speaker 3: All he succeeds in is breaking the handle off of
Speaker 3: the door, and then he tries repeatedly ramming the glass
Speaker 3: with his shoulder like he's a charging bull, but to
Speaker 3: no avail. And this is all played for physical comedy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, you do get the vibe that
Speaker 2: he is trying to do what's right, both in the
Speaker 2: eyes of the gray man inside, but also the crowd
Speaker 2: of onlookers, like there's a performative aspect of what's going on,
Speaker 2: even though as he begins to fail at this task,
Speaker 2: they begin to sort of mock him as well. But
Speaker 2: in the end, once more, there's only so much he
Speaker 2: can do and has to do in everyone's eyes, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of like, well, it is what it is.
Speaker 2: I gave it a good go, but I've got places
Speaker 2: to be buddy. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Once again, I feel like he never seems to really
Speaker 3: see or be concerned about the man inside. He's just like, oh,
Speaker 3: here's a problem. I'm strong, I can get this thing open.
Speaker 3: And he tries and tries, and then he's humiliated and
Speaker 3: then last to leave. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, there's never a sense that he cares
Speaker 2: about the individual in the box. He wants to obey
Speaker 2: the social contract. He wants to sort of appease the
Speaker 2: crowd and perhaps himself in his own ego. But does
Speaker 2: he really see the gray man at all in a sense.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: Somewhere in here there's an interesting moment where the man
Speaker 3: in the box sees his reflection in the fancy mirror
Speaker 3: that the movers have set down across from him and
Speaker 3: on Rewatch. I thought this was kind of interesting because
Speaker 3: a few things happen here, for one thing, and the
Speaker 3: man sees himself in the mirror. He's clearly embarrassed, and
Speaker 3: he kind of tries to adjust his appearance in a way.
Speaker 3: But this is also the first moment where it felt
Speaker 3: to me like Vasquez's performance, where the man's demeanor shifts
Speaker 3: a little bit from frustration and embarrassment to worry.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And of course I love just the idea
Speaker 2: of bringing the mirror into this. It feels very borges esque,
Speaker 2: you know. And also the mirror is of course a
Speaker 2: person in a box sort and so the man in
Speaker 2: the box is now reflected and is another man in
Speaker 2: the box. And I think maybe now he's seeing himself
Speaker 2: from the outside, right, he's seeing what other people are
Speaker 2: seeing that he is this person trapped within and maybe
Speaker 2: less of a person, you know, he is just he
Speaker 2: is within something else. He he's no longer like this
Speaker 2: free part of the world.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. Yeah, But then so we we're
Speaker 3: gonna get another attempt to intervene. So the guy who
Speaker 3: was carrying the mirror next tries to show that he
Speaker 3: he's the one who can get the box open. He's like,
Speaker 3: it takes not strength but skill, and so he pulls
Speaker 3: out his tools. He's got like a screwdriver. He has
Speaker 3: the tools and he has the know how. So we
Speaker 3: see him searching all over the box looking for the
Speaker 3: place where he can unscrew the door and get it open,
Speaker 3: but he finds nothing. It's like it was made not
Speaker 3: to be disassembled.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And then he tries to pry the door open with
Speaker 3: his tools, but he can't get that done either. And
Speaker 3: then while the screwdriver man is working and the crowd
Speaker 3: is watching, Uh, the man in the telephone box, he
Speaker 3: like witnesses things happening outside. I thought this was so interesting.
Speaker 3: So everybody's watching him, and then he's looking out through
Speaker 3: the windows seeing things happening in the crowd. That other
Speaker 3: people are not seeing. He's like seeing what is not
Speaker 3: otherwise observed. So he like watches a man steal pastries
Speaker 3: from the pastry vendors tray and cram them in his mouth,
Speaker 3: and he walks. He sees a man walk by behind
Speaker 3: the crowd with multicolored balloons. He sees the mover who
Speaker 3: set down the cushioned chair, offering the chair to an
Speaker 3: elderly woman who is also there watching the scene, which
Speaker 3: is funny because it's like it's like a gesture of kindness,
Speaker 3: but not toward the man in the box, only toward
Speaker 3: another member of his unwonted audience. And then finally, uh oh,
Speaker 3: here comes the fuzz. So two uniformed police come marching
Speaker 3: up to the scene.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And I've read other reviewers mentioning feeling at this moment
Speaker 3: when they watched it, like, oh, okay, the authorities are here,
Speaker 3: the situation is under control now.
Speaker 2: But nope, Well, you know, given the sort of rule
Speaker 2: of three, right, if this were some sort of a parable,
Speaker 2: and it definitely feel it has more of the trappings
Speaker 2: of parable. I think when we tell listeners what's happening here,
Speaker 2: it feels like okay now, And then the third people
Speaker 2: that came and tried to solve the riddle. They were
Speaker 2: able to solve it because they had legal authority to
Speaker 2: do so. But, like you say, this is also not
Speaker 2: going to work, right.
Speaker 3: So the cops here have an awesome way of dealing
Speaker 3: with the situation. They arrive and they tell the man
Speaker 3: with the screwdriver to get away from the box, and
Speaker 3: they tell the man stuck in the box to get
Speaker 3: out immediately, and then when he shows that he can't,
Speaker 3: they start barking threats at him and saying, didn't you
Speaker 3: hear me, I said, get out of there now? Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, once more they follow procedure, they enforce their authority,
Speaker 2: but they are unable to help and gladly step aside
Speaker 2: to let some other authorized party jump in. And during
Speaker 2: this section of the short film here I thought quite
Speaker 2: a bit about the bystander effect in all of this.
Speaker 2: This is that psychological theory that I believe we've talked
Speaker 2: about in the show before. It states that the presence
Speaker 2: of others tends to discourage an individual from intervening. So
Speaker 2: in the more people there are, arguably the less likely
Speaker 2: any individual is to help. And this is not necessarily
Speaker 2: grounded in any kind of like state of innate cruelty
Speaker 2: or anything. If there is a conscious energy to it all,
Speaker 2: it is often something along the lines of, oh, well,
Speaker 2: someone more qualified, someone more official, or someone more just
Speaker 2: someone closer to the situation, they're going to jump in
Speaker 2: and do what needs to be done. I'm not that person.
Speaker 2: And this is why if you've ever taken any CPR
Speaker 2: classes before, they always stress that you don't say, hey,
Speaker 2: someone called nine one one, because there's too much room
Speaker 2: for people to say, yes, that's a great idea. Someone
Speaker 2: should do that, maybe someone closer to the situation or
Speaker 2: someone unless No, what you do is you point at
Speaker 2: someone and you tell them to call nine to one one.
Speaker 2: Because if you leave it open, then there's this there's
Speaker 2: a high likelihood that nothing is going to be done,
Speaker 2: or it's going to take far longer for some decision
Speaker 2: to be made.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody assumes somebody else is doing it, or it
Speaker 3: takes them too long to figure out who's doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So when the when the police kind of run out
Speaker 2: of options, that you know someone else is about to
Speaker 2: arrive on the scene. It's the fire department and they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: good fire department will take care.
Speaker 3: Of it, okay, see yah, So the fire department, it
Speaker 3: really seems like these are the ones who are going
Speaker 3: to solve the problem, right. So they've they've got ladders
Speaker 3: and axes and everything they need to get inside this box.
Speaker 3: So they get like one of the fire firefighters gets
Speaker 3: up on top of the box and it seems like
Speaker 3: he is going to smash the glass in.
Speaker 2: And I was really thinking this was going to do it,
Speaker 2: surely like they had. Finally someone has the tools. It
Speaker 2: seems it's a little violent, but it looks like this
Speaker 2: is going to work.
Speaker 3: But just then an even higher authority arrives, the phone company.
Speaker 3: So finally the right people for the job. The phone
Speaker 3: company truck parks and four men get out, I think
Speaker 3: the same fore men who installed the box earlier, and
Speaker 3: they One thing I thought was worth noting, we never
Speaker 3: get a very close look at any of the phone
Speaker 3: company workers, whatever they actually are, the people dressed up
Speaker 3: in the green uniforms who put the box there. But
Speaker 3: from a distance they all look vaguely like the man
Speaker 3: stuck inside the box. They're all like middle aged men
Speaker 3: who are balding on top with a horseshoe of dark hair.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. Yeah, they're just very much bland,
Speaker 2: everyday men, they are, and we get far we get
Speaker 2: far less character from these. We don't get a sense
Speaker 2: of the same sort of interpersonal connection that we do
Speaker 2: with these other phases of helpers or would be helpers.
Speaker 3: That's right. So the four men come and they unbolt
Speaker 3: the phone booth from the earth, they lift it up,
Speaker 3: they insert the poles to carry it, and then they
Speaker 3: carry it back to their flatbed truck, put it on
Speaker 3: the truck bed and drive away, all with the man
Speaker 3: still stuck inside, and everybody at the assembled crowd they're
Speaker 3: all cheering and celebrating, like this is what's supposed to happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like somebody who knows what they're doing came something,
Speaker 2: so things are okay now.
Speaker 3: But the guy in the box is like, wait, what
Speaker 3: what's going on? But from everybody outside's perspective, it's like
Speaker 3: it's absurd. But it almost is plausible that that is
Speaker 3: how a crowd would react, because it's now like by
Speaker 3: removing the man in a in a kind of weird
Speaker 3: psychological way, the people who were standing around can be
Speaker 3: like the situation has been resolved.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this gives rise to the middle section of
Speaker 3: the movie, where the man is still stuck in the
Speaker 3: booth and now he's riding around on the back of
Speaker 3: the truck. I did notice this earlier, actually, but I
Speaker 3: thought we've got to mention at some point, so I
Speaker 3: do want to mention here how hot it seems like
Speaker 3: it would be inside that booth. Was just like the
Speaker 3: sun blasting down through the glass and the doors are stuck.
Speaker 3: And apparently this was actually an issue during filmmaking that,
Speaker 3: like the actor in the box, it was quite hot
Speaker 3: in there, and they at some points had to like
Speaker 3: angle shots in certain ways so that you couldn't see
Speaker 3: that pains had to be removed from parts of the
Speaker 3: box just to allow some air to circulate, or it
Speaker 3: would get unbearably hot inside. But during this section of
Speaker 3: the short, the truck is driving around Madrid and the
Speaker 3: man is becoming increasingly distressed. He tries to get the
Speaker 3: attention of the workers in the truck, but they won't
Speaker 3: even look at him like that. It's not like they're menacing.
Speaker 3: They just eyes forward, driving, no acknowledgment of him at
Speaker 3: all other people on the road, much like the crowd
Speaker 3: earlier just do not seem to take him seriously, Like
Speaker 3: they stare at him, they're kind of amused, or they
Speaker 3: mock him and laugh at him. We see some young
Speaker 3: attractive people in a convertible like pull up next to
Speaker 3: the truck in traffic, and they're all pointing at him,
Speaker 3: and one of them jokingly, I think, asks if they
Speaker 3: can make a phone call.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this whole time too, we're driving past more
Speaker 2: high rise apartment buildings in various high rise buildings in Madrid.
Speaker 2: And this is another I think there's some great visual
Speaker 2: poetry going on here between the vertical phone booth and
Speaker 2: the vertical buildings, the idea of these towers of modernity
Speaker 2: in here, this sort of little tower of modernity in
Speaker 2: which our main character is trapped.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And so obviously this section of the movie is
Speaker 3: where they were fulfilling part of their obligation to the
Speaker 3: Ministry office that was like show us Madrid modernizing. And
Speaker 3: so we get some of these views of the city,
Speaker 3: but I think a lot of them are sort of
Speaker 3: situated and edited together actually to make us feel some
Speaker 3: amount of dread. Yeah, yeah, because we see like buildings
Speaker 3: being constructed and so in a way all like construction,
Speaker 3: that's growth, that's modernizing this good, but we see kind
Speaker 3: of the bones of a building in a way that's
Speaker 3: a little unsettling, especially because we see them back to
Speaker 3: back with a moment where the truck stops outside of
Speaker 3: a church where there's a funeral going on and it's
Speaker 3: a funeral with a glass coffin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, the comparison there is obvious and rather foreboding.
Speaker 2: But but then also gave what you mentioned about the
Speaker 2: we see these buildings that are being built, and it
Speaker 2: is there's this kind of feeling like something modern and
Speaker 2: out of control is happening, you know, And that's what's
Speaker 2: happening on the micro level here with the phone booths
Speaker 2: as well, or at least that's the sense I'm beginning
Speaker 2: to get, like there's some sort of a process going
Speaker 2: on here. People you know, delivered one of these things,
Speaker 2: it trapped somebody, and now they're taking it away, and
Speaker 2: there's this feeling that nobody is at the wheel, or
Speaker 2: that's the the overbearing feeling that I got from it,
Speaker 2: like there are just machinations in process. They are completely unfeeling,
Speaker 2: nobody approved them, nobody's fighting them. It's just what's happening, uh,
Speaker 2: and you and you were just in the wrong place
Speaker 2: of the wrong time.
Speaker 3: Will it connects to a kind of to a kind
Speaker 3: of real world horror that I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people will have some experience with the feeling of like
Speaker 3: when you are in some way to your detriment being
Speaker 3: the object of an institutional process something by like a
Speaker 3: you know, a big corporation or a government or some
Speaker 3: big institution, and there's no way for you to feel
Speaker 3: like you are getting a foothold with that organization, like
Speaker 3: they're paying attention to your needs. And that kind of
Speaker 3: experience can of course run the whole gamut from just
Speaker 3: like a very frustrating inconvenience to like severe oppression of
Speaker 3: a person's rights, and in any sense it feels bad,
Speaker 3: but it can go from much like this story does,
Speaker 3: from the inconvenient to the horrifying. Now right around here
Speaker 3: in the stories, the first moment where I would say
Speaker 3: the energy really seems to tip over when it crosses
Speaker 3: the threshold into horror, and that moment is when the
Speaker 3: truck pulls up next to a playground and there are
Speaker 3: children singing a kind of song where it's some kind
Speaker 3: of I don't know, old like nursery rhyme song that
Speaker 3: talks about like Easter and the Trinity. And the truck
Speaker 3: stops and it stops next to another phone company truck,
Speaker 3: on which there is also a red telephone box with
Speaker 3: a man stuck inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's where we begin to realize this is
Speaker 2: not a singular incident, This is not maybe not that
Speaker 2: much of an anomaly, This is maybe happening all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so the men are unable to talk, like
Speaker 3: because they're both stuck in the boxes, but they look
Speaker 3: at each other and you see them both like a
Speaker 3: kind of horror or dawning on them when they see
Speaker 3: one another. Also because they're kind of dressed the same
Speaker 3: and look similar, like they just like look like similar guys.
Speaker 3: And they see each other and they they're aware something
Speaker 3: frightening is happening, and they're both powerless to do anything
Speaker 3: about it. So you can see a it's weird almost
Speaker 3: to kind of like pity for each other but also
Speaker 3: a kind of resentment for each other in the like
Speaker 3: seeing what the other one means for them. Yeah. Another
Speaker 3: interesting moment, I wonder what you made of this was
Speaker 3: the part where the truck crosses paths on the outskirts
Speaker 3: of the city, Like there are these ruins a kind
Speaker 3: of collapsing old wall, and they cross paths with a
Speaker 3: group of circus performers. There are these guys juggling and
Speaker 3: in clown makeup sitting on this collapsing wall. One guy's
Speaker 3: holding a ship in a bottle. Oh, it's it's an
Speaker 3: unsettling moment. And I would say the men sitting there,
Speaker 3: like the circus performers do seem to kind of look
Speaker 3: at the guy in the phone booth with more recognition
Speaker 3: and pity than most of the other observers in the
Speaker 3: story do. But I'm not sure what was really meant
Speaker 3: by this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think, like everything in the picture, that
Speaker 2: they keep it vague so that you can have various interpretations.
Speaker 2: But I guess what I took away from this is maybe,
Speaker 2: like the circus performers here have a certain amount of freedom,
Speaker 2: like they live on the outside, and in fact they
Speaker 2: are situated in this shot on the other side of
Speaker 2: a wall that separates them from the truck in the
Speaker 2: phone booth, So you know, in a way they like
Speaker 2: pity his condition in his circumstance, but they understand it
Speaker 2: insofar as they have escaped it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. And then right after this comes I was
Speaker 3: maybe the saddest part in the whole thing, which is
Speaker 3: when the truck crosses paths with a young boy. There's
Speaker 3: like a young boy out playing with a ball, and
Speaker 3: the boy waves to the man. This is another point
Speaker 3: I guess where the man does. It does feel like
Speaker 3: somebody actually sees the man and kind of like recognizes
Speaker 3: his humanity and all that. But he when he sees
Speaker 3: this boy, obviously he thinks about his son, and he
Speaker 3: thinks about his son earlier, and he remembers the soccer
Speaker 3: ball bouncing into the phone booth that morning. And I
Speaker 3: think it's a wrong image because it implies simultaneously a
Speaker 3: kind of horror. This man's worrying about his own situation
Speaker 3: and worrying how he's going to get out of this
Speaker 3: and whether he's going to see his son again. But
Speaker 3: also there's a kind of relief in the memory, I think,
Speaker 3: because he realizes that his son could have been the
Speaker 3: one trapped in the box and he wasn't. Then after
Speaker 3: this he just keeps getting weirder. Suddenly there's a helicopter
Speaker 3: following the truck. Why the helicopter. I never knew what
Speaker 3: to make of that.
Speaker 2: I think the helicopter just means like someone is watching.
Speaker 2: It's almost like the eye of God. But then it
Speaker 2: becomes it offers no comfort because in this situation, God
Speaker 2: is doing nothing. Whoever is in the helicopter, who's observing
Speaker 2: from the helicopter, they're not interfering with this, They're just
Speaker 2: I guess, documenting it. And again there's just this overbearing
Speaker 2: coldness to the whole scenario.
Speaker 3: So the truck leads through some strange and amazing locations.
Speaker 3: At one point it goes down this mountain side road,
Speaker 3: zigzagging down, down and down into a valley near a
Speaker 3: huge dam. And then finally at the end of this road,
Speaker 3: we pass out of the sunlight, which has been beating down.
Speaker 3: So you might imagine you almost kind of feel a
Speaker 3: physical relief because this man's been under the glass under
Speaker 3: the hot sun and it has just been roasting him
Speaker 3: in there. And they finally pass into darkness. But things
Speaker 3: are not getting better. So the truck goes into an
Speaker 3: underground facility and it drives down a long dark road
Speaker 3: and a tunnel. There are little sort of utility lights
Speaker 3: all along the walls, and as it goes deeper, it
Speaker 3: passes more and more unsettling things. The man sees lots
Speaker 3: of empty red telephone boxes being cleaned and prepared by
Speaker 3: phone company workers. Again, if that's actually what they are,
Speaker 3: they're just men in green uniforms. We see trucks leaving
Speaker 3: the facility loaded with telephone boxes, and the tone markedly shift.
Speaker 3: There is no longer any ambiguity or any hint of
Speaker 3: comedy or whimsy. The music lets you know that things
Speaker 3: have gotten very dark.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, the carl Orf is in full swing here,
Speaker 2: and things that are beginning to feel tragic.
Speaker 3: So the truck parks and uniformed men get out and
Speaker 3: the man in the box again. He tries to signal
Speaker 3: them for help, but they don't even look at him.
Speaker 3: They unhitch the box from the truck and then it
Speaker 3: is lifted away by a crane and transported to some
Speaker 3: deeper part of the facility, and the man becomes increasingly
Speaker 3: terrified and desperate. He's banging on the glass from the inside,
Speaker 3: but there seems to be no relief, and eventually the
Speaker 3: box is transported into some kind of dark back room.
Speaker 3: This big vast warehouse room where he is wheeled past
Speaker 3: other telephone boxes, and here just the nightmare reaches its apex,
Speaker 3: where he looks into the other telephone boxes and there
Speaker 3: are just dead men inside, dead men dressed like him,
Speaker 3: in various states of decomposition, looking like they've been in
Speaker 3: there for years or even decades. And finally he is
Speaker 3: parked next to one where a guy appears to have
Speaker 3: strangled himself with the cord of his own telephone receiver.
Speaker 3: The last image we see of the man is of
Speaker 3: his hand pressed up against the glass. Is he's just
Speaker 3: I guess, sinking down to the floor in despair? Ending
Speaker 3: doesn't get much darker than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is no escape. That is the final statement
Speaker 2: here that we do get a little bit of a
Speaker 2: stinger that reminds us don't worry, there's more doom to come.
Speaker 3: That's right. So we see a clean, tidy, new telephone
Speaker 3: box being deployed in the plaza, once again, just waiting
Speaker 3: for the next person to step inside. Wow. So that's
Speaker 3: the end of Lacabina. But several things I think I
Speaker 3: want to talk about because it raises all these interesting ideas.
Speaker 3: One is within the movie, did you ever detect any
Speaker 3: hint about what the point of the human harvesting operation was, Like,
Speaker 3: why are people getting trapped in phone booths and stashed underground?
Speaker 3: I'm almost certain this is intentionally left unanswered by the film.
Speaker 3: But did you pick up on any clues that I missed?
Speaker 2: No, I mean, I think it's left ambiguous. I think
Speaker 2: if I were to supply, I think my own sort
Speaker 2: of headcannon for what's happening here is that just like
Speaker 2: some sort of uncorrected accident of design, and the overall
Speaker 2: view of the corporation and or the government and anyone
Speaker 2: involved is like, well, these things happen. It's unavoidable. There
Speaker 2: are tragedies and horrors baked into modern civilization, and I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: we can't really address these design flaws. It is what
Speaker 2: it is. I'm sorry it happened to you, or at
Speaker 2: least I feel obligated to tell you so. And yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's what I got from it. I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess you could lean into the idea that the boxes
Speaker 2: are being put out there intentionally to catch and kill
Speaker 2: middle aged men in Madrid, But I like the idea
Speaker 2: that this is all just an accident of design and
Speaker 2: it's just not going to be corrected, not out of
Speaker 2: maliciousness or not individual maliciousness, but just sort of like
Speaker 2: the uncaring nature of the world.
Speaker 3: Well, bridging off of that, I guess to go beyond
Speaker 3: the sort of in universe question of what these people
Speaker 3: are supposed to be doing in the narrative, there's something
Speaker 3: a lot of people have asked, which is, like, what
Speaker 3: is the meaning of the whole story? Is Luckabina supposed
Speaker 3: to be a metaphor for living under the Francoist dictatorship
Speaker 3: in Spain? This is something lots of viewers have inferred.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's quite reasonable to suspect that
Speaker 3: about it. According to the director, the meaning was not
Speaker 3: intended to be limited to that, so it's not any
Speaker 3: kind of direct allegory, but instead it was generally about
Speaker 3: a kind of confinement and unfreedom and the desire for
Speaker 3: freedom of all sorts. However, I think it's very worth
Speaker 3: noting that at the time of this film's production and release,
Speaker 3: Marcero may have believed he had to say that that
Speaker 3: he could not admit, even if it were a veiled
Speaker 3: critique of Frank Wist Spain, that that's what it was However,
Speaker 3: I think this issue is a little further illuminated by
Speaker 3: a couple of quote quotes that Marcero gave that are
Speaker 3: collected in that article in the Artifice magazine that we've
Speaker 3: been talking about. So, for one thing, Marcero, speaking after
Speaker 3: the film's release, said, quote, Jose Luis Garci and I
Speaker 3: recognize that when we wrote the script, we were closer
Speaker 3: to the world of science fiction and terror than any
Speaker 3: political theme. We also realized that our story had many readings,
Speaker 3: and that that was its richness and complexity. I would
Speaker 3: say then that Lakabina is this a parable opened all
Speaker 3: kinds of interpretations, and according to the sensitivity, culture, and
Speaker 3: formation of each one, it will be interpreted in a
Speaker 3: different way, and those multiple interpretations will always be valid.
Speaker 3: And then, apparently, in an interview to Rtve in two
Speaker 3: thousand and nine, looking back on the film, so this
Speaker 3: was when he was much older, he said, quote, all
Speaker 3: human beings have boxes that we have to get rid of.
Speaker 3: There are boxes of the moral type, there are boxes
Speaker 3: of the educational type, there are boxes of the mental type,
Speaker 3: economic boxes that imprison us. And I believe that life
Speaker 3: is a continuous quest for freedom from each one of
Speaker 3: these boxes. In order to be free, spontaneous, and happy,
Speaker 3: each person has to see which box imprisons him and
Speaker 3: try to free himself. That is our destiny. So, according
Speaker 3: to Mrcero himself, a political interpretation is not the only
Speaker 3: intended meaning, and I certainly don't think it's the only
Speaker 3: valid interpretation of the film. But I also looking at
Speaker 3: it and knowing a bit about the history, I would
Speaker 3: have to say it's certainly a reading that makes sense,
Speaker 3: especially in the way that it locks with other themes
Speaker 3: that are clearly there in the story. So there's this
Speaker 3: theme of unfreedom, but it also the theme of unfreedom
Speaker 3: connects to the theme of dehumanization, which is a core
Speaker 3: element of first the comedy and then later the horror.
Speaker 3: This thing we see over and over is that the
Speaker 3: man stuck in the phone booth is not being treated
Speaker 3: as a human being by those outside the booth. He
Speaker 3: gets mocked, he gets gawkeed at like just some amusing object.
Speaker 3: He gets absurd, nonsensical orders barked at him by the police,
Speaker 3: like things that would be impossible for him to comply with.
Speaker 3: People that do try to help him, most of them
Speaker 3: don't actually seem all that sympathetic to him. They're just
Speaker 3: like it's like a way to show off their strength
Speaker 3: or skills to the gathering crowd by getting the door open.
Speaker 3: And then eventually the man gets shelved inside an underground
Speaker 3: bunker to apparently die, with no one at any point
Speaker 3: other than maybe like the kid on the road, and
Speaker 3: maybe the circus performers seeming too much notice his humanity,
Speaker 3: like his pain, his dignity, his desire for freedom, his
Speaker 3: requests for help. It's really like, once he is stuck
Speaker 3: in the box, he is not a person anymore. And
Speaker 3: so despite the film's extremely bleak and horrifying ending, I
Speaker 3: think it actually functions as a rather humane and emotionally
Speaker 3: powerful warning against participating in that kind of dehumanization, either
Speaker 3: as a spectator or as a functionary of an institution
Speaker 3: stacking telephone boxes full of people underground. Like the person
Speaker 3: stuck on the other side of the glass is a
Speaker 3: human being, and tomorrow or the next day, maybe it
Speaker 3: is you according to this story, and so we've got
Speaker 3: to treat that person as a human being. The fact
Speaker 3: that they're stuck in the box isn't funny, and it
Speaker 3: isn't meaningless. It matters.
Speaker 2: I think it would be easy to watch this film
Speaker 2: and just be left with a feeling of like, well,
Speaker 2: people will do what they can and what they have
Speaker 2: to do in order to help you, but beyond that,
Speaker 2: they won't. And you know that. It's not to say
Speaker 2: that the safety net of society and government is a
Speaker 2: complete illusion, but it will only get you so far.
Speaker 2: I guess where it challenges us and where you can
Speaker 2: get into that idea of the film ultimately being about
Speaker 2: freeing yourself from your boxes and all is by realizing
Speaker 2: that we don't have to be like the people in
Speaker 2: this movie, like this is a cautionary tale, Like we
Speaker 2: don't have to live in a society, in a culture
Speaker 2: that views the suffering of other in the predicaments of
Speaker 2: other people like this.
Speaker 3: That's right. And so I think that that's one reading
Speaker 3: on which this weird, absurd, little horror short film actually
Speaker 3: becomes quite powerful. Like it's not just there to kind
Speaker 3: of chill you an innertain you. It's rather meaningful and
Speaker 3: it kind of puts a lesson in there that I
Speaker 3: think it's hard to forget. But I do want to
Speaker 3: acknowledge also that that again, that's not the only reading
Speaker 3: of it. People have interpreted this to mean all kinds
Speaker 3: of things, and so you know, there's what the director
Speaker 3: said about it himself, is this general like free your
Speaker 3: mind sort of thing. There are also all these weird
Speaker 3: other readings that came up in some of the articles
Speaker 3: we looked at. The one in the Artifice mentioned some
Speaker 3: people at the time apparently thought it had something to
Speaker 3: do with alien abductions. I don't get that much at all,
Speaker 3: but people take it all over the place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they leave it open, and so you know,
Speaker 2: all interpretations are valid. All right. Well, there you have it.
Speaker 2: Nineteen seventy two's La Cabina the telephone Box, I say,
Speaker 2: still more of a downbeat film compared to last week's Quest,
Speaker 2: but they do have some things in common, Like they
Speaker 2: are both films, both short films about liberation or the
Speaker 2: for liberation, the desire for liberation. Whether that liberation is
Speaker 2: actually achieved within the runtime or not.
Speaker 3: I guess it is up to us to imagine the
Speaker 3: sequel to Lacabino where the where the telephone box regime
Speaker 3: is overthrown.
Speaker 2: But can you imagine if someone did a feat I
Speaker 2: think I've seen that kind of thing done before, where
Speaker 2: there'll be like some sort of a short, like perfect
Speaker 2: treatment of an idea. But if you expanded out into
Speaker 2: a feature, you've got to you've got to add all
Speaker 2: these elements that kind of take away the bite of
Speaker 2: the original piece. You know, you'd inevitably have to have
Speaker 2: that escape and perhaps some explanation of what's going on,
Speaker 2: and I think a lot of that would fall flat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, best to leave that victory to the imagination.
Speaker 2: All right, We're gonna go and close up the episode here,
Speaker 2: but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Had
Speaker 2: you seen the telephone Box before, what did you think
Speaker 2: of it? What kind of an impact did it have
Speaker 2: over you? Or are you like us new initians into
Speaker 2: the mysteries of the telephone box? If that is the case,
Speaker 2: we want to hear about that too. And if you
Speaker 2: have any reck mandations for other thirty minute films that
Speaker 2: feel like a perfect fit for Weird House, we would
Speaker 2: love to entertain those suggestions. Also, I want to note
Speaker 2: once more that we are really close to hitting our
Speaker 2: two hundred film selection here on Weird House Cinema. We've
Speaker 2: been receiving a number of suggestions for what we might
Speaker 2: cover and we might not listen to any of those suggestions,
Speaker 2: but we might. I'm very interested to read more of them,
Speaker 2: so keep them coming. A reminder that Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on
Speaker 2: Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns
Speaker 2: to just talk about a weird movie here on weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema, and if you want to follow us on
Speaker 2: letterbox dot com, our profile name is weird House and
Speaker 2: there is in fact a list of all the movies
Speaker 2: we've covered thus far, and sometimes a glimpse ahead at
Speaker 2: what's coming out next.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: to topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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