Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb
Speaker 2: and this is Joe McCormick, and we are once more
Speaker 2: returning to the Nashi verse. This will be our fourth
Speaker 2: Paul Nashi film on Weird House Cinema. Paul Nashy, of
Speaker 2: course an icon of Spanish horror and just in general
Speaker 2: like nineteen seventies grimy horror cinema. We've previously talked about. Yeah,
Speaker 2: three of his films. There's nineteen seventy three's Horror Rises
Speaker 2: from the Tomb, in which he plays no fewer than
Speaker 2: three characters, including the undead warlock Alarak Demarnac alongside his
Speaker 2: undead bride played by Helga Line. And then we also
Speaker 2: talked about nineteen seventies Assignment Terror, which is a ridiculous
Speaker 2: mostly I would say, a spy themed monster mash featuring
Speaker 2: Nashi as the cursed werewolf Valdemar Daninsky.
Speaker 3: And then had like off brand versions of all the
Speaker 3: universal monsters that were being recruited by alien spies to
Speaker 3: attack Earth.
Speaker 2: Yes, but I have to say some really fun monster
Speaker 2: combat in that one. I had that one on Blu
Speaker 2: Ray donated it to Future Shock Video in New Orleans,
Speaker 2: so you can rent it there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I recall that one was interesting for how they
Speaker 3: sketched out the moral character of the different monsters, like,
Speaker 3: of course, because it was Paul Nashi playing Waldebarn Doninsky
Speaker 3: as the werewolf. The werewolf was the more sympathetic monster.
Speaker 3: It's just got a you know, a romantic role. Paul
Speaker 3: Nashi as this were wolf character, which occurred in many films,
Speaker 3: often played a kind of tragic romantic role. But the
Speaker 3: really bad one was Frankenstein. The Frankenstein monster was like
Speaker 3: the main henchmen of the bad aliens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was interesting. And then we talked about nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one's Night of the Werewolf, a full blown of
Speaker 2: Valdemar Doninski film in which the legendary werewolf does battle
Speaker 2: with Lady Bathrie played by Julius Sally. All three of
Speaker 2: these were written by Nashi as well, and he directed
Speaker 2: Nine of the Werewolf.
Speaker 3: I think did he often write these under I was
Speaker 3: gonna say a pen name, but I think it was
Speaker 3: actually his real name, right, yesinto Molina.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, generally that they would be credited to his
Speaker 2: real name Paul Nashy is his performance name.
Speaker 3: Now, in case we're interested in running up the score
Speaker 3: on recent Nashi viewings. Just the other night, my wife
Speaker 3: and I finished watching another nineteen seventy one Paul Nashi movie.
Speaker 3: We watched The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman, which I
Speaker 3: acquired this past December. It has some really good gopher
Speaker 3: style vampire fangs. You know, there are different ways you
Speaker 3: can design vampire fangs. This made me think about it,
Speaker 3: Like the kind that are actually rather slight like they
Speaker 3: kind of hide in the mouth, and then you can
Speaker 3: have the ones that were you know, the mouth opens
Speaker 3: way and reveals a kind of longer snake fang, and
Speaker 3: then you've got this style which is a kind of
Speaker 3: fang over by this sort of chipmunk look where the
Speaker 3: fangs go down over the bottom lip, which I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think it looks pretty funny. This is, of course,
Speaker 3: another tragic romantic werewolf part for Paul Nashy. He's reprising
Speaker 3: his role as Waldemartin and Doninsky. I don't know how
Speaker 3: many movies he played Dninsky, and it had to be
Speaker 3: more than a dozen. He's doing it over and over.
Speaker 2: We discussed the full count in our episode on Night
Speaker 2: of the Werewolf, but it's yeah, it's a whole slew
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Werewolf versus the Vampire Woman was a lot
Speaker 3: of fun. It's mostly goofball stuff. It has a quite
Speaker 3: wooden love story. The chemistry between Nashi and his romantic
Speaker 3: interest is not really there, but it does have a
Speaker 3: handful of genuinely unnerving and artful sequences. It's kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it comes at. So like, it's
Speaker 3: mostly a B movie, but every now and then there's
Speaker 3: a shot that could be like, oh, that's actually quite scary,
Speaker 3: that that could be in a in a much better film.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, that's one of the wonderful things about
Speaker 2: films of this caliber B cinema in general, is that
Speaker 2: you know there's gonna be some stuff that, you know,
Speaker 2: where the either abilities or a budget wasn't quite there.
Speaker 2: But then there'll be areas where it really shines, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's finding those diamonds in the rough. That's that's
Speaker 2: always the joy.
Speaker 3: Rachel had questions about what the audience was supposed to
Speaker 3: understand about the romantic appeal of Paul Nashi because he's
Speaker 3: sort of part Peter Loriie and part Clark Gable. You know,
Speaker 3: it's it's a mix.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is often hard in in a way, it's
Speaker 2: interesting because it kind of makes him a bit of
Speaker 2: a chameleon, because he can play a werewolf, he can
Speaker 2: play he can play Dracula, you know, he can play
Speaker 2: an action hero, and as we're going to discuss today,
Speaker 2: he can also play a hunchback like he you know,
Speaker 2: he as we've mentioned before, like he was a former weightlifter,
Speaker 2: so you know, you know, he's the muscular guy and
Speaker 2: not you know, and I think you know, you can
Speaker 2: say Paul Nashi was a handsome fella as well, but
Speaker 2: he didn't have those kind of necessarily those like iconic
Speaker 2: leading man good looks that were kind of like the standard,
Speaker 2: and we have, I think an example of those sorts
Speaker 2: of good looks for a male actor of the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies in Spanish cinema in this picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think he can be understood as attractive in
Speaker 3: a way, but it's more the byronic hero who's maybe
Speaker 3: not necessarily the most classically handsome, but he has a
Speaker 3: kind of dark, strong, brooding, complicated, dangerous appeal which goes
Speaker 3: with his werewolf roles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, because I've watched one or two of
Speaker 2: the films where he plays like irresistible action Paul Nashy
Speaker 2: without any supernatural motifs added on, and you know it's
Speaker 2: a little harder to get behind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but to the extent that he has Peter Laurie energy,
Speaker 3: it's like buff Peter Lourie.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So yeah, in today's film Hunchback of the Morgue,
Speaker 2: we get to experience Nashy is a different horror movie staple,
Speaker 2: the Hunchback. This trope, of course, has deep roots in
Speaker 2: Gothic horror, going back to the eighteen thirty one Victor
Speaker 2: Hugo novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with film adaptations
Speaker 2: of that work going back to nineteen oh five. The
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three silent film adaptation starring Lon Cheney stands out,
Speaker 2: as well as the nineteen thirty nine talkie starring Charles
Speaker 2: Lawton and Marine O'Hara. These have both stood the test
Speaker 2: of time and are considered classics. The makeup as well
Speaker 2: in these two, Like you look up stills or footage
Speaker 2: from these films and it's still very convincing stuff.
Speaker 3: Now, I think the Hunchback of Notre Dame character has
Speaker 3: been brought to screen with a number of different takes,
Speaker 3: but usually the core of the character is that he
Speaker 3: is someone who is rejected and outcast by others because
Speaker 3: of his appearance, but has a good soul.
Speaker 2: Right And there's generally like one fe male character at
Speaker 2: least who sees him for who he really is, who
Speaker 2: recognizes this pure heart within him. So yeah, a lot
Speaker 2: of great actors have played this role over the years.
Speaker 2: Some of these I've never seen and wasn't familiar with,
Speaker 2: Like Anthony Quinn played Quasimoto in fifty six. Anthony Hopkins
Speaker 2: played him in eighty two alongside Derek Jacobi, who I
Speaker 2: believe played the villain in that one. Mandy Patinkin played
Speaker 2: him in nineteen ninety seven. I vaguely remember that one.
Speaker 2: I think it was a TV adaptation opposite Samahayak and
Speaker 2: Richard Harris. We also have the nineteen ninety six Walt
Speaker 2: Disney film adaptation animated, and I'm not sure where the
Speaker 2: project stands, but there was talk of Idris Elba starring
Speaker 2: in and directing a Netflix adaptation of the Hunchback of
Speaker 2: Notre Dame. Sadly, I think fate has probably robbed us
Speaker 2: of our chance to see Big driss as Quasimoto.
Speaker 3: That would have been something. Don't even know if I
Speaker 3: can imagine it, but sorry, I just had to go
Speaker 3: over and look at the I had to look up
Speaker 3: the story because I remember the name of the villain
Speaker 3: from the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the archdeacon, the church official.
Speaker 3: But that was Archdeacon Frolo or Frollo. I don't know
Speaker 3: how you say it, but yeah, this character. It's funny
Speaker 3: because I misremembered what this character was supposed to be,
Speaker 3: and thinking back on him, I had been thinking of
Speaker 3: him more as a I don't know, a character more
Speaker 3: like Javert and Limius, a rob and another Victor Hugo novel,
Speaker 3: who is a kind of misguided, overly strict enforcer of
Speaker 3: the rules, who you know, kind of fails to see
Speaker 3: ways in which strict enforcement of the rules can be
Speaker 3: harmful or you know, can do more harm than good.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's actually what this character is.
Speaker 3: It seems like in the novel at least he is
Speaker 3: a He is a weird sort of outsider figure in
Speaker 3: the church who people think he might be some kind
Speaker 3: of wizard. He's doing alchemy experiments, and he's a lecherous creep,
Speaker 3: which is funny because that means there's there's maybe some
Speaker 3: overlap betwe between that character and one of the main
Speaker 3: villains in The Hunchback of the Morgue.
Speaker 2: That's a great point. Yeah, Now, given Paul Nashy's love
Speaker 2: for universal monsters and classic gothic horror, yeah, it was
Speaker 2: only a matter of time, I guess, until he did
Speaker 2: a Quasimoto like character. Though it is important to stress
Speaker 2: here this is not another retelling of the Hunchback of
Speaker 2: Notre Dame. Instead, we have a largely original story involving
Speaker 2: grave robbing, doomed love, mad science, and just a splash
Speaker 2: of lovecrafty and horror.
Speaker 3: Set in the modern world at the time of the film.
Speaker 3: Or is it questions about that this one was temporally confusing.
Speaker 2: Yes. Now you had a great note as well about
Speaker 2: the likely inspiration for this. I mentioned Nashi was, of
Speaker 2: course a big fan of the universal horror movies, all
Speaker 2: the classics that he grew up on, and you brought
Speaker 2: up the character of Fritz.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, because this movie to me seemed you
Speaker 3: could definitely interpret it as Franken's not so much to
Speaker 3: the novel, but the first James Whyale movie, the first
Speaker 3: universal Frankenstein from Fritz's perspective.
Speaker 2: That's a great point. Yeah, Fritz, of course, being the
Speaker 2: hunchback esque sidekick to the doctor.
Speaker 3: In the first film, played by Dwight Fry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, I could see there's some Fritz. DNA
Speaker 2: did this as well, for sure, and maybe a little
Speaker 2: I Gore in there as well, though I Gore, of
Speaker 2: course pure villain.
Speaker 3: So I guess a real question about this movie is
Speaker 3: how sympathetic are we supposed to think Paul Nashy's character is,
Speaker 3: because it's clear he's being portrayed, at least in the beginning,
Speaker 3: as mostly sympathetic. I mean, the story is basically told
Speaker 3: from Paul Nashy's character's perspective, and we see all of
Speaker 3: his loves and disappointments and humiliations we identify emotionally with
Speaker 3: his struggles. We see and other characters repeatedly tell him
Speaker 3: that despite the fact that he is outcast, he has
Speaker 3: a good heart and he means well. But we also
Speaker 3: just see him carry out murder after murder and not
Speaker 3: just murders like live later in the movie, kidnappings of
Speaker 3: live human subjects to be fed to some kind of monster.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And in a sense, it's the murders have the
Speaker 2: sort of standard trajectory of any kind of at least
Speaker 2: initially sympathetic killer in a film, because the initial victims
Speaker 2: will all be dirt bags, and then later on you're like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: they're not really that much of he's straight over in
Speaker 2: the less dirt bag territory. But this film doesn't really
Speaker 2: make much out of that. We can observe it in
Speaker 2: comment on it, but the film doesn't really spend a
Speaker 2: lot of time with the fact that, yeah, he's increasingly
Speaker 2: just murdering and kidnapping people to feed them to a monster.
Speaker 2: And yet at the same time, I do feel like
Speaker 2: the movie encourages us to feel sympathy for Gotho the
Speaker 2: Hunchback the whole time. So yeah, it's it's weird and
Speaker 2: different characters speak about him in ways where it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: none of this is his fault, and I'm like.
Speaker 3: I don't know, if he's got some responsibility in there,
Speaker 3: he knows what he's doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So yeah, we'll discuss as we proceed here. But
Speaker 2: as far as the elevator pitches go, I would say
Speaker 2: my elevator pitch would be I would do anything for love,
Speaker 2: up to and including murder and grave.
Speaker 3: Robbing, including after my love is long dead.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, Uh, let's let's hear a little bit
Speaker 2: of the trailer audio. I'm not sure we're going to
Speaker 2: be busting out some English trailer audio or Spanish trailer audio,
Speaker 2: but either one will give you a taste you every one.
Speaker 5: You got three colors, no wish, no, no, no.
Speaker 4: Never before as a motion picture told such a story
Speaker 4: in which love and horror race hand in hand so
Speaker 4: their final consequences. Never has love been so terrifying, Never
Speaker 4: has horror been more romantic. Close your eyes tightly if
Speaker 4: you're unable to look at the terrifying scenes of this
Speaker 4: motion picture interpreted by Paul Nashy, Rosana Yanni, Vic Winnard,
Speaker 4: Alberto Delbiz, and Maria Pushy.
Speaker 3: All right, rob Speaking of the English and Spanish dubs,
Speaker 3: I have to report that I had a slightly chaotic
Speaker 3: viewing experience with this movie because the streaming version that
Speaker 3: I found to watch. I don't know if I should
Speaker 3: call out the platform it was the one that's on
Speaker 3: the shout Factory streaming collection only had one. Maybe this
Speaker 3: is my fault. Maybe I just didn't figure out how
Speaker 3: to set it up correctly or something. But at least
Speaker 3: when I was watching it, I could only figure out
Speaker 3: how to use one audio option, and that audio option
Speaker 3: was both the English and Spanish dubs playing simultaneously, which
Speaker 3: was somewhat maddening, but I was still able to enjoy
Speaker 3: the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that can always be confusing. If you've never, of course,
Speaker 2: played around with this, you might easily make the mistake
Speaker 2: of thinking, well, the dub and the subtitles are going
Speaker 2: to be identical, right, No, very often they are not.
Speaker 2: If they're even if they're just a little off it,
Speaker 2: you can feel your your brain hemispheres becoming like moving
Speaker 2: away from each other, you know, your brain splitting in half.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like creating the dial tone noise. Yeah. But
Speaker 3: so I was watching it with both of the audios
Speaker 3: playing simultaneously, and then looking at the English subtitles. So
Speaker 3: the amusing. When I reference lines in the film, I'm
Speaker 3: referring to the English subtitles.
Speaker 2: Mostly I watched this one in Spanish with the English
Speaker 2: subs I checked out the English dub at first, because
Speaker 2: it's important to note, especially filmed films from this era
Speaker 2: Spanish cinema, they're almost always dubbed, even in Spanish. It
Speaker 2: was just sort of the standard. It wasn't until later
Speaker 2: that there was more of an emphasis on getting Spanish
Speaker 2: actors to use their.
Speaker 3: Own voices, in the sense that a lot of times
Speaker 3: the movie would not have live sound from the set,
Speaker 3: even in the language it was shot in. They would
Speaker 3: do they would record their lines later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think maybe part of it too, is like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're bring in a voice actor. They're like, they're better anyway,
Speaker 2: bring them in. But I listened to a little bit
Speaker 2: of the English dub and I'm like, no, this Gotho
Speaker 2: doesn't sound right. So I just switched to the Spanish version,
Speaker 2: but I watched it on the screen. Factory released Paul
Speaker 2: Nashi Collection Volume two, which is a pretty great Blu
Speaker 2: ray set. It contains a number of Paul Nashi films,
Speaker 2: including The Werewolf and The Yetti, which is really fun.
Speaker 2: That's another Doninsky film in which he travels to Tibet.
Speaker 2: I believe, so a lot of fun stuff in that.
Speaker 2: The disc offers two different versions of The Hunchback of
Speaker 2: the Morgue, regular and uncensored. I've only watched the uncensored version.
Speaker 2: I rewatched it, and I watched it originally a few
Speaker 2: years back while I was like deep in COVID, and
Speaker 2: I think the only difference is like one or two scenes.
Speaker 2: There's not like a huge difference between the censored and
Speaker 2: the uncensored as far as I understand it. But this
Speaker 2: is a great collection worth checking out. If you live
Speaker 2: in Atlanta. You can rent it from Videodrome. Great quality,
Speaker 2: great stuff, a few extras as well on the disc.
Speaker 3: From what I could detect the uncensored version, there was
Speaker 3: only really one scene of brief mild nudity that was
Speaker 3: on a completely different film quality than the rest of
Speaker 3: the movie.
Speaker 2: That stands out. That's the main scene that stands out.
Speaker 2: Is being added on.
Speaker 3: This feels like it was from somewhere else.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, let's get into the people involved here.
Speaker 2: The director of this picture, and they also have a
Speaker 2: screenplay credit, so I think they had some influence on
Speaker 2: the screenplay. It's Javier Aguiri, who lived nineteen thirty five
Speaker 2: through twenty nineteen, Spanish film director whose films include a
Speaker 2: trio of seventy three horror pictures. Hunchback of the Morgue.
Speaker 2: Of course, another Paul Nashy film, Dracula's Great Love and
Speaker 2: the Killer, is one of thirteen. He worked in multiple
Speaker 2: genres and was well regarded for his short films. He's
Speaker 2: one of these directors that I believe did some more
Speaker 2: experimental short film work early on.
Speaker 3: The Killer is one of thirteen. Don't know anything about
Speaker 3: that one, but it sounds by the title like a Jallo.
Speaker 2: I looked into it briefly when it was like a
Speaker 2: Friday the Thirteenth episode publication, and I was like, we
Speaker 2: should do something with thirteen in the title. So I
Speaker 2: was looking into it. It looks it looks it looks
Speaker 2: like it might be good, but I haven't seen it.
Speaker 3: If the name of the movie is a complete sentence,
Speaker 3: there's a good chance it's a jallo.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Or if it has something cryptic about like the
Speaker 2: moth with the sapphire plumage or whatever. You know, there
Speaker 2: are a number of those that sound like like your
Speaker 2: auto generated jallo title.
Speaker 3: Twenty seven Daggers for the Owl Queens, Yes.
Speaker 2: All right. There's also a screenplay credit for Alberto S.
Speaker 2: And Sua dates unknown who also worked on tract It
Speaker 2: was Great Love and the Killers one of thirteen, but
Speaker 2: the main screenplay credit goes to Paul Nashi, who of
Speaker 2: course also plays our hunchback Wolfgang Gotho. So yeah, Paul Nashi,
Speaker 2: the legend himself. We've of course talked about Paul Nashey
Speaker 2: on the show before. Real name Jacinto Molina Alvarez, he
Speaker 2: was an aspiring architect turned bodybuilder turned horror writer, actor,
Speaker 2: and eventually director. He grew up idolizing the universal monsters
Speaker 2: he saw at the cinema and eventually got to become them.
Speaker 2: He worked in various genres in addition to horror, including action, comedy,
Speaker 2: and history, though history I think you know, with some
Speaker 2: obvious horror elements. Well, but his horror work is what
Speaker 2: has become legendary and has found an international audience, And
Speaker 2: clearly this was his deepest love. Several of his films
Speaker 2: certainly explored the darker side of human nature, but his
Speaker 2: most iconic role, that of the werewolf Voldemart de Doninski,
Speaker 2: embodies a clearly heartfelt sense of tragic love and doom,
Speaker 2: and we see elements of these sensibilities and other roles
Speaker 2: as well, including this one. And I think that when
Speaker 2: we're talking about sympathy for Gotho, I think I think
Speaker 2: doom is important, Like there is a strong doom vibe
Speaker 2: to everything here with him, Like, you know, he he
Speaker 2: is a doomed individual. He's a tragic individual. He stands
Speaker 2: outside of the laws. He's been pushed outside of society,
Speaker 2: and therefore he also has a sort of liberation in
Speaker 2: being completely untethered from those laws and moral standards.
Speaker 3: Yeah. There are even scenes that communicate essentially that idea
Speaker 3: in the movie. Yeah, but it seems over and over
Speaker 3: again across his career. Nashi liked to play characters whose
Speaker 3: love was more powerful than anything in the universe and
Speaker 3: who in the end are destroyed by their love.
Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah, so it's always.
Speaker 3: Like in the werewolf role, he's always got to get
Speaker 3: stabbed in the heart with the silver cross by the
Speaker 3: one woman who truly loves him.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's a great quote from Nashie that I read
Speaker 2: in the last Nashi film we covered Knight of the Werewolf,
Speaker 2: where he's talking about Night of the Werewolf in some
Speaker 2: of the plot elements, and he says, the claustrophobic castle
Speaker 2: the gothic tombs, the ill fated love affair, the menace
Speaker 2: of the undead, the ostracism of someone who is despised
Speaker 2: for being different, in the albravating shadow of death. All
Speaker 2: of these elements go to make up my personality and my.
Speaker 3: Work sounds about right.
Speaker 2: And yeah, these characters, these films like these were the
Speaker 2: soul of Paul Nashy. So yeah, he in this film,
Speaker 2: I say, I think he gives a great performance at
Speaker 2: once sympathetic and menacing or altering between the two depending
Speaker 2: on the scene. And his physicality works really really well.
Speaker 2: Here he's playing a hunchback, which is you know, he's
Speaker 2: hunched over, he's shambling as he moves from scene to scene,
Speaker 2: and I just have to say, this must have just
Speaker 2: been physically exhausting. I am not an actor, but I
Speaker 2: played a character in a video series, a mad scientist
Speaker 2: talking about science called Anton Jessup, and I had like
Speaker 2: a slightly hunched over posture for the shoot. And this
Speaker 2: was just like a few hours on a couple of days,
Speaker 2: and I just felt like my body was racked after
Speaker 2: from having to hold like a posture that I wasn't
Speaker 2: accustomed to. And you know, It's probably not good posture
Speaker 2: at all. And you know, for someone to play a
Speaker 2: character like this and shamble about and maintain this kind
Speaker 2: of posture and gait, yeah, this must have just absolutely
Speaker 2: wrecked him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I would say you can even see the strain
Speaker 3: on him in certain scenes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, well let's get into the love interest for
Speaker 2: old Gotho here. First of all, we have Ilsa. This
Speaker 2: is Gotho's initial doomed crush, played by Maria Elena Apron
Speaker 2: born nineteen forty eight, Spanish actress whose other credits include
Speaker 2: sixty nine Is the House That Screamed, Armando Dios Aarrio's
Speaker 2: first Blind Dead movie, seventy two's Tombs of the Blind Dead,
Speaker 2: and nineteen to seventy four's The Fish with the Eyes
Speaker 2: of Gold. Now there's a job title for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep.
Speaker 2: She was also in the seventy three Western Tequila exclamation Point,
Speaker 2: and she was only active during the late sixties early seventies.
Speaker 2: But she's good. I mean, it's as far as roles
Speaker 2: where someone mostly plays a corpse, this was pretty physically demanding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, I already said there are several things
Speaker 3: that are temporally confusing about the setting of the film.
Speaker 3: We'll keep coming back to that, especially throughout the plot.
Speaker 3: This is set in the modern times, it's set in
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies, but this character feels like something out
Speaker 3: of a Victorian novel. She very much just has a
Speaker 3: story based disease. That's kind of Oh I die now.
Speaker 3: I don't even know which story in particular I'm thinking of,
Speaker 3: but she feels like a Victorian character.
Speaker 2: I love that your sample cough there was clearly the
Speaker 2: cough from Black Sabbath. Sweetly.
Speaker 3: You know, my daughter heard that song for the first
Speaker 3: time the other day and she proclaimed, it's heavy.
Speaker 2: That is quite heavy.
Speaker 3: She didn't originate that terminology. I had instructed her what
Speaker 3: heavy means awesome.
Speaker 2: All right. So this is the doom the initial doomed
Speaker 2: crush of Gotho. But then Gotho is going to get
Speaker 2: a new love interest, and that is the character Elki,
Speaker 2: played by Rosanna Yanni born nineteen thirty eight, Argentinian born
Speaker 2: actress active from the early sixties to the early two thousands.
Speaker 2: She was in Count Dracula with Great Love same year.
Speaker 2: She was also in sixty eight's Frankenstein's Bloody Terror. That's
Speaker 2: another Dninsky picture. And she's also in nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 2: Spangs of the Living Dead that was directed by Diasorrio,
Speaker 2: which she also had a production credit on. Oh, and
Speaker 2: she was in a very interesting looking nineteen three Amazonian
Speaker 2: warrior peplam film that also featured Helga Line, titled War Goddess,
Speaker 2: and it was directed by Terrence Young, the guy who
Speaker 2: directed several of the early James Bond pictures.
Speaker 3: Oh, Okay, that's funny because I can just see her.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying she was in one, but I could
Speaker 3: see her in a James Bond movie. She looks like
Speaker 3: she would fit right in and a I don't know,
Speaker 3: in a blackjack scene in a casino.
Speaker 2: She's really tall and of course gorgeous, and I feel
Speaker 2: like her height really helps in this picture opposite Gotho,
Speaker 2: because again it's Paul Nashew, I think, is already shorter
Speaker 2: than her, and then he's stumped. He's stooped over as well,
Speaker 2: so I don't know, like her very vertical alignment like
Speaker 2: makes him even more hunchbacky.
Speaker 3: She's good in the role. She plays a doctor, so
Speaker 3: she has a very very caring and therapeutic kind of
Speaker 3: presence her kindness, however, just not in her performance, but
Speaker 3: the way the character is written, her kindness and level
Speaker 3: of understand goes to such lengths that it becomes a
Speaker 3: kind of hilarious naivete. At the end of you know,
Speaker 3: there's like murder after murder, and she's like, he's really
Speaker 3: very good.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, yeah. There are a lot of characters who
Speaker 2: see the good in Gotho to the point where they're
Speaker 2: clearly overlooking a lot of crimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: We mentioned that this has a mad scientist in it,
Speaker 2: and that is the character to doctor or La, who's
Speaker 2: a real treat played by Alberto Dalbis who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty two through nineteen eighty three. Yeah, he's our chief
Speaker 2: antagonist are mad scientist Argentine film and television actor who
Speaker 2: worked a lot in horror, Jallo, crime and westerns. Something
Speaker 2: of a Spanish horror icon himself, and yet this is
Speaker 2: the only role that he ever had in a Nashi film.
Speaker 2: He pops up in no fewer than eleven Jess Franco films,
Speaker 2: so his credits include the likes of seventy three's The
Speaker 2: Erotic Rights of Frankenstein. I'm not sure if it's the
Speaker 2: monster of the doctor that has the erotic rights here,
Speaker 2: and that's rights like sacred rights, not like legal.
Speaker 3: Rights, satanic rights of Dracula.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But he also appeared in the sci fi action
Speaker 2: sci fi action films like sixty seven's Danger to Exclamation Points,
Speaker 2: Death Ray and the seventy two Telesavahas film Pancho Villa,
Speaker 2: which we've talked about on the show before.
Speaker 3: He is an interesting and different kind of mad scientist
Speaker 3: if you follow me here. So, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: feel like the mad scientists we see in movies are
Speaker 3: more often of either the Colin Clive kind of coming
Speaker 3: apart of the seems nervous energy variety, or they might
Speaker 3: be more like Doctor Septimus pretorious and Bride of Frankenstein
Speaker 3: and be a kind of oh, I don't know, beyond
Speaker 3: good and evil libertine, of weird obsessions and all that.
Speaker 3: This guy instead has more of a kind of academic,
Speaker 3: masculine bully energy. He feels like the guy, like the
Speaker 3: guy in an academic department who has a kind of
Speaker 3: charisma and authority and likes to boss other people around
Speaker 3: and always get his way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's a good read on the character,
Speaker 2: and it does make him stand out, Like he has
Speaker 2: some great villain monologues, but they're not about ruling the
Speaker 2: universe or anything like that. It's largely about like, yeah,
Speaker 2: some real scientific advancements you are going to come out
Speaker 2: of this work. So yeah, I thought Doctor Orla was
Speaker 2: a lot of fun here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like him too. I don't know exactly how
Speaker 3: I got here. He doesn't look a whole lot like
Speaker 3: this guy. But the comparison I kept coming to in
Speaker 3: my mind is he reminded me of the American actor
Speaker 3: Richard Thomas, who played John Boy on The Waltons, And
Speaker 3: it's a bunch of other roles since then. He was
Speaker 3: in the adult half of the nineteen ninety eight, and
Speaker 3: he had a role in The Americans, which is a
Speaker 3: great espionage TV show. If there's a slightly more science
Speaker 3: oriented version of that kind of energy, that's what I
Speaker 3: got from this guy.
Speaker 2: He has a great, smoldering, hateful glare that put me
Speaker 2: in the mind of Powers Booth and Michael Shannon.
Speaker 3: M Okay, I can see that too, all right.
Speaker 2: So we have our love interests set in place here,
Speaker 2: we have our sympathetic monster, and we have our mad scientists.
Speaker 2: We have a few other parts here to round out
Speaker 2: the cast. I mentioned that there would be traditional handsome
Speaker 2: in this picture, and the traditional handsomeness is provided by
Speaker 2: Victor Barrera credited as Vic Winner or Vic Wiener as
Speaker 2: I think it depends on which trader you watched exactly
Speaker 2: how it is pronounced, But he plays doctor Frederick Togner.
Speaker 2: He is the second author on the forthcoming study that
Speaker 2: doctor Orla is working on.
Speaker 3: He is is he a mad scientist? And not really?
Speaker 3: But he I don't know. I think he, on one hand,
Speaker 3: is kind of a nice guy who means well, but
Speaker 3: he also comes across like a he just keeps getting
Speaker 3: talked into doing bad stuff by Orla.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's here for the applications of this study, and
Speaker 2: it seems willing to turn a blind eye to some
Speaker 2: of the horrors. That being said, I feel like his
Speaker 2: character is really the only decent male character in the film.
Speaker 2: The vast majority of the men we meet in the
Speaker 2: picture are belligerent, drunken, hateful bullies. One character is a
Speaker 2: mad scientist, then there's Gotho, a tragic figure who murders
Speaker 2: everyone else. Even the children are just the absolute worst.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess the only really truly good and pure
Speaker 3: characters are Ilsa and then Elkie, and then I guess
Speaker 3: you could argue about Tauchner here and then also about
Speaker 3: doctor Meyer his fiance.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, all the women are fine, but of
Speaker 2: the men, only Fred Here is decent. Now Barrera or Winner.
Speaker 2: He worked in a few different Nashi pictures. We talked
Speaker 2: about him, I think briefly before because he pops up
Speaker 2: in Horror Rises from the Tomb. He's also in Count
Speaker 2: Dracula's Great Love. So yeah, pretty standard stuff here, but
Speaker 2: you know he plays his part well, yeah, all right,
Speaker 2: we mentioned doctor Meyer, doctor Maria Meyer. This is doctor
Speaker 2: Fred's fiance, played by Maria Percy, who lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: eight through two thousand and four. Persciy Here was an
Speaker 2: Austrian born actress whose biggest film was likely nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: four Is Man's Favorite Sport. She was billed third in
Speaker 2: that film. It starred Rock Hudson and was directed by
Speaker 2: none other than Howard Hawks in his fourth to last film.
Speaker 2: She appeared in five films with Paul Nashey. She was
Speaker 2: also in the third Blind Dead picture, The Ghost Gallion.
Speaker 2: Now a brief note on special effects because I have
Speaker 2: to say I thought that the gore in this movie
Speaker 2: looks pretty good, Like it's really fun blood and slime.
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, I'm not primarily a gorehound by nature.
Speaker 3: It's not the first thing I'm looking for in a movie,
Speaker 3: but I but I do appreciate better gore, and this
Speaker 3: is better gore than much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some good disembodied heads in this picture. For example.
Speaker 2: The special effects credit goes to one Pablo Perez, Spanish
Speaker 2: effects artists who also worked on such films as seventy
Speaker 2: two's Horror Express, which we previously talked about and had
Speaker 2: some very fun effects in its Yeah. Yeah, Count Dracula
Speaker 2: was great. Love Luccio Fulciese nineteen seventy three White Fang adaptation.
Speaker 2: What I didn't even know that existed as well as
Speaker 2: seventy three is The Vampire's Night Orgy, a movie I
Speaker 2: haven't seen, but it's on my radar because there's a
Speaker 2: scene in the picture and it's featured on promotional materials,
Speaker 2: including the poster that shows Helga Line as a vampire
Speaker 2: carrying a male victim, which is a nice inversion of
Speaker 2: the horror movie poster trope in which a male monster
Speaker 2: carries a female captive. So the movie may just be
Speaker 2: absolute trash, it may not be good. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but bravo for doing the gender flip on this iconic
Speaker 2: bit of poster sleeves. I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it looks good.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean I think she's really carrying him here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean they've they've posed him just right, showing
Speaker 3: off the thighs and all that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And then finally, the music here is by
Speaker 2: Carmelo A Berniola, who lived nineteen twenty nine through two
Speaker 2: thousand and two. Highly influential Spanish composer who also worked
Speaker 2: in film and TV scores. He won some Spanish Film
Speaker 2: Awards for a few different pictures, including seventy four's Tormento.
Speaker 2: His other scores include The House Without Frontiers and Cutthroat
Speaker 2: nine and seventy two and three Nashy films from seventy three, Hunchback,
Speaker 2: count Dracula's Great Love and Horror Rises from the Tomb.
Speaker 2: I would say, good melodramatic score on the whole.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree with that, though I will say
Speaker 3: it's not that the music is bad, especially early in
Speaker 3: the film. There is a lot of use of music
Speaker 3: that is really not my favorite style. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 3: not the music's fault. It's just not there's a lot
Speaker 3: of like, I don't know, marches with heavy horns and
Speaker 3: Octoberfest style music that's I don't know, I get that
Speaker 3: that's that's some people's thing.
Speaker 2: They they lean heavily on the score right as the
Speaker 2: movie opens to let you know that this is Germany,
Speaker 2: it's Germanic, or it's Austria. It's somewhere. It's somewhere that
Speaker 2: has Octoberfest. And later on in some things we see
Speaker 2: like Octoberfest posters on the walls and so forth. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so well, speaking of that, should we jump right
Speaker 3: into the plot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's let's hit the poke music.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, this is the music we're getting while we
Speaker 3: see the credits play. It's not exactly it's not polka music.
Speaker 3: I think this might technically be a march of some kind.
Speaker 3: I don't know the music term, but it's Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: a lot of horns. It's like blasting. It's really loud
Speaker 3: on the soundtrack, like going into the red and you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: the Octoberfest zone. But this is playing while the camera
Speaker 3: pans over the beautiful landscape of wherever this is. I
Speaker 3: think it's supposed to be Germany. There are mountains in
Speaker 3: the distance, hills in the foreground covered in forests. The
Speaker 3: leaves are going orange for the autumn, and then we
Speaker 3: see green, clear expanses of farmland. So it's a very
Speaker 3: beautiful landscape.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, most of this film was filmed in Spain,
Speaker 2: but there are some shots from Austria, and I think
Speaker 2: some of these zoom in on the town shots are
Speaker 2: definitely Austrian.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, maybe it's supposed to be Austria, but it
Speaker 3: feels like one of those feels like Germany or Austria
Speaker 3: or something. Anyway, we zoom in on one sleepy town
Speaker 3: somewhere in these hills now here. I want to come
Speaker 3: back to the issue of how someone could easily be
Speaker 3: confused about when this movie is supposed to take place,
Speaker 3: because some of the sets and plot elements really imply
Speaker 3: this is supposed to take place in the nineteenth century
Speaker 3: or even earlier. But that can't be because there are
Speaker 3: contemporary cars, and some of the characters but not others,
Speaker 3: are wearing nineteen seventies clothes, So this has to be
Speaker 3: set in the nineteen seventies. But again we will just
Speaker 3: see things here and there, like some interior decoration, some
Speaker 3: clothes and things like that that make it seem like
Speaker 3: it's from another time. And I don't know what contributed
Speaker 3: to that weird anachronism, but there it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, some of it probably has to do
Speaker 2: with the locations and the sets, where on one hand
Speaker 2: you'll have mad science equipment, but then on the other
Speaker 2: hand you'll have these tremendous ruins and stone hallways with
Speaker 2: straw strewn on the ground. So yeah, some temporal confusion
Speaker 2: does ensue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in this town we see an empty street.
Speaker 3: It is empty except for Paul Nashy who's wandering along
Speaker 3: the cobblestones in his hunchback costume. And this is our protagonist, Gotho.
Speaker 3: I'm going to call him Gotho because that's how it's spelled.
Speaker 3: I think when I was hearing the characters say it,
Speaker 3: this might have been more in the Spanish stub they
Speaker 3: were calling him more like go Toe, but I think
Speaker 3: Gotho is easier for me to remember to say. So
Speaker 3: Gotho makes his way toward I think this place would
Speaker 3: be called a beer haul in the cultural context. It
Speaker 3: is a drinking establishment with tables and chairs. It's got
Speaker 3: an accordion player, and it serves beer in comical, almost
Speaker 3: gallon sized glasses. And inside we meet several bar patrons.
Speaker 3: There is a young Foppish man with shaggy brown hair
Speaker 3: wearing an olive green sweater. This might be a commando sweater,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, but he's carousing with two women, also
Speaker 3: in temporally confusing outfits. They're dressed to bar maids like
Speaker 3: the Saint Paul girl. And this guy is named Udo,
Speaker 3: and he's just partying with these ladies. They're like swaying
Speaker 3: back and forth wildly, drunkenly to the accordion music, laughing
Speaker 3: at nothing, just clinking their mugs together about again, apparently nothing.
Speaker 3: And then this guy Udo rudely yells at the accordion
Speaker 3: player to play something different. He says they're getting bored.
Speaker 3: The accordion player stops, plays a different song which sounds
Speaker 3: exactly like the first song. And then Paul Nashy watches
Speaker 3: this scene play out. So he's peeking in through the
Speaker 3: beer hall window. At a table nearby, there are a
Speaker 3: couple of other young louts. Somebody says that they are students,
Speaker 3: and they challenge Udo to a drinking contest by saying,
Speaker 3: this was the line, can you handle your beer as
Speaker 3: well as it can handle your girls? I don't know.
Speaker 3: So they order four huge beers. You just gigantic beers.
Speaker 2: These beers are so huge, the glasses are so huge,
Speaker 2: and the quantity of beer is so huge that like
Speaker 2: you almost feel like the humans are shrinking, or that
Speaker 2: you're in some sort of a surreal sequence, Like, surely
Speaker 2: beer is not served in quantities this vast.
Speaker 3: It's when they go to the pub and and Lord
Speaker 3: of the Rings, Yeah, it comes in pints.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like if you're a hobbit and you're drinking
Speaker 2: a human sized beer. I mean, I guess this is legit.
Speaker 2: I have no reason to believe that they they faked this.
Speaker 2: I just and I'm not a beer drinker. So it
Speaker 2: just seems like, wouldn't it just become so warm by
Speaker 2: the time you get to the bottom of that glass.
Speaker 3: Well not if you drink it like Udo in this
Speaker 3: other guy, because they just chug it all at once.
Speaker 3: So they have a drinking contest. Udo goes toe to
Speaker 3: toe with one of the students, a tall guy with Sideburns,
Speaker 3: And I would say this bar scene is good to
Speaker 3: watch if you want to convince yourself to quit drinking alcohol.
Speaker 3: It makes alcohol look absolutely revolting. These two guys. So
Speaker 3: they're drinking the giant beer as they're drooling everywhere, they're
Speaker 3: spitting little flecks of froth. They end up with their
Speaker 3: faces and clothes covered in some kind of gleaming mucus
Speaker 3: from the chugging process. So they're not just wet, you know,
Speaker 3: They've got drool and wet going down their shirts and
Speaker 3: on their pants. But then their face are covered with
Speaker 3: this mucusy like shining stuff. And when I say their faces,
Speaker 3: I don't just mean their mouth. It's like their forehead
Speaker 3: and their eyebrows are wet. It's disgusting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just sweaty, toxically masculine beer guzzling. It seems to eventually,
Speaker 2: it seems to destroy both their sex drives and their
Speaker 2: internal organs. Yes, because after you're done drinking at this place,
Speaker 2: you're just like, I have to leave now and fall
Speaker 2: in the street.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's right. So Udo wins the drinking contest
Speaker 3: because kids sideburns here falls unconscious and then smashes his beer,
Speaker 3: steining on the floor, Udo mocks him and then announces,
Speaker 3: soaking wet, that it's time he has to go home.
Speaker 3: The ladies dressed up like the Saint poly girl or
Speaker 3: they're like, no, Udo, don't go. I think the implication
Speaker 3: is that Udo is the life of the party. He's
Speaker 3: very handsome and charismatic, and they want him to stay
Speaker 3: and party. But you know, how's he going to stay
Speaker 3: in party? He's like soaked in beer. So he gets up.
Speaker 3: He wanders outside by himself, stumbling and staggering back and
Speaker 3: forth as he makes his way down the street. Now
Speaker 3: from the shadows nearby, Gotho watches Udo leave and then
Speaker 3: follows him at a distance, looking concerned. At some point
Speaker 3: while he's going down the street, Udo drops something I
Speaker 3: think it's his wallet, and Gotho sees this and runs
Speaker 3: to pick it up. He calls out, Udo, you dropped this,
Speaker 3: but Udo does not appreciate Gotho's help. Instead, he hits
Speaker 3: Gotho and then he says, like Gotho, you monster, what
Speaker 3: were you going to do? Rob me? One direct quote
Speaker 3: from this part from the subtitles is he says to Gotho,
Speaker 3: your fart face turns my guss. But in this altercation,
Speaker 3: Udo drops a photograph of a woman signed with a note.
Speaker 3: Gotho picks it up and it says to Udo, with
Speaker 3: all my love Ilsa, and Gotho reads this to himself
Speaker 3: clearly in pain reading it. It's just it's wounding him emotionally. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Udo is walking on ahead, but suddenly he starts coughing
Speaker 3: and gagging and clutching his stomach and he just collapses
Speaker 3: on the street and apparently dies.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was confused about this, but I don't know. We
Speaker 3: can check in on this in a minute, but first
Speaker 3: we have to say. We go to a second location
Speaker 3: that we're told in a subtitle is Feldkirch Hospital or
Speaker 3: feldkirk It's about feld k Rch Hospital, and so it's
Speaker 3: a clinic situated up on a slope overlooking the town.
Speaker 3: It's surrounded by elegant, well kept gardens and a fountain courtyard,
Speaker 3: and tonight the rain is pouring. We see the rain
Speaker 3: pouring into the fountain outside. But suddenly we are in
Speaker 3: the morgue of the hospital. It's a room with white
Speaker 3: tile walls, lockers for body storage, and autopsy tables, and
Speaker 3: here we see Udo laid out I think, already dead
Speaker 3: on one of the tables. And then Gotho is here,
Speaker 3: wearing a heavy leather apron. He approaches. He approaches Udo's
Speaker 3: body with a knife in hand. It's rinning, and Gotho says, now, Udo,
Speaker 3: your skin is pale white. You no longer have that
Speaker 3: handsome olive complexion the women like so much. You were
Speaker 3: so proud of your good looks. You made fun of
Speaker 3: the hump on my back. You never realized you would
Speaker 3: end up as a pile of meat at the hands
Speaker 3: of bungling students. Then Gotho takes the knife and proceeds
Speaker 3: to I think it's not exactly clear what all happens here,
Speaker 3: but I think he cuts off Udo's head, hands, and
Speaker 3: feet and puts them in a bag in his cart.
Speaker 3: While he's doing this, he's singing song lyrics to himself
Speaker 3: that go the dead will never rise again. The crows,
Speaker 3: they sing and sing. So it's a little ambiguous what
Speaker 3: happened here, Like, how did Udo die? Was he already
Speaker 3: dead when the cutting happened?
Speaker 2: I think, I assume yeah, I mean, because he's in
Speaker 2: the morgue. My understanding is he just straight up like
Speaker 2: died of alcohol poisoning in the street.
Speaker 3: He drank so much beer that he died in the
Speaker 3: middle of the street.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Gotho, after this, he takes his little cart, presumably
Speaker 3: full of Udo's organs, like his head and his hands
Speaker 3: and stuff, and he wheels it out of the morgue,
Speaker 3: going past a couple of doctors who work in the morgue.
Speaker 3: And these guys stink as Gotho's coming in there in
Speaker 3: the middle of some misogynous knee slapper, and they stop
Speaker 3: Gotho to insult him and yell at him. They call
Speaker 3: him a gorilla. They tell him he's not welcome in
Speaker 3: the dissection room. One of them says, you know that
Speaker 3: the students have a special dislike for your baboon face.
Speaker 3: So what's worse here, baboon face or fartface. We've already
Speaker 3: gotten both, but I do want to emphasize here. Many
Speaker 3: times characters comment on the ugliness of Gotho's face, But
Speaker 3: he doesn't have any special makeup. Really. He has a scar,
Speaker 3: but that's about it. Otherwise it's just Paul Nashy face.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So, on one hand, it is always a
Speaker 2: little jarring where you're like he doesn't look that on
Speaker 2: that ugly guys. He just looks like Paul Nashy. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, I guess it's it's kind of
Speaker 2: nice that it makes the performance pure Nashy, you know,
Speaker 2: like there's no potentially distracting makeup getting between you and
Speaker 2: the performance.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, anyway, Gotho goes about his business. I don't
Speaker 3: know what he's doing with this with the Udo Organs,
Speaker 3: but he At one point he stops in a hallway
Speaker 3: to gaze longingly at the photograph of Ilsa that Udo dropped,
Speaker 3: And it's obvious that Gotho is in love with Ilsa.
Speaker 3: Whoever she is.
Speaker 2: She's single, now, Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's true. So we're about to meet her. You see,
Speaker 3: Ilsa is actually a patient at this hospital where Gotho works,
Speaker 3: and they have a relationship, not a romantic one, but
Speaker 3: a friendship. Ilsa is here with a very Victorian movie disease.
Speaker 3: It causes her to appear pale and go into fits
Speaker 3: of weak, dry coughing. When we meet her, the doctor
Speaker 3: tells her she's gonna be fine, But then after they
Speaker 3: leave the room, Gotho hears the doctor and the nurse
Speaker 3: talking about how she actually has no chance whatsoever, and
Speaker 3: the doctor says her lungs are practically destroyed.
Speaker 2: I feel like they're barely out of your shot when
Speaker 2: they say that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Gotho comes into the room to visit Ilsa
Speaker 3: and brings her flowers that he picked from the gardens outside,
Speaker 3: and Ilsa is obviously glad to see him. She thanks
Speaker 3: him for the flowers and they talk about a number
Speaker 3: of things. They talk about the death of her boyfriend Udo.
Speaker 3: Gotho tells her not to cry because Udo died dreaming
Speaker 3: of her. I mean, this does raise questions, like, does
Speaker 3: it make sense to you that Ilsa and Udo or
Speaker 3: an item. I know, listeners, you haven't gotten to know
Speaker 3: Ilsa all that well yet, but Ilsa is going to
Speaker 3: be presented as just an angel on earth, a kind
Speaker 3: of impossibly pure, kind and perfect soul. And Udo, in
Speaker 3: the short time we get to know him, is presented
Speaker 3: as just overtly vain, stupid, hostile, and violent.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I agree that the only read I have
Speaker 2: on it that makes sense as well, we only got
Speaker 2: to see Udo at his absolute worst, Like maybe he's
Speaker 2: just drinking really heavily right now because he knows that
Speaker 2: his girlfriend is dying, and so, yeah, we caught him
Speaker 2: at his worst, being drunk and belligerent and hateful in
Speaker 2: the street. And maybe he has other qualities. We're just
Speaker 2: not privy too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. I guess they do say he's
Speaker 3: very handsome. That's the one redeeming quality we know about.
Speaker 3: So Gotho promises to bring Ilsea flowers every day. She
Speaker 3: tells him that he's the only one who visits her,
Speaker 3: the only one who cares. It seems ILSA's family have
Speaker 3: all died and she has no one else, so Gotho's
Speaker 3: her only friend. She asks Gotho to describe the countryside
Speaker 3: while she closes her eyes. She wants to sort of,
Speaker 3: you know, do some mental travel with Gotho narrating for her.
Speaker 3: And she seems to know that she's going to die,
Speaker 3: even though the doctor has told her otherwise. Ilsa kind
Speaker 3: of knows everything. She's a little bit mild on missions.
Speaker 2: This is, of course, the first scene in which we
Speaker 2: see Gotho entering a room with flowers, and there's I
Speaker 2: love every sequence that he has is because there's generally
Speaker 2: this just look of complete optimism as walking into a
Speaker 2: terrible situation he somehow thinks everything is going to be okay,
Speaker 2: And yeah, I love it. I want to make Valentine
Speaker 2: cards this year with images of Gotho holding flowers.
Speaker 3: He makes a very very adorable face. It's almost I
Speaker 3: made you a cookie, but I ate it.
Speaker 2: It levels Yeah.
Speaker 3: So after this, there's a scene where Gotho is wandering
Speaker 3: the streets of the town melancholy, I think because of
Speaker 3: ILSA's health, and there are school children who appear to
Speaker 3: taunt him. They call him a dirty monkey, and he
Speaker 3: shakes his fist at them, and then the kids pelt
Speaker 3: him with rocks, like hitting him in the head and
Speaker 3: causing him to bleed, and then they all run away.
Speaker 3: Evil children.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like they basically stone him in the streets. And yeah,
Speaker 2: this reminded me. There's a scene in seventy three's Return
Speaker 2: of the Blind Dead same year, in which children pelt Murdo,
Speaker 2: the outcast character in that film, with rocks.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Brave Dirigger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, I don't know if these films were both
Speaker 2: riffing on the same reference point, but at any rate,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of kids throwing rocks at outcasts in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway. Immediately after this, Gotho is helped to his
Speaker 3: feet by a woman who seems to appear out of nowhere,
Speaker 3: a tall, elegant woman. She's blotting his wounds with a handkerchief.
Speaker 3: This woman tells Gotho to come with her for treatment
Speaker 3: because she is a doctor, and we will learn that
Speaker 3: this is Elkie. So they go on a walk to
Speaker 3: Elkie's house and she and Gotho get to know each other.
Speaker 3: She hears the story of Gotho's history with Ilsa. They
Speaker 3: were friends as children. She played with him, even though
Speaker 3: the other children said he was ugly and frightening. Then
Speaker 3: later he found out that she was ill in the
Speaker 3: hospital and he began to visit her every day. And
Speaker 3: Elkie infers from listening to all this that Gotho is
Speaker 3: in love with her, But he asks her, and Gotho
Speaker 3: says he doesn't know. He doesn't know whether he's in
Speaker 3: love with her. He just knows that he does care
Speaker 3: for her and he wants her to be well. So
Speaker 3: they go to Elkie's home and she treats his wounds
Speaker 3: and he thanks her. In fact, he doesn't just thank her.
Speaker 3: He bows down on the floor and kisses her feet,
Speaker 3: and I was like, man, it's good to show appreciation.
Speaker 3: That's a little too thankful, buddy. You need a dell
Speaker 3: it back just a little bit. I don't know. It
Speaker 3: might be appropriate in some other cultural context. To hear it,
Speaker 3: it reads at a little much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Gotho has no sense of proportion.
Speaker 3: But also I just wanted to linger here for a
Speaker 3: second because Rob I had to take a photo of
Speaker 3: the screen. Did you stop to get a good look
Speaker 3: at this room in Elkie's house? What is going on here?
Speaker 3: There's a random handrailing in the middle of the room,
Speaker 3: not apparently attached to any darrs or anything. There's a
Speaker 3: green treasure chest, very busy floral print upholstery on the furniture,
Speaker 3: a golden, highly decorated almost Buddhist temple style archway over
Speaker 3: the exit from the living room. There are animal pelts
Speaker 3: and a crossbow hanging on the wall. And then here's
Speaker 3: the real topper, two severed human hands on a table
Speaker 3: in the foreground. This is so easy to miss. I
Speaker 3: did not even catch it the first time I saw
Speaker 3: this scene, but then the second time I was like, wait,
Speaker 3: what we get no explanation at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did not notice these hands in either of
Speaker 2: my viewings, So maybe these are supposed to be anatomical models.
Speaker 3: Why are they bloody then? Why do they have bloody stumps?
Speaker 2: I don't know. My other read is that maybe this
Speaker 2: was Nashi's home or apartment at the time, Like that
Speaker 2: would make more sense with the pelt and the crossbow.
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean it was shot there because I think
Speaker 3: this is supposed to be Elkie's home.
Speaker 2: It is supposed to be Elkie's home. But I'm just wondering, like, was, yeah,
Speaker 2: did they build this, did they put all these odd
Speaker 2: things together? Or it is just just this is just
Speaker 2: like a snapshot of someone's home. Maybe Paul nash Shey's home.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I could believe this was Paul Nashi's home in real life.
Speaker 3: But yeah, why the severed hands. I mean, she is
Speaker 3: a doctor, But would it be normal for doctors to
Speaker 3: have severed hands in their houses?
Speaker 2: Yeah, mean at least keep those in the fridge, right.
Speaker 3: So, next scene, Gotho is taking Ilsa for a walk
Speaker 3: around the pleasant little gardens outside the hospital. She's in
Speaker 3: a wheelchair. He's pushing her, and she's talking about how
Speaker 3: she knows her life is fading, but Ilsa says she
Speaker 3: likes to look at the roses in the garden. So
Speaker 3: these visits where Gotho pushes her around to look at
Speaker 3: the flowers, they're really helping her feel better. And then
Speaker 3: when she says this, Gotho cuts one of the roses
Speaker 3: from the garden and brings it to her, and she says,
Speaker 3: we can't do that. Cutting the flowers is forbidden, and
Speaker 3: then Gotho has a great line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he says, it's okay. Everything is forbidden from me,
Speaker 2: and yeah, obviously it speaks to Gothos outside status, but
Speaker 2: it also helps us understand why Gotho does the other
Speaker 2: things that he does, i e. The murders and the
Speaker 2: dismemberments and the grave robbing. He's been pushed outside of
Speaker 2: society and therefore its rules no longer apply to him.
Speaker 2: So he still has this, deep down a heart of gold,
Speaker 2: but he has already been pushed over the line in
Speaker 2: terms of society's laws and norms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's right. So Ilsa says, these roses are
Speaker 3: my last happiness. If only I could have a bouquet
Speaker 3: every day, And then Gotho said, promises her he says,
Speaker 3: you'll have them, and then from this sweet scene, the
Speaker 3: sweet sad scene, we cut straight to something else. Now
Speaker 3: we're told we're in the Feldkirch Women's Reformatory, so it
Speaker 3: seems this is some kind of mental hospital for women.
Speaker 3: And the first thing we see is a couple of
Speaker 3: women in a dormitory room here engaging in what seems
Speaker 3: to be recreational whipping of each other with a leather strap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just spankings all around here in a scene that
Speaker 2: really feels like it was just here to spice up
Speaker 2: a grindhouse trailer, yeah, or lead to more exploitive content
Speaker 2: regarding these two characters. But it really doesn't. It's just
Speaker 2: we get this one moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, really doesn't go. We don't see any more of this.
Speaker 3: We do see these characters later in the movie when
Speaker 3: when there's a creature that needs to eat human flesh,
Speaker 3: but that's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they show up later as victims, but that's about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Anyway, so this is going on, and suddenly Elkie
Speaker 3: comes in the door and she's like, what is the
Speaker 3: meaning of this and takes the strap out of the
Speaker 3: patient's hand and she's like, Okay, we're going to you know,
Speaker 3: you know what this means, We're gonna have to separate
Speaker 3: you too. And I'm telling doctor Meyer. So apparently Elkie
Speaker 3: is a doctor here, but I think not the head doctor.
Speaker 3: I think she's working for doctor Meyer. So we cut
Speaker 3: from there to meet doctor Meyer. In fact, we're going
Speaker 3: to meet a couple of major characters, doctor Meyer and
Speaker 3: doctor Tauchner. We learned that they are engaged to be married,
Speaker 3: So there are a couple and they're both professionals here
Speaker 3: at the hospital, but they're also kind of scheming. They're
Speaker 3: talking about some secret research that Tauchener is involved in
Speaker 3: which they don't want the trustees of the university to
Speaker 3: find out about. And this is the research of doctor Orla,
Speaker 3: a character we haven't met yet. But when Elki comes in,
Speaker 3: doctor Meyer I think she says something like, oh, Elkie,
Speaker 3: this is my fiance, doctor Tauchner. You may remember him
Speaker 3: because he was your mentor in school. And then she
Speaker 3: explains that Elki has a talent for criminal psychiatry. So
Speaker 3: after this, there's a scene, another scene of Gotho in
Speaker 3: the garden, but this turns into a fight scene. He's
Speaker 3: not here with Ilsa this time. Instead, she's in her
Speaker 3: room and he's out here cutting roses from the garden
Speaker 3: to take to Ilsa. And then a bunch of the
Speaker 3: hooligan medical students come out and just start harassing him
Speaker 3: and insulting him. One of these guys is kids Sideburns
Speaker 3: from the bar in the opening scene, and they're mocking him.
Speaker 3: They're saying, you are the prince of monkeys, you are
Speaker 3: ugly and so forth, and Gotho I think he's used
Speaker 3: to this, but then they really escalate when the dude
Speaker 3: insults Ilsa. He says something like, I hope you're h
Speaker 3: I wrote this down. He says, I hope your princess
Speaker 3: can become impregnated by the fragrance of roses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we lost in translation there.
Speaker 3: I guess, Well, whatever it means, it's clearly supposed to
Speaker 3: be insulting to her and him. And this sends Gotho
Speaker 3: over the edge and he attacks. He's like choking the
Speaker 3: med student and the fight turns into a four on
Speaker 3: one against Gotho and he gets badly beaten. They kick
Speaker 3: him on the ground until Tauchner and another doctor arrive
Speaker 3: to stop.
Speaker 2: It, but Gotho puts up a good fight, and there's
Speaker 2: absolutely there's an absolutely beautiful moment in this fight where
Speaker 2: Gotho pushes one of the hooligans into a bush and
Speaker 2: the hooligan bounces off of said bush like it's a
Speaker 2: wrestling ring rope, right back into a kind of back
Speaker 2: body drop from Gotho, and I was like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: that's inspired.
Speaker 3: The next scene Gotho, I guess he goes straight from
Speaker 3: here to ILSA's room, but uh oh, Ilsa is dying.
Speaker 3: She's talking to the nurse here about Gotho bringing her
Speaker 3: beautiful flowers and then she dies. And then Gotho gets
Speaker 3: there right after she dies, and the nurse tells him.
Speaker 3: She's like, oh, she died, too bad, you were outside
Speaker 3: getting wailed on, or you would have been here for it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So these heartbreaking scenes of Gotho arriving too late for
Speaker 2: Ilsa and it'll happen again. These are too much and
Speaker 2: also just morbidly hilarious again entering the room with those flowers,
Speaker 2: all the optimism in the world and only to be
Speaker 2: greeted with like worse and worse news.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Gotho is left alone with ILSA's body here,
Speaker 3: and he is first overwhelmed with grief, and then you
Speaker 3: can see with rage. I think he's angry at the
Speaker 3: students who were attacking him because they robbed him of
Speaker 3: this moment with Ilsa. So from here we go to
Speaker 3: the next scene, which is that later that night, Gotho
Speaker 3: is waiting alone in the morgue and the two dissection
Speaker 3: specialists wheel Ilsa in on a cart and they're like, hey, Gotho,
Speaker 3: here's your one true love. We just wanted to make
Speaker 3: you aware that we're immediately going to rob and desecrate
Speaker 3: her corpse. So they like they're going to steal the
Speaker 3: gold crucifix from her neck. They're saying they can sell
Speaker 3: it and buy themselves a round of drinks, and Gotho
Speaker 3: freaks out and attacks them. In fact, he doesn't just
Speaker 3: attack them, he starts beating them, but then he grabs
Speaker 3: an axe and why is there an axe in the morgue?
Speaker 3: But he grabs an axe and he decapitates one guy
Speaker 3: and disembowels the other. The decapitation is single stroke with
Speaker 3: what looks like a fire axe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this sequence is just amazing, just an absolute blood
Speaker 2: bath of a scene, and the gore effects hit all
Speaker 2: the right nineteen seventies hard notes. You know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 2: there's just a certain way the blood looks, the way
Speaker 2: the bodies come apart here absolutely perfect.
Speaker 3: So Gotho grabs his flower bouquet and he quickly wheels
Speaker 3: Ilsa out of the morgue. He's going to take her
Speaker 3: to his secret hideaway. So what is this place. It's
Speaker 3: a place we have not seen in the movie yet.
Speaker 3: It is some kind of dungeon or passageways. I think
Speaker 3: maybe better to call it catacombs. It's just like lots
Speaker 3: of these passageways and rooms underneath the hospital grounds, which
Speaker 3: Gotho accesses by way of a hatch under a garden path.
Speaker 3: So he lowers Ilse's body inside on a rope and
Speaker 3: then descends himself and he lays her body out on
Speaker 3: a large table or slab which is covered in cobwebs, chains, rags,
Speaker 3: and bones, which he awkwardly has to push away. And
Speaker 3: I don't know. At first, I was like, what is
Speaker 3: this place? He's got skeletons all along the walls, dressed
Speaker 3: in robes and hoods, some are in coffins. There are
Speaker 3: just racks of weapons and torture instruments, and there are
Speaker 3: torches already burning in here. So somebody must regularly use
Speaker 3: this place. I think, since Gotha's the only character we
Speaker 3: meet who knows about it, it must sort of be
Speaker 3: Gotho's residence.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think he puts out fresh straw on the ground
Speaker 2: and he lights all these torches. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So Gotho tells Ilsa that she must rest now and
Speaker 3: he will find a way to take care of her.
Speaker 3: But first, he says he has some business to take
Speaker 3: care of. He says, I have to deliver a bouquet
Speaker 3: of roses to one who doubted your beauty.
Speaker 2: I love Gotho's outfit here as well. It's kind of
Speaker 2: like a black poncho, but also like it's kind of like,
Speaker 2: I guess, like a morgue's a mortician smock or something.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, so we're going to go back to the
Speaker 3: disgusting beer hall. I don't think I mentioned this the
Speaker 3: first time. Another unpleasant thing about this place is the lighting.
Speaker 3: This is a bar with off white walls that is
Speaker 3: extremely well lit inside. Just imagine that for a second
Speaker 3: for a bar environment. It's the ambiance is bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, every sticky surface is gleaming. Most likely you
Speaker 2: can see every dead insect in this place. It's cross.
Speaker 3: So all of the med students who beat Gotho up
Speaker 3: earlier here they're getting beard up up there, being loud
Speaker 3: and rude to servers. And then we do see one
Speaker 3: server here who I think was one of the bar
Speaker 3: maids who was partying with Udo the you know in
Speaker 3: the earlier scene. She's in the middle of bringing beer
Speaker 3: to these creeps when she looks out the window and
Speaker 3: sees Paul Nashi, and she just starts shrieking at seeing
Speaker 3: paul Nashi's face again. It's just Paul Nashi with the scar,
Speaker 3: and he doesn't look scary. It's just a guy looking
Speaker 3: in the window, but she screams. The med students turn
Speaker 3: and look, but by then Paul Nashy's gone, so they
Speaker 3: tell her she's hallucinating and they demand more beer. And
Speaker 3: then the sideburns guy who was leading the mockery earlier.
Speaker 3: He's once again disgustingly drunk and just glazed with some
Speaker 3: kind of beer drool. He announces that he has to
Speaker 3: go home. We learned that his name is Hans and
Speaker 3: he stumbles out and they say be careful Hans, don't
Speaker 3: bump into the devil on your way home, And just
Speaker 3: like in the earlier scene, we watch we watch Hans
Speaker 3: go down the street and we watch Goto follow him
Speaker 3: at a distance. Eventually Hans makes it back home. Gotho
Speaker 3: sneaks in and then murders Hans in his bed by
Speaker 3: cramming a bouquet of roses into his mouth. And Gotho says,
Speaker 3: experience the aroma because it will be the last smell
Speaker 3: of your life.
Speaker 2: It's this murder is less impressive, but it's you know,
Speaker 2: the gimmick is nice. He kills them with the flowers
Speaker 2: that he was bringing to also, so fair enough.
Speaker 3: Now we're going to check in with some police investigators
Speaker 3: who I think ultimately don't play that big of a
Speaker 3: role in the plot. But there's a mustache guy and
Speaker 3: then a guy who looks like he could be a
Speaker 3: bishop of some kind, but he's just a police inspector
Speaker 3: in a suit, and they're talking about the crime scene
Speaker 3: in the morgue. One of them says, you couldn't imagine it.
Speaker 3: It was terrible. The two cadavers were absolutely destroyed, and
Speaker 3: they discuss how Gotho, the clerk in charge of the
Speaker 3: Morgue has disappeared, but they rule him out as a
Speaker 3: suspect because their inquiry has revealed that he is harmless
Speaker 3: and passive. And I was just thinking, wait, did anybody
Speaker 3: ever follow up on the issue of Udo's body getting
Speaker 3: chopped into pieces on Gotho's watch?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no clue. Maybe that one got kind of like
Speaker 2: swept under the rug, you.
Speaker 3: Know, Yeah, maybe I don't know. But then the inspectors
Speaker 3: discuss how ILSA's body has also disappeared, and they say,
Speaker 3: once again, their inquiry has revealed that Gotho was in
Speaker 3: love with Ilsa. Where are they getting all this information? Also,
Speaker 3: this is literally supposed to be the same night. This
Speaker 3: is all the same night, so the murder has must
Speaker 3: have just happened within the past few hours and they're
Speaker 3: here talking about it, and they already know all this
Speaker 3: stuff about Gotho enough to rule him out.
Speaker 2: And do they know about Hans yet?
Speaker 3: Oh, they're just about to find out. So the cops
Speaker 3: find out about a second crime, this is the murder
Speaker 3: of Hans with the sideburns rip, and then they find
Speaker 3: out oh wait, no, they are you know this also?
Speaker 3: So they've got all this information, they're like, oh, this
Speaker 3: guy was fighting with Gotho earlier today, so it's got
Speaker 3: to be Gotho. We got to put out an APB
Speaker 3: even though we rolled them out. Okay, finally enough evidence
Speaker 3: has accumulated. Later that night, Gotho comes home to the
Speaker 3: dungeon to find uh, oh, there are rats swarming all
Speaker 3: over ILSA's body, taking bites out of her, and then
Speaker 3: he has to fight them off with fire. And this
Speaker 3: scene is a bummer because well, Rob, you can talk
Speaker 3: about it. We know apparently there was some animal cruelty
Speaker 3: on the set in the shooting of this scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's unfortunate, but this film does entail scenes of
Speaker 2: live rats on fire, capping off what sounds like a
Speaker 2: series of bad production decisions. They apparently set fire to
Speaker 2: some of the actual sewer rats that were captured for
Speaker 2: use in these scenes, including the scenes where they attack Nashi,
Speaker 2: who had to get a bunch of shots beforehand to
Speaker 2: keep from getting sewer rat diseases. However, I've read that
Speaker 2: the rats we see on the corpse here of Ilsa
Speaker 2: are actual guinea pigs that were dyed brown. Okay, I
Speaker 2: didn't really have the stomach to really analyze these sequences.
Speaker 2: But this is what I have read. This is not
Speaker 2: our first film with flaming rats in it would that
Speaker 2: it was our last. Nash She would later express regret
Speaker 2: that they filmed the scenes this way, but at the
Speaker 2: time it was just presented as the way you did things.
Speaker 2: So we talked about this before. You know, on pictures,
Speaker 2: you know. Unfortunately you do see this sort of thing
Speaker 2: turn up and pictures from prior decades, and some of
Speaker 2: it's not as visible, Like there are a number of
Speaker 2: things that are now considered animal cruelty regarding horse stunts,
Speaker 2: for example that not being a horse person myself, I
Speaker 2: tend to not even notice. So I don't know how
Speaker 2: many times I've seen horse cruelty without just having the
Speaker 2: expertise to recognize it. That being said, with this film,
Speaker 2: there's no doubting what's going on here. These are clearly
Speaker 2: live rats on fire. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, if not for knowing about the animal cruelty, there
Speaker 3: would be some pretty funny things about this scene because
Speaker 3: it has rats like leaping at Gotho from the floor,
Speaker 3: like as if they're just jumping right off the ground
Speaker 3: onto his neck to attack him. Obviously there's people throwing
Speaker 3: either rats or fake rats. But plot wise, Gotho is like, wow,
Speaker 3: I guess I shouldn't have left her in the rat room.
Speaker 3: So he relocates her to another room, which is now
Speaker 3: which the second room is full of torture equipment. It's
Speaker 3: got a rack. I think I see an iron maiden,
Speaker 3: and he like puts her on the rack table. I mean,
Speaker 3: he doesn't stretch her, but it's just that's her resting place.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: Now, from here we get more of the police investigators.
Speaker 3: They go to visit a new character who will become
Speaker 3: a major character, Professor Orla, who has a nice, expensive home.
Speaker 3: He's got a proper butler. So Orla is an authority
Speaker 3: figure here, and he admits the police to his comfortable study.
Speaker 3: He greets them confidently, and we can already see in
Speaker 3: this kind of cozy environment that Orla radiates a sort
Speaker 3: of intimidating power and sense of authority. He can he's
Speaker 3: the kind of person who can talk people out of
Speaker 3: their suspicions. Like the two police investigators quiz him about
Speaker 3: Gotho and the murders. He denies Gotho could be involved
Speaker 3: and says he doesn't know where he is. But from
Speaker 3: here we follow Orla back to the hospital because of course,
Speaker 3: you know, the night is long and he has much
Speaker 3: work to do, and it seems his work is mainly
Speaker 3: chopping up cow organs with a scalpel and then looking
Speaker 3: at things under a microscope. But here in the lab
Speaker 3: Gotho comes into Orla. He actually he starts off hiding
Speaker 3: under a sheet on one of the cadaver tables, and
Speaker 3: he pops up like as if you know, a kind
Speaker 3: of like scene in the fog where the corpse is
Speaker 3: rising up under the sheet. But then he tells Orla
Speaker 3: that he needs help, and here begins some negotiation. Gotho
Speaker 3: has something that Orla could use. He shows Orla his
Speaker 3: underground hideaway. They sort of tour all the passageways together,
Speaker 3: and he asked for Orla's help, and Orla says, I
Speaker 3: can help you, but that means you work for me.
Speaker 3: Now you must do everything I tell you to do.
Speaker 3: And then they make the trade more explicit. Orla promises
Speaker 3: that he can bring Ilsa back to life for Gotho,
Speaker 3: but Gotho must transfer all of Orla's laboratory equipment down
Speaker 3: to this secret torture chamber and help him with his
Speaker 3: work and This is good timing for Orla because we
Speaker 3: learned that Orla has just received a notice from the
Speaker 3: university that he's got to stop his research at once.
Speaker 3: He will no longer have access to the hospital facilities.
Speaker 3: And there's a scene there are actually many scenes like
Speaker 3: this in the second half of the film, where Orla
Speaker 3: is talking with Tauchner, who has been helping him in
Speaker 3: the project. And Orla is like, these neuro minded fools,
Speaker 3: you know, they're terrified of anything that's new, beautiful and
Speaker 3: possesses true genius. So what's the project they're working on
Speaker 3: that's so important but that the university, the narrow minded
Speaker 3: fools are afraid of.
Speaker 4: Why.
Speaker 3: It's to create artificial life. Of course, what else would
Speaker 3: it be. Now Orla and Tauchener are debating what to
Speaker 3: do next, and Orla reveals that he has Gotho working
Speaker 3: for him. Tauschener is like, wait, you know he's accused
Speaker 3: of three murders, right, and Orla is I probably didn't
Speaker 3: do it. Tauchener then says, this is an actual quote
Speaker 3: I took down. Dealing with a killer is not only repugnant,
Speaker 3: it might also causes complications.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you'd have to list those in the complications
Speaker 2: section of your peer reviewed study. Yeah, you know, at
Speaker 2: the bottom it's like potential complications. We did work with
Speaker 2: a murderer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he's an evil stain on humanity. Also, he
Speaker 3: might throw sand in the gears.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: In the end, Orla puts pressure on Tauchner and persuades
Speaker 3: him to keep working with him on the Artificial Life
Speaker 3: project for the time being, and they head out for
Speaker 3: a tour of the dungeon. There's some quite beautiful location
Speaker 3: shots here as they go into the nearby abbey that's
Speaker 3: one of the access points for the catacombs. I wonder
Speaker 3: where they shout this part because I mentioned earlier that
Speaker 3: I just watched this other Nashy movie, The Werewolf Versus
Speaker 3: the Vampire Woman from seventy one, and there is an
Speaker 3: abbey location in that movie that looks almost identical to this.
Speaker 3: I wonder if they used the same place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, they might have. It also reminds me
Speaker 2: of some of the ruins from the Blind Dead movies,
Speaker 2: so likely they use the same Spanish locations here. But then,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, like this part of the world,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of castles, a lot of ruins.
Speaker 2: I looked around briefly, wasn't able to find a good answer,
Speaker 2: but I did find evidence of In twenty seventeen, there
Speaker 2: is a tour company called ECS Tours and they did
Speaker 2: something called Classic Spanish Horror Film Location Tour, a Paul
Speaker 2: Nashi tribute Whoa. I was like, oh, man, that sounds great,
Speaker 2: do it again please?
Speaker 3: So Tauschener gets read in on the whole operation, including
Speaker 3: Orlo's promises to go Tho that he will cause Ilsa
Speaker 3: to wake up. This does not sit well with Tauchner
Speaker 3: for multiple reasons. He says, you know, it's not fair
Speaker 3: to lie to Gotho and manipulate him like this. Also,
Speaker 3: he could kill again. And Orla argues, you know, but
Speaker 3: science must sometimes use dubious methods because the ends will
Speaker 3: justify the means, and he says success is waiting. So
Speaker 3: there's more Dark Knight of the Soul with Tauchener. Here,
Speaker 3: Tauchener goes and talks to doctor Meyer. We learn her
Speaker 3: first name is Marie. About his work with Orla, I
Speaker 3: guess they've both sort of been working with Orla, but
Speaker 3: mainly Tauchner, And he's like, yeah, I've got reservations, but
Speaker 3: I'm also inclined to push ahead because of the great
Speaker 3: potential for scientific discovery. But Marie tells him there is
Speaker 3: something about Orla in his work that has begun to
Speaker 3: frighten her. He may be a great scientist, but he's
Speaker 3: willing to destroy anything and anyone who gets in his way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's always a red flag.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we get a look after they've been working
Speaker 3: on setting up the lab in the dungeon. We get
Speaker 3: a look at it. So there's a lot of beeps
Speaker 3: and boops kind of equipment, beakers full of pink liquid
Speaker 3: that's burbling, and then a giant sulfuric acid pit in
Speaker 3: the floor.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, much like the one from nineteen seventy Scream
Speaker 2: and Scream again, which we previously talked about on the show.
Speaker 2: It looks wonderful.
Speaker 3: Also, it appears that Gotho or somebody has hired movers
Speaker 3: to get all of the equipment. And now there are
Speaker 3: just other people involved in the like three other guys
Speaker 3: involved in this. Is this really a top secret laboratory?
Speaker 3: There's more and more people coming in.
Speaker 2: Well, it's gonna be as we find out. With this
Speaker 2: crew of labor as they brought in.
Speaker 3: That's right. So Orla tries to promise Gotho that he
Speaker 3: will be famous for his contribution to this very important
Speaker 3: science project. But Gotho just wants to know when Orla's
Speaker 3: gonna wake Ilsa up for him, and he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: real soon, Gotho, Real soon. So we follow Gotho as
Speaker 3: he goes out still every day to pick flowers for
Speaker 3: Ilsa in the abbey ruins. So it's still very sad.
Speaker 3: We follow him and we see his pain that he's
Speaker 3: you know, he's hoping, he's hoping against hope that she
Speaker 3: can be revived somehow. Now I mentioned that they the movers.
Speaker 3: I don't know who these guys are, but we see
Speaker 3: them later and they're three guys just like playing cards
Speaker 3: and cursing and drinking schnops in the lab. They seem
Speaker 3: like real, no good, low life. They're they're complaining about
Speaker 3: the smell of rotting meat while they're pounding liquor on
Speaker 3: a torture rack, and they decide to fix the problem.
Speaker 3: They're like, oh, the problem is this body over here.
Speaker 3: It's Ilse's body. She's stinking up the place. So they
Speaker 3: take initiative, and they chuck the decomposing body of Ilsa
Speaker 3: into the sulfuric acid.
Speaker 2: Tank because clearly that will smell better.
Speaker 3: Yes, So of course Gotho walks in while they're doing this,
Speaker 3: he sees it happen, and then he flips it once again.
Speaker 3: He's here too late. He flips out and starts attacking
Speaker 3: the dudes. Two of them get different kinds of deaths
Speaker 3: by acid. One guy he throws straight into the sulfuric
Speaker 3: acid tank alive. The other guy gets smashed in the
Speaker 3: face with a beaker of acid. And then the third guy, Gotho,
Speaker 3: slams inside an iron maiden.
Speaker 2: Yeikes, nice, Yeah, this is a great kill. All these
Speaker 2: were great kills, but the iron Maiden that was the
Speaker 2: real topping on the cake.
Speaker 3: So right after this, here comes Maria wandering into the catacombs.
Speaker 3: She's checking up on the project. So again this place
Speaker 3: is really not as secret as it first seemed, and
Speaker 3: she sees some rats and screams and runs away. But
Speaker 3: also we see Orla and Tauchiner here around the same time.
Speaker 3: They're getting on with their research. They're making exciting progress,
Speaker 3: occasionally stopping to wonder what happened to those three men
Speaker 3: who worked for us hm hm, and Orla says something
Speaker 3: like the fewer witnesses the better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it maintained secrecy.
Speaker 3: But Maria is still running around in the catacombs here,
Speaker 3: and she encounters a zombie like creature with a burned face.
Speaker 3: So I was confused about what happened here. But I
Speaker 3: think this is supposed to be the guy that Gotho
Speaker 3: hit with the acid beaker. He's either reanimated or somehow
Speaker 3: sort of zombified, and he just wanders past Maria. But
Speaker 3: then Gotho arrives and is like, oh, hey, you know
Speaker 3: you know me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think it's the taller of the acid
Speaker 2: burn guys with one of the other acid burn guys
Speaker 2: strapped to his back. Yeah, And it's unclear whether the
Speaker 2: guy on his back is alive or dead at this point.
Speaker 2: Clearly the zombified guy is barely alive in a very
Speaker 2: bad state of mind, but it's uncertain whether like tall
Speaker 2: guy is trying to escape and bring his buddy with him.
Speaker 2: I'm more inclined to think that what happened here is
Speaker 2: that is that Gotho, in an act of cruelty, has
Speaker 2: strapped one to the other and just sort of like
Speaker 2: kicked him in the butt and send him off to
Speaker 2: wander the ruins until they die.
Speaker 3: You know, I noticed this about the werewolf versus the
Speaker 3: Vampire Woman as well. A lot of Nashy movies have
Speaker 3: a random zombie type figure with gross face makeup that
Speaker 3: appears only for one or two scenes and is not explained.
Speaker 3: It all exactly the same in this other movie. There's
Speaker 3: like a zombie and the Abbey Ruins in that movie,
Speaker 3: and we never learn what he is or why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you gotta go a little little bit undead in there,
Speaker 2: part of his soul.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyway, here, Maria joins Orla and Tauchiner in
Speaker 3: the lab and they talk more about the progress of
Speaker 3: the artificial life that they are incubating, and Orla says,
Speaker 3: you know, they're right on the cusp. It will be
Speaker 3: assuming a definite form any day now. But Meyer points
Speaker 3: out something. She says, you don't know what form the
Speaker 3: life will take, which means it could be a human
Speaker 3: form or a monstrous mutation. And Orla tells her off.
Speaker 3: He's like, I know what I'm doing. But by the way,
Speaker 3: the life at this point is in a big vat.
Speaker 3: It's in like a big glass jar.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So we begin to see lots of shots of
Speaker 2: bits of meat and gore, like pulsing and throbbing inside
Speaker 2: of the vat. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3: It looks like a glass stock pot stuffed with blood
Speaker 3: clots and huge throbbing oysters. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you got to throw some stuff in there, like frogs,
Speaker 2: live frogs.
Speaker 3: Yes. So obviously Gotho is really down and out. Now
Speaker 3: he goes to talk to Orla and he's like, well,
Speaker 3: Ilsa has been disintegrated, so now I have no hope.
Speaker 3: I can't work this job anymore. So I'm going to
Speaker 3: go turn myself into the police. And Orla tells him, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: don't do that. I need you and let's see, I'll
Speaker 3: create a new Ilsa for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, a whole new one. And somehow Gotho
Speaker 3: goes for this. He's overjoyed. He's like, you do that
Speaker 3: for me, professor, and Orla says, yes, yes, yes, I
Speaker 3: will do that, but I need you first to go
Speaker 3: to the morgue and swipe some fresh body parts for me.
Speaker 3: I need a head. You've got to get me a
Speaker 3: human head. So Gotho says, all right, and he goes
Speaker 3: to the morgue and he saws off a human head
Speaker 3: and it looks pretty realistic.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Now I've read that the filmmakers had the
Speaker 2: chance to use a real corpse here, but nobody ended
Speaker 2: up having the stomach to go through with the shoot.
Speaker 2: I'm unsure person if this is true or if this
Speaker 2: is more sort of movie myth making. So you be
Speaker 2: the judge, But at any rate, this is a fake head.
Speaker 2: This is an effect. But it looks amazing like it
Speaker 2: has the big old Man ears on it and all
Speaker 2: very well done.
Speaker 3: So Gotho gets chased with the head by some kind
Speaker 3: of night watchmen or police who were wearing I don't know,
Speaker 3: they're wearing sort of those straw hats, like like Harold
Speaker 3: Hill the music man, and he escapes by climbing onto
Speaker 3: rooftops and running over the rooftops through the town, eventually
Speaker 3: making his way I don't know if this was intentional
Speaker 3: or by accident, but he makes his way into the
Speaker 3: window of Elki's apartment, and she's here in her night
Speaker 3: gown reading a book. I was trying to see what
Speaker 3: book that is. I wanted to look it up, but
Speaker 3: I couldn't quite make out the title or the author.
Speaker 3: But anyway, she confronts him. She's like, well, at first,
Speaker 3: she says, you know, oh, you shouldn't be jumping through
Speaker 3: my window with a head and a bag at this
Speaker 3: time of night. But then comes a knock at the
Speaker 3: door and it's the police, and Elkie hides Gotho from
Speaker 3: the police. She lies to them cover for Gotho and
Speaker 3: they leave, and Gotho was appreciative, but he asks her,
Speaker 3: why did you do it? You heard them I'm a
Speaker 3: killer now. Remember Elki has a great talent for criminal psychiatry,
Speaker 3: as doctor Meyer told us earlier, and she says, yeah,
Speaker 3: you might be a killer, but you're not a killer killer.
Speaker 3: I know why you did it. If only I could
Speaker 3: have someone who loved me as much as you loved Elsa.
Speaker 3: And I was like when I first got to this,
Speaker 3: I was like, wait a minute, where is this going?
Speaker 3: But Elkie explains that she doesn't care that everyone else
Speaker 3: finds him ugly and frightening. She says, sometimes faithfulness and
Speaker 3: love surpassed beauty. So Gotho kisses her feet once again,
Speaker 3: and then Elki kisses Gotho on the mouth.
Speaker 2: They're hitting it off.
Speaker 3: They're hitting it off, so some more mad science stuff
Speaker 3: going on into the lab. He goes back, and Orla
Speaker 3: throws the human head into the vat full of oysters
Speaker 3: and organs. He just drops it right into the tank.
Speaker 2: I love how he's like, I should really take the
Speaker 2: brain out first, but I'm just so excited to carry
Speaker 2: on with the project, and d goes in.
Speaker 3: That's right, so Orla quickly sets Gotho to some more
Speaker 3: grave robbing. They go out digging up graves. While Aurla's
Speaker 3: standing there making speeches at him, Gotho's digging. They end
Speaker 3: up killing a security guard at the cemetery, and Gotho
Speaker 3: is horrified at what he has done, like he hits
Speaker 3: him with a shovel, kills the guys like, oh no,
Speaker 3: But Orla says, oh, you know, sweet bonus bodies. They
Speaker 3: take both of them back now. Next there is a
Speaker 3: hitch in the project because Orla starts to think that
Speaker 3: the artificial life's growth is slowing down, and the problem
Speaker 3: is it doesn't want dead body parts. It needs a
Speaker 3: live human.
Speaker 2: And who's going to supply those live humans or at
Speaker 2: least very fresh humans. Well, you know, it's got to.
Speaker 3: Be Gotho, that's right. So oh and at some point,
Speaker 3: kind of without much fanfare, the new creature is suddenly born.
Speaker 3: Like Orla and Gotho are in the lab and they
Speaker 3: quickly lock the tank behind a heavy wooden door to
Speaker 3: one of the cells in the dungeon because Orla he
Speaker 3: detects that it's about to transform. But we don't get
Speaker 3: to see what it is initially. We just like hear
Speaker 3: a commotion inside the room and we see them looking
Speaker 3: through a little peep hole in the door, and they're thinking, Wow,
Speaker 3: that's amazing, but we won't see it until the very end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they describe a little bit. They're like, oh, it
Speaker 2: broke the tray, it broke the table, and so forth.
Speaker 2: And we hear the sounds, which is great because it
Speaker 2: builds up in our imagination of what this might be,
Speaker 2: especially when we have sort of conflicting ideas about what
Speaker 2: it's going to be. It sounds like a monster, but
Speaker 2: Orla is eventually going to talk about it in terms
Speaker 2: of some primordial goddess that is being reborn in this
Speaker 2: artificial biological state.
Speaker 3: That's right. So we get more scenes of discussing the
Speaker 3: ethics of the projects between Tauchener and Meyer. Meyer is
Speaker 3: again the voice of reason here. She's like, there's just
Speaker 3: something wrong about the way that you are ignoring the
Speaker 3: impact on people's lives, especially the abuse of Gotho. It's wrong.
Speaker 3: Meyer says, all the crimes of the Hunchback are really
Speaker 3: the crimes of Orla. He's the one responsible, which to
Speaker 3: some extent is true. Maybe not all of the crimes,
Speaker 3: but some of the crimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Gotho still he has agency. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: can't pin all of the son Orla.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Orla clearly shares a lot of the blame, but
Speaker 3: she breaks through to Tauchner and convinces him to abandon
Speaker 3: the project. However, whoops. Tauchner goes to Orla and he's like,
Speaker 3: I'm done, can't do this anymore. And this leads to
Speaker 3: a fight where Orla gets Gotho to knock Tauchner unconscious
Speaker 3: and lock him in a cell in the dungeon. Orla
Speaker 3: tells Gotho that he will have need of Tauchner for
Speaker 3: a thing. Now Here, we start to see a bunch
Speaker 3: of these scenes where Gotho has to go out and
Speaker 3: kidnap living people to bring to feed the artificial life form.
Speaker 3: So he starts kidnapping women from the women's reformatory. He
Speaker 3: brings one lady down screaming into the dungeon, where he
Speaker 3: and Orla throw her into the life form cell. Don't
Speaker 3: see what's happening, but we hear it eating her. Gotho
Speaker 3: goes back to Elk's apartment at some point, and Gotho
Speaker 3: is torn because he not so much about what he's
Speaker 3: doing on the project. He's torn because he is falling
Speaker 3: for Elki, but he feels guilty, like he's betraying ILSA's memory.
Speaker 3: And Elkie tells him that if Elsa could see them together,
Speaker 3: she would approve, And Okay, I think that's all the
Speaker 3: convincing Gotho needs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because also Gotho believes that any day now he's
Speaker 2: going to get that new Ilsa and she can approve
Speaker 2: in person.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's right. And obviously Elk is super into Gotho.
Speaker 3: I think Gotho is like, yes, I like Elki too,
Speaker 3: So yeah, they start kissing and there's like a full
Speaker 3: Gotho Elkie love scene. I don't know if I should
Speaker 3: say full there's a brief Gotho Elkie love scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is the scene that is a noticeably
Speaker 2: different film quality. I've read that the original I've read
Speaker 2: two different stories about the original Newde footage here. One
Speaker 2: was that it was destroyed by Spanish censors and also
Speaker 2: at now she had a naked hump effect on his
Speaker 2: back that ended up not looking all that great and
Speaker 2: they scrapped it and had to redo it. At any rate,
Speaker 2: the uncensored version here just features a very brief, poorer
Speaker 2: quality segment of all this with Elkie topless and Gothos
Speaker 2: still wearing your shirt, but very brief, especially as these
Speaker 2: movies go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there's no ambiguity. Now, it's not just a
Speaker 3: crush like they're having a full on love affair. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Is it doomed love?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Probably probably. Yeah. Now there's another scene where doctor Meyer
Speaker 3: comes down to the dungeon. I think she's looking for
Speaker 3: her fiance who has been locked in a cell, and
Speaker 3: she confronts Orela and finds out, uh oh, that we've
Speaker 3: been feeding ladies from the hospital to this creature. She
Speaker 3: looks through the peepole and the cell door to see
Speaker 3: the creature and says that's horrible. It has completely devoured her,
Speaker 3: and Orla starts monologuing about his plot, but Meyer wisely
Speaker 3: whacks him from behind with a pipe and then runs
Speaker 3: around calling out for Touchner try to find him. Instead,
Speaker 3: she finds Gotho. And what does Gotho do with her?
Speaker 3: I think he just crams her in a cell. Gotho's
Speaker 3: kind of all in on the evil plot now he
Speaker 3: wants that new ilsa. Yeah, So Gotho just keeps kidnapping
Speaker 3: women to bring to the tank. Being in this section,
Speaker 3: there are some very funny edits because there will be rapid,
Speaker 3: abrupt cutting back and forth between Gotho, like doing an abduction,
Speaker 3: and then suddenly we go back to the dungeon with
Speaker 3: Orla standing at the cell door listening to the creature,
Speaker 3: and the creature is constantly unleashing these sound effects, these
Speaker 3: rage groans. It's just in the cell going.
Speaker 2: Like a rampaging ogre on the Muppet Show, sort of
Speaker 2: a sound yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they just are constant. Elkie. She looks out
Speaker 3: the hospital window at one point and just sees Gotho
Speaker 3: taking kidnapped women to the dungeon. So she just like
Speaker 3: directly witnesses it, and it's like, oh, that's not good.
Speaker 3: So she climbs down follow him. So I think we're
Speaker 3: building up to a final showdown, aren't we.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Now we do get a nice villain monologue,
Speaker 2: one of many villain monologues from Orla, but I really
Speaker 2: like this one where he's talking about the creature that
Speaker 2: is growing. He says, quote from the subtitles, the creature
Speaker 2: is a primordial one of the beings that inhabited Earth
Speaker 2: before the human race. Her race is the oldest books
Speaker 2: like the Necronomicon and the old treaties of magic and
Speaker 2: alchemy are full of references concerning this entity. That creature
Speaker 2: holds the secrets of every ancient civilization, and she will
Speaker 2: share them with us. The world will kneel before us. Okay,
Speaker 2: So it does get a little more into the megalomaniac
Speaker 2: side of things with you know, will rule the world
Speaker 2: so forth, But most the last five minutes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's beginning to awaken to that possibility. But mostly they're like,
Speaker 2: we're going to learn so much from this breakthrough. And
Speaker 2: I also just love the idea that their eventual peer
Speaker 2: review journal article on all of this will also reference
Speaker 2: the Necronomicon.
Speaker 3: What does the citation on that look like, Well.
Speaker 2: What's his name? Alhazard reference Alhazzard. And I guess I'm
Speaker 2: hoping that Gotho would also get an author credit on this.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's putting in the work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but guess what Orla thinks the creature needs more
Speaker 3: of to reach its final form, needs more food, needs
Speaker 3: some more living flesh. So oh, and here comes Elki
Speaker 3: following Gothot into the catacombs. So what's it going to be.
Speaker 3: He's like, go get me, Elkie. We're going to feed
Speaker 3: her to the creature. Gotho does bring her to the lab,
Speaker 3: but when Orla commands him to put her inside the cell,
Speaker 3: Gotho refuses. He's He's like, no, not her. She was
Speaker 3: kind to me. I have to protect her. So this
Speaker 3: turns into a Gotho versus Orla battle. And what do
Speaker 3: you think. Of course, the monster is going to come
Speaker 3: into play.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that monster is going to get loose. It's going
Speaker 2: to rampage, and we're here for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So well, actually, first there's an interlude in this
Speaker 3: fight in the lab where Gotho lets Meyer and Tauchner
Speaker 3: out of their cells. And she asks them to take
Speaker 3: Elki to safety. So the three basically good people run away.
Speaker 3: They get to you escape and be all right. But
Speaker 3: this is right before the primordial escapes itsel and it
Speaker 3: attacks Orla and there's this whole fight here. I think
Speaker 3: it's a pretty awesome looking monster. Kind of a muddy,
Speaker 3: melted candle slash oily maniac design.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a green, brown sludge monster that looks especially
Speaker 2: great in this setting with this film quality. And it
Speaker 2: also benefits us that we don't see much of it.
Speaker 2: We've just been leading up to this moment, and so
Speaker 2: that we don't see enough of it to where we
Speaker 2: really begin to see the seams or anything. Yeah, it's scary.
Speaker 2: It's a great design. I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's really good. It kills Orla, and
Speaker 3: then in the final the tragic ending that we probably
Speaker 3: knew was coming, Gotho and the Primordial sort of lock
Speaker 3: arms and they fall into the sulfuric acid pit together.
Speaker 3: Bubble bubble the end.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In fact, the words the end appear over the site
Speaker 2: of blood colored sulphuric acid bubbling in the acid vat.
Speaker 2: I wonder how much we're supposed to read into this
Speaker 2: this kind of here we have like the tragic masculine
Speaker 2: figure of Gotho and this perhaps monstrous feminine, pre human
Speaker 2: deity type figure, if you believe everything Oil has been saying,
Speaker 2: also falling into the acid with him. I'm probably reading
Speaker 2: too much into the scenario.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, what does that mean? The oily maniac goddess
Speaker 3: and Gotho meet their fates together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's but Gotho. To be clear, redeems
Speaker 2: himself fully here. He has saved all of humanity and
Speaker 2: we are in his debt. There can be no argument
Speaker 2: over that.
Speaker 3: He did nothing wrong. He's fine, now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he did several things quite wrong, but he
Speaker 2: saved us all in the end. He came through in
Speaker 2: the end, and that's what matters.
Speaker 3: That's right, because who knows what the primordial could have done.
Speaker 3: If it truly was kind of a Goser type figure,
Speaker 3: a lost god from ancient times, it could have swept
Speaker 3: over the earth and ruled us all.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't get the sense that this thing was
Speaker 2: really interested in sharing ancient civilization secrets like Orla was
Speaker 2: talking about, Like, it's not gonna I can't imagine having
Speaker 2: a conversation with it with it where you're like, so,
Speaker 2: what's up with the Egyptian neck rests? How did they
Speaker 2: use that those when they slept? And it would be like, well,
Speaker 2: let me tell you all about it. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: this thing wants to eat and grow and do god
Speaker 2: knows what else.
Speaker 3: It would just eat us all. Yeah, yeah, all right,
Speaker 3: Well that was Hunchback in the Morgue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, rats aside. I think a real
Speaker 2: strong picture in the Nashi verse filmography here. You know,
Speaker 2: it's got all the all the elements you want out
Speaker 2: of a Nashy picture, you know, some great effects, some
Speaker 2: ridiculous moments, you know, has it all?
Speaker 3: I would be interested to collect the examples of Nashi's filmography,
Speaker 3: I guess, especially the movies that he had a hand
Speaker 3: in writing or directing that don't have an element of
Speaker 3: doomed love in them, doomed tragic love, like, because it
Speaker 3: seems like he's almost always doing that. So like, what
Speaker 3: what were his other main interests? You know, what are
Speaker 3: what are the characters' emotional motivations when it's not.
Speaker 2: That well there definitely seemed to be a number of
Speaker 2: pictures I've seen a few of them recently. Watch Panic Beats,
Speaker 2: which brings the Warlock all Iraq back in an altered form,
Speaker 2: but is largely a picture about like how awful people are.
Speaker 2: But I'm not sure like how much of this is
Speaker 2: like the example of this film like speaking I think
Speaker 2: maybe to a certain extent, speaking a where speaking to
Speaker 2: where like Nashi's mind was at the time, and sort
Speaker 2: of his views on the state of humanity, but also
Speaker 2: probably representing we're talking about like early eighties by this point,
Speaker 2: representing changes in the horror market, and I understand there's
Speaker 2: like less of a demand for gothic horror at that time,
Speaker 2: and like clearly, you know, that's where his heart was.
Speaker 2: So in order to still do a film about undead
Speaker 2: you know, murderous Nights and so forth, you had to
Speaker 2: sort of couch it in these you know, newer slasher
Speaker 2: tropes and so forth.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so at some point in the future, well, maybe
Speaker 2: we'll have to come back and do a Nashy picture
Speaker 2: where he's sort of playing against type a bit. But
Speaker 2: then on the other hand, the ones where he's playing
Speaker 2: a true Nashy you know, tragic, doomed character, those are
Speaker 2: so good it's hard to resist though, So it would
Speaker 2: be very hard to pass up one of his monster
Speaker 2: roles in favor of one of these other pictures.
Speaker 3: I'm just imagining a Paul Nashi themed Valentine card that's like,
Speaker 3: will you stab me in the heart with a silver cross.
Speaker 2: There's something you could do a whole series of them.
Speaker 2: I'd love to see it. Someone may have done it.
Speaker 2: I mean that Nashi's a big enough horror icon at
Speaker 2: this point, somebody may have created those already. If so,
Speaker 2: please someone send me a link and in general right
Speaker 2: into us with your thoughts on a Hunchback of the Morgue,
Speaker 2: other Nashi pictures, or you know, favorite Spanish horror films,
Speaker 2: favorite Hunchback movies. Everything is fair game. Just a reminder
Speaker 2: that Stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a science
Speaker 2: and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 2: but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns just
Speaker 2: talk about a weird film on weird house cinema, such
Speaker 2: as this picture. And if you want to see a
Speaker 2: list of all the films we've covered thus far, and
Speaker 2: sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next, go
Speaker 2: to letterbox dot com. Our user name there is weird.
Speaker 3: House, Huge Things. As always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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: a 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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