Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2: And this is Joe McCormick, and today we're bringing you
Speaker 2: an episode from the Weird House Cinema vault. This was
Speaker 2: actually our first Weird House Cinema episode ever. It was
Speaker 2: on the movie Without Warning, a Graydon Clark classic about
Speaker 2: an alien running around in the fields of Where's it.
Speaker 2: I guess it's in rural California?
Speaker 1: Maybe yep?
Speaker 2: Yeah. So this originally aired on October thirtieth, twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: It was our first ever Weird House Cinema episode when
Speaker 2: we didn't know what Weird House Cinema would be yet.
Speaker 2: I think we were still trying to figure it out.
Speaker 2: So I wonder what kind of weird little appendages and
Speaker 2: vestigial organs there will be to fined in this episode.
Speaker 1: Let's dig right in and find out.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob and
Speaker 1: this is Joe. Oh were we not saying our last
Speaker 1: names here?
Speaker 2: That's a change.
Speaker 1: Oh you know, No, I guess we should say our
Speaker 1: last names.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, you're Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. That's it.
Speaker 2: That sound okay, let's go with that. Okay, So it
Speaker 2: looks like this is our pilot episode. We're recording this
Speaker 2: here as a test. It may or may not see
Speaker 2: the light of day, but if you're listening to it,
Speaker 2: it obviously did.
Speaker 1: Now, we originally explored the idea of this being a
Speaker 1: standalone podcast series, but then we realize now the perfect
Speaker 1: place to try and roll this out would be like
Speaker 1: late night on a Friday, like at midnight, if they'd
Speaker 1: let us do that. I don't think they can let
Speaker 1: us do that, but at any rate, Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: kind of a little bonus episode. It is not core
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind content, but we are featuring
Speaker 1: it in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind feed on Fridays.
Speaker 1: I like to think of it as the asexual budding
Speaker 1: offspring of our science podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: where really, we've frequently over the years brought up various
Speaker 1: weird movies, generally as a means of sort of illustrating
Speaker 1: a particular scientific topic or making a particular scientific topic
Speaker 1: maybe a little more engaging, at least to us. So
Speaker 1: this is just more of the same, except we're putting
Speaker 1: the cart in front of the horse here. We're putting
Speaker 1: the movie weirdness ahead of any other concerns that would
Speaker 1: otherwise be engaged.
Speaker 2: That's right. We're putting the jack palance in front of
Speaker 2: the horse here because for our inaugural episode here we
Speaker 2: are going to be talking about, without warning, a film
Speaker 2: from nineteen eighty that is so exquisite. I could not
Speaker 2: have asked for a better opening episode. Robert, you suggested
Speaker 2: this film, having not seen it yourself, I believe. But
Speaker 2: when I laid eyes on the trailer, I knew it
Speaker 2: was going to be love at first sight, and my
Speaker 2: heart was true once I saw it. This film holds up.
Speaker 2: This is b trash for the ages. All right, let's
Speaker 2: go ahead and a taste for this film. Let's listen
Speaker 2: to the trailer in its entirety.
Speaker 4: The hunting season has begun, but the hunter isn't human, only.
Speaker 5: The prey are. It came without warning. It's like nothing
Speaker 5: on this earth, our friends.
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 4: Beyond any known terror, because one that leaves this planet,
Speaker 4: no one may be left alive.
Speaker 1: Good Time warned you.
Speaker 5: When they start eating you, don't come to me for help.
Speaker 5: He came out here a spot you want to hear
Speaker 5: some about.
Speaker 2: Eutrope is right now, you and me, we.
Speaker 4: Are the prize, the hotter, the hunted house, not true,
Speaker 4: the thing that praise on human fear and feeds on
Speaker 4: human flesh from deepest space. It came, and now man
Speaker 4: is the endangered species. It came without warning, and now
Speaker 4: it's coming for you.
Speaker 1: Wow. That was something. It's pretty wonderful for a number
Speaker 1: of reasons we're going to discuss in this episode, but
Speaker 1: for me personally, one of the things I liked about
Speaker 1: it is that while on the Internet is a wonderful
Speaker 1: means of discovering new weird films. You know, everything from
Speaker 1: B movies and exploitation films to art films and even
Speaker 1: blockbusters that didn't quite bust the block back in the day,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. But this is a film that
Speaker 1: I discovered the old fashioned way on a video rental shelf.
Speaker 1: I went to Atlanta's own video drome. I was perusing
Speaker 1: the horror and science fiction and there it was.
Speaker 2: A video drome is the holy temple of this show.
Speaker 2: It's been a sight of pilgrimage for us for quite
Speaker 2: some time. Yeah, and it's great that they're still operating
Speaker 2: even during these are dark times by a wonderful sort
Speaker 2: of exchange system that operates out of a table at
Speaker 2: the front door. And so you can just walk right
Speaker 2: up to him and say, give me something disgusting that
Speaker 2: reminds you of The Uninvited by Graydon Clark, and you
Speaker 2: may well get without warning.
Speaker 1: Yes, because this is a directed by great on Clark
Speaker 1: all of that film, and we'll touch based on him
Speaker 1: in a bit. But before we get any further, Joe,
Speaker 1: do you want to summarize this film for us? Give
Speaker 1: us a quick breakdown of the plot.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, the short version is that, without warning, this
Speaker 2: is a movie that came out in nineteen eighty and
Speaker 2: it's Predator before Predator. When did the Schwarzenegger Predator come out,
Speaker 2: like eighty seven, eighty eight something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this is Predator before Predator, except instead of
Speaker 2: a bug mouth gadget alien with like a laser cannon
Speaker 2: and dreadlocks, this is a fifty style big head alien,
Speaker 2: sort of a cross between the creepy clay monsters from
Speaker 2: Fire in the Sky and then just full camp Martians
Speaker 2: like the ones in Invasion of the saucer Men, big head,
Speaker 2: a large alien compound eye is kind of a screeching
Speaker 2: a mouth. Does it make a noise? I think maybe
Speaker 2: at some point does the invasion of the Body Snasher screech?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes some sort of an animal noise at
Speaker 1: some point.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. And so instead of taking place in a
Speaker 2: vague Central American war zone, this is set somewhere in
Speaker 2: I think it's supposed to be the rural western US.
Speaker 2: I would guess rural California. And instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger
Speaker 2: and his team of commandos, you've got whiny hunters. You've
Speaker 2: got boy scouts who just sing incessantly, you've got makeout
Speaker 2: point tines, and you've got Jack Palance. And Jack Palance,
Speaker 2: by the way, is a force of nature. In this movie,
Speaker 2: he plays a hunter. I guess half the characters are
Speaker 2: supposed to be hunters of some kind or another. We'll
Speaker 2: get to that more when we talk about the themes
Speaker 2: and message of the film later on. But Jack Palance
Speaker 2: is some kind of hunter who likes to kill animals,
Speaker 2: put their heads on the wall of his gas station,
Speaker 2: put them in jars, put them in formaldehyde. And when
Speaker 2: he talks in this film, he is human cocaine. Half
Speaker 2: of his lines are delivered literally quivering.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there is a leathery intensity to this performance that,
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, you would expect from Palance. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he really brings it. There's not a sense that he
Speaker 1: missed call and phoned it in.
Speaker 2: But as for the basic plot, there's an alien who's here.
Speaker 2: It's hunting humans. It does hunt humans, including some of
Speaker 2: the actors that we're going to mention in just a minute.
Speaker 2: As it hunts them, it collects them and puts them
Speaker 2: in a water utility shed. I guess that is functioning
Speaker 2: as this temporary like food storage locker. I think there's
Speaker 2: the implication that the alien is going to eat the people.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's ever made entirely clear, but
Speaker 2: I recall that being suggested.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of wonderful mystery about exactly what
Speaker 1: the alien is doing and why, which really works but
Speaker 1: yet also leads to you wondering is this for food?
Speaker 1: It might be for food, or are they trophies, perhaps
Speaker 1: their trophies, or is there something else in play here?
Speaker 1: And we're just taking our own human practices and sort
Speaker 1: of holding them up over the extraterrestrial pattern in front
Speaker 1: of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so this alien is hunting humans.
Speaker 2: It doesn't use technology really at all that I can
Speaker 2: think of. There. Like I said, there's no laser cannon,
Speaker 2: there are no extending wrist blades, there are no magical
Speaker 2: flying circular saw discs. Instead, it uses what I would
Speaker 2: call a jellyfish shuriken. It throws these little biological creatures
Speaker 2: that attach to people and then stab into the people
Speaker 2: with their tentacles and make the people bleed and then
Speaker 2: kill them. Is that about right?
Speaker 1: That pretty much. I like to think of them as
Speaker 1: fresh frisbees, but I think murder pancakes would also suffice.
Speaker 2: Frisbee from the seafood market.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So basically, this tall, big headed alien, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, I want to stress this is a nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties movie, a nineteen eighty film, which is key because
Speaker 1: you certainly expect that kind of a big headed alien
Speaker 1: in these older in decades pro prior, especially stuff like
Speaker 1: outer limits and so forth. But this is eighty. There
Speaker 1: is a Star Wars beach blanket that shows up in
Speaker 1: the film, and so there's something about the weirdness of that.
Speaker 1: This creature is not only from a different world, he's
Speaker 1: from a different cinematic world, so he feels even more
Speaker 1: the outsider, but unlike those other cinematic big headed aliens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's throwing these flesh frisbees around, and if one of
Speaker 1: these flesh frisbees attaches to your flesh, you're probably doomed.
Speaker 1: You have, like it seems like a few seconds in
Speaker 1: the movies, time to whip out a bowie knife and
Speaker 1: cut that sucker free. Otherwise you're done for.
Speaker 2: Though nobody seems to have that insight except Jack Palance himself.
Speaker 2: Everybody else who gets hit by one of the fresh frisbees. Wait,
Speaker 2: are we going with fresh frisbees or flesh frisbees?
Speaker 1: Either way, fresh flesh frisbees.
Speaker 2: Okay, one of the jellyfish meat frisbees attaches to you.
Speaker 2: Everybody else just goes oh and then goo comes out
Speaker 2: of them and they fall over. But Jack Palance, Yeah,
Speaker 2: of course he whips out his knife because I guess
Speaker 2: he's got more grit than any of the other ones,
Speaker 2: and he has the courage and the resolve to just
Speaker 2: stack a right in there and get it off like
Speaker 2: he's shucking an oyster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there is very much. There's an oyster shucking
Speaker 1: sense to these things. See, it's never explained if the
Speaker 1: thing is the flesh frisbee, it kills you so fast
Speaker 1: because it's like draining your essence or sucking your blood out,
Speaker 1: or if it's like a toxin situation. But it seems
Speaker 1: to work really well, and the movie does a good
Speaker 1: job of conveying that sense of danger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I got the sense of a toxin from
Speaker 2: it because the flesh frisbee, the fresh flesh frisbee, is
Speaker 2: also very greasy. You know, it's like got this ooze
Speaker 2: that when Jack Palance stabs into it with his linoleum
Speaker 2: knife or whatever, it produces this oleaginous extrusion that is
Speaker 2: I don't know, it looks like it would not come
Speaker 2: out with water alone. You would need you know, googne
Speaker 2: or something to get rid of it. And we'll come
Speaker 2: back to that in just a little bit when we
Speaker 2: explore some monster science. But maybe first we should look
Speaker 2: at a cast of characters and associated artisans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's start at the top. I with director
Speaker 1: Graydon Clark not to be confused with tad artist Great Anus,
Speaker 1: and I have personally made that confusion confusing these two.
Speaker 1: But Graydon Clark is perhaps best known, I think for
Speaker 1: directing Aimed Angel's Brigade back in nineteen seventy nine, but
Speaker 1: also the MST three k riffed Final Justice with Joden
Speaker 1: Baker back in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's the one with a dyspeptic Jodon Baker and
Speaker 2: he's running around Malta, right.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, cowboy. It has some wonderful There's this one
Speaker 1: shot in that film where he has his hand on
Speaker 1: his hip and they're shoot it like between his arm
Speaker 1: and the side of his Torso it's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite bizarre shooting choices I've ever seen in a film.
Speaker 2: I also recall a joke about a felonious monk in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But so, Graydon Clark directed another film that came
Speaker 2: out in nineteen eighty seven, which that might be the
Speaker 2: same year that Predator came out, or maybe Predator was
Speaker 2: eighty nine, I don't know. In eighty seven, Graydon Clark
Speaker 2: made the movie un in I keep pointing to call
Speaker 2: it the Uninvited. I think there's no article. It's just Uninvited,
Speaker 2: which is about a mutant cat that gets aboard a
Speaker 2: yacht with klu Gooliger and George Kennedy and a bunch
Speaker 2: of some more makeout point teams.
Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, I haven't seen that one yet, but it's
Speaker 1: definitely on my love for this October.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Robert, it is a top tier creature film you've
Speaker 2: got to see uninvited, and in fact that should be
Speaker 2: a later, later addition to the show because it is.
Speaker 2: It is a creature film like none other. It is
Speaker 2: really unparalleled genius. It Dwelleth at the top of the
Speaker 2: creature film Zigarat.
Speaker 1: All right, well, okay, so we've got Clark on board here.
Speaker 1: Another key individual makeup artist Greg Cannum. I now I
Speaker 1: should note that that sometimes Rick Baker's name is attached
Speaker 1: to this film. Apparently he was involved in the film
Speaker 1: early on and actually made the alien head and designed
Speaker 1: some of the effects and then handed duties off to
Speaker 1: fellow FX makeup with Greg Cannum and Canum ends up
Speaker 1: completing everything. Canum is another superstar of special effects makeup.
Speaker 1: He went on to work on everything from brom Stoker's
Speaker 1: Dracula and Highlander two to most recently, I believe he
Speaker 1: was involved in that Christian Bale, Dick Cheney makeup for
Speaker 1: that movie Vice.
Speaker 2: Oh wow wow, Okay, well I see the through line. Actually,
Speaker 2: did he do the old man makeup for Connor MacLeod
Speaker 2: and Highlander two? And did he do the old man
Speaker 2: makeup for Gary Oldman in bram Stoker's Dracula and the
Speaker 2: old man makeup for Christian Bale and Vice?
Speaker 1: I would bet that that is the case.
Speaker 2: Yes, three extraordinary works, each of each of their own genre,
Speaker 2: as long as you consider that the stuff they put
Speaker 2: on Christoph Lambert is supposed to be oily looking and funny.
Speaker 1: Now, of course, the thing about effects in a film
Speaker 1: like this is they can look amazing, but it also
Speaker 1: comes down to how you shoot them and indeed how
Speaker 1: you light them. Oh, and that leads to our next
Speaker 1: future superstar that was involved in this picture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Dean Coundy. So, Dean Coundy is a legendary cinematographer
Speaker 2: and director of photography. He's he's a member of the ASC.
Speaker 2: If you just think about a movie that is effortlessly
Speaker 2: visually absorbing, something that is constantly pleasing and interesting to
Speaker 2: look at without really calling attention to itself as flashy photography,
Speaker 2: and I think that there is a good chance that
Speaker 2: you're watching a Dean Coundy movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, I have to say with this film, it
Speaker 1: doesn't start off feeling like Cundy's presence is there, because
Speaker 1: early on in the film, everything is in just stark daylight.
Speaker 1: You just you wake up late and arrive in this
Speaker 1: movie around noon in lovel California, so everything has hungover
Speaker 1: to yeah, a little bit hungover. Everything's just super bright.
Speaker 1: It looks like it's probably hot and you should maybe
Speaker 1: be in a library somewhere or you want to crawl
Speaker 1: back into a trailer or something. So you know, that's
Speaker 1: the first section of the film. But eventually the sun
Speaker 1: goes down, and when the sun goes down in this movie,
Speaker 1: Kundy's lighting comes up, and that's when everything begins to
Speaker 1: take on an entirely new feel because that's when we
Speaker 1: see more and more of the monster. But then we
Speaker 1: also see more and more of these kind of and
Speaker 1: really at times monstrous character actor faces that are also
Speaker 1: lit up just so well. Some of the best scenes
Speaker 1: in the film are just character actors well lit.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, I would actually go
Speaker 2: disagree just a little bit that I think there's some
Speaker 2: really good photography and the film has a good look,
Speaker 2: even in some of the daylight scenes. I definitely agree
Speaker 2: that it becomes more interesting to look at once you
Speaker 2: get to the nighttime. But there are a couple of
Speaker 2: daylight scenes that remind me of scenes in Halloween. Of course,
Speaker 2: Dean Kundy famously worked with John Carpenter on movies like
Speaker 2: Halloween and the thing remember in Halloween how there will
Speaker 2: be these scenes that are just in broad daylight, and
Speaker 2: it'll be a creepy wide shot with Michael Myers standing
Speaker 2: somewhere in the distance and not really moving or doing
Speaker 2: anything all that menacing. He's just there in the mid
Speaker 2: ground background. And those are I think some of the
Speaker 2: most effective shots in Halloween. They really color how you
Speaker 2: experience the film. There are shots like that in Without
Speaker 2: Warning too. There's like a shot where a hunter is
Speaker 2: looking around at a field just with kind of like
Speaker 2: dead grass and overgrown weeds, and there is some figure
Speaker 2: with a large head just kind of standing in the
Speaker 2: distance behind the tall grass, not moving, and I thought
Speaker 2: it was an incredibly effective shot for such a low
Speaker 2: grade movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I do admit that some of those daylight
Speaker 1: scenes are creepy in that they convey that sense of
Speaker 1: the terror that stalks in the daylight is perhaps even
Speaker 1: more dangerous than that which stalks at night.
Speaker 2: But I agree in general Dean Coundy, he's just got
Speaker 2: the magic touch, and it's especially magic once night comes
Speaker 2: on and he's messing around with lighting. There are scenes
Speaker 2: that are filmed inside a house, a sort of a
Speaker 2: hunting cabin where there is a sudden boo scare where
Speaker 2: the alien pops out from the corner of a room
Speaker 2: and I think points with his finger. Very again, very
Speaker 2: invasion of the body snatcher's style, but it's a very
Speaker 2: effective boo scare.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, I have to throw in that the Shout
Speaker 1: Factory Scream Factory edition of this movie that came out
Speaker 1: on DVD and Blu Ray several years back has some
Speaker 1: special features, and one of them is Kundy talking about
Speaker 1: the film, and it's really insightful. He for instance, brings
Speaker 1: up the fact that the monster costume looked really good
Speaker 1: and you had this maybe temptation to want to show
Speaker 1: a lot of it, but he held back. And you know,
Speaker 1: you depend on a little bit more shadow and mystery,
Speaker 1: So there are certain details on that monster head that
Speaker 1: you just don't necessarily get in the final feature like
Speaker 1: it has kind of compound eye is yes, and you
Speaker 1: never complete. I don't think you ever get a sense
Speaker 1: of that in the film, but ultimately you don't need
Speaker 1: it because great costume plus great lighting equals great experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. Yeah, the monster is often in shadow,
Speaker 2: and this actually works to great effect. Again, it's a
Speaker 2: common feature you see when people are talking about Dean
Speaker 2: Kundy movies on the internet. I think a lot of
Speaker 2: times they don't even know that they're The reason they're
Speaker 2: saying this is that it's a Dean Kundy movie. But
Speaker 2: you see this thing in reviews over and over, a
Speaker 2: sentence like this trashy b movie is much more watchable
Speaker 2: than it has any right to be. I think it's
Speaker 2: that's just Dean, that's Dean work and his stuff, and
Speaker 2: a lot of it has to do with lighting and
Speaker 2: good framing and pleasant cinematography. I don't know if pleasants
Speaker 2: the right word, but it's interesting to look at, you know,
Speaker 2: it's visually not boring.
Speaker 1: Speaking of visually not boring, we've already touched on Jack
Speaker 1: Palance's presence in this, and I think one of the
Speaker 1: key things about Jack Palance, again, the intense. He is great,
Speaker 1: but there is an inherent weirdness that Palance brings to
Speaker 1: any picture, whether you're looking at a blockbuster film that
Speaker 1: he was in. You know, if you're looking at you
Speaker 1: could be looking at City Slickers or Batman or Shane
Speaker 1: or Outlaw of Gore or anything like when he shows up, Like,
Speaker 1: if there's nothing else weird about the film, Palance is
Speaker 1: the weirdness.
Speaker 2: It's like he's always just about to start telling you
Speaker 2: about his erotic model train hobby. It's just he's got
Speaker 2: secrets and they're bursting out, they're about to leak out
Speaker 2: of his face.
Speaker 1: I should also add that Palance has this kind of
Speaker 1: captain ahab vibe throughout the film too, so you're you're
Speaker 1: never really sure if you can trust him him, You're
Speaker 1: not really sure if you can trust the character. And
Speaker 1: I think there's there's something about that that Palance brings
Speaker 1: to most films, like he is you look, just look
Speaker 1: at him, and this is not leading man, This is
Speaker 1: not the hero. This is a potential villain at least.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, he really feels like this tweener character.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with that. You walk into him his
Speaker 2: gas station and he starts talking to you about hunting
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing. You don't know if you
Speaker 2: can rely on him when he later shows up in
Speaker 2: the dark with a gun.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, one of the beautiful things about this film
Speaker 1: is that Jack Palance is not the only creepy old
Speaker 1: man character played by an established character actor, because we
Speaker 1: also have Martin Landau in this picture.
Speaker 2: No, they really swung for the bleachers, I mean with
Speaker 2: the casting here, so it's got Martin Landel. Also Martin Landel,
Speaker 2: I'd say one of my favorite old character actors. He
Speaker 2: gives one of the best movie performances of all time
Speaker 2: playing Bella Legosi. And Tim Burton's ed Wood. I've kind
Speaker 2: of you know, I hate to talk smack, but I've
Speaker 2: kind of gotten tired of Tim Burton movies in the
Speaker 2: modern era. But when you go back to some of
Speaker 2: the Tim Burton stuff from the nineties, it's so lively
Speaker 2: and fantastic, and ed Wood is one of the best
Speaker 2: examples of that. Of course, it's about a schlock movie
Speaker 2: maker himself. What's his name, Edward? No, no, no, I
Speaker 2: mean no, who plays Edwood? What's about the actor? The
Speaker 2: actor Johnny Depp? So yeah, yeah, Johny dep Yeah, yeah, sorry,
Speaker 2: Johnny Depp plays Edward and of course, late in life, Edwood,
Speaker 2: the schlock filmmaker, actually did form a relationship with the
Speaker 2: great actor Bella Lagosi and cast him in some of
Speaker 2: his films, and this is portrayed in the movie, with
Speaker 2: Martin Landau playing Bella Lagosi as a kind of tired,
Speaker 2: washed up, ornery version of himself.
Speaker 1: A quick note, Martin Landau has a lot of vampire
Speaker 1: in the family because not only did he play Bella Lagosi,
Speaker 1: but his daughter Susan Finch was one of the producers
Speaker 1: of bron Stokers of Dracula, and his other daughter Juliet
Speaker 1: played Drusella on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Speaker 2: Oh, we've looked that up before when we were watching Buffy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I remember we discovered that fact and it was just
Speaker 2: a delight. Martin Landau is so lovable as Bella, and
Speaker 2: even in this movie where he's not playing a lovable character,
Speaker 2: he's somehow lovable anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess it's more of a like his
Speaker 1: character goes the way you really expect Palance's character to go,
Speaker 1: because he plays this character named Sarge, who's a like
Speaker 1: an army vet I guess we're supposed to believe, and
Speaker 1: he we learned increasingly learned that he has some some
Speaker 1: serious psychological baggage. And so even though he is aware
Speaker 1: that there's some sort of alien presence in the local
Speaker 1: area causing mischief, he heaps like additional conspiracy theory on
Speaker 1: top of that, additional like psychotic thinking where he he
Speaker 1: believes also that the alien might be in disguising itself
Speaker 1: with various people that they you know, there's a real
Speaker 1: conspiracy going on when there isn't, but it may makes
Speaker 1: for a sort of a sort of a surprise villain
Speaker 1: in the film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's he's he plays the unfortunate role of like
Speaker 2: the teens. Okay, maybe we should actually summarize the plot
Speaker 2: a little bit more to get up to this point. So, so,
Speaker 2: like it starts off with there are a pair of
Speaker 2: hunters who are out hunting. There's this older hunter played
Speaker 2: by Cameron Mitchell we can talk about in a minute.
Speaker 2: And then he's got this younger son with a mustache
Speaker 2: who doesn't like hunting and doesn't want to be outdoors
Speaker 2: and it's just whining. And then they both get killed
Speaker 2: by the alien. Okay, it's your classic you know, prolog
Speaker 2: a slaughter in a horror movie, right, And then you've
Speaker 2: got the makeout point teens who show up in a
Speaker 2: van there, you know, the classic teens from the city.
Speaker 2: They want to go swimming at the lake and so
Speaker 2: they're hanging out in their bathing suits in their van.
Speaker 2: They stop at the gas station that I believe belongs
Speaker 2: to Jack Palance to get gas presumably, but they end
Speaker 2: up going in the bathroom and running into Martin Landau
Speaker 2: as Sarge, who's kind of creepy, and then just disappears.
Speaker 2: And then they make it to the lake and then
Speaker 2: the slaughtering starts. The alien praise on one of the
Speaker 2: one couple of the teens, and then the other couple
Speaker 2: of teens run for help at a local bar, and
Speaker 2: then on once they're at the bar, the run into
Speaker 2: Sarge and they're saying there's an alien trying to kill us,
Speaker 2: and Sarge believes them, but unfortunately he also I think,
Speaker 2: ends up believing that they are aliens themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is ultimately a clever idea like having the
Speaker 1: two old men, creepy old men that you run into
Speaker 1: one is going to be more and more of a
Speaker 1: benefit than the other by far right. But Landau does
Speaker 1: a great job in this, brings a real kind of
Speaker 1: crazy intensity to it. And you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: that I remember seeing him play as much of like
Speaker 1: a deranged villain character before in a film. A lot
Speaker 1: of the things I'd seen him in he was more
Speaker 1: of a really more of a leading man or hero.
Speaker 1: I finally remember him on the seventies TV show Space
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, which was rerun like crazy at one
Speaker 1: point in the nineties on the Sci Fi Channel.
Speaker 2: He's actually in a really great old episode of The
Speaker 2: Twilight Zone where I believe he plays some kind of
Speaker 2: Eastern Bloc agent who's trying to defect in one episode,
Speaker 2: and he is being pursued by assassins in the company
Speaker 2: that he's trying or from the country that he's trying
Speaker 2: to defect from, and they have booby trapped his hotel
Speaker 2: room with a bomb, and so it's his job to
Speaker 2: try to figure out where the bomb in the room is.
Speaker 2: And it's a nice tight little bottle episode. All right.
Speaker 1: So, so Landau's great in this, But let let's talk
Speaker 1: about some of the other actors here. You have Kevin
Speaker 1: Peter Hall playing the monster, the Hunter itself, and Hall
Speaker 1: is a legendary monster player who most ironically went on
Speaker 1: to play the Predator in both Predator one and two.
Speaker 2: So this is where things almost get kind of suspicious,
Speaker 2: and you wonder, like, I don't know about the screenwriters
Speaker 2: who wrote Predator, but did they actually watch this movie?
Speaker 2: Were they actually just ripping it off?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I think we'll get into
Speaker 1: that a little bit when we discussed like the ideas
Speaker 1: behind it, sort of the the mythic underpinnings of the film.
Speaker 1: But maybe Kevin Peter Hall also played some other monsters
Speaker 1: during his time. He sadly died in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: but before then he played the Newtant Bear in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine film Prophecy. He also played Harry and
Speaker 1: Harry in The Henderson's Heart Eyes Bulging, Yeah Yeah. And
Speaker 1: he was Big John in Big Top Peewee.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So famously a very tall actor, great, you know,
Speaker 2: great presence for creature type roles, and you know what
Speaker 2: I got to say, his body performance as the Predator
Speaker 2: in the Predator film kind of makes it.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: Originally they had cast Jean Claude Van Dam to play
Speaker 2: the predator and no offense to Jean Claude van Dam.
Speaker 2: But I don't know if that would have been as
Speaker 2: effective in the movie, especially standing next to Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Speaker 2: Like if the alien's literally smaller than him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like the stature is key, I think, But.
Speaker 2: Also no, he's got a great physicality in the role too,
Speaker 2: like the way he moves his arms and his stance
Speaker 2: and all that. He really knew how to play non
Speaker 2: speaking role.
Speaker 1: Now, this movie also gave us a key cinematic debut
Speaker 1: the ginger baby Face himself, David Caruso.
Speaker 2: David Caruso, So he plays one of the makeout point
Speaker 2: teams in this He's one of the ones that unfortunately
Speaker 2: does not make it all the way to the bar.
Speaker 2: He and his girlfriend are swimming in the lake. I
Speaker 2: think the last time we see them they're literally on
Speaker 2: a towel getting ready for some makeout action and then
Speaker 2: they just end up later in the waterworks shed. But
Speaker 2: so he is, he's very ginger, and he's wearing shorts
Speaker 2: in this movie that are so short they inhert the
Speaker 2: Axis of Time and Space. I'm like, I can't believe
Speaker 2: that people once wore shorts that short.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. He would of course go on
Speaker 1: to make a career out of playing mostly cops and
Speaker 1: detectives and occasionally criminals who basically seem like cops. But
Speaker 1: that's his point. He was only twenty four four years
Speaker 1: old and he just plays a horny teen who gets
Speaker 1: himself killed by an alien.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But then also we have a veteran character actor,
Speaker 2: Cameron Mitchell, who I mentioned that earlier. He's in the prologue.
Speaker 2: He's one of the hunters who gets killed at the
Speaker 2: beginning of the movie. And I must admit, the whole
Speaker 2: time I was watching him in the prologue, I thought
Speaker 2: he was Jack Palance because he kind of looks like him.
Speaker 1: He has his face does a very similar thing to Palances,
Speaker 1: like you just do not trust it. You know that
Speaker 1: something is up when Cameron Mitchell like Locke's Eyes with you.
Speaker 2: For fans of Mystery Science Theater three thousand, Cameron Mitchell
Speaker 2: is maybe best known for playing the Santa Claus guy
Speaker 2: in Space Mutiny. He's the old man with the white beard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's one of the Ultimately I feel like
Speaker 1: it's such a disservice because that was probably the first
Speaker 1: thing I saw him in and where in which I
Speaker 1: recognized him as Cameron Mitchell. But generally he just plays
Speaker 1: heavies and villains. And so if you watch most of
Speaker 1: his works from before for Space Mutiny, those are the
Speaker 1: kind of characters he plays, like dangerous men, unsavory characters.
Speaker 1: And here again he plays an unsavory character who is
Speaker 1: at one point just going to murder his own son
Speaker 1: because he doesn't like hunting in the outdoors.
Speaker 2: Because he doesn't like hunting. That is the reason we're given.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But anyway, Cameron Mitchell always of an interesting presence
Speaker 1: in a film he worked. He worked with Mario Bava
Speaker 1: a lot, for example. But I have also found that
Speaker 1: nobody dies ten minutes into a film quite like Cameron Mitchell.
Speaker 1: He has pulled this in other films. He's got a
Speaker 1: real dirty rat face. Yeah. Now, a few other just
Speaker 1: older actors have noted here. Larry Storch shows up as
Speaker 1: a scout master. Neville Brand plays one of the drunks
Speaker 1: in the bar, and he's another one of these character
Speaker 1: acts with just a real landslide of a face, just
Speaker 1: a total character actor, who, by the way, played the
Speaker 1: killer in Toby Hooper's Eaten Alive from seventy six.
Speaker 2: Oh, the movie with the Gator hotel.
Speaker 1: I think that's the one is like the cover is
Speaker 1: like he it's the cover is just a Neville brand
Speaker 1: with a big sickle or something. Yeaheah.
Speaker 2: I think that's right. I could be wrong, but yeah,
Speaker 2: so he's great. I must say one of the other teens,
Speaker 2: the male teen who survives longer into the movie. I
Speaker 2: hate to bring politics into it, but it's Scaramucie. He's
Speaker 2: baby Scaramouccie. That's exactly what he looks like. Maybe sort
Speaker 2: of a cross between him and Casper van Deen. He's
Speaker 2: got that van Den, sort of like a forest creature.
Speaker 1: I I have to say that both of the teens
Speaker 1: that last the longest in the film. Those actors, I
Speaker 1: think were mainly stunt workers. But I thought they did
Speaker 1: a fine job as far as like teen leads in
Speaker 1: a horror movie from nineteen eighty go, I have no
Speaker 1: problem with them at all. I thought they did a
Speaker 1: pretty good job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, neither of them appears to have done all that
Speaker 2: much else. The girl who is sort of comes the
Speaker 2: final girl in the movie. She is played by an
Speaker 2: actress named Tara Nutter, who I saw was also in
Speaker 2: some movie with Ron Howard about an evil company that's
Speaker 2: poisoning farmland.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, not a.
Speaker 2: Hugely extensive acting career. Well, maybe now we should get
Speaker 2: infuriatingly granular about the physical reality imagined by this film.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's time for a little monster science, because ultimately,
Speaker 1: this is often the case if you have a suitably
Speaker 1: weird creature, monster, or even just monstrous scenario in a film,
Speaker 1: there's we always found that there's generally something in nature
Speaker 1: that is as weird, if not weirder. And this is
Speaker 1: the same it's going to be said about this film.
Speaker 1: So we already touched on the fact that, unlike the predator,
Speaker 1: this hunter doesn't use technology to hunt its prey. No,
Speaker 1: it uses other organisms. That uses flesh, frisbees. I mean,
Speaker 1: presumably there are other organisms. I guess it's possible that
Speaker 1: it is like hatching these from its chest and then
Speaker 1: collecting them in its purse or satchel and then flinging
Speaker 1: them out. But I think the predominant interpretation, the fair interpretation,
Speaker 1: would be that these are other organisms that it has.
Speaker 1: Maybe it raises them in a tank somewhere, Maybe it
Speaker 1: goes to some weird moon and collects them like like
Speaker 1: a mushroom harvester. But at any rate, it comes to
Speaker 1: Earth with a sack of these things looking for a
Speaker 1: good hunt.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the jellyfish shirocin as I mentioned. I think maybe
Speaker 2: you could think of them as technology, but they're definitely
Speaker 2: not like inert mechanical technology. If there are technology at all,
Speaker 2: their biotechnology. These things are definitely alive in some way.
Speaker 2: They ooze, They're full of oleaginous you know, substances. They
Speaker 2: got like little tentacles that poke out. They squeal, I
Speaker 2: think when you stab them. So they're definitely alive in
Speaker 2: some way. And yeah, I was curious about the same thing.
Speaker 2: Are these like part of him, part of the Hunter
Speaker 2: in some way? We don't. I don't think we ever
Speaker 2: see them come off of his body in the movie.
Speaker 2: He just throws them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they come out of a satchel or purse.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So it makes me think maybe there's some
Speaker 2: kind of organism that he has collected from the natural
Speaker 2: world on his home planet, or like you say, like
Speaker 2: a moon or something. They made me think. Actually, I
Speaker 2: recall back in the very first half Life game, there
Speaker 2: was a weapon you could get. There were basically these
Speaker 2: little alien rats and I don't remember exactly what they
Speaker 2: were called, but you get like a bag of these
Speaker 2: alien rats and you could kind of throw them into
Speaker 2: a room and they'd run around and attack whatever was
Speaker 2: in the room. But if you ran into the room yourself,
Speaker 2: you were also vulnerable to them. They could like turn
Speaker 2: around and attack you. And I wondered if the same
Speaker 2: thing would be true of the flesh frisbees in this movie,
Speaker 2: like could they turn against their master. I don't think
Speaker 2: we see a character try to employ that method, but
Speaker 2: we never see it work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she didn't really have a good throwing arm on her. No.
Speaker 2: So, one thing about these projectiles that I I was
Speaker 2: looking for biological parallels to is the fact that they
Speaker 2: are so obviously slimy and oleaginous. Right, they look greasy.
Speaker 2: You get repeated close ups of the slime and the
Speaker 2: mucus they produce, and it looks oily to me. It
Speaker 2: looks like you need some good soap or something to
Speaker 2: get it off. And as a point of comparison in
Speaker 2: the natural world, I do want to mention a very
Speaker 2: alarming grease throwing animal, which is a type of petrol,
Speaker 2: a kind of bird of the southern half of the
Speaker 2: world which projects a greasy slime vomit against other birds
Speaker 2: as a defensive tactic. The most the bird best known
Speaker 2: for this is a type of bird called full mars,
Speaker 2: where they will spit out of their mouth a type
Speaker 2: of stomach oil that if it gets on the feathers
Speaker 2: of an attacking birds an eagle type predator, it makes
Speaker 2: it undercuts the feathers ability to be waterproof, and it
Speaker 2: hurts their ability to fly. So birds have actually died
Speaker 2: because they were spit on with this mucous vomit oil
Speaker 2: stuff from the full mar's stomach. They were, in fact
Speaker 2: like cases I was reading of where birds like auks
Speaker 2: were put in an enclosure with a full bar and
Speaker 2: then got vomited on and died. Oh wow, so you
Speaker 2: don't want this oil on you. I was also reading
Speaker 2: in a post on Scientific American about how sometimes the
Speaker 2: chicks of these full mars will just basically spit this
Speaker 2: oil at anything that gets close to them, including their
Speaker 2: own parents, and they have to like mature out of
Speaker 2: that over time, and the parents apparently can defend themselves
Speaker 2: by preening by removing it from their feathers with their beaks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking at a picture of one of these
Speaker 1: right now, and it's like a vile orange grease that
Speaker 1: seems to be flying out of this creature's mouth.
Speaker 2: You don't want to get the gou on you. And
Speaker 2: just like in the movie, you don't want to get
Speaker 2: the gou on you. But it also is much more
Speaker 2: than goo. It's an organism in itself. And I was
Speaker 2: trying to think, you know, are there any animals I
Speaker 2: could I could find examples of that threw a more
Speaker 2: complex thing like the flesh frisbees in this movie, that
Speaker 2: actually does something. I was having trouble finding good examples
Speaker 2: of something that actually throws something more than just an
Speaker 2: object from its environment or a liquid from its body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, offhand, I can't think of a good example of
Speaker 1: that either. Yeah, generally, and animals are going to manipulate,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like sand or dirt shell that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. But one example that I came across that's
Speaker 1: probably the best example of an organism using organisms as
Speaker 1: some sort of a tool or indeed some sort of
Speaker 1: a weapon, and that is to look at the boxing
Speaker 1: crab or palm pob crab found in the genus Libya.
Speaker 1: These are little guys. These are like two centimeters or
Speaker 1: point seven inches wide, so they're not very big crabs,
Speaker 1: but have this wonderful adaptation where they will they will
Speaker 1: collect or acquire and that's part of the mystery, these
Speaker 1: little anemonies. And they'll have one in each claw and
Speaker 1: they'll brandish them, almost like a pair of nunchucks or something.
Speaker 1: They will they'll wave them around when they're doing various
Speaker 1: displays for other crabs. But they also seem to use
Speaker 1: them to collect food. And there's a mutualism in play
Speaker 1: here because the anemy gets you know, it's far more
Speaker 1: mobile if a crab is carrying it around. But I
Speaker 1: was looking at a twenty thirteen study from Barilan University
Speaker 1: and they were really getting into how do they acquire
Speaker 1: these particular anemonies. And they found that, for instance, if
Speaker 1: they lose their anenemy, they may steal one from somebody else.
Speaker 1: If they have only one, they'll rip it in half
Speaker 1: so that they have two. And that particular study, they
Speaker 1: were looking at one variety of boxing crab, and they
Speaker 1: pointed out that the variety of anemony that the crab
Speaker 1: used had not been found yet in the wild. Now,
Speaker 1: that could just mean we just had not found it yet.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of organisms in the wild that
Speaker 1: we have not fully charged, obviously. But the other possibility
Speaker 1: is that it is essentially a domesticated, fully cultivated species
Speaker 1: that has henceforth gone extinct in the wild, and it
Speaker 1: is only carried on by these crabs that use them
Speaker 1: as a sort of tool or weapon.
Speaker 2: It's like an agricultural product of the crab society.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, you could compare it in that
Speaker 1: respect to leafcutter ants and the crop they grow. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the idea of comparing the boxing crab to
Speaker 1: the hunter from without Warning, because it makes you wonder, like,
Speaker 1: what kind of evolutionary path led the hunter here? Did
Speaker 1: it grow up cultivating its weapon race of deathly flying discs,
Speaker 1: and just you know, it ends up being part of
Speaker 1: the way it lives its life. Eventually they start making
Speaker 1: satchels to carry them in. Maybe at some point they
Speaker 1: were like exo parasites that collected on their and then
Speaker 1: they started using them offensively. I don't know.
Speaker 2: That would not be the only case in nature of
Speaker 2: something that begins as a parasite, but then eventually is
Speaker 2: adopted into a kind of mutualism with the host.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think that could probably be said to
Speaker 2: be the case for a lot of just you know,
Speaker 2: the regular microbiota that lives on and in all of us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I should add that we never see the alien
Speaker 1: hunter without his outfit on. If they were to pull
Speaker 1: that costume off, perhaps he just covered with him. They
Speaker 1: just suckered all over.
Speaker 2: Him, right, or they're just like coming out of a
Speaker 2: little like a printer slot in his belly. Now we
Speaker 2: mentioned at some point the character played by the actress
Speaker 2: Tara Nutter tries to throw one of these things back
Speaker 2: at the alien, you know, to turn his weapons against him,
Speaker 2: and it fails. She like throws it and it falls
Speaker 2: short of him. So you never get the sense that
Speaker 2: would it have worked if it had hit him, Like,
Speaker 2: if she was able to hit him with this thing,
Speaker 2: would it latch on and poison him and do its
Speaker 2: thing like it does with humans, or you know know,
Speaker 2: is it just like would he be immune to it? Anyway?
Speaker 2: The movie does not solve this riddle that itself has posed,
Speaker 2: but maybe that would be a good place to talk
Speaker 2: about what happens at the end. Of the film because
Speaker 2: that's when she throws the disc. So there are various
Speaker 2: encounters where the teens are running around. The surviving teens
Speaker 2: are being pursued by Martin Landau, who at some point
Speaker 2: he gets a police car and he's like driving after
Speaker 2: them in it.
Speaker 1: Oh, well, there's this wonderful scene where the police officer
Speaker 1: shows up, yeah to save the day, and Sarge shoots
Speaker 1: him dead.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: And then of course more police come to arrest Sarge.
Speaker 1: But then Sarge apparently steals the police vehicle and shows
Speaker 1: up in the police car. You think the both the
Speaker 1: police are here to save the teens. No, it's Sarge again.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think Sarge shoots the police officer because he
Speaker 2: thinks he's an alien. Yes, And then yeah, so he's
Speaker 2: in the police car. He's chasing the teens around. And
Speaker 2: then at some point the teens escape and they go
Speaker 2: into a hunting cabin or a house, and then the
Speaker 2: movie gets kind of quiet for a bit where they're
Speaker 2: just chilling out in the house. They're looking around the
Speaker 2: baby Scaramushi bruised this pot of coffee and then presumably
Speaker 2: drinks it all from it looks like he drinks about
Speaker 2: four gallons of coffee and then dies in a chair.
Speaker 1: I remember him going to make the coffee, saying he's
Speaker 1: going to stay up all night and protect her. Whyn't
Speaker 1: you sleep? And I wanted to be like, oh, sweet,
Speaker 1: that's not how coffee works. You can't just brew a
Speaker 1: pot of coffee and that's going to keep alone, is
Speaker 1: going to keep you up all night?
Speaker 2: Yeah, how much coffee do I need in order to
Speaker 2: stay up all night? I would guess about four gallons. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that will get me through. So he's dead in a
Speaker 2: chair when we find him with a flesh frisbee attached
Speaker 2: to his face. So you might assume, okay, the alien
Speaker 2: killed him, but it's also quite possible that he just
Speaker 2: died of diarrhea from the four gallons of coffee before that,
Speaker 2: and then the alien just stuck the flesh frisbee on there,
Speaker 2: kind of as an afterthought. But then we get a chase.
Speaker 2: The alien is chasing Tera Nutter around and Jack Palin
Speaker 2: shows up to help her, and Jack Palance reveals that
Speaker 2: he has laid a trap for the alien that now
Speaker 2: the aliens shed the former water utility is shed that
Speaker 2: has all the dead bodies in it is rigged with
Speaker 2: dynamite and they're going to lure the alien back to
Speaker 2: the shed and blow him to pieces. And essentially this
Speaker 2: process works, except that at some point Sarge shows up
Speaker 2: and temporarily foils their plan, and then he gets killed
Speaker 2: by the alien. Unfortunately, Jack Palance gets flesh frisbeed a lot,
Speaker 2: and no amount of cutting off the flesh frisbees will
Speaker 2: save him, so instead he sacrifices himself, charging straight on
Speaker 2: at the alien and yelling.
Speaker 1: And you can just tell when they filmed the scene they.
Speaker 2: Were looking around at each other thinking like, did we
Speaker 2: ever give the alien a name? Does it have a name?
Speaker 2: And the answer is no, So he just.
Speaker 1: Yells alien, Yeah it really does. Ultimately have his Captain
Speaker 1: Ahab moment. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, from the heart of Hell, I stab at the
Speaker 2: I guess from the heart of Hell, I run at
Speaker 2: the alien.
Speaker 1: Yah if he presumably pulls it off.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, see he grabs the alien around the ankles
Speaker 2: and then they blow it to pieces with the dynamite
Speaker 2: and the day is saved.
Speaker 1: But that's why Palents didn't get to play Ahab in
Speaker 1: a film adaptation to Mobi Dick, because he's like and
Speaker 1: then I kill the whale. That's how this goes. And
Speaker 1: they're like, no, no, it's not exactly how the novel goes.
Speaker 1: And he's like, it doesn't matter. I think a run
Speaker 1: it that whale, I take it down.
Speaker 2: I thought you were going to say that's why he
Speaker 2: never played Ahab, because he's like, I've already done that role.
Speaker 1: It's perfect.
Speaker 2: No adaptation of Moby Dick could rival without warning. Do
Speaker 2: I get to run at the whale? Yelling way? Well,
Speaker 2: perhaps we should talk about what is this film trying
Speaker 2: to say, if it is trying to say anything. I
Speaker 2: do think this one is trying to say something, but
Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure it's sure what that is. But
Speaker 2: I can tell you it is something about hunting. The
Speaker 2: film is clearly a meditation on the theme of hunting,
Speaker 2: because the alien is a hunter, and they just really
Speaker 2: beat you over the head with it. Almost every single
Speaker 2: character talks about hunting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, from the very beginning, like the father and son
Speaker 1: are arguing about hunting, like why do you like hunting? Dad?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Son, why don't you not like hunting?
Speaker 1: So they really kind of to a certain extent, beat
Speaker 1: you over the head with it. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: after a while, it feels like they're not really sure
Speaker 1: what point they're trying to make about hunting. I mean
Speaker 1: maybe to an extent, maybe that's good. Like you don't
Speaker 1: feel like there's a really heavy handed message to this film.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, I mean I'm not saying that. I think
Speaker 2: every film should have a moral that can be stated
Speaker 2: in a sentence. Though if this film has any thoughts
Speaker 2: in general about hunting, even then I'm not quite sure
Speaker 2: what those are. But maybe maybe we'll find something here,
Speaker 2: because I wanted to explore these these hunting themes in
Speaker 2: literature a little bit and see if we can if
Speaker 2: that can inform our vision of the movie. Now, obviously,
Speaker 2: stories of divine hunters, like you would say, the alien
Speaker 2: in this movie is in a way a divine hunter, right,
Speaker 2: it comes down from the sky. It's got superhuman powers,
Speaker 2: and it uses them to hunt on earth, but not
Speaker 2: just to hunt beasts, to hunt the most dangerous game
Speaker 2: of all, which is mad and so obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: these stories of divine hunters are just rich throughout ancient mythology.
Speaker 2: Most of the myths of hunters, I think, are about
Speaker 2: normal hunting. You know, they're humans or humanoid gods who
Speaker 2: hunt animals, And then a lot of hunting mythology is
Speaker 2: about the relationship between hunters and prey and the gods
Speaker 2: who aid hunters in the hunt. But there are a
Speaker 2: few myths that sort of turned the tables on the
Speaker 2: hunting dynamics in the style of Predator or this movie,
Speaker 2: or one of my favorites, the tagline from the for
Speaker 2: the nineties movie Congo. You remember that tagline that goes
Speaker 2: where you are the endangered species?
Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess it's often pointed out too that modern
Speaker 1: twists on this or are all kind of a twist
Speaker 1: on a most dangerous game in which you know, humans
Speaker 1: are hunting humans. And then in just in sci fi,
Speaker 1: like there was an older Isaac Asimov's story in which
Speaker 1: there's like a time traveler who gets drunk at a
Speaker 1: bar and tells everybody that he traveled back to dinosaur
Speaker 1: days and found that reptilian humanoids hunted all the dinosaurs
Speaker 1: to extinction. So this idea of alien or alien esque hunters,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly predates even this film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And other sci fi stories have touched
Speaker 2: on hunting themes, of course. I mean the one that
Speaker 2: immediately comes to mind as a sound of thunder where
Speaker 2: there's time travel again and the idea that but this
Speaker 2: is also about humans hunting animals. In that story, the
Speaker 2: humans go back, they hunt dinosaurs, and unfortunately in hunting
Speaker 2: dinosaurs they create ripple effects throughout time. You know, it's
Speaker 2: the butterfly effect explored. But this, of course is the
Speaker 2: theme where we're talking here about humans or humanoid gods
Speaker 2: being the prey. And I think there are some myths
Speaker 2: that sort of get into territory at least close to this.
Speaker 2: One example is a number of myths about the Greek
Speaker 2: goddess Artemis having various kinds of hunts for humans, or
Speaker 2: at least hunting sort of revenge on humans that in
Speaker 2: some way resembles a hunt. Artemis. Artemis is an interesting figure,
Speaker 2: of course, she is the virgin goddess of the hunt
Speaker 2: in Greek mythology. There are some connections between her and
Speaker 2: probably older, more ancient goddesses who symbolized something having to
Speaker 2: do with fertility in the ancient Near East. But in
Speaker 2: Greek mythology, Artemis is very often associated with hunts and
Speaker 2: hunting weapons and the wilderness and wild animals. She had
Speaker 2: these stags and deer that are sacred to her. She,
Speaker 2: like the predator, and like the alien in Without Warning,
Speaker 2: has powerful supernatural tools that aid her in the hunt.
Speaker 2: So whereas the Predator's got his laser cannon and his
Speaker 2: blades and his nets and all those things, and of
Speaker 2: course the alien from Without Warning has the flesh frisbees,
Speaker 2: Artemis has a silver bow and silver arrows that were
Speaker 2: forged by the cyclopes in this underwater realm, and the
Speaker 2: arrows of this bow could split a pine tree and
Speaker 2: the quiver would always be full. And she also has
Speaker 2: a pack of hunting dogs that she acquired from the
Speaker 2: god Pan, you know, the little King of the Wood,
Speaker 2: which could outrun any deer or outfight any lion. And
Speaker 2: there are a number of myths where she sort of
Speaker 2: hunts a person or a deity after they've offended her
Speaker 2: in some way. I think that probably the best known
Speaker 2: of these is the myth of Acteon, right where Acteon
Speaker 2: is himself a hunter. He's a young hunter who's traveling
Speaker 2: through the forest and he sees Artemis bathing in a
Speaker 2: pool or a stream, and he's like wow, And then
Speaker 2: she catches him looking at her, and because he saw
Speaker 2: her naked, she transforms him into a stag, and then
Speaker 2: he is pursued by dogs. I think in most versions
Speaker 2: of the story, I think he's pursued by his own
Speaker 2: hunting dogs that mistake him for the prey now, and
Speaker 2: they catch him and they tear him to pieces. But
Speaker 2: I've also seen some version where apparently she hunts him
Speaker 2: with her hounds, maybe the hounds of Pan, and they
Speaker 2: catch him and rip him apart.
Speaker 1: You know, this is great because on one hand, hunting
Speaker 1: dogs are a perfect analog to the flying fresh flesh
Speaker 1: for yes, yeah, yeah, biotechnology, domesticated creatures that we send
Speaker 1: forth to do our will on the hunt. I wonder
Speaker 1: too about you know, obviously, hunting was such an important
Speaker 1: part of life, an essential part of life for for
Speaker 1: early humans. So it makes sense that this thing that
Speaker 1: we depended on, you know, on a daily basis, would
Speaker 1: would mingle so with our myth making. But also I
Speaker 1: wonder if there's a sense that it that it that
Speaker 1: it also reveals, especially for early humans, how delicate our
Speaker 1: place in the natural order was. Like in the same
Speaker 1: way that has often pointed out that our cats, our
Speaker 1: pet cats, are you are extra insane because in the
Speaker 1: in the wild, they are both predator and prey, you know,
Speaker 1: and and so for early man especially that would have
Speaker 1: been the case. There were beasts that would eat us,
Speaker 1: just as we had to eat beasts, and and in
Speaker 1: doing so, you know, a lot of these myths kind
Speaker 1: of uh seem to explore that dual nature that you know,
Speaker 1: just but for the will of the goddess, I could
Speaker 1: be the creature hunted by these fierce beasts that do
Speaker 1: my bidding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a natural place to go, and
Speaker 2: it's a natural kind of irony to explore, you know.
Speaker 2: It's very much that like Avid's metamorphosis territory, you know,
Speaker 2: the ironies inherent in the natural order of things. One
Speaker 2: of the most obvious kind of ironies you could get
Speaker 2: into is the order of the food chain. We're usually
Speaker 2: at the top, we're doing all the hunting. But what
Speaker 2: if you were the prey, which, in fact, and that's
Speaker 2: not even something you have to imagine a magical scenario for, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, if you are stranded without tools, without aid
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, you could easily become a prey
Speaker 2: animal to a lion or something like that. But I
Speaker 2: think the strange part comes in the strangeness enters when
Speaker 2: you're imagining not just being prey to a wild animal,
Speaker 2: but being prey to a human or humanoid hunter.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, being the focus of the hunter's will.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because human hunters are different than wild animals. They've got,
Speaker 2: you know, these they've got tools, they've got technology like
Speaker 2: Artemis does, they've got language, they've got sort of complex
Speaker 2: desires and will. That the reason that Artemis might hunt
Speaker 2: a human would be not because she desires its meat
Speaker 2: to eat, but because she hates it for some reason
Speaker 2: it has offended her, and that would be the case
Speaker 2: in say, the myth of Niobe again, this one is
Speaker 2: it's not a perfect analogy because it's not exactly a hunt,
Speaker 2: but the normal version of this myth is that Niobe
Speaker 2: is the human daughter of Tantalus and the wife of Amphion,
Speaker 2: the king of Thebes, and in a lot of tellings
Speaker 2: she boasts in pride that she has more children than
Speaker 2: the titan Letto, who is the mother of Apollo and Artemis.
Speaker 2: And then Apollo and Artemis get revenge against her for
Speaker 2: making this prideful boast against their mother by slaughtering all
Speaker 2: of Niobe's children, which is, you know, a very Greek
Speaker 2: myth kind of thing to happen. And so the way
Speaker 2: it happens is that Artemis showers them with shafts from
Speaker 2: her bow while they're in their home, and Apollo takes
Speaker 2: the sons of Niobe hunting and kills them all while
Speaker 2: on the hunt, and Niobe is left to grieve. So
Speaker 2: there is sort of like a hunting inflection in the
Speaker 2: revenge plot here.
Speaker 1: Now there's also a sense, especially without warning, there's this
Speaker 1: idea too that all right, you bumbling teens have just
Speaker 1: wandered into something beyond your comprehension, and now you're stuck
Speaker 1: in it. And really we see this as well with
Speaker 1: this mythic concept of the doom that comes with interrupting
Speaker 1: a divine hunt, such as the wild hunt traditions of
Speaker 1: northern Europe. So in these traditions you have gods such
Speaker 1: as Odin and or the spirits of hunters past, running
Speaker 1: amok across the countryside, often at night with hell hounds
Speaker 1: into in pursuit of prey. And that prey might be
Speaker 1: a magical or divine heart, you know, some sort of
Speaker 1: sacred a deer. It might be demons thereafter, it might
Speaker 1: be the souls of the damned as another frequent prey,
Speaker 1: or they might be chasing nothing at all, or nothing
Speaker 1: that you can even you know, determine. Now, the rules
Speaker 1: of these hunts and these hunt encounters seem to vary,
Speaker 1: but basically getting in the way of these hunts, or
Speaker 1: certainly even being seen by these hunts is potentially dangerous.
Speaker 1: You might get swept away into the underworld, and in
Speaker 1: some versions of the tradition, trying to interfere with in
Speaker 1: the hunt will spell your doom, but in some versions,
Speaker 1: aiding the hunt could earn you a reward.
Speaker 2: Ah, I see, So these are kind of ghost riders
Speaker 2: in the sky, Like, yeah, you and you come across them,
Speaker 2: you best not get in their way, even if they're
Speaker 2: not hunting for you.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There's kind of a sense of that in actually, I
Speaker 2: would say, in a lot of horror movies, but also
Speaker 2: in definitely in Without Warning and in Predator. I know,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of sort of academic theory about one
Speaker 2: of the common themes of horror being, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: the danger of going into liminal spaces that people are
Speaker 2: punished for venturing into areas and meddling into affairs that
Speaker 2: are not their purview, and so you know, you go
Speaker 2: and so in Predator would be there, like these commandos
Speaker 2: go into some other country that is not their home,
Speaker 2: and they get involved in stuff that is none of
Speaker 2: their affair, and thus they become targets of this otherworldly hunt.
Speaker 2: I think the same thing is sort of true and
Speaker 2: without warning, except it's hokey or I mean, basically the
Speaker 2: place they're going is like to some river in some
Speaker 2: kind of rural area. But again it's like city kids,
Speaker 2: it's the you know, the makeout point. Teens are not
Speaker 2: from here, and they go in and they suffer for
Speaker 2: invading this liminal space.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess you could even say that
Speaker 1: in without warning, you know, they're trying they're trying to
Speaker 1: make some point about the distance between the young generation
Speaker 1: the older generation, between urban and rural, and so you
Speaker 1: could say that there is some exploration of the idea
Speaker 1: that it is like another world, but it does.
Speaker 2: They are getting in the way of the hunt, like
Speaker 2: the able that's where he's doing his stuff, and they
Speaker 2: show up and almost kind of like get into the
Speaker 2: middle of it and are punished for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like everybody's doing basically okay with it. The drunks
Speaker 1: in the bar, they're just maintaining Sergetes addled, but you know,
Speaker 1: he's not hurting anybody, and Palettes really wants to hunt
Speaker 1: that alien. But you get to see the feeling that
Speaker 1: he's just been waiting for the right opportunity to really
Speaker 1: bring it to the next level. And that's what the
Speaker 1: kids do. They just knock all of the norms out
Speaker 1: of out of position, and now we're in a you know,
Speaker 1: a much dire situation, right. But with the wild hunts,
Speaker 1: like I said, a lot of the time they're hunting
Speaker 1: demons and whatnot. But some of these wild hunt traditions
Speaker 1: do involve the wild hunters hunting the living. Consider the
Speaker 1: Devil's Dandy Dogs of Cornwall, which Carol Rose a focus
Speaker 1: story and has written a couple of wonderful encyclopedias that
Speaker 1: I continually come back to about monsters and fairies. She
Speaker 1: describes the Devil's Dandy Dogs as demonic huntsmen in a
Speaker 1: pack of black, fiery eyed demon dogs who quote hunt
Speaker 1: down the living and rip them to pieces. And then
Speaker 1: they also hunt the souls of the damned. And then
Speaker 1: there's also the coon Anin or the hounds of Fairyland
Speaker 1: or the Hounds of Hell, also known as the Hounds
Speaker 1: of the Mother, or the Corpse Dogs or the sky Dogs.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have a number of different names, and according
Speaker 1: to Rose, they're mostly invisible. But when you do see
Speaker 1: these dogs, they're stark white and they have red eyes
Speaker 1: and red ears, and they're led by either the Devil
Speaker 1: or a giant named Bran or a quote monstrous, black faced,
Speaker 1: gray clad master huntsmen and known as Gwyn app nude.
Speaker 1: And they might be hunting the living, they might be
Speaker 1: hunting the souls of the dead. They also might be
Speaker 1: hunting unrepentant sinners or unbaptized babies, depending on the telling.
Speaker 2: Is it much sport to hunt unpaptized babies.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I wouldn't think so, unless they're just
Speaker 1: really cagy babies. Okay, So yeah, So clearly there is.
Speaker 2: This idea that there are I mean, I think this
Speaker 2: is common in beliefs about fairies or about the hidden people,
Speaker 2: that they have their own affairs and they're going about
Speaker 2: their own business, and that humans often get into trouble
Speaker 2: when you sort of wander into the middle of what
Speaker 2: they're doing. So are you saying that that's sort of
Speaker 2: what's going on here and connects in a way with
Speaker 2: Predator and Without Warning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think there is a sense that you know,
Speaker 1: you've stumbled upon this otherworldly affair that you don't have
Speaker 1: any right to be a part of, but now you're
Speaker 1: in it, and you may well face your doom because
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: There is a strange sense of implied justice that is
Speaker 2: more there, I would say, in Predator than in Without Warning.
Speaker 2: In Predator you recall that, like the Predator does not
Speaker 2: say to attack anyone who is unarmed, so in some way,
Speaker 2: it is almost a chivalrous alien hunter that it only
Speaker 2: wants someone who's a good sport, and you're only good
Speaker 2: sport for it if you can defend yourself. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: feel like that's less the case. And Without Warning I
Speaker 2: don't remember anything.
Speaker 1: Well, we do have that scene where the monster the
Speaker 1: Hunter has no problem taking out the scout master, but
Speaker 1: lets an entire pack of boy scouts go free.
Speaker 2: That's right, I forgot about that scene. So maybe the
Speaker 2: same thing is implied here. I'm coming back to it again,
Speaker 2: you screenwriters of Predator, I'm coming for you. I want
Speaker 2: to know you. Was this just a variation on without warning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the Hunter knew that David the Babyface
Speaker 1: David Crusoe or David Face Baby Crusoe, whichever it knew
Speaker 1: that he was. This is a character worth hunting to
Speaker 1: the death right. But the boy Scouts got to let
Speaker 1: him go, let him, let him grow up a little bit.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the other two teens who got killed by
Speaker 2: the lake weren't They weren't armed, So I don't know
Speaker 2: how holds up. Well, yeah, so maybe the boy Scouts
Speaker 2: are let go just because they're too young. Maybe that's it.
Speaker 1: The flesh isn't tasty yet. I don't know, right, Maybe
Speaker 1: the sucker of frisbees don't actually attach the younglings. We
Speaker 1: don't know, or maybe they'd all been baptized. We don't
Speaker 1: know the full religious history of everybody in this film.
Speaker 2: Oh that's true. We never get any glimpse at the
Speaker 2: religion of the Hunter, though you kind of get the
Speaker 2: sense that there is at least some narrow bit of
Speaker 2: culture implied, because the Hunter is not dressed in what
Speaker 2: appears to be utilitarian clothing. The alien Hunter is dressed
Speaker 2: in something that looks at least from the earth analogy,
Speaker 2: like religious garb. It has robes, and then it has
Speaker 2: this kind of woven net like or almost Macromay kind
Speaker 2: of thing over it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, which I think does also add to the
Speaker 1: just weird vibe of the villain here, because yeah, he's
Speaker 1: not outfitted like a human hunter. He's not using tools
Speaker 1: that are seemingly like anything we use to hunt. He's
Speaker 1: like some weird alien priest, flinging flesh frisbees all over
Speaker 1: the woods.
Speaker 2: Here's a jellyfish Dominus vobiscum. So I wanted to point
Speaker 2: out something else that I thought was interesting. That's something
Speaker 2: in common with, or something in common between Without Warning
Speaker 2: Predator and some ancient myths about divine hunters, which is,
Speaker 2: how do you defeat them? If there's like a divine
Speaker 2: hunter with otherworldly powers and tools at its disposal, is
Speaker 2: there any way that immortal or a less powerful entity
Speaker 2: can face it down? And the answer appears to be traps.
Speaker 2: In this movie, it's Jack Palance with a shed rigged
Speaker 2: with dynamite. Remember he gets the explosives in the in
Speaker 2: the watershed and then they blow the alien to pieces
Speaker 2: after he yells alien. And then in Predator it's Schwarzenegger's
Speaker 2: tree trunk counterweight, right. Oh yeah, Like he Schwarzenegger sets
Speaker 2: up a trap that I think is supposed to originally
Speaker 2: hook under the predator's feet and then like throw him
Speaker 2: up into a bunch of spikes but or sharpened steaks.
Speaker 2: But then he has to kind of improvise because the
Speaker 2: predator goes around his trap. But then he gets him anyway,
Speaker 2: just by dropping a log on him.
Speaker 1: He's I think the more ingenious thing that Schwartzenager's character
Speaker 1: was a Dutch could have employed. He don't try and
Speaker 1: make a really good trap, make a terrible trap, like
Speaker 1: a really obviously bad trap that just make the predator
Speaker 1: give up and realize, Okay, this guy is not a genius,
Speaker 1: not a discord after all. Yeah, I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and call it a day, which I guess to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, that's what Sarage is doing in this movie,
Speaker 1: because we learned that Sarage is going around digging tiger traps, yes,
Speaker 1: deep pit traps, all over the place, to the point
Speaker 1: where our heroes just fall.
Speaker 2: Into one at some point, but they're fine, there are
Speaker 2: fights or anything.
Speaker 1: It's not a very good trap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but this actually does connect it to a
Speaker 2: Greek myth. So there's a Greek mythut the pair of
Speaker 2: figures known as the Aloaid, in which Artemis, the divine hunter,
Speaker 2: again kills two other divine hunters, two otherwise invincible aggressive
Speaker 2: divine hunters, only by resorting to a trap. So here
Speaker 2: is sort of predator versus predators. Now, the Aloaid were
Speaker 2: these twin giants. They were the sons of a human
Speaker 2: mother named Ifemidea and of the sea god Poseidon, and
Speaker 2: their names were ODIs and e Fialtes. And as demi gods,
Speaker 2: ODIs and e Fialtes grew large and violent, and they
Speaker 2: lived as these wild, uncontrollable hunters on the land, and
Speaker 2: they were so powerful that they could only be killed
Speaker 2: by each other, and they eventually nurtured designs on Mount Olympus.
Speaker 2: They wanted to attack the home of the gods, and
Speaker 2: it said that Aris, the god of war, tried to
Speaker 2: stop them. He tried to kill them, but they crammed
Speaker 2: him into a brazen cauldron. And some versions of the
Speaker 2: myth the twin giants wanted to steal away Artemis and
Speaker 2: Hera from Olympus and make them into their wives. And
Speaker 2: in one telling of the myth. The way they're defeated.
Speaker 2: I think there's some versions where Apollo kills them, but
Speaker 2: in one version, the huntress Artemis is able to catch
Speaker 2: them in a trap. She transforms herself into a stag
Speaker 2: and then bits the two of them into a hunt
Speaker 2: and in animal form, Artemis positions herself between the two
Speaker 2: giants and they each throw their hunting spears at her,
Speaker 2: and then she dodges, and the spears thrown by each
Speaker 2: hunter pierced the other, and thus the Demi gods are slain.
Speaker 1: You know what that reminds me of? It also reminds
Speaker 1: me of RoboCop three. Isn't that how RoboCop defeats the
Speaker 1: two cyber ninjas? Oh?
Speaker 4: Is it?
Speaker 1: Kind of? I don't recall it, Like basically, he somehow
Speaker 1: tricks or so some shenanigans occur that cause the two
Speaker 1: cyber ninjas to destroy each other with their swords.
Speaker 2: That's interesting And as a connections, I was reading on
Speaker 2: IMDb the young actor who played Scaramuci van Deen in
Speaker 2: this movie. He apparently did stunts in RoboCop three, if
Speaker 2: his IMDb page is correct. But anyway, is this a coincidence?
Speaker 2: Why are traps the obvious answer to an overpowered celestial
Speaker 2: hunter from the sky.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, one part of it could just be to,
Speaker 1: you know, to think back on how we would have
Speaker 1: dealt with larger predators of old. You know, we had
Speaker 1: to figure out ways to outsmart them, and that may
Speaker 1: involve either setting a trap, like an actual physical trap
Speaker 1: like a pit or a tiger pit. Oh, or it
Speaker 1: might involve some sort of yeah we have buffalo jumps,
Speaker 1: you have some sort of ambush tactics would be employed,
Speaker 1: like some way of outsmarting them and using either a
Speaker 1: physical artifice or a strategic artifice against them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, so when a human is hunted,
Speaker 2: it's obviously it's some kind of inversion of how things
Speaker 2: are supposed to be. It's a perversion of the divine order.
Speaker 2: We're supposed to hunt, not be hunted. And I wonder
Speaker 2: if there's an idea that, in order to reclaim your
Speaker 2: humanity and your position atop the chain of being, that
Speaker 2: you have to insist on victory by outsmarting this usurping
Speaker 2: hunter figure rather than simply overpowering it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that might well be the mythic energy
Speaker 1: that without warning is tapping into all right, Well, we're
Speaker 1: reaching the end of our discussion here at this point.
Speaker 1: If you have not seen the film, you might be wondering, Hey,
Speaker 1: where can I watch without Warning? Well, as of this recording,
Speaker 1: I don't believe it's available on any of the major
Speaker 1: streaming sites, at least in the United States. I couldn't,
Speaker 1: but it's always worth checking around. Especially I find Amazon
Speaker 1: Prime to be a great place to find just righteous trash.
Speaker 1: They have just a wonderful selection of obscure titles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, recently they've expanded their Jallo collection and in eye
Speaker 2: popping ways, we watched a movie with Baby Jing Carlo
Speaker 2: Janini in it, The Black Belly of the Tarantula. Have
Speaker 2: you seen that one?
Speaker 1: Oh? I haven't seen that one, but I love that title.
Speaker 2: Oh man, is it is? It is a Jallo lover's Jallo.
Speaker 1: Now, as we mentioned earlier, Shout Factory Scream Factory in
Speaker 1: Print put out an awesome DVD and blu ray of
Speaker 1: Without Warning back in twenty fourteen. I think it is
Speaker 1: out of print. Maybe it'll go back in print by
Speaker 1: the time you're listening to this, but that's well worth
Speaker 1: finding a copy of. That is the edition that we
Speaker 1: both watched in preparation for this episode. Yeah, and hey,
Speaker 1: if you happen to live in Atlanta, you can totally
Speaker 1: rent it at video drone in either format.
Speaker 2: I would highly recommend it. I would say it's like
Speaker 2: all of the Dean Cundi movies. Once again, it might
Speaker 2: be trash, but it's surprisingly watchable.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're going to go and close out the
Speaker 1: episode here, but we want to hear from you. What
Speaker 1: did you think of the film? Did you happen to
Speaker 1: see it back in nineteen eighty. I'm always interested in
Speaker 1: those accounts, like, Yeah, I saw it on the screen
Speaker 1: in the time that it was speaking to all of
Speaker 1: the time it was speaking too.
Speaker 2: Did you happen to make it in nineteen eighty? Are
Speaker 2: you great?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Were you involved in the in the film? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Are you great? On Clark? Are you the ghost of
Speaker 1: Jack Palance writing into us to let us know that
Speaker 1: you did defeat that alien? It was definitely dead and
Speaker 1: your character survived for the sequel that we never got
Speaker 1: to see. We want to know about that as well.
Speaker 1: Hunter of Core, all right, you know how to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, and in the meantime, just wherever
Speaker 1: you get this podcast, we asked you rate, review, and subscribe.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you'd like to get in touch with us,
Speaker 2: we don't know how you would do that yet, but
Speaker 2: maybe there will be a way.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.
Speaker 5: AST