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.
Speaker 3: And today on Weird House, we're going to be talking
Speaker 3: about the nineteen seventy two made for TV horror film Gargoyles,
Speaker 3: starring Cornell Wilde, Jennifer Salt, Grayson Hall, and Bernie Casey.
Speaker 3: This selection has been waiting in the wings for some time,
Speaker 3: hasn't it. It comes up frequently on our Connection segment
Speaker 3: in multiple previous episodes, and also has been recommended by
Speaker 3: multiple listeners. It was one of the It just seemed
Speaker 3: we were faded to cover it at some point.
Speaker 2: That's right. Let's see Lee Steven, Bob Tato or Bob Tato,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure which his pronunciation. Are just a few
Speaker 2: of the listeners who suggested this film in particular and
Speaker 2: said it would be a great fit. Yeah, It's come
Speaker 2: up multiple times on the show before in our Connections,
Speaker 2: and it's also one that I finally remember watching at
Speaker 2: least parts of on television in the nineteen nineties, I
Speaker 2: think on the Sci Fi channel and TV again is
Speaker 2: the place to watch it. This was a film made
Speaker 2: for television, and it has just this great TV wasteland
Speaker 2: vibe to it. The sort of weird dated movie that
Speaker 2: like during the nineteen nineties you discover on cable when
Speaker 2: you were inside on a weekend afternoon instead of going
Speaker 2: outside and playing in the sun, or that you discover
Speaker 2: late at night instead of getting a good night's sleep,
Speaker 2: that sort of picture.
Speaker 3: The spirit of television flows through it, even to the
Speaker 3: extent that there's one character. We'll have to talk about
Speaker 3: this in the plot section. There's one character who seems
Speaker 3: to have gotten completely different notes on how to play
Speaker 3: his character over the course of a commercial break.
Speaker 2: Can change during a commercial break, you know, it takes
Speaker 2: you out of the action. I believe we're going to
Speaker 2: talk more about this later. It takes you out of
Speaker 2: the action, perhaps takes you out of the room as
Speaker 2: you go to get your dinner, return your plate, get
Speaker 2: a snack, use the restroom, put the kids to bed,
Speaker 2: what have you, and then you're back in and yeah,
Speaker 2: it might be a different movie by that point. Like
Speaker 2: sometimes it is implied stuff has happened during the break.
Speaker 3: I guess that's true. The character I have in mind
Speaker 3: is implied to have gotten drunk as over the course
Speaker 3: of the commercial break, but he goes from being kind
Speaker 3: of I don't know, sly in cagey to just being
Speaker 3: a complete mass.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it happens pretty quickly. So yes. Indeed, this film
Speaker 2: was originally broadcast on Tuesday, November twenty first, nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 2: for CBS's the New CBS Tuesday Night Movies. The made
Speaker 2: for TV werewolf movie Death Moon that we previously covered
Speaker 2: on Weird House was also a CBS affair, though it
Speaker 2: aired on a Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Was it one of the new CBS Wednesday Night Movies?
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't recall. Death Moon came out and said so,
Speaker 2: I guess I knew it had become old or standard
Speaker 2: by that point. I'm not sure. I get a little
Speaker 2: foggy on how like the Tuesday Night movie would have
Speaker 2: differed from the Wednesday Night movie. I just remember the
Speaker 2: Death Moon aired, I think following an episode of The
Speaker 2: Incredible Hulk. But this is a movie that certainly connected
Speaker 2: with plenty of folks. It's a nice mix of early
Speaker 2: seventies television, monster suits cinematic weirdness. In nineteen eighty one's
Speaker 2: Dance maccob Stephen King singled it out as one of
Speaker 2: the high points of the various one shot TV movies
Speaker 2: and specials of the day, praising it as memorable and hideous. Likewise,
Speaker 2: Michael Weldon in the Psychotronic film Guides highlights it as unusual.
Speaker 3: I'm a little perplexed at the amount of praise I
Speaker 3: see people heap on this movie. But I will give
Speaker 3: it that it is not boring, like it kind of
Speaker 3: skips right along and is highly entertaining as to its
Speaker 3: real horror credentials. I don't know if I can quite
Speaker 3: go there.
Speaker 2: I feel like it is remarkably weird to have been
Speaker 2: on television. You know. It's like other examples will point
Speaker 2: to from this time period. When you're looking at made
Speaker 2: for TV horror, a lot of them are a little
Speaker 2: more you know, traditional in the sense that maybe it's
Speaker 2: like Gothic horror, and you know, not that this is
Speaker 2: completely non traditional. It is based, you know, basic format
Speaker 2: of a monster movie, and it's set with a you know,
Speaker 2: an American background. But yeah, I mean these scenes where
Speaker 2: you have like reptilian gargoyle creatures like rebinon big furry
Speaker 2: eggs and in an egg cave, it's it's weird stuff.
Speaker 3: Weirder even for its time than you might think because
Speaker 3: we live downstream of gargoyles. An interesting claim I came across.
Speaker 3: I can't verify this, but a claim of priority that
Speaker 3: I found referenced in the Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and
Speaker 3: Cinematic Monsters, edited by somebody named somebody named Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: This book claims quote Gargoyles, the movie we're talking about today.
Speaker 3: Gargoyles is the first work to present gargoyles as a
Speaker 3: species as opposed to solitary creatures.
Speaker 2: Hmmm. Interesting, yeah, yeah, because that is how they're they're
Speaker 2: positioned here. They are not statues, come alive. They are
Speaker 2: an ancient species of creatures, perhaps with some sort of
Speaker 2: origins going back to Satan in the Fall, the Rebel Angels.
Speaker 3: Well, it just seems kind of like a creative appropriation
Speaker 3: of the word gargoyle, because otherwise they are treated as
Speaker 3: just demons. They're just demons or devils, but they're also
Speaker 3: sort of greedo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're they're reptile men. They but they
Speaker 2: are gargoyles. They're also devils. But the title of the
Speaker 2: movie is Gargoyles, and they make sure to call them
Speaker 2: gargoyles at various points in the film.
Speaker 3: I should mention that that same Encyclopedia entry also flags
Speaker 3: a short story by Harlan Ellison called Bleeding Stones, apparently
Speaker 3: also published in nineteen seventy two, in which there are
Speaker 3: gargoyles on Saint Patrick's Cathedral that are animated by pollution,
Speaker 3: like industrial waste gets into them and it turns them
Speaker 3: into monsters that attack New York City.
Speaker 2: I should go ahead and mention, now that we're talking
Speaker 2: about this, if any of this sounds familiar. Back in
Speaker 2: October of twenty twenty four, we did the Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind episode titled Grimoure of Horror, Volume one.
Speaker 2: We talked about a couple of short horror stories, one
Speaker 2: of them being a nineteen thirty two Clark Ashton Smith
Speaker 2: story about gargoyles in which a tormented sculptors gargoyles come
Speaker 2: to life and commit crimes in this Gothic city, and
Speaker 2: that is often pointed to as one of if not
Speaker 2: like the first stories about animate gargoyle, But then again,
Speaker 2: that would be different than what we have here today.
Speaker 2: These are gargoyles that were never part of the particular
Speaker 2: of a particular architectural uh creation. They instead are said
Speaker 2: to have inspired architectural flourishes. And what are those flourishes. Well,
Speaker 2: just a reminder we're talking when we talk about gargoyles,
Speaker 2: we're generally talking about a decorative water spout to drain
Speaker 2: water away from a building. Then the term is used
Speaker 2: a little loose more loosely to describe, you know, hideous
Speaker 2: monsters perching on the corners of buildings. That you get
Speaker 2: you get into different terminology when you get into the
Speaker 2: specifics of all these things. But this is linked to
Speaker 2: the old French word gargoue as well as the Greek gargarazine.
Speaker 2: And these words, of course may remind you of the
Speaker 2: word gargyle that we use today, because you know, essentially
Speaker 2: we're talking about a word used to describe the clearing
Speaker 2: or washing of the throat.
Speaker 3: Right, So, from decorative water spouts the side of a
Speaker 3: building to Reptilian Satanic gredo monsters that live in caves
Speaker 3: in only a few hundred years, that's an evolution.
Speaker 2: Yes, from European cathedrals to the children of Lucifer living
Speaker 2: in caves. In the Great American Desert.
Speaker 3: Now, we mentioned earlier that a lot of people have
Speaker 3: had praise for this movie, a lot of good things
Speaker 3: to say about it, and one thing that often gets
Speaker 3: singled out for praise is the creature design itself, the
Speaker 3: monster design. They've got these great rubber masks and suits.
Speaker 3: And apparently this movie won a nineteen seventy three Primetime
Speaker 3: Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup.
Speaker 2: That's right. It beat out a TV movie of Doctor
Speaker 2: Jekyll and Mister Hyde starring Kirk Douglas and Donald Pleasants,
Speaker 2: as well as a TV movie of Frankenstein starring Robert Foxworth,
Speaker 2: who would go on to appear in Death Moon, as
Speaker 2: well as the actor Bose S. Vincent, who I believe
Speaker 2: Vincent played the monster, Foxworth played the doctor.
Speaker 3: Foxworth was the work beast and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean who I mean, Doctor Frankenstein. Can
Speaker 2: you think of more a bigger work beast than that?
Speaker 3: That's right, He's the original work beast. I wonder how
Speaker 3: my feelings about Gargoyles might be different if if we'd
Speaker 3: seen it with the hard burned Dutch subtitles. I think
Speaker 3: that would bring a different spirit to the to the occasion,
Speaker 3: wouldn't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably so. But the costumes here do look amazing,
Speaker 2: and as we'll get into in just a little bit,
Speaker 2: it's the work of Stan Winston, like fresh baby face
Speaker 2: stan Winston. This is his first big, big gig as
Speaker 2: a makeup dude before he went on to a lot
Speaker 2: of other legendary work and legendary monster design makeup effects
Speaker 2: from the subtle to the extravagant. Now, are these suits
Speaker 2: always presented in the best light? Is the rest of
Speaker 2: the film like reaching its level? Well, you know, an
Speaker 2: argument could be made that it is not. You know,
Speaker 2: you put a suit like this in a gas station
Speaker 2: in the middle of New Mexico, it might not look
Speaker 2: as great. But I think on their own they look
Speaker 2: amazing and compared to anything else it was on TV
Speaker 2: at the time, I have no doubt that these really
Speaker 2: stood out and obviously touched a nerve.
Speaker 3: I believe these suits and makeup effects could have popped
Speaker 3: even more if they'd been photographed a little more carefully.
Speaker 3: I don't want to insult the cinematography too much, but
Speaker 3: we get a lot of just straight up looking at them,
Speaker 3: even in slow motion, sometimes in broad daylight, sometimes busting
Speaker 3: through a breakaway door into a hotel room not the
Speaker 3: most creative or artful way of obscuring and keeping the
Speaker 3: mystery of the gargoyle form alive.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, they're often shot, and yeah, feels like
Speaker 2: like noon sun they're out being stealthy. Just the in
Speaker 2: broad daylight. People were like, what was that that flew over?
Speaker 2: And it's like, you're in the middle of nowhere in
Speaker 2: New Mexico. I think you probably could have seen it,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. There are plenty of plenty of
Speaker 2: animals in New Mexico that managed to carry out their
Speaker 2: stealth roles successfully, so I guess an argument could be
Speaker 2: made that these these creatures do as well.
Speaker 3: It's hard to stay stealthy when you're doing trampoline stunts
Speaker 3: in slow motion.
Speaker 2: True. True.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to pause here for a moment to
Speaker 3: think about the specific flavor of today's movie, because despite
Speaker 3: the different setting and subject matter, I noticed what felt
Speaker 3: like a significant esthetic overlap with the other seventies American
Speaker 3: made for TV horror movie we've covered again. That was
Speaker 3: Death Moon with the work Beast, and this got me
Speaker 3: interested in thinking about these movies as their own subgenre.
Speaker 3: The made for TV movie of the seventies as its
Speaker 3: own horror subgenre. So I went digging around for any
Speaker 3: academic literature that has explored this idea, and I came
Speaker 3: across a passage in a book. So the book was
Speaker 3: by Lorna Jowett and Stacy Abbott called TV Horror Investigating
Speaker 3: the Dark Side of the Small Screen. This was originally
Speaker 3: published in twenty thirteen. I haven't read this whole book,
Speaker 3: but I did read some reviews, and in this passage
Speaker 3: about made for TV films of the era in question,
Speaker 3: it seems to me the central idea of this book
Speaker 3: is that wild TV has long been thought of as
Speaker 3: a poor venue for horror storytelling due to many things.
Speaker 3: You know, restrictions on content that tend to be more
Speaker 3: restrictive than what you would get in the movie theaters,
Speaker 3: and horror tends to be by nature transgressive and contains
Speaker 3: objectionable material. But also you can think about constraints due
Speaker 3: to format format restrictions like the need to include commercial breaks.
Speaker 3: Despite all those well known limitations, the authors argue that
Speaker 3: the medium of TV also kind of presents its own
Speaker 3: unique opportunities for horror, and that horror has long been
Speaker 3: incorporated it into TV storytelling, even if in cryptic forms,
Speaker 3: kind of expressing itself in little ways in you know,
Speaker 3: in crime dramas on TV and things like that. And
Speaker 3: in the words of the authors the quote relationship between
Speaker 3: horror and television is one fraught with tension and potential.
Speaker 3: And so when you try to think, like, what would
Speaker 3: be the special potential for horror on TV as opposed
Speaker 3: to other media like the cinema or in written literature.
Speaker 3: One example that comes to mind for me, which they
Speaker 3: do explore in the book, is the idea that back
Speaker 3: before home video, when movies were something that you went
Speaker 3: to see in the theater and you couldn't watch at
Speaker 3: home unless it just happened to be playing on one
Speaker 3: of the few TV stations you got, TV provided provided
Speaker 3: an opportunity to project visual horror into the domestic setting,
Speaker 3: and the domestic setting changed how frightening stories were received,
Speaker 3: and to that last point. At one point in this book,
Speaker 3: the author's cite the concluding voiceover from Colchak The night Stalker,
Speaker 3: which is not a movie but a sort of mystery
Speaker 3: horror TV series. We've talked about this in our anthology
Speaker 3: of Horror episodes in the Halloween season sometimes but apparently
Speaker 3: you know, at the end of this Colchak would always
Speaker 3: say something like quote, So think about it and try
Speaker 3: to tell yourself, wherever you may be and the quiet
Speaker 3: of your home, in the safety of your bed, try
Speaker 3: to tell yourself that it couldn't happen to you. You know,
Speaker 3: the implication being, Oh, you think you're safe just because
Speaker 3: you're at home on your couch eating a hungry man
Speaker 3: dinner right now, but no paramoul fay, this moss monster
Speaker 3: could come get you.
Speaker 2: That's a great point, you know, Like you could basically
Speaker 2: have a no horror in the house rule where you
Speaker 2: only go out to the theaters and see horror, but
Speaker 2: then TV changes that in the same way that like
Speaker 2: right now, I think most of us probably, well not
Speaker 2: most of us. I can't speak for everyone out there.
Speaker 2: I know we have some horror ficionados out there there,
Speaker 2: but a lot of us probably have an unofficial rule
Speaker 2: of no haunted attractions in the house. Where we go
Speaker 2: out to a haunted attraction. We go out to a
Speaker 2: professional haunted house, but we don't bring professional gruls and
Speaker 2: goblins into our home to jump scarce randomly, you know,
Speaker 2: and if we were to do that, that would drastically
Speaker 2: change the way we might think about our house.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly. Now, of course this would change with the
Speaker 3: advent of home video, you know, that sort of reshuffles everything,
Speaker 3: But you can still think of ways in which TV
Speaker 3: is a different video. I've said this on the show before,
Speaker 3: but I'm often very partial to medium is the message
Speaker 3: type thinking kind of mccluinist view that we really underappreciate
Speaker 3: how much we're influenced not just by the content that
Speaker 3: we consume, but by the format that that content takes. So,
Speaker 3: you know, whatever technology or media we use to consume
Speaker 3: it that shapes us almost as much as the content itself,
Speaker 3: and shape shapes over time the form the content takes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this has certainly come up before when we've
Speaker 2: talked about movies where certain changes were made because they
Speaker 2: wanted to make sure that like the first ten minutes killed,
Speaker 2: you know, so people wouldn't leave the theater, or I
Speaker 2: seem to recall an example where they were like, well,
Speaker 2: let's offset the big moment a little bit so that
Speaker 2: people who are late to their seats don't miss out
Speaker 2: on the excitement. Things like that, you know, and I
Speaker 2: guess with TV horre you're also probably having a factor
Speaker 2: in well, some people are coming in maybe thirty minutes
Speaker 2: into it. You know, there's no definite start time. It's
Speaker 2: not like they bought a ticket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll come back to that in just a minute,
Speaker 3: but I did want to say so. The authors here
Speaker 3: have a sub section discussing horror within the history of
Speaker 3: the made for TV movie, also known as the single play,
Speaker 3: a single play as opposed to like a series or
Speaker 3: a mini series, and so they write about how the
Speaker 3: made for TV movie was especially popular in the nineteen
Speaker 3: sixties and seventies, with major productions in being networks in
Speaker 3: the United States like ABC and then in this case CBS,
Speaker 3: and then of course in Britain as well with things
Speaker 3: like ITV. ITV actually had armchair theater going back to
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties, so we established even earlier there. But
Speaker 3: then the authors cite a scholar named Waller who cataloged
Speaker 3: more than one hundred made for TV horror films that
Speaker 3: premiered on primetime in the United States between nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: eight and nineteen eighty seven, and that was kind of
Speaker 3: surprising to me that there were that many because I
Speaker 3: don't think of horror as the most popular genre of
Speaker 3: made for TV movies. I mean, I tend to think
Speaker 3: of made for TV movies as like, you know, your
Speaker 3: kind of comedies and your family dramas and things like that.
Speaker 3: They were made for TV. Horror felt like a more rare,
Speaker 3: rare exploration. But in discussing these movies, Jowett and Abbott right.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: These films include at daptations of Gothic novels such as
Speaker 3: Count Dracula nineteen seventy seven, Frankenstein nineteen seventy three. Oh,
Speaker 3: I wonder if that's the one we were just talking about.
Speaker 3: I believe, Yeah, the Turn of the Screw nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 3: or original contemporary horror such as Fear No Evil nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty nine, Duel nineteen seventy one. I believe that's an
Speaker 3: early Steven Spielberg movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe Matheson either a script by Matheson or
Speaker 2: it's based on a work by Matheson. I don't recall
Speaker 2: at the top of my head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then their final example is Gargoyles from nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two, but the passage continues. Quote John Kenneth Muir
Speaker 3: argues that in this period, television became increasingly graphic, and
Speaker 3: that the turn toward darkness in TV horror represented, as
Speaker 3: with cinematic horror, a shift in national mood, due at
Speaker 3: least in part to the shocking and graphic news footage
Speaker 3: coming back from the Vietnam War. It was as if
Speaker 3: for the first time Americans were aware of a darker world,
Speaker 3: and television reflected that shift in perspective.
Speaker 2: Hmm, that's fascinating. Now.
Speaker 3: Another thing they mentioned here is about the production mode
Speaker 3: of made for TV horror films, which was in some
Speaker 3: ways similar to that of a cinematic film, but usually
Speaker 3: with a lower budget and a shorter production schedule. One
Speaker 3: major format difference that we've already alluded to here is
Speaker 3: the necessity of incorporating commercial breaks. Now, you might be thinking, like, a,
Speaker 3: do you really need to plan out commercial breaks? From
Speaker 3: a writing perspective, maybe you just write the story like
Speaker 3: you would otherwise and let the breaks fall wherever.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's how we do the podcast.
Speaker 3: That sort of is how we do the podcast now.
Speaker 3: But like the podcast is a conversational informational exploration, it's
Speaker 3: really hard to do that if you are writing a fiction,
Speaker 3: a fictional narrative where you're you're trying to control tension
Speaker 3: and you're trying to build to climaxes and all that.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you just if you literally just randomly
Speaker 3: place commercial breaks within a story. In fact, we've seen
Speaker 3: what this is like when that happens on, like, you know,
Speaker 3: something like you're watching a maybe illicit stream of of
Speaker 3: a movie or something, and the ads just pop in wherever.
Speaker 3: It's hilarious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, I was thinking about this recently
Speaker 2: as well, not only in watching Gargoyles, which has these moments,
Speaker 2: but also as a family we've been watching and for
Speaker 2: my wife and I rewatching the sci fi series Firefly, Oh,
Speaker 2: which you know I love back in the day. I'm
Speaker 2: getting reacquainted with now. The footage is not the most
Speaker 2: restored that I've seen, so it feels a little rough
Speaker 2: around the edges and places, but still very fresh in
Speaker 2: many other ways. But it has those those obvious, baked
Speaker 2: in commercial breaks where things lead up, you know, you
Speaker 2: get to kind of like a little crescendo and then
Speaker 2: there's just a little bit darkarkness and then you come
Speaker 2: back and you know, for someone like our kids, seemed
Speaker 2: less and less of that, So they're like, what's what's
Speaker 2: going on here? Why don't we keep having these moments?
Speaker 2: So they go, yeah, those are commercial breaks. Those were
Speaker 2: those were necessary, mandated and you know, clearly constructed around Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the authors of this book talk about how it's
Speaker 3: been recognized for a while that, or at least argued
Speaker 3: by other scholars previously, that the need for commercial breaks
Speaker 3: is especially devastating to horror as a as a genre
Speaker 3: for storytelling because it interrupts the narrative flow and the
Speaker 3: building of tension that is supposed to take place in
Speaker 3: a horror story. But also they cite again the scholar
Speaker 3: named Waller who says that it's really a problem that
Speaker 3: the advertisements coming in in the middle of the story
Speaker 3: quote themselves serve as reassurance that all is well in
Speaker 3: the world and I can see what's going on there.
Speaker 3: But then coming back on the other side, the authors
Speaker 3: talk about how writers try to get around this by
Speaker 3: of course structuring the story with these kind of mini climaxes,
Speaker 3: placing breaks after each one. That's like what you were
Speaker 3: just talking about, you know, the where even when the
Speaker 3: commercials are no longer present, you're just watching it as
Speaker 3: one continuous thing. You can feel where the commercial breaks are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I have to admit at times watching Gargoles,
Speaker 2: I really kind of wanted to see those commercials. What
Speaker 2: would they have been, you know.
Speaker 3: I want to see commercials for Towbor, the International Ladies
Speaker 3: Garment Workers Union, all the good ones. But anyway, this
Speaker 3: got me thinking about how there are multiple ways to
Speaker 3: write around the idea of commercial breaks. The authors here
Speaker 3: are talking about trying to structure it with many climaxes
Speaker 3: before a commercial break, so the break doesn't unnecessarily cut
Speaker 3: into the tension you're building. But I was thinking about
Speaker 3: how it's actually often the case that people will try
Speaker 3: to have a commercial break occurring right at a moment
Speaker 3: of suspense, you know, like the door is opening, and
Speaker 3: then you cut to commercial to I guess the ideas
Speaker 3: that will leave you hanging and make you avoid changing
Speaker 3: the channel during the commercial because you want to see
Speaker 3: what happens next. I think that can lead made for
Speaker 3: TV horror to feel kind of hokey that often does
Speaker 3: not play very well. But at the same time, in
Speaker 3: rare cases, I think the juxtaposition between story and commercial
Speaker 3: breaks can itself be uncanny, like made for TV horror
Speaker 3: with commercial breaks works especially well. I think in stories
Speaker 3: where everything seems to be right with the world, but
Speaker 3: there are hidden threats lurking behind a facade of everyday life.
Speaker 3: It's kind of making you question the sort of interactions
Speaker 3: and media that you go through every single day. You know,
Speaker 3: that can kind of play well when suddenly it cuts
Speaker 3: away to people trying to manipulate you by capturing your
Speaker 3: tension and selling you on something.
Speaker 2: I could see that definitely having been the case with
Speaker 2: Death Moon. Because Death Moon if you don't familiar, if
Speaker 2: you're not familiar with it or you don't remember the episode.
Speaker 2: This is about an overworked man going on a vacation
Speaker 2: to Hawaii where he begins to change into a werewolf.
Speaker 2: Much of what occurs in the film, though, is exactly
Speaker 2: the kind of life that advertisements might have been selling
Speaker 2: you on. You know, like a successful single man, you know,
Speaker 2: looking for love, you know, working hard, but trying to
Speaker 2: play hard a little bit as well, but then also
Speaker 2: changing into a murderous monster at night.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a dapper dan man, but yeah, gargoyles.
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's maybe a harder case than you made.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it really fits that. As I've said,
Speaker 3: I do think Gargoyles is very entertaining. There are some
Speaker 3: elements of it that kind of work pretty well as intended.
Speaker 3: It's definitely funny in some ways. I don't know how well,
Speaker 3: at least for me, it holds up as actual horror building,
Speaker 3: actual horror tens. But I do want to say I
Speaker 3: think there is a special esthetic weirdness, and more specifically,
Speaker 3: I would say a bleakness to the handful of made
Speaker 3: for TV horror movies that I've seen from the seventies.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I have exactly the right words
Speaker 3: to explain this, but as close as I can get
Speaker 3: is a couple of things. One is that they often
Speaker 3: kind of incorporate a slightly alarming feeling of numbness, like
Speaker 3: a spiritual an hedonia. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2: It all? Yeah? Yeah, I mean this. You know, it's
Speaker 2: impossible to think about these pictures without thinking about, like,
Speaker 2: what's going on in the nineteen seventies, late nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: early seventies. Wherever a predicture work particular work happens to fall.
Speaker 2: You know, you know, what does it say about about
Speaker 2: the zeitgeist at the time and the like the general
Speaker 2: like feeling about the world and about your place in
Speaker 2: the world. And I guess, you know, part of that
Speaker 2: comes out of like like being a kid who was
Speaker 2: born in the seventies. You know, it's kind of like
Speaker 2: this is this is the world that I like emerge from,
Speaker 2: Like this is the alchemy that produced me. It's like,
Speaker 2: what does it say about the world I came from?
Speaker 2: What does it say about who I am now? And
Speaker 2: so forth?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I don't mean this at all as a
Speaker 3: commentary on you where the world you came from. But
Speaker 3: the thing I mean is, I don't know, there's this
Speaker 3: background feeling in these movies of kind of searching after
Speaker 3: pleasures that can no longer satisfy or something like that,
Speaker 3: this kind of emptiness and longing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the post nineteen sixties world, you know, to invoke
Speaker 2: the famous quote by Hunter S. Thompson, you know, after
Speaker 2: the wave has has crested and fallen and fallen back
Speaker 2: from where we are now. Yeah, often a sense of
Speaker 2: that vibe. And at the same time there's also a
Speaker 2: part of it again coming back to having been born
Speaker 2: in the seventies, like, these pictures sort of feel like home,
Speaker 2: and I want and I feel comfortable in them, and
Speaker 2: they make me want to to some extent, not to
Speaker 2: like a literal extent, but it makes me, to some
Speaker 2: extent like want to crawl into them and inhabit that
Speaker 2: world and find some sort of safety there that, of course,
Speaker 2: you know, has no real connection to what the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies were actually like or certainly the world's depicted in
Speaker 2: these films.
Speaker 3: I belong in this gargoyle cave. But the other thing
Speaker 3: I was thinking is that because these made for TV
Speaker 3: movies are restricted to FCC content standards, nothing ever gets
Speaker 3: north of PG you know, they're fairly tame. This one
Speaker 3: is often singled out for being especially frightening and violent
Speaker 3: by TV standards, but even in this case, I would
Speaker 3: say it is very tame compared to the horror movies
Speaker 3: of the same time. In his you know this is
Speaker 3: not The Exorcist.
Speaker 2: Oh certainly not.
Speaker 3: And because of that, there is counterintuitively a feeling of
Speaker 3: restrained viciousness that is actually quite menacing when you focus
Speaker 3: on it. It's like the made for TV horror movie
Speaker 3: asks you to imagine the version of the story that
Speaker 3: you could not be shown.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 3: Anyway, That's all I've got on made for TV horror
Speaker 3: right now. But maybe we can revisit this topic as.
Speaker 2: We go on. Oh absolutely, absolutely, and I'm sure it
Speaker 2: will also come back to more made for TV horror
Speaker 2: in the future.
Speaker 3: I mean, as we just read, there are at least
Speaker 3: one hundred of them by nineteen eighty seven, so you.
Speaker 2: Know, there's some real dogs in there, but probably plenty
Speaker 2: of other gems as well.
Speaker 3: Is Dracula's dog one of them?
Speaker 2: Ooh yeah, maybe so maybe, so we'll come back to
Speaker 2: Dracula's dog in this episode. All right, elevator pitch. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna invoke Jimmy Rodgers Desert Blues here and say, way
Speaker 2: out on the windswept desert where nature favors no man,
Speaker 2: the gargoyle found Diana at rest on the sun baked sand.
Speaker 2: That's beautiful. Now, I do not have some trailer audio
Speaker 2: to include here. I'd really hope to find a little
Speaker 2: like CBS promo like tonight on the CBS New Tuesday
Speaker 2: Night Movie, but I could not find anything. I found
Speaker 2: some things that might have been legitimate trailers of the
Speaker 2: day other things that were definitely creations from a later point,
Speaker 2: so we'll just have to imagine what it might have
Speaker 2: consisted of.
Speaker 3: See, this is what I want AI to help with.
Speaker 3: When there's like footage that you know is out there
Speaker 3: but doesn't have the proper metadata and you can't locate it,
Speaker 3: that's what I want AI to help me do is
Speaker 3: find that promo for the CBS movie.
Speaker 2: Oh well, sorry, it's gonna make whole podcasts instead. All right,
Speaker 2: So if you you want to see Gargoyles, luckily it
Speaker 2: is widely available, and it's been widely available for a while.
Speaker 2: There have been a few different vhs and DVD releases.
Speaker 2: Ideal viewing is of course, on an old school television set,
Speaker 2: but you know, do what you can with what you have.
Speaker 2: There's been no Blu ray release that I'm aware of,
Speaker 2: and it's widely available on streaming right now, like various
Speaker 2: legitimate streaming platforms have at you can. I think you
Speaker 2: can find a few different versions of it on YouTube
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, you're not allowed to watch this movie unless
Speaker 3: at least seventy percent of the mass of your TV
Speaker 3: is wood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, big wooden television set let's serve you well
Speaker 2: here all right, Well, let's get into the people behind
Speaker 2: this picture, starting at the top with the director. It's
Speaker 2: Bill Norton born nineteen forty three American director Norton. Here
Speaker 2: was coming off of his most well regarded feature film,
Speaker 2: his first nineteen seventy one Cisco Pike, starring Chris Kristofferson,
Speaker 2: Karen Black, Harry Dean Stanton, and Gene Hackman. Rip'ed all
Speaker 2: four of those individuals. Norton also co wrote the movie
Speaker 2: Cisco Pike. Gargoyles was his follow up, and he went
Speaker 2: on to direct More American Graffiti in seventy nine, as
Speaker 2: well as another film that I've seen, Baby Secret of
Speaker 2: the Lost Legend. This is a nineteen eighty five film
Speaker 2: about people going to the jungle and finding a cute
Speaker 2: baby dinosaur. Definitely watched this so on VHS as a kid,
Speaker 2: and he also did a lot of TV work, both
Speaker 2: series and films. His credits include episodes of Buffy the
Speaker 2: Vampire Slayer as well as the nineteen eighties Twilight Zone revival.
Speaker 3: Okay, I looked up Baby Secret of the Lost Legend.
Speaker 3: I want to assure people it's cuter than what I
Speaker 3: had in mind, which was the baby from the TV
Speaker 3: show Dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a different baby dinosaur. This is like
Speaker 2: Brontosaurus or something to that effect, some sort of sarapot.
Speaker 3: The original poster for it is kind of nice. It
Speaker 3: has that old school jungle adventure look. A more recent
Speaker 3: poster for it. I guess this is box art for
Speaker 3: a re release of the DVD. Seems to steal the
Speaker 3: visual theme of Jurassic Park.
Speaker 2: Oh well, you know, it made sense. It's like, look
Speaker 2: around and see, wow, this dinosaur movie is really making
Speaker 2: a lot of money. Well, we have one already on
Speaker 2: the shelf, ready to go. Let's go ahead and bust
Speaker 2: it out. I don't remember anything else about it except
Speaker 2: scenes where they're engaging with the dinosaur in the jungle.
Speaker 3: As I said, haven't seen it, but it looks to
Speaker 3: me like it fits in the e Walk adventure kind
Speaker 3: of market.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely. With a score by Jerry Goldsman. All right,
Speaker 2: moving on to the writing. This is the work of
Speaker 2: the husband and wife writing duo of Stephen Karf and
Speaker 2: Eleanor Karf. Stephen was born in nineteen thirty nine. Eleanor
Speaker 2: lived nineteen thirty nine through twenty thirteen. Their credits include
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties daytime soap opera Capital, four, episodes of
Speaker 2: Kung Fu, and the nineteen seventy eight TV movie Devil
Speaker 2: Dog the Hound of Hell starring Krenna.
Speaker 3: Oh that's the one we keep thinking is called Dracula's Dog.
Speaker 2: No, this is a different one. Oh yeah, there's Devil
Speaker 2: Dog Hound of Hell. And then there's Dracula's Dog, which
Speaker 2: we will come back to in a bit because it
Speaker 2: also is connected to this movie. And so.
Speaker 3: I can't even count our blessings today.
Speaker 2: All right. Getting into the cast top build is Cornell Wilde,
Speaker 2: playing the character of doctor Mercer Bowley. Wild lived nineteen
Speaker 2: twelve through nineteen eighty nine. Hungarian born American actor of stage, screen,
Speaker 2: and TV, who is nominated for an Oscar for nineteen
Speaker 2: forty six. Is A Song to Remember, in which he
Speaker 2: starred and nominated for a Hugo Award in nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 2: No Blade of Grass, which he directed. His uncredited acting
Speaker 2: where it goes back to the mid nineteen thirties and
Speaker 2: it's His actual credits include nineteen fifty two's The Greatest
Speaker 2: Show on Earth and episodes of Such TV shows as
Speaker 2: I Love Lucy Night Gallery, Fantasy Island, and Murder, she wrote.
Speaker 2: He's also in Charles B. Pearce's nineteen seventy eight Viking
Speaker 2: movie The Norseman.
Speaker 3: Oh I've never seen that, but that's been on my
Speaker 3: radar for a while. Charles B. Pearce is the buggy
Speaker 3: Creek guy.
Speaker 2: Right correct, Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. He did one Viking epic.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot to say about this character, not
Speaker 2: really as much as say about the performance. I mean,
Speaker 2: Cornell wild is fine in this.
Speaker 3: He's playing it just right down the middle.
Speaker 2: Right down the middle he does. There is a major
Speaker 2: you know, I could be shirtless in this scene energy
Speaker 2: in this film, which makes sense once he takes his
Speaker 2: shirt off. So he was in his sixties at this point,
Speaker 2: and I was looking back at I wasn't super familiar
Speaker 2: with Cornell Wilde's work, but looking back through his filmography,
Speaker 2: he was off in shirtless. So you know, kudos to
Speaker 2: him for being in such great shape at age sixty.
Speaker 3: I can't believe he's in his sixties, can't believe how
Speaker 3: good he looks. I was thinking he did not look
Speaker 3: old enough to be Jennifer Saltz's Cater's dad, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: she's She's apparently supposed to be like thirty, and I
Speaker 3: was reading him as like, I don't know, early forties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: he had such a long career. But the character here,
Speaker 2: there's much, there's much, I don't know how much we
Speaker 2: want to get into right now, but he's maybe not
Speaker 2: the most likable protagonists. Like not to say he's in
Speaker 2: like full blown anti hero domain or anything, but a
Speaker 2: lot of a lot of questions early on, like this
Speaker 2: is really the guy we're gonna stick with? This is
Speaker 2: our hero.
Speaker 3: This is not on Cornell Wilde as an actor, but
Speaker 3: just the way the character is written is strange. He's
Speaker 3: characterized oddly from the get go with the they make
Speaker 3: some strange choices about his level of sincerity in his
Speaker 3: own work, and then also at the end, yeah he
Speaker 3: he you really get into like, wait, who's the real
Speaker 3: bad guy here? Territory that does not seem to be
Speaker 3: acknowledged by the film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Now, playing his daughter, Diana, who
Speaker 2: we just mentioned, is Jennifer Salt born nineteen forty two
Speaker 2: American actress who previously appeared in nineteen sixty Nine's A
Speaker 2: Midnight Cowboy, which her father Waldo Salt wrote the Academy
Speaker 2: Award winning screenplay for. She was also in seventy two's
Speaker 2: Played Again Sam for TV and sixty five episodes of
Speaker 2: the TV series Soap. She's remained very active as a producer,
Speaker 2: and this is interesting talking about TV horror because she
Speaker 2: is Slash was a producer on American Horror Story, which
Speaker 2: is in a totally different TV horror ecosystem than what
Speaker 2: we have in the nineteen seventies, but notable.
Speaker 3: Nonetheless, you know who though in this would really fit
Speaker 3: in on the season of American Horror Story would be
Speaker 3: Grayson Hall as Miss Parks. Doesn't that Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Like an American Horror Story character.
Speaker 2: I would say, yeah, out out of the characters we encounter, definitely,
Speaker 2: definitely speaking yeah of Grayson Hall, her character Miss Parks.
Speaker 2: This is our noisy hotel lady who is always nursing
Speaker 2: a water glass half full of dark liquor.
Speaker 3: You know, Julian from Trailer Park Boys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So. Grayson Hall lived nineteen twenty two through
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five an American actress who was nominated for
Speaker 2: an Oscar for her supporting role in nineteen sixty five's
Speaker 2: The Night of the Iguana, directed by John Houston, and
Speaker 2: she's perhaps best known for playing the psychologist doctor Julia
Speaker 2: Hoffman on TV's Dark Shadows and the nineteen seventy movie
Speaker 2: House of Dark Shadows. I'm only vaguely familiar with the
Speaker 2: Dark Shadows world via seeing like bits and pieces of
Speaker 2: episode I think on the Sci Fi Channel back in
Speaker 2: the nineties, but this was apparently a major character. This
Speaker 2: was essentially, i think, originally sort of a Van Helsing
Speaker 2: sort of character who becomes more of a collaborator with
Speaker 2: the family of supernatural characters. Huh. Grayson Hall also appeared
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty two Satan in High Heels and nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty five's That Darn Cat. I hear, it's pretty darned yeah,
Speaker 2: But in this film, definite character work, you know, and
Speaker 2: it's it's amusing for what it is.
Speaker 3: So you mentioned she has a glass of liquor in
Speaker 3: her hand in all of her scenes, which starts off being,
Speaker 3: you know, she's in her apartment, or then she's walking
Speaker 3: next door from her apartment to another apartment, but it
Speaker 3: becomes increasingly absurd because in later scenes she's that way,
Speaker 3: like in a police station or like getting into a
Speaker 3: truck as a passenger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's glued to her hand or something.
Speaker 2: It's absolutely part of her ensemble the whole time, all right,
Speaker 2: playing the gargoyle, not the only gargoyle in the picture,
Speaker 2: but the main gargoyle. The leader of the gargoyles is
Speaker 2: Bernie Casey, who of nineteen thirty nine through twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: NFL Pro football player turn actor, artist and poet. He
Speaker 2: had to look up at the football details here for sure,
Speaker 2: but he apparently played for the forty nine Ers and
Speaker 2: the Rams, not at the same time, like one and
Speaker 2: then the other. I don't remember which one came first.
Speaker 2: I think forty nine Ers first, then the Rams played
Speaker 2: for them in the nineteen sixties, and then made the
Speaker 2: transition into acting first with nineteen sixty nine's Guns of
Speaker 2: the Magnificent Seven. So at this point in his career
Speaker 2: he'd had a string of credits, but it was still
Speaker 2: pretty early, and this might be part of the reason
Speaker 2: I'm guessing why his voice ends up being cut. More
Speaker 2: on that in a minute. But we don't actually hear
Speaker 2: Bernie Casey in the picture it's but still it's a
Speaker 2: solid physical monster suit performance. Bernie Casey was like six',
Speaker 2: four you, know and you, know strongly, built so he
Speaker 2: occupies that monster suit rather well and looms very well
Speaker 2: over the human. Characters also has very expressive eyes that work.
Speaker 2: Well you, know all this works well to establish the
Speaker 2: presence of the lead. Gargoyle.
Speaker 3: YEAH i would say this is one of those cases
Speaker 3: where the performance comes through even though the actor is
Speaker 3: hidden behind makeup in a costume and we're not hearing
Speaker 3: their original. Voice you. Know Some santo movies we've watched
Speaker 3: are like, that where like a physical performance is good
Speaker 3: enough that it gets through all of the apparatus and
Speaker 3: through the.
Speaker 2: Dubbing, yeah, YEAH i, mean and again coming back To spanish,
Speaker 2: cinema Like Paul, nashy we almost never Hear Paul nashiy's actual,
Speaker 2: voice and the same goes for a number Of spanish
Speaker 2: actors at the. Time, so but, yeah So Bernie casey
Speaker 2: is our. Gargoyle early on in his, career he appeared
Speaker 2: in such black'sploitation pit titles As Black chariot seventy, One
Speaker 2: Cleopatra jones seventy, three as well as seventy six Is
Speaker 2: Doctor Black Mister hyde that we've mentioned that, before because
Speaker 2: that was the follow up To blackula by Director William,
Speaker 2: crane WHICH i haven't seen. Yet i've got the disc
Speaker 2: but i've heard good things about, it AND i haven't
Speaker 2: seen these other pictures THAT i just mentioned. Either and you,
Speaker 2: know as we've talked about before when we've brought up
Speaker 2: blacks exploitation cinema is that sometimes that's kind of a big,
Speaker 2: tint and it may include films that are more or
Speaker 2: less in the exploitive category of, things you. Know SO
Speaker 2: i can't speak to any of these pictures, individually except
Speaker 2: For Black, elow which we did an episode on last
Speaker 2: year and recently re. Ran but out of This Bernie
Speaker 2: casey ends up moving into all manner of, films Including
Speaker 2: The Man Who fell To, earth which we previously discussed
Speaker 2: On Weird, house a small but poignant. Part he won
Speaker 2: a nineteen seventy FOUR Naacp Image award for his role In,
Speaker 2: maury in which he starred Opposite Bose, vincent who is
Speaker 2: Not frankenstein's monster in that. Picture subsequent film roles included
Speaker 2: eighty One Sharky's, machine eighty Three's Never Say, Never, AGAIN
Speaker 2: A James bond, picture eighty Four's revenge of The, nerds eighty,
Speaker 2: Eight So I'm going To Get you sucka eighty Nine's
Speaker 2: bill And Ted's Excellent adventure nineteen nineties and other forty Eight,
Speaker 2: hours ninety, Twos Under, siege ninety five's in The mouth Of,
Speaker 2: madness ninety Six's once on A Time When We Were,
Speaker 2: colored and his final film was two thousand and Seven's Vegas.
Speaker 2: Vampires he also did a fair amount OF tv, work
Speaker 2: including seventy One's Brian, song nineteen, Eighties The Martian chronicles
Speaker 2: based on the work Of Ray, bradberry And Star Trek
Speaker 2: Deep space, nine among. Others Now. Again in this, picture
Speaker 2: he is. Dubbed he's dubbed By Vic, perrin who's also
Speaker 2: the narrator at the beginning of the. Picture paren lived
Speaker 2: nineteen sixteen through nineteen eighty, nine perhaps best known as
Speaker 2: the control voice on the Original Outer. Limits you know
Speaker 2: we control the, horizontal we control the. Vertical he also
Speaker 2: appeared on SUCH tv series as the Original Star trek
Speaker 2: and the Original Mission.
Speaker 3: Impossible they give him a real metallic voice in, this don't?
Speaker 3: They he almost sounds like HE'S i don't, know echoing
Speaker 3: through a ten box or.
Speaker 2: Something, YEAH i can't SAY i loved, it BUT i
Speaker 2: mean it works well. Enough AND i don't know what
Speaker 2: the original audio sounded. LIKE i Think i've read that
Speaker 2: the filmmakers just thought that the original vocal performs didn't
Speaker 2: match the creature that they were, creating and you, know
Speaker 2: they decided they needed to go With Vic. Pearen SO
Speaker 2: i don't. Know and again early on in the career
Speaker 2: of the Actor Bernie casey, here SO i don't know
Speaker 2: if that played into it at all as.
Speaker 3: Well, well no offense To Vic, peren but give us
Speaker 3: The Bernie casey. Cut give it to us, cowards you've got.
Speaker 2: It, YEAH i Mean Bernie casey had a great, voice
Speaker 2: so you, Know i'd like to hear. It BUT i
Speaker 2: looked around for, it in, fact BUT i couldn't find
Speaker 2: any evidence of. It All, right moving on through the cast,
Speaker 2: here we also Have Scott glenn popping up playing the Character.
Speaker 2: James what is this Reager? Reger, yeah one of the
Speaker 2: dirt bike.
Speaker 3: Boys we didn't mention right at the top that this
Speaker 3: in some ways is a gargoyles versus bikers.
Speaker 2: Movie, yes, Yeah, eventually the threat of The gargoyles will
Speaker 2: unite the natural enemies of bikers and cops will come
Speaker 2: together to battle the gargoyle. Menace So Scott, GLENN i,
Speaker 2: think is a name THAT i think most of you
Speaker 2: are probably familiar, with perhaps born in nineteen thirty, nine
Speaker 2: Though i've seen some pages and databases that are a
Speaker 2: little vague on, this as if it's. Unknown but he
Speaker 2: is still alive because he's very, Active like he's just
Speaker 2: in THE tv Series Bad, monkey WHICH i really, enjoyed
Speaker 2: and also he's in the latest season Of The White,
Speaker 2: lotus so again very. Active Great american character, actor perhaps
Speaker 2: most appreciated for those grizzled character roles that he would
Speaker 2: do a mid and later, career but his, SCREEN tv
Speaker 2: And broadway credits go back to the mid, sixties so
Speaker 2: he'd already been in a handful of things Before. Gargoyles
Speaker 2: he went on to appear In Apocalypse now in seventy,
Speaker 2: nine which was kind of a shock to me because
Speaker 2: he's largely unrecognizable to my eyes, anyway he's, bearded he's
Speaker 2: kind of not one of the more prominent, characters but
Speaker 2: he is in.
Speaker 3: IT i don't remember that.
Speaker 2: He's in More American, graffiti nineteen Eighty's Urban, cowboy and
Speaker 2: he Plays rick in the nineteen eighty Two John frankenheimer
Speaker 2: Kickboxer samurai Film The. Challenge, YEAH i haven't seen, it
Speaker 2: But i'm familiar with. IT i Think i've watched the
Speaker 2: trailer a few. Times but things really picked up at
Speaker 2: this point in his career because He's the subsequent pictures
Speaker 2: he was in included nineteen eighty Three Is The Right,
Speaker 2: stuff in which he Plays Alan. Shepard he's In Michael
Speaker 2: Mann's The, keep and his other credits include eighty Five, silverado,
Speaker 2: Nineties The hunt For Red october ninety, One The silence
Speaker 2: of The lambs two thousand and One's Training, day and
Speaker 2: SUCH tv shows As, Daredevil The, leftovers and Again Bad.
Speaker 2: Monkey in the latest season Of White.
Speaker 3: Lotus, Uh i'm not gonna Say scott glenn is swinging
Speaker 3: for the fences in this. Movie he's it feels like
Speaker 3: he's just kind of turning in a workaday. Performance but
Speaker 3: he's a good, actor so he does better than you
Speaker 3: might imagine selling lines about you, know he's like in
Speaker 3: a prison cell talking To Jennifer salt about whether gargoyles are,
Speaker 3: real and he at one point he hasked to say
Speaker 3: something like they were attacked by one of those gar,
Speaker 3: things and you know he's making it.
Speaker 2: Through, Yeah let's see a couple of small. Performers i'm
Speaker 2: including them because you did a screenshot of their credit
Speaker 2: at the. End we HAVE tv style credits at the
Speaker 2: end of this picture where we see their picture in
Speaker 2: the name of the actor the name of the. Character
Speaker 2: we Have William stevens playing Police. Chief dates unknown as
Speaker 2: far AS i could tell on this, actor mostly A
Speaker 2: tv player whose credits include the Original Outer limits in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy One's The Mephisto. Waltz and then we also
Speaker 2: Have John gruber Playing, jesse another cop who lived nineteen
Speaker 2: forty two through nineteen eighty, one mostly A tv player
Speaker 2: whose credits Include Night. Gallery now this according TO. IMDb
Speaker 2: i have not been able to verify this, elsewhere BUT
Speaker 2: IMDb claims that he is the father Of Joshua, todd
Speaker 2: the lead singer often shirtless of the Band Buck. Cherry
Speaker 2: AND i have to say this feels too random to
Speaker 2: not be, true so please correct me If i'm wrong out,
Speaker 2: there But i'm going to at least for now accept
Speaker 2: this is.
Speaker 3: Reality it would be a hilarious project to just make
Speaker 3: up facts like.
Speaker 2: That, YEAH i, MEAN i think people are that. Bored
Speaker 2: they've done it before ON. IMDb so that's WHY i
Speaker 2: do want to add the caveat that this might not be,
Speaker 2: true but it also feels too weird and specific to
Speaker 2: be anything but.
Speaker 3: Reality you know this seventies actor you've never heard. Of
Speaker 3: he's the dad of the like the cocaine.
Speaker 2: Guy so, wait, wait they had a song about.
Speaker 3: Cocaine that's the One Buck cherry. SONG i know you
Speaker 3: know what the song. IS i love the. Cocaine oh,
Speaker 3: MAN i.
Speaker 2: Don't maybe maybe We're i'm remembering the same, song BUT
Speaker 2: i didn't know what they were saying in. IT i
Speaker 2: haven't thought About Buck cherry in a long. TIME i
Speaker 2: just remember that he was like shirtless in the music.
Speaker 2: VIDEOS i think we've got a lot of tattoos. Done, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah shirtless and, tattooed all? Right and then uh, oh
Speaker 2: we have the character Of Uncle willie played By woodrow
Speaker 2: Or Woody, chambliss who lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen eighty,
Speaker 2: One american character actor of, stage, screen AND tv who
Speaker 2: made numerous memorable appearances on THE tv Western gun. Smoke
Speaker 2: and you know he has already popped up on Weird
Speaker 2: house because he plays a very similar role In The
Speaker 2: Devil's rain from nineteen seventy.
Speaker 3: Five oh, yeah, yeah he just really slots right in
Speaker 3: as the kind of weird old desert. Codure.
Speaker 2: Yeah you need a weird old dude in the desert
Speaker 2: mumbling about dark, secrets, well then call call Up woody
Speaker 2: because he'll he can totally do. It his other credits
Speaker 2: include nineteen fifty seven's three ten To yuma and nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy Eight Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club, band which of
Speaker 2: course Starred Peter frampton and The. Begies i'm ALWAYS i
Speaker 2: have had that revelation many times over the years that
Speaker 2: this is not a movie with the Actual beatles in.
Speaker 3: It, well you know what the song, Says Sergeant pepper
Speaker 3: he taught the band, play so it's you, know it's
Speaker 3: like the second. Generation.
Speaker 2: YEAH i Think woody plays the like the Senior Sargant
Speaker 2: peppers in, that BUT i Can't i've never seen, it
Speaker 2: SO i can't say much on, that BUT i will
Speaker 2: say That woody's a lot of fun in. THIS i
Speaker 2: feel like it's perhaps the best performance in the whole, movie,
Speaker 2: though as you mentioned, earlier it does change drastically over
Speaker 2: the course of a commercial. Break.
Speaker 3: Yeah he goes from shrewdly negotiating a book deal to
Speaker 3: suddenly just being like shaky and drunk and clearly making
Speaker 3: up lies about something about like folklore he was.
Speaker 2: Told, yeah and he also goes from being like, like,
Speaker 2: hey you need to help me write my book to
Speaker 2: you believe me or you get out of my shed right,
Speaker 2: Now and it happens rather rather. Swiftly, yeah all. Right
Speaker 2: we mentioned that Stan winston was behind the look of the. Creatures,
Speaker 2: indeed he is credited with The gargoyle. Makeup Stan winston
Speaker 2: lived nineteen forty six through two thousand and. Eight legendary,
Speaker 2: name multiple Time Oscar award winner and nominee for such
Speaker 2: films as eighty Seven's alien, Eight, predator ninety One's Edward Scissor,
Speaker 2: hands ninety Twos terminator, two and ninety Four's Jurassic. Park
Speaker 2: he had studied sculpture and moved To hollywood to pursue
Speaker 2: a career in, acting but ended up taking a makeup
Speaker 2: apprenticeship At Walt Disney. Studios gargoyles was his first, picture
Speaker 2: and he followed this up with a number of early
Speaker 2: pictures of, note including nineteen seventy four as The Bat,
Speaker 2: people WHICH i believe that one was featured On Mystery
Speaker 2: Science theater and handsome as you'd, expect cool monster. Effects
Speaker 2: he also did makeup on nineteen seventy Six's Doctor Black Mister,
Speaker 2: hyde which we just. Mentioned his mini credits range from
Speaker 2: small pictures to big, ones from serious dramas without any
Speaker 2: kind of speculative element to just, horror sci fi and
Speaker 2: fantasy pictures with extravagant visions of monsters and robots and
Speaker 2: what have. You as a, director he gave us a
Speaker 2: handful of, films including nineteen eighty Eight's. PUMPKINHEAD i will
Speaker 2: also throw in, That. Yes his other credits include nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy Seven's Dracula's dog Aka zoltan Of dracula.
Speaker 3: Aka a different movie than the other one we, mentioned.
Speaker 2: Right, Right, yeah they're a number OF i don't, know
Speaker 2: is this like canine'sploitation. Cinema there's like a whole supernatural
Speaker 2: dog cinematic universe out. There during the seventies and.
Speaker 3: Eighties Satanicus, Rex The Bow wow Of.
Speaker 2: Hell all, right and then finally the. Music the composer
Speaker 2: here Is Robert, prince who lived nineteen twenty nine through
Speaker 2: two thousand and. Seven and you, KNOW i often talk
Speaker 2: about films that have a nineteen Seventies Night gallery, sound you,
Speaker 2: know kind of slightly, surreal slightly disturbing music that's maybe
Speaker 2: a little bit, jazzy AND i honestly can't get enough
Speaker 2: of it with these. Films but today's selection certainly has that,
Speaker 2: sound and the man responsible for it actually composed music
Speaker 2: for episodes Of Night, gallery so not the theme song
Speaker 2: From Night, gallery but he did do the episode music
Speaker 2: for three season one. EPISODES i would say.
Speaker 3: The music In gargoyles is for what it, is it's pretty.
Speaker 3: Good there aren't really any especially memorable themes or melodies
Speaker 3: or anything like, that but a lot of it's just
Speaker 3: kind of, eerie ambient, sound and for that it's pretty.
Speaker 2: GOOD i wonder how much of That AND i don't
Speaker 2: know enough about how theme songs and episodic episodic music
Speaker 2: worked ON tv in the, day BUT i wonder how
Speaker 2: much of it was Around like you're not supposed to
Speaker 2: stand out in the episode, itself like you don't want,
Speaker 2: to you don't want to interfere with the theme. Song
Speaker 2: like the theme song is doing the heavy lifting and
Speaker 2: you're just here to add the necessary ambiance and emotional
Speaker 2: support throughout the. Episode, uh and maybe that's part of
Speaker 2: the character of what we have. Here you, know we
Speaker 2: don't have something that feels like The gargoyles theme. Song
Speaker 2: though what if we, did that would be amazing as
Speaker 2: well with the. Lyrics, yeah but. Anyway prince worked also
Speaker 2: worked on THE Tv Richard mathieson anthology Series circle Of,
Speaker 2: fear which is hosted hosted by The Sebastian. Cabot he
Speaker 2: worked mostly IN, tv but also scored a pair of
Speaker 2: noteworthy nineteen seventy six, films the black exploitation horror Film
Speaker 2: JD's revenge And Jeff Lieberman's.
Speaker 3: Squirm, Sorry i'm distracted thinking about what nineteen seventies rocker
Speaker 3: would write the Best gargoyles theme. Song i'm kind of
Speaker 3: thinking in The Steve miller. Zone. Yeah can can you
Speaker 3: imagine that it's a sort of jaded seventies rock?
Speaker 2: Tune? Yeah, yeah, YEAH i could see that. Working Like
Speaker 2: i'm instantly reminded of the nineteen seventy one film Zat
Speaker 2: or The bloodwaters Of DOCTOR z which we've talked, about
Speaker 2: which has that great theme song that is really like
Speaker 2: all about sympathizing with the villain of the picture in
Speaker 2: ways that the picture maybe doesn't completely back. Up SO
Speaker 2: i could see something like that working, here some sort
Speaker 2: of folksy ballad about the plight of the car. Coil
Speaker 2: what's that?
Speaker 3: One that was Like World war three boy or? Something
Speaker 3: World war two?
Speaker 2: Boy that's World war two? Boy oh, yeah and, Yeah
Speaker 2: i'm trying to remember who did that. Offhand jamie, Defrates jamie,
Speaker 2: Defrats that's who it. Was sache through the.
Speaker 3: Sarcasm, okay you ready to talk about the?
Speaker 2: Plot, yeah, yeah let's dive right in with some.
Speaker 3: Woodcuts, yeah so we get a cold open with The
Speaker 3: Outer limits voiceover. Narration it's that metallic electronic sound Of
Speaker 3: vic Paren, right he's the one doing, It, yeah, yeah
Speaker 3: talking at us, forcefully while we see various images of,
Speaker 3: yeah old, woodcuts paintings with demonic. Themes there's definitely some
Speaker 3: bosh in, there and also photos of grotesque statues on cathedral.
Speaker 3: Architecture the very first critter we see is kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: LOOKING i don't know what this is, from but it
Speaker 3: looks like a cross between a lamb's face and The
Speaker 3: Lance henrickson morph of pumpkinhead for Another Stan winston tie.
Speaker 2: In oh it, does doesn't. It, Yeah but.
Speaker 3: ALSO i pulled out a screenshot for you to look at, Here.
Speaker 3: ROB i like the demon with the kind of, lumpy bulbous.
Speaker 3: Face it's kind of a tumor. Face AND i did
Speaker 3: a reverse image search and found, nothing so this could
Speaker 3: be original to the. MOVIE i don't.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah it almost looks like a, Tattoo like it's
Speaker 2: a picture of somebody's like abs or. SOMETHING i don't.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, Anyway i've got to read the opening narration
Speaker 3: because this will lay the. Groundwork So Vic parrin, says
Speaker 3: as if speaking through kind of decaying, Circuitry parents, says
Speaker 3: the devil was once the most favored of the host
Speaker 3: of angels serving The, lord but pride welled in his.
Speaker 3: Breast he thought it unseemly for him to serve the
Speaker 3: devil in his band of, followers who likewise suffered the
Speaker 3: sin of, pride were defeated in battle by The lord
Speaker 3: and his, host and were banished to the outermost depths Of,
Speaker 3: hell never to know the presence of The, lord or
Speaker 3: look on heaven, again smarting with his, wounds but all
Speaker 3: the more swollen with the devil cried out from the.
Speaker 3: Depths it is better to rule in hell than serve in.
Speaker 2: Heaven all, right so you know thus, far you know
Speaker 2: there's a very strong paradise lost theme here.
Speaker 3: Exactly war in, heaven the, demons the rebellious, angels are.
Speaker 3: Defeated they fall to. Pandemonium and, yeah better to serve in,
Speaker 3: hell or rule in, hell than serve in. Heaven but
Speaker 3: it goes, on it says the devil proclaimed what was
Speaker 3: lost in heaven would be gained on. Earth he, said my,
Speaker 3: offspring the gargoyles will one day rule The lord's works
Speaker 3: earth and. Man and so it came to pass that
Speaker 3: while man ruled on, earth the gargoyles, waited, lurking hidden
Speaker 3: from the. Light reborn every six hundred years in man's
Speaker 3: reckoning of, time the gargoyles joined battle against man to
Speaker 3: gain dominion over the. Earth in each, coming the gargoyles
Speaker 3: were nearly destroyed by, men who flourished in greater. Numbers
Speaker 3: now it has been so many hundreds of years that
Speaker 3: it seems the ancient statues and paintings of gargoyles are
Speaker 3: just products of man's. Imagination in this, year with man's
Speaker 3: thoughts turned toward the many ills he has brought upon,
Speaker 3: himself man has forgotten his most ancient, adversary the. Gargoyles
Speaker 3: this is funny to me in so many. Ways first of,
Speaker 3: all no acknowledgment really of the architectural, connection except that
Speaker 3: it says like it says, now it's been many hundreds of.
Speaker 3: Years it seems the statues and paintings are just. Imagination
Speaker 3: SO i guess it's saying every six hundred years of
Speaker 3: what from nineteen seventy, Two that would mean in thirteen
Speaker 3: seventy two the gargoyles were, last they emerged and were,
Speaker 3: defeated people made statues and, paintings and then since thirteen
Speaker 3: seventy two people were, like, ah that was all just made. Up,
Speaker 3: also the movie seems to simply believe gargoyle equals. Demon
Speaker 3: it's just the.
Speaker 2: Same, so of, course feels like one of the most
Speaker 2: tacked on intro narration bits That i've ever, heard you,
Speaker 2: know where someone's, like, yeah we really need something to
Speaker 2: the beginning to draw folks in and let them know
Speaker 2: what's to, Come so let's bring In vic paren and
Speaker 2: have him or read, something write something up for.
Speaker 3: Me, yeah you've got to kind of reconcile everything also
Speaker 3: while that's going. On so AGAIN i, said we see
Speaker 3: a bunch of these paintings and, stuff BUT i wanted
Speaker 3: to pull out rob one picture that was pretty. Good
Speaker 3: who's this, like shirtless guy who's laying back while just
Speaker 3: a stream of unidentified liquid pours into his. Mouth.
Speaker 2: Nice, NICE i feel like this was partially. Recreated And
Speaker 2: labyrinth there's a scene where goblins drinking drippings from some
Speaker 2: sort of a. Barrel but, yeah we see a lot
Speaker 2: of horrific imagery in the, background some of it like
Speaker 2: ultimately a little harder than anything we see later. On
Speaker 2: but it makes sense if you're wanting to get something
Speaker 2: right there at the top to let folks know that
Speaker 2: they're in for a demonic horror, picture even if it's
Speaker 2: going to be mostly boring desert scene at. First this
Speaker 2: is a pretty cheap way to do, It like have
Speaker 2: narration that mentions the devil and all, this and then
Speaker 2: throw in a bunch of clip, art you, know a
Speaker 2: bunch of you, know old woodcuts and details From bosh
Speaker 2: paintings that're gonna really drive that home for. Folks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, anyway once the ancient mariner has let go
Speaker 3: of our arms and stopped yelling at, us we plunk
Speaker 3: down on an airstrip in The American southwest and we
Speaker 3: see like there's a single engine prop plane coming to
Speaker 3: a stop in the, foreground a bigger passenger plane landing
Speaker 3: in the, background and the title of the movie slams
Speaker 3: up on the screen in the same green slime font
Speaker 3: used for The goosebumps.
Speaker 2: Books this font just screams. Fun i'm not saying that
Speaker 2: fun will necessarily be had in the opening sequences of this,
Speaker 2: picture but the font is very.
Speaker 3: Fun so we come up on a park lot next
Speaker 3: to the airstrip and Here's Cornell. Wild he parks his,
Speaker 3: car which is a sort of, pale, drab toothpaste foam
Speaker 3: green color of station, wagon and he gets. Out he's
Speaker 3: waiting for. Somebody one THING i briefly wanted to flag
Speaker 3: just because it interested. ME i noticed while pausing and
Speaker 3: taking screenshots of this movie that there are different visual
Speaker 3: artifacts than WHAT i usually see WHEN i pause a.
Speaker 3: MOVIE i paused it here With Cornell wild in motion
Speaker 3: running from his, car and he's, blurry which is not,
Speaker 3: surprising but the way that he's blurry is that he
Speaker 3: seems to be surrounded by a haze of, horizontal dark
Speaker 3: spines protruding from the outline of his, body almost taking
Speaker 3: the form of a sort of data. Pinhead i've got
Speaker 3: a zoom in here for you to look. AT i
Speaker 3: don't know exactly what causes, this BUT i have to
Speaker 3: suspect it has to do with the fact that this
Speaker 3: movie was made FOR, tv so maybe it was shot
Speaker 3: on a different kind of, camera maybe A tv video
Speaker 3: camera of the kind of maybe shot on video to
Speaker 3: magnetic tape instead of to. Film AND i don't really,
Speaker 3: know BUT i thought that was. Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, YEAH i don't THINK i did much pausing on.
Speaker 2: MINE i wasn't getting any screen caps at, all SO
Speaker 2: i didn't notice, this but this is a great point.
Speaker 3: Anyway the character played By Cornell wilde is Again Professor Mercer,
Speaker 3: bully and the person he is waiting for here at
Speaker 3: the airstrip is his adult, Daughter Diana bully played By Jennifer,
Speaker 3: salt and she gets off the. Plane we see her like,
Speaker 3: disembarking and she is clutching in the crook of her
Speaker 3: arm a cat sized demon. Statue so she meets up
Speaker 3: with her father and they hug and have their you,
Speaker 3: know they're, reunited and he, Says i'm so glad you
Speaker 3: decided to join me and bring Me. Calamudri and we see.
Speaker 3: This we never get a really good look at this,
Speaker 3: statue but it does look tremendous from from the angles
Speaker 3: we do get And, rob you ended up digging up
Speaker 3: something about where this demon statue came.
Speaker 2: From, YEAH i mean part of. IT i didn't remember
Speaker 2: that i'd seen this, before BUT i. WASN'T i didn't
Speaker 2: remember all the plot, elements AND i WAS i was
Speaker 2: looking Up calumudry Because i'm, like all, right this is
Speaker 2: going to factor into the plot, Maybe AND i was
Speaker 2: curious if this name had any actual connection to demons
Speaker 2: in any culture, mythology AND i don't think it. Does
Speaker 2: BUT i ended up running across the details of the
Speaker 2: sculpture that we see. Here as it turns, out the
Speaker 2: sculpture of the demon in question was made By california
Speaker 2: based Artist Jim. Rump that's R U. M P h
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen forty two through nineteen ninety three and
Speaker 2: as far AS i can tell he was a mad
Speaker 2: potter in the grand tradition of mad potters for.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah there's a there's like a website about his
Speaker 3: career THAT i didn't get all that deep, into but
Speaker 3: it just it exudes weird.
Speaker 2: Wildness that's, right the rump dot. Com so that's thhg
Speaker 2: R u m P h dot. COM i highly recommend
Speaker 2: checking it. Out you can see a lot of his work.
Speaker 2: There so he was highly active in the late sixties
Speaker 2: and the seventies and the, eighties and he worked out
Speaker 2: of his own Slime factory studio In Santa. Monica that's
Speaker 2: s L y by the. Way AND i even found
Speaker 2: a business card printed on cardboard for The Slime factory
Speaker 2: there for, You. Joe it has the original address AND
Speaker 2: i think phone number of the studio AND i looked
Speaker 2: it up to see what's there, today and it's you,
Speaker 2: know it's like a modern house or condo or. Something
Speaker 2: but back in the, day this is where the Slime factory,
Speaker 2: was and it's where it, apparently from WHAT i could
Speaker 2: gather on the, website various counterculture bohemian artists seem to
Speaker 2: gather for what was called The Mind. Circus according to
Speaker 2: the rump Dot, com this is Where jim created all
Speaker 2: manner of, sculptures from like demon helms and wizard bongs
Speaker 2: to officially Licensed Star wars. Tankards so you, know we're
Speaker 2: talking like Handcrafted Star wars mugs straight from the. Kiln
Speaker 2: and apparently the situation here is Like lucas knew of his.
Speaker 2: Work George lucas like officially allowed him to produce these
Speaker 2: as Licensed Star wars memorabilia in the late nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: or early.
Speaker 3: EIGHTIES i could be wrong about, this but from my,
Speaker 3: understanding that is a rare, honor like not Have lucas say, like, uh,
Speaker 3: oh you can't do.
Speaker 2: That, yeah But i've seen some pictures of and some of.
Speaker 2: Them a lot of his work is readily available On,
Speaker 2: eBay like he can pick up A rump mug or
Speaker 2: What i'm believed to be an Official rump mug for
Speaker 2: like twenty. Bucks but if you want to get A
Speaker 2: Star wars one like An obi Wan, kenobi you're looking
Speaker 2: at two hundred bucks. Thereabouts look, around explore the world
Speaker 2: for yourself if you want to invest in some, art
Speaker 2: but they're at the slime. Factory according to The rump
Speaker 2: dot Com they also made casts of everyone's navels so
Speaker 2: they could display them on the. Wall and, yeah it
Speaker 2: sounds like he was a real wild. Character and, Yeah
Speaker 2: i've just found it really interesting that this one little
Speaker 2: sculpture that doesn't factor into the plot much at all at. All,
Speaker 2: yeah has this connection to this underground artist who seems
Speaker 2: to have enjoyed us a kind of a resurgence in recent.
Speaker 2: Years according to that, website like a lot of people
Speaker 2: have kind of forgotten About Jim rump and a lot
Speaker 2: of it's you, know coalescing once. More but that website
Speaker 2: includes listings for not only the sculpture we see, here
Speaker 2: but also like a painting or drawling THAT i guess
Speaker 2: was kind of like the concept art for the.
Speaker 3: Piece well Maybe Jennifer salt's character is supposed to be
Speaker 3: a friend Of.
Speaker 2: Rump's maybe, SO i, mean she seems like a free spirited.
Speaker 2: GAL i don't know where she's flying in. From he's
Speaker 2: got some hippie.
Speaker 3: Energy, yeah. Yea so she gives it to her, Dad Mercer,
Speaker 3: bolli and he's, like oh Boyd he like puts it
Speaker 3: in a box and he, Says calimudri will just about
Speaker 3: complete my collection of. Demons so through dialogue we learn
Speaker 3: a bit about their family. Situation mercer And diana's mother
Speaker 3: are now divorced and the mother has, remarried and it's
Speaker 3: discussed That diana and her mother don't see each other.
Speaker 3: Much diana seems to be maybe in her like late
Speaker 3: twenties or maybe about. Thirty and we are going to
Speaker 3: learn That mercer is a professor who, researches it seems
Speaker 3: both archaeology and, anthropology AND i guess also like folklore under,
Speaker 3: anthropology and he writes books for a. Living and this
Speaker 3: involves a lot of. Travel so it used to be
Speaker 3: normal For diana and her mother to accompany him on
Speaker 3: these research, trips but that hasn't happened in a, while
Speaker 3: and Now diana is excited to join her dad for
Speaker 3: a new. Project it's not spelled out, explicitly, well it nearly.
Speaker 3: IS i think she is a photographer who takes pictures
Speaker 3: that will be used in his. Books did you understand
Speaker 3: it that?
Speaker 2: Way? Right? Right, yeah he's put working on the next,
Speaker 2: book like That's ali makes The bacon and he needs
Speaker 2: some photographs of something going out into the field to
Speaker 2: get some content for the next.
Speaker 3: Book so they're about to talk more about, that but
Speaker 3: before we get, THERE i have to MENTION i typically
Speaker 3: am going to avoid making fun of the appearance of child,
Speaker 3: actors BUT i have to point out there's this kid
Speaker 3: in the. Background like the way the light is falling
Speaker 3: on this blonde child with dark. Eyes he looks like
Speaker 3: he's like sorting through the baggage card at the, airport
Speaker 3: and he looks like the spawn Of Rutger hower And Emperor.
Speaker 3: PALPATINE i was confused by this kid because at, first
Speaker 3: like AS i was beginning to sort of ease into.
Speaker 2: The, PICTURE i thought this kid was with, them and
Speaker 2: THEN i even thought he was in the station wagon with. Them,
Speaker 2: later because it looks like there's something moving in the
Speaker 2: back of the station, WAGON i was, like, oh as a, Person,
Speaker 2: yeah So i'm, LIKE i guess this is the younger.
Speaker 2: Brother but then THEN i realized, later, like, no this
Speaker 2: kid has no connection to these, characters so he's just.
Speaker 2: Gone we never see him.
Speaker 3: Again, yeah bye. Bye, Anyway mercer And diana they get
Speaker 3: in the station, wagon they drive off into the desert
Speaker 3: and then chat awkward About mercer's career for the benefit
Speaker 3: of the. Audience ROB i think you were calling attention
Speaker 3: to some of these dialogue scenes in the car at
Speaker 3: the beginning as being especially. Funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah we have some sequences where it's just the
Speaker 2: station wagon driving, along no interior shots and his dialogue. Voiceover,
Speaker 2: yeah we eventually do enter the vehicle with them for.
Speaker 2: Conversations and, YEAH i enjoy all of the scenes with
Speaker 2: the station, wagon including some later on that are very
Speaker 2: GARTH marangi dark. Place oh, like it's clearly like filmed,
Speaker 2: inside with people shaking the car on both, sides with.
Speaker 3: The gargoyles clinging to the roof that's obviously secured there
Speaker 3: by some. Anyway so we learn from their dialogue That
Speaker 3: Mercer bowley, is AS i, said archaeologist and, anthropologist but
Speaker 3: his work focuses especially on demons and, monsters and he
Speaker 3: is not just your average. Academic he is a media
Speaker 3: superstar who writes best selling books and he gets booked
Speaker 3: ON tv talk. Shows apparently his gig is telling people that, demons,
Speaker 3: devils and witchcraft are not, real they are only. Superstition
Speaker 3: so they're they're setting him up as a kind Of
Speaker 3: James randy Of satanic. Monsterdom you may think demons and
Speaker 3: devils and monsters are, real but they're.
Speaker 2: Not. Yeah you can imagine him even being On carson
Speaker 2: back in the, day like you, know like A Late
Speaker 2: Tonight show guest that pops up and has some fun
Speaker 2: With johnny talking about some demon like maybe he even
Speaker 2: brings in this.
Speaker 3: Sculpture but Then diana is, like she, Goes, dad do
Speaker 3: you really believe the world of evil is nothing more
Speaker 3: than a? Fantasy and he, replies who knows it sells my?
Speaker 3: Books what a bizarre aura of anti viisimilitude the writers
Speaker 3: have conjured here with this. Character so a few. Things
Speaker 3: first of, all the idea of like he's a professor
Speaker 3: who specializes in demons and monsters and who rakes in
Speaker 3: the cash by publishing books claiming the demons and monsters
Speaker 3: are not. Real let me tell you that is absolutely
Speaker 3: where the money.
Speaker 2: IS i, Mean i've bought plenty of books about demons
Speaker 2: and monsters and those authors are not claiming they're.
Speaker 3: Real, well but it's not just that he's not claiming they're.
Speaker 3: Real he's writing books to be like that demon not?
Speaker 2: Real yeah, Real, yeah He's it's not just about this
Speaker 2: is an important folk. Belief you get more of the
Speaker 2: sense that he's, like demons are. Nonsense, now let me
Speaker 2: show you some.
Speaker 3: Pictures, yeah and they like set him up on THESE
Speaker 3: tv talk shows to like argue with witches and. Stuff
Speaker 3: so that's his public, persona but we find out in
Speaker 3: private he doesn't actually have a position on whether demons
Speaker 3: are real or. Not it's just a character he insincerely
Speaker 3: adopts because that's how he makes, money that's what the public.
Speaker 3: Wants Bizarre, anyway he is currently working on a book
Speaker 3: called five Thousand years Of, demonology and the goal of
Speaker 3: this book will be to quote Trace man's conception of
Speaker 3: evil from three THOUSAND bc to the.
Speaker 2: Present, yeah and he said it's going to be a
Speaker 2: big seller Come christmas, season like this is the one
Speaker 2: everyone's gonna want on their uh there there on their
Speaker 2: living room, table like big coffee table vibes.
Speaker 3: Here, yeah and of Course diana's photos are going to
Speaker 3: be in the book as. Well but SO i guess
Speaker 3: this is like the first leg of the trip to
Speaker 3: research this. Book they're currently en route to meet a
Speaker 3: gin guzzling desert crank the professor has been corresponding with
Speaker 3: who claims to have knowledge of devil monster uh and
Speaker 3: so they're going to be driving for a while to get,
Speaker 3: there and boy strap yourself in for these driving. Scenes
Speaker 3: there's even a scene where they take a wrong turn
Speaker 3: and have to go back five.
Speaker 2: Miles, yeah, yeah you. Can this is this is where
Speaker 2: you begin to understand why we have that that tact
Speaker 2: on narration and the sequence of demonic.
Speaker 3: Imagery BUT i will, say, ACTUALLY i guess the Wrong
Speaker 3: turren scene is the first time we see a, gargoyle
Speaker 3: not actually, see but indirectly, see because as the car
Speaker 3: comes to a, stop we see it framed from far.
Speaker 3: Away we're like up on a rocky hill, nearby and
Speaker 3: suddenly there is a winged humanoid shadow that falls over the,
Speaker 3: rocks and this, unsettling fluttering electronic music kicks, in and
Speaker 3: you know it's conjuring some decent.
Speaker 2: Atmosphere yeah, YEAH i mean it's often pointed out, that you,
Speaker 2: know nighttime is certainly a great place for supernatural threats to,
Speaker 2: reside but sometimes if you do it, right the daytime
Speaker 2: can be equally. Terrifying AND i mean here we do
Speaker 2: have a desolate desert. Environment there is kind of a
Speaker 2: weird sense that, like how could they not see something so?
Speaker 2: Big but THEN i don't know you're thinking, about like direct,
Speaker 2: sun it is possible for things to sort of hide
Speaker 2: in the, Sun So i'm willing to grant the believability
Speaker 2: to this.
Speaker 3: SCENE i think daytime in the desert can be a scary.
Speaker 3: Environment there's kind of, stillness stillness to desert air that
Speaker 3: can be a little.
Speaker 2: Creepy. Yeah, yeah and, again like the sun can be
Speaker 2: be bright, thing and there are plenty of natural creatures
Speaker 2: that can hide quite well in the open desert so
Speaker 2: that humans can't see, Them and we can easily imagine
Speaker 2: that a gargoyle could do the. SAME i like these, Gargoyles.
Speaker 3: YES i like out on the way to the meeting.
Speaker 3: Place next they start seeing these these signs beside the,
Speaker 3: road like they're about to meet The. Riddler they're just
Speaker 3: these Big riddler question.
Speaker 2: Marks big like weird unofficial, Signs like there's no sense
Speaker 2: that these are official like highway, signs like some old
Speaker 2: kook has been setting these up to try and get
Speaker 2: the tourist.
Speaker 3: Traffic, yeah they promise a two headed mystery, lizard a
Speaker 3: snake in and a monster that flies fl ys as
Speaker 3: well as cold. Beer and so when we get to the.
Speaker 3: Destination it is Called Uncle Willie's Desert. Museum, yes the
Speaker 3: pick of fence is falling. Over, yes there's a donkey out. Front,
Speaker 3: yes the roof is littered with cow.
Speaker 2: Skulls it looks, great it.
Speaker 3: Does, yeah and inside it looks like The sawyer family lives.
Speaker 3: Here It's tcum. Mansion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah and Again Uncle woody is. Great this is
Speaker 2: a great character performance. Here end up wanting more than we.
Speaker 3: Get, Right so he's, like already, sweaty AND i think
Speaker 3: probably been drinking when he first meets. Them he comes
Speaker 3: out and he's, like why DON'T i just get you some?
Speaker 2: Beers how cold do these beers end up?
Speaker 3: Looking by the, WAY i don't know about, that.
Speaker 2: All, Right so the cold, beer presumably cold, beer has been. Served.
Speaker 3: Yeah so the short version On willie is that he
Speaker 3: wrote to Doctor bowley saying he has records of Local
Speaker 3: Native american exorcism rights and he also has some artifacts to.
Speaker 3: Share But willie tries to kind of flip the. Script he's, like,
Speaker 3: HEY i saw you ON tv with all your fancy book.
Speaker 3: LEARNING i am in possession of a gargoyle skeleton AND
Speaker 3: i want you to co author a book with. Me
Speaker 3: with my picture on the, cover BECAUSE i, MEAN i
Speaker 3: agree that would sell. BOOKS i would buy any book
Speaker 3: that had a picture Of Uncle willy on the.
Speaker 2: Cover and at, first the professor is just, like see you.
Speaker 2: Later we're gone. Walking we're just walking now and walking
Speaker 2: out of this. Store AND i guess maybe in the long,
Speaker 2: run like this was a negotiating, tactic but when it
Speaker 2: occurs in the, film it just makes him seem like
Speaker 2: a huge, jerk, like, dude you just flew in, here
Speaker 2: drove however long through the desert to Meet, willie and
Speaker 2: you're just gonna immediately walk out on him without hearing
Speaker 2: him out a little.
Speaker 3: Bit, yeah, yeah But willy's also driving a hard. Bargain.
Speaker 3: Yeah So willy takes them out to his gargoyle shack
Speaker 3: where he keeps the. Skeleton it's like a human skeleton
Speaker 3: in the body sort. Of, ACTUALLY i guess it's not so.
Speaker 3: Much it's by pal you, know it's, upright but it's got,
Speaker 3: wings it's got claws instead of, toes and then the
Speaker 3: head has horns and a giant.
Speaker 2: Beak. YEAH i think someone who has a better head
Speaker 2: for anatomy might look at this skeleton and have some
Speaker 2: serious questions about how it all comes together.
Speaker 3: Here, yeah and of Course bully doesn't believe it at.
Speaker 3: First he's, like this is a concoction of unrelated. Bones he,
Speaker 3: says he admires the, artistry but he rejects the reality of.
Speaker 3: It But willie is. Adamant so he's got a bunch
Speaker 3: of stories of how the local tribes had to hold
Speaker 3: off these monsters with sacrifices and rituals for hundreds of.
Speaker 3: Years and then there's a little moment Where diana starts
Speaker 3: taking pictures While willie's back is, turned and he gets
Speaker 3: very upset about. This no pictures without a.
Speaker 2: Deal, yeah and he's really good in the. Scene he's totally.
Speaker 2: Raving but, NOW i will say that this mention of
Speaker 2: the native practices that were so effective at containing and
Speaker 2: holding off the, gargoyles this sounds really, Intriguing and you
Speaker 2: might be tempted to think this is going to come
Speaker 2: into play now that they've rolled this cannon out on,
Speaker 2: deck but, no, no it's not gonna come up.
Speaker 3: Again, Well willy gets drunk and he starts trying to
Speaker 3: like tell some of these tales as told to, him
Speaker 3: but it sounds like he's just making it up as
Speaker 3: he goes.
Speaker 2: Along, mmm, NO i don't, know are just having a
Speaker 2: hard time remembering. It it would have been an interesting twist
Speaker 2: if like these were really the native lore was really
Speaker 2: key to defeating the. Gargoyles and you, know all these
Speaker 2: our contemporary characters here are unable to defeat the gargoyles
Speaker 2: in the end because they no longer have access to that.
Speaker 3: Information, no it turns out what's crucial to defeating the
Speaker 3: gargoyles are, guns, gasoline and bashing with.
Speaker 2: Rocks that's.
Speaker 3: Right so in the middle of all, this the gargoyle
Speaker 3: shack is suddenly it comes under. Attack. Outside there is
Speaker 3: a fluttering of leathery, wings the walls start, shaking and
Speaker 3: something is shredding through the door with huge catlike. Claws
Speaker 3: and in the middle of all, this a big roof
Speaker 3: beam falls down and Hits. Willy everything catches on. Fire
Speaker 3: mercer And diana run, Away they like run out to
Speaker 3: their car to, escape And diana's, like, oh, look Uncle,
Speaker 3: willy And mercer's just, like leave. Him he's.
Speaker 2: Dead, yeah very quick to write him. Up and then
Speaker 2: he gets hit in the head and then he's caught on.
Speaker 2: Fire BUT i don't, know it seemed like there was a.
Speaker 3: Possibility, yeah they didn't really investigate too. Close they just you,
Speaker 3: know get to leave. Him he's dead very. Easily but
Speaker 3: they do stop to grab the gargoyle. Skull so there's
Speaker 3: an escape sequence in the station wagon that involves several
Speaker 3: more gargoyle attacks in the. Dark there's like one clinging
Speaker 3: to the, roof WHICH i believe they dislodge by way
Speaker 3: of a three point. Turn and then also you, know
Speaker 3: they're attacking the. Window the car gets really banged. Up and,
Speaker 3: meanwhile while they're driving, away they're listening to the playback
Speaker 3: of the audio tape they were making Of willy when
Speaker 3: the shack was.
Speaker 2: Attacked, yeah on all this section, here this is where
Speaker 2: we get some of those Great GARTH marangi dark place
Speaker 2: ask shake the car in a dark, room. Yes.
Speaker 3: Effects so after they finned off the gargoyle, attacks it's
Speaker 3: time to go to the gargoyle. Motel they like drop
Speaker 3: their car off at an all night service station in
Speaker 3: the middle of the. Desert that's. Convenient there's a motel right.
Speaker 3: Nearby and the gargoyles really tore the car. Up it
Speaker 3: is slashed to, pieces and so they go over to this.
Speaker 3: MOTEL i looked this. Up this was a real motel Near,
Speaker 3: Carlsbad New mexico that was called The Cactus. Motel as
Speaker 3: like a sort of Roadside america POST i found refers
Speaker 3: to it as The Gargoyles.
Speaker 2: Motel, yeah and apparently no longer. AROUND. I you, KNOW
Speaker 2: i might otherwise be inclined to say it's a tragedy
Speaker 2: that we lost such an iconic filming. Location but this
Speaker 2: place looks pretty rough in nineteen seventy, Two and according
Speaker 2: to this Roadside america, post apparently now it's a Registered
Speaker 2: New mexico historical, site not because of The gargoyles, movie
Speaker 2: but because of some archaeologic digs in the, area real,
Speaker 2: ones not gargoyle.
Speaker 3: Related so at the, motel they check in with the,
Speaker 3: Proprietor Missus. Parks she answers the door with a tall
Speaker 3: glass of. Liquor this is that, Character and she takes
Speaker 3: them to the, room and she keeps trying to Get
Speaker 3: Cornell wild to like come back and party with. Her
Speaker 3: and she also won't stop telling stories of grizzly car
Speaker 3: accidents she has.
Speaker 2: Witnessed, yes hers is a curious seduction. Style it does
Speaker 2: not quite work in this, film but apparently it has worked,
Speaker 2: before so who can?
Speaker 3: Falter AND i think this is sort of the end
Speaker 3: Of act. One they go to, bed so, HERE i
Speaker 3: guess we can zoom out and talk in some broader.
Speaker 3: Strokes the next, morning they sort of report what, happened
Speaker 3: or at least a partial version of what happened to the.
Speaker 3: Police mercer holds back the full gargoyle, ENCOUNTER i think
Speaker 3: because he hasn't gotten the gargoyle skull carbon dated.
Speaker 2: Yet mercer is, very very relaxed in all of, this, Like,
Speaker 2: okay there was a violent encounter with creatures and somebody,
Speaker 2: died And will he's out, There willi's out there in
Speaker 2: the desert. Dead let's go and get a good night's.
Speaker 2: Sleep let's make sure we get the car turned into
Speaker 2: to a. Mechanic we'll report this to the police in the.
Speaker 3: Morning, yeah and not tell them everything Because i'm a
Speaker 3: little fuzzy on exactly why they couldn't. Yet he's, LIKE
Speaker 3: i haven't fully done all the research, yet so.
Speaker 2: Yeah and we do continue to see this as a character,
Speaker 2: trait like at Times diana accuses him of being unfeeling
Speaker 2: and he's like, well this is like the maximum of
Speaker 2: what we can do right. Now like we we can
Speaker 2: come back later with more info and get more, done
Speaker 2: but right now this is all we can. Do and
Speaker 2: SO i, MEAN i WILL i would acknowledge that to
Speaker 2: a certain. Degree, YEAH i guess. So.
Speaker 3: Uh, anyway so the police go to investigate the scene
Speaker 3: of the fire and they find a gang of young
Speaker 3: motorcycle enthusiasts loitering around the crime. Scene their leader seems
Speaker 3: to Be Scott glenn played by Or Scott glenn playing
Speaker 3: this young guy Named James rieger who's a very very
Speaker 3: good looking bad boy on a. Motorcycle the bullies do
Speaker 3: not implicate the bikers in the, crime but the cops
Speaker 3: arrest them, anyway and the bullies do not reveal what
Speaker 3: they do know would that would make it clear that
Speaker 3: the bikers were not were not to.
Speaker 2: Blame and this shuld becomes no surprise to anyone who's
Speaker 2: watched any amount of biker in the. Media even though
Speaker 2: these guys are not really a motorcycle, club they're just
Speaker 2: as pointed, out they're just dirt. Bikers but, still bikers
Speaker 2: and cops do not like each, other and our natural,
Speaker 2: enemies and of, course the cops are going to arrest
Speaker 2: the bikers for anything they can get them.
Speaker 3: On, yeah the cops are just, like, yeah you know
Speaker 3: how these dirt bikers are, There they probably did. Something.
Speaker 3: Yeah so later that, night the bullies are back in
Speaker 3: their motel room at The Cactus motel and they are
Speaker 3: attacked by several. Gargoyles we get some great scenes of
Speaker 3: breakaway doors and and the motel attack that just kind
Speaker 3: of crumble like they're made out OF i don't, know gram.
Speaker 2: Crackers, yeah and it's not a siege sequence, either because
Speaker 2: the gargoyles are just right in, There like there's one
Speaker 2: in the. BATHROOM i don't know what that gargoyle is
Speaker 2: doing in the. Bathroom When mercer opens the, door it's
Speaker 2: like it's like the first stage of this attack is
Speaker 2: to rifle through his pills or. Something.
Speaker 3: Yeah they just kool aid man bust through the.
Speaker 2: Walls.
Speaker 3: Yeah but they're, there in fact to retrieve the gargoyle,
Speaker 3: skull which is. Interesting that means it seems these creatures
Speaker 3: must be intelligent and they are trying to cover up
Speaker 3: evidence of their. Existence but during this this attempt to
Speaker 3: retrieve the, skull one of the gargoyles gets hit by
Speaker 3: a truck and, killed And bully takes the body back
Speaker 3: with him and so and here we get to see
Speaker 3: like the different kinds of. Gargoyles they are like some
Speaker 3: gargoyles that are more lizard, men others that have more
Speaker 3: bird like, features kind of with.
Speaker 2: Beaks, yeah, YEAH i think this is of course fitting
Speaker 2: with the very designs of like actual architectural. Gargoyles but
Speaker 2: the main ones we see attacking here are, wingless which you,
Speaker 2: know we can interpret as being due to the fact
Speaker 2: that wings are extra work and maybe you don't have
Speaker 2: time to make wings for. Everybody but also maybe these
Speaker 2: are worker gargoyles or. Juveniles but, yeah there's a great
Speaker 2: deal of varied morphology, here and if you want to
Speaker 2: see some like better imagery behind the scenes imagery of
Speaker 2: the different masks and. Costumes The Stan Winston school has
Speaker 2: a great article About stan and his cohorts work on,
Speaker 2: gargoyles with lots of cool pictures and masks and, suits
Speaker 2: so look that up at Stan winston school dot.
Speaker 3: Com so there's a scene Where diana goes to the
Speaker 3: police station to get them to Release Scott glenn and his.
Speaker 3: Bros because you know they didn't do the, murder but
Speaker 3: the police will not release them. Yet and, again the
Speaker 3: bullies could tell the whole truth now because they've got
Speaker 3: a dead gargoyle boty is proof they've got it in their,
Speaker 3: Car BUT i Think bowley doesn't for some, reason still
Speaker 3: can't reveal. It he like doesn't want to get scooped
Speaker 3: on the discovery or.
Speaker 2: Something, yeah, yeah it's like he it's not that he
Speaker 2: doesn't want to help, people but he's very calculated in
Speaker 2: how he wants to roll everything.
Speaker 3: Out Look out for number, One.
Speaker 2: Yeah look out for number. One maybe make sure you
Speaker 2: have a good press release prepared, beforehand even if the
Speaker 2: bikers are just stewing in the jail.
Speaker 3: Cell BUT i like this is one of those movie
Speaker 3: jails where you can walk into the police station and
Speaker 3: then just walk up to the cells and like talk
Speaker 3: to the people in.
Speaker 2: Them, yeah it's Basically Desert.
Speaker 3: Mayberry, yeah So diana walks up to the biker is
Speaker 3: and kind kind of semi flirts With rigor here but
Speaker 3: talks to him about, Gargoyles and there's a good exchange
Speaker 3: Where Scott glenn, says so you and your old man
Speaker 3: you're not afraid of them gar. Things, Huh and she
Speaker 3: says gargoyles are a scientific fact and they're no more
Speaker 3: dangerous than a high school dropout on a. Motorcycle.
Speaker 2: YEAH i don't, Know. DIANA i feel like the Guard
Speaker 2: things by this point in the film have proven themselves
Speaker 2: to be rather shockingly, effective you, know tearing up the
Speaker 2: car and all. Like there is violent as a supernatural motorcycle.
Speaker 2: Gang BUT i think they obviously trump just the motorcycle
Speaker 2: dropout squad that she's referring.
Speaker 3: To, Yeah gargoyle's on wheels, Anyway so there's another gargoyle
Speaker 3: attack on the. Bullies this time the gargoyles take the
Speaker 3: body with, Them they take the professor's, books and they Kidnapped,
Speaker 3: diana taking her back to the gargoyle home base within
Speaker 3: a local cave, system which Is Carlsbad kenyon Or Kenyons,
Speaker 3: caverns isn't.
Speaker 2: It, yeah, YEAH i look this. Up the cave scenes
Speaker 2: were filmed In Carlsbad Caverns National. PARK i don't THINK
Speaker 2: i have actually been, there been To New mexico? Once
Speaker 2: have you been To? Carlsbad?
Speaker 3: No, NO i have been In New mexico but didn't
Speaker 3: make it to the.
Speaker 2: Caves. Yeah i've been to some other cave systems in
Speaker 2: this part of the, country but not. These but, yeah
Speaker 2: this is one of a number of pictures that were filmed, there,
Speaker 2: also including nineteen Fifties King Solomon's, minds fifty One's Unknown,
Speaker 2: world fifty Eight's The, spider fifty Nine's journey to The
Speaker 2: center of The, earth seventy Three's John Livingston, seagull and
Speaker 2: seventy four Is The Bat, people which we already. REFERENCED
Speaker 2: i Believe Stan winston worked on that one as.
Speaker 3: Well so from here the movie finally starts to arrive
Speaker 3: at its core, proposition which is a gargoyle hunt featuring,
Speaker 3: yes of course, cops but also. Bikers So Cornell, WILDE
Speaker 3: i forget how he somehow convinces the cops to release
Speaker 3: the bikers from jail and they team up to help
Speaker 3: find the gargoyles layer and Save. Diana this is after
Speaker 3: the second attack, there SO i guess the cops have
Speaker 3: been convinced. Somehow, also Missus, parks the alcoholic lady at the,
Speaker 3: motel and the local mechanic drive away in a pickup
Speaker 3: truck to get help from out of. Town but later
Speaker 3: the posse finds the truck, wrecked smeared with, blood and
Speaker 3: they come across Missus parks's body hanging upside down from
Speaker 3: a telephone, pole which is a very creepy shot in,
Speaker 3: concept but a little bit less so in. Execution AND
Speaker 3: i think she should have still had the rumglass in her.
Speaker 2: HAND i think. SO i think maybe downing the last
Speaker 2: of it would have been like the last act that
Speaker 2: she committed before.
Speaker 3: Passing, anyways the posse hunts the gargoyle. Cave we get
Speaker 3: some action scenes of cops and bikers fighting gargoyle warriors
Speaker 3: and the scrub. Desert the gargoyles can, fly but they
Speaker 3: are not, invincible so it's a you, know it's a tough,
Speaker 3: fight but a somewhat fair. Fight, meanwhile as all this
Speaker 3: is going, on we also follow what happens To diana
Speaker 3: in the gargoyle. Cave while none of the gargoyles that
Speaker 3: we see earlier in the movie ever, Speak diana is
Speaker 3: taken to the leader of The, gargoyles who has quite
Speaker 3: a lot to, say and this Is Bernie casey in the,
Speaker 3: suit but again dubbed By Vic, parrien the voice from
Speaker 3: the outer. Limits so he explains that the history that
Speaker 3: we learned at the, beginning The gargoyles keep popping up
Speaker 3: in human history every six hundred years or so to
Speaker 3: try to destroy humankind and take over the, world but
Speaker 3: the humans keep beating them each, time after which they
Speaker 3: go into another six hundred year. Incubation but this time
Speaker 3: it will be. Different The gargoyles will really they're going
Speaker 3: to defeat us this, time and the gargoyle leader Makes
Speaker 3: diana read aloud to him From Doctor bowley's books because he's,
Speaker 3: LIKE i find your voice pleasing. Now the head gargoyle
Speaker 3: is clearly interested In. Diana he is attracted to, her
Speaker 3: though for some, reason they pause to make it explicit
Speaker 3: that the gargoyles do not need humans in order to.
Speaker 3: Reproduce in, fact they've got huge chambers full of more
Speaker 3: gargoyle eggs already, incubating and WHAT i thought was kind
Speaker 3: of a strange and interesting. Choice it is The King
Speaker 3: gargoyle's attraction To diana that ultimately helps the humans win
Speaker 3: at the end of the, movie because it seems that
Speaker 3: The Queen gargoyle sort of the his gargoyle wife becomes
Speaker 3: jealous of this and, causes and this causes The Queen
Speaker 3: gargoyle to help lead Doctor bowley to the rescue.
Speaker 2: Later, yeap that seems to be how it plays. Out
Speaker 2: maybe it's the soap opera writing credentials of the writing,
Speaker 2: team but that seems to be how it plays, out
Speaker 2: which isn't you? KNOW i, MEAN i guess on one, hand,
Speaker 2: yeah monster kidnapping the girl is just a standard monster
Speaker 2: movie trope and they felt like they needed to employ,
Speaker 2: that and so maybe they're adding just a little soap
Speaker 2: opera nuance to all of. That but it does seem
Speaker 2: like The gargoyle mission here has gone rather off. Track
Speaker 2: like you only get to do this every six hundred, years,
Speaker 2: guys you need to pull it together beyond target because
Speaker 2: during those six hundred years you have fallen behind in
Speaker 2: technology a. Lot, yes you, know whether you realize it or,
Speaker 2: not things are going to be different this, time and
Speaker 2: don't count too much on next. Time it could be,
Speaker 2: harder maybe it'll be, easy but the six hundred years
Speaker 2: is a long, time that's.
Speaker 3: TRUE i, MEAN i feel like the jealousy is a
Speaker 3: weird thing because it makes the gargoyles seem more, human
Speaker 3: which also makes the ending less palatable where the ending.
Speaker 3: Is it's very ripley in aliens Like Scott glin And
Speaker 3: Cornell wilde go into the cave and they're, like we
Speaker 3: got to destroy this, whole all the, eggs you, know
Speaker 3: burn them all. Up but like the jealousy thing has
Speaker 3: made it seem, like, oh these are not just like,
Speaker 3: weapons not just like destruction. Machines they kind of are
Speaker 3: people in a, sense like they might want to destroy,
Speaker 3: us but they are they feel kind of.
Speaker 2: Human, now, yeah we see like hatchling gargoyles as, well so, like,
Speaker 2: yeah you end up feeling for them quite a. Bit
Speaker 2: and you, know, granted The gargoyles have discussed wiping out
Speaker 2: all humans and you, know we obviously can't get on
Speaker 2: board with that, constat but the humans also seem to
Speaker 2: to be very much in favor of wiping out the,
Speaker 2: gargle so you, know we're in a bit of a standoff.
Speaker 3: Here well, yeah but the show of sort of betrayal
Speaker 3: of The King gargoyle by The Queen gargoyle suggests there
Speaker 3: could be differences of opinion within The gargoyle, people like
Speaker 3: what if instead we just depose The King gargoyle and
Speaker 3: empower some one of the gargoyles that wants to live
Speaker 3: in harmony with.
Speaker 2: Humans it seems very, possible, RIGHT i, mean gargoyles probably
Speaker 2: have a lot to teach. Us we have stuff to
Speaker 2: teach them they're interested, in so why.
Speaker 3: Not, anyway so we get a final confrontation where Doctor
Speaker 3: bully has led to the gargoyle, leader who wants to
Speaker 3: Carry diana away with. Him as they're, ESCAPING i think
Speaker 3: maybe some MORE i don't, know maybe some more people are.
Speaker 3: Arriving oh oh, WAIT i almost forgot to Mention Scott
Speaker 3: glenn blows himself up in order to destroy the eggs
Speaker 3: in one. Room Scott glenn is already that dedicated to
Speaker 3: the destruction of gargoyle.
Speaker 2: Kind you, know he may have been no good biker,
Speaker 2: kid but he just needed a cause to get. Behind
Speaker 2: and here is.
Speaker 3: So, anyway AS i, said the gargoyle main gargoyle wants
Speaker 3: to fly away With, diana But Doctor bowley comes up
Speaker 3: with a solution to this. Problem he bashes the Gargoyle
Speaker 3: queen's wing with a rock so she can no longer.
Speaker 3: Fly so if the gargoyle king wants to escape with,
Speaker 3: her he has to carry, her meaning he cannot also Carry,
Speaker 3: diana so he has to Leave diana. Behind and he
Speaker 3: has a line he, says how clever you. Are your
Speaker 3: choice has allowed you and your daughter to. Survive it
Speaker 3: also allows me and my kind to, survive perhaps at
Speaker 3: the price of your supremacy On. Earth one, day and
Speaker 3: he flies, away and that's the ending we'd like, see
Speaker 3: and they show him. Flying we get a kind of
Speaker 3: slow mo flyaway.
Speaker 2: Shot looks pretty good. TOO i have to, say all things,
Speaker 2: considered you, know, OKAY tv movie, budget it could have
Speaker 2: looked a lot flappier and on the, wire BUT i
Speaker 2: thought it looked pretty. Good but, yeah our heroes end
Speaker 2: up sort of taking the high, road but most out
Speaker 2: of self interest and after like getting in a cheap
Speaker 2: shot against the very female gargoyle who put her own
Speaker 2: species ascension aside to help them. Out, yeah, so you,
Speaker 2: know mixed.
Speaker 3: Feelings it's unclear to me exactly how conscious the film
Speaker 3: is of the moral ambiguity of its, heroes especially Of
Speaker 3: Cornell wilde's. Character BUT i don't. KNOW i don't know
Speaker 3: if this was an attempt to create a kind of
Speaker 3: morally gray protagonist who uses a lot of dirty tricks
Speaker 3: and often acts in self interest or if that or
Speaker 3: if that was just kind of like going over their.
Speaker 3: Heads there's not a lot of acknowledgment of.
Speaker 2: It, yeah it's hard to tell if this is something
Speaker 2: that was diluted in the execution of the film and
Speaker 2: maybe more prevalent in the, script or is this something
Speaker 2: an energy that kind of emerges out of the filmmaking.
Speaker 2: Process but, yeah you can imagine if someone were to remake,
Speaker 2: this like imagine The Rob zombie remake of Gard Rob
Speaker 2: zombie would get in, there he would explore these.
Speaker 3: Themes Sid haig as Doctor Mercer, Bowley Sherry Moon zombie
Speaker 3: As Diana.
Speaker 2: Bowley, yeah, yeah OR i think now this should Be
Speaker 2: zombie's next, film like get her in that she can
Speaker 2: play The Queen. Gargoyle, okay, yeah and who else is
Speaker 2: he fond of casting these? Days, Oh Richard. Brake Richard
Speaker 2: brake is The King. Gargoyle that's that's somebody That zombie
Speaker 2: cast a. Lot not as tall as A Bernie, casey
Speaker 2: but you, know good monster makeup.
Speaker 3: Guy oh, okay, well, anyway That's.
Speaker 2: Gargoyle's, yeah it's a fun. ONE i, mean you can
Speaker 2: really see. WHY i read subsequently was reading some other
Speaker 2: like little reviews on letterboxed and you know a lot
Speaker 2: of people were saying things about how when they were,
Speaker 2: kids this movie resonated with, them you, know, Yeah and
Speaker 2: you can totally get that with these these fun monster.
Speaker 2: Suits and also the kind of subversive nature that it
Speaker 2: might feel like it has if you're a kid just
Speaker 2: watching stuff on, television like what is? Gargoyles like it's,
Speaker 2: again it's it's weirder than it probably has any right to.
Speaker 3: Be CAN i offer another thing that is interesting about
Speaker 3: television as a venue for horror movies compared to the.
Speaker 3: CINEMA i don't know this for sure about historical practices
Speaker 3: and movie, theaters BUT i bet it was hard for
Speaker 3: little kids to get into a movie theater to see
Speaker 3: like AN r rated horror, movie or maybe NOT r
Speaker 3: rated at the, time but a mature horror movie in
Speaker 3: the theaters in the. Seventies but you know who controls
Speaker 3: what kids are watching ON tv in the? Home, Parents
Speaker 3: maybe they're not even in the, room so the kid
Speaker 3: turns this. On that might be a different kind of
Speaker 3: reception thing about the medium as, Well like it's easier
Speaker 3: for kids to tune into a horror movie that they
Speaker 3: are not technically mature enough for when it's shown ON.
Speaker 2: Tv, yeah, yeah because especially at the, time it's like it's, implied,
Speaker 2: well if it's on network, television they should be able
Speaker 2: to handle.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah so that kind of changes the way the
Speaker 3: horror work as, well because it's like a different audience
Speaker 3: and different. Setting, anyway the made FOR tv nous it
Speaker 3: really is strong. Here it is part of what this
Speaker 3: film is for good and for.
Speaker 2: Ill all, Right, well we'd love to hear from everyone out.
Speaker 2: There do you HAVE i know a number of you
Speaker 2: do have thoughts About, Gargoyles so write in and tell
Speaker 2: us what your connection is to this. Movie what do
Speaker 2: you think about some of the themes we've discussed. Here,
Speaker 2: likewise any other gargoyle related media out? There were you
Speaker 2: a big fan of the Animated gargoyles series and have
Speaker 2: thoughts on? That right, in we'd love to hear from. You.
Speaker 2: Do joe AND i need to watch the twenty fourteen
Speaker 2: FILM I, frankenstein in Which frankenstein's monster Battles. Gargoyles, maybe
Speaker 2: so make a case for it or anything else we
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