WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms 0:00:02.440 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:15.480 Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:18.520 This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:20.639 today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be talking 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:24.680 about the nineteen fifty three creature film The Beast from 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:29.560 twenty thousand Fathoms, a very interesting precursor to movies that 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:32.760 would come later, like Godzilla, and you might say one 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:36.240 that follows in the footsteps of King Kong. I had 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:39.240 never seen this before today. I watched it for the 0:00:39.280 --> 0:00:42.920 first time this morning, and yeah, this one was a 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:46.479 lot of fun. I was noticing how even though there 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:50.200 are silly things about it, it really does fit more 0:00:50.320 --> 0:00:54.480 in that first half of the fifties monster movie bucket 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:57.480 than the second half of the fifties monster movie bucket. 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:00.600 It got me thinking about this division and where like 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:06.640 these early fifties movies are the monsters are a thing 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:10.640 of seriousness. They're more kind of adult oriented creature films, 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.720 usually made or at least distributed by these major studios, 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:17.680 and they deal with serious themes, very often about the 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:20.480 Cold War in one way or another, thing from another 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:24.480 world and them and this movie too, and then sometime 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:26.640 you get sometime in the mid fifties, you get this 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:30.399 handover where things start getting silly, where your monster movies 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:34.600 are like lower budgets, more independent features that are kind 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:37.720 of focused on the teenage audiences. This is your time 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:40.880 of the AIP takeover and Roger Korman and all that 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:43.600 attack of the crab monsters that sort of thing. And 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:46.240 there are exceptions, of course. I remember when we did 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:49.520 our episode on Robot Monster, we were noticing that, like, man, 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:52.240 that's this really feels like a movie from like five 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:55.040 years later. That one is from nineteen fifty three as well, 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:59.280 same year as Beast from twenty thousand fathoms, but it 0:01:59.360 --> 0:02:02.600 fits in more with that drive in era. But generally 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:04.840 the trend really does hold, and I would say Beast 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:08.600 tightly conforms to the trend. This is a relatively serious 0:02:08.680 --> 0:02:13.160 early fifties creature feature, and I would especially single out 0:02:13.280 --> 0:02:16.840 the grim imagery of the conclusion right at the end 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:20.080 of the movie. It's one of the weirdest, spookiest looking things, 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:23.080 I think, especially because of the imagery we get to 0:02:23.120 --> 0:02:26.120 of the roller coaster on fire with the main characters 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:32.840 wearing these deathly looking radiation suits. Yeah, interesting movie. 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:37.239 Yeah is It definitely has that serious tone, but to 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:41.320 be clear, early fifties serious tones, not a sixty serious tone, 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:44.240 not a seventies or eighties. So don't feel like this 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:47.639 is a monster movie that is going to necessarily demand 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:50.200 a lot off you. You can definitely give it a 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:53.480 casual viewing. You can definitely just check in for the 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:57.200 monster scenes. But I do think it's worth watching in full. 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:01.400 I really enjoyed it. I get to watch this one 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:04.440 at Atlanta's own Plaza Theater as part of the Silver 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:08.720 Screams spook Show series and the Beast in question, I think, 0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:10.800 to nobody surprise if you're familiar with it at all, 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:14.640 this is a Ray Harry Howsend creation. Looks absolutely terrific 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:18.320 on the big screen, big screen, black and white. You 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:22.119 can really imagine what it was like back in the days, 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:24.600 back in the early fifties to see this thing up 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:27.880 on the screen. Yeah. I think most people agree that 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:30.720 the monster absolutely holds up here, and the monster is 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:34.680 primarily the reason people come back to it with a 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:38.200 few other bits of interest as well. Some have said 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:39.960 that they find the rest of the movie a bit 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:43.080 slow at times, and I agree somewhat when it comes 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:46.440 to the research the research portion of the film, but 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:51.480 absolutely worth sticking out, especially for the ending. The ending 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:52.920 is just bonkers and I love it. 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:55.560 I don't know. I was kind of going in for 0:03:55.600 --> 0:03:57.880 the flirty dinosaur identification scene. 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:00.560 No, no, that was good, and of course the lighthouse 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:03.280 scene is terrific. I mean, all the scenes with the 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:07.240 monster are terrific, and the humans are very likable as well. 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:09.520 I'll take your modification on this. I don't want to 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:12.960 oversell the seriousness of it. It is also, I think, 0:04:13.000 --> 0:04:17.200 in some ways unintentionally funny. I think, especially to audiences today, 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:22.560 some of the dialogue scenes and its treatment of scientific 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:27.039 skepticism is pretty funny, but not nearly the level of 0:04:27.120 --> 0:04:31.880 seriousness and darkness you would get when treating the same themes, 0:04:31.960 --> 0:04:34.479 or at least similar themes in Godzilla a year later. 0:04:34.920 --> 0:04:38.240 Yeah. To be clear, this was the first time I'd 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:40.920 seen the film as well, and I knew that I 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:44.640 needed to be excited about a giant lizard rampaging down 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:48.080 Broadway in New York City, but I didn't know that 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:49.919 we're going to kick things off in the Arctic. That 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:50.719 was a real treat. 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:55.040 Yeah, I was actually thinking about this, like these fifties 0:04:55.480 --> 0:04:58.400 creature movies that take place in the Arctic, or at 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:01.839 least have parts that do. First, I don't know, fifteen 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:04.320 minutes or so of this movie is in the Arctic, 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:07.839 and it was making me think about Howard Hawks, the 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:10.640 Thing from Another World that also has a setting in 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.560 the Arctic. Of course, that movie was the inspiration for 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:16.200 the Thing which moves from the Arctic to the Antarctic. 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.240 And I was kind of thinking about, like, why do 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:22.039 we get all of these sci fi creature movies set 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:25.080 in the far North and you know, these icy environments 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:28.920 in the early fifties. I think that's probably no coincidence 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:32.719 because when I started thinking about it, that probably has 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:35.960 to do with what was actually happening geopolitically at the time, 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:40.320 because in the early fifties, nuclear war was very much 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:44.080 on everybody's mind. You know, the Cold War is kicking up, 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:48.800 and we have these new weapons, this horrible technology. But 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:53.159 because of the state of the delivery systems for nuclear 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:56.680 weapons at the time, the Arctic was a major strategic 0:05:56.760 --> 0:06:00.760 theater for the Cold War in the early fifties. ICBMs 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:04.880 wouldn't be operationalized until later like around nineteen fifty seven 0:06:05.000 --> 0:06:07.839 or fifty eight. So in the first half of the fifties, 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:12.039 people generally understood that if nuclear war ever broke out, 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:16.120 it would begin with long range bomber planes, and the 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:20.880 shortest route between available airfields and targets in the Soviet 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:24.800 Union in the United States would involve flights over the Arctic. 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:28.640 So as a result, the Arctic was a major zone 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:31.719 of strategic anxiety. So during this time there was a 0:06:31.720 --> 0:06:35.080 lot of building, building and staffing of these far northern 0:06:35.160 --> 0:06:39.240 bases and airfields, and trying to establish radar lines and 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:42.320 early warning systems that could detect a first strike coming 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:45.960 across the North Pole or through Arctic attack routes. So 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:48.520 I think it very much makes sense that the Arctic 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:51.920 would be on people's minds when they thought about nuclear war. 0:06:52.560 --> 0:06:56.000 And in one way or another, most of these big 0:06:56.040 --> 0:06:58.400 monster movies from the fifties have something to do with 0:06:58.520 --> 0:07:00.919 nuclear war, either direct or indirectly. 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:04.039 Yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously a key thing going on in 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:09.960 the zeitgeist and our fears take the form of these monsters. Well, 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:13.360 let's see my elevator pitch for this one would probably 0:07:13.360 --> 0:07:16.160 just be giant lyzard goes crazy on Broadway because that 0:07:16.320 --> 0:07:19.600 is what will happen, and that's the most iconic sequence 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:23.480 in the picture. But as far as just promotional materials go, 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:27.360 I love this The original poster for the film, which 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:31.960 says the Sea's master beast of the ages raging up 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:35.160 from the bottom of time pretty grand. 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.080 You know. I don't really recall a scene where they 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:42.960 describe much of anything about the palaeoecology of the Redosaurus 0:07:43.040 --> 0:07:45.840 or the Raydosaurus. I forget how they pronounce it is that, 0:07:46.360 --> 0:07:49.760 but they come up with a fictional dinosaur species in 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:52.880 this movie, which is what the monster is. It is 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:56.760 an unfrozen, unfrozen caveman lawyer, except it's a you know, 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:01.720 rampaging dinosaur monster coming out of the ice and it's 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:07.280 r h Edosaurus. However you say that, and yeah, do 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:09.880 they say. Was it supposed to be an aquatic dinosaur 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:12.960 or a terrestrial dinosaur? It does both, And it really 0:08:13.040 --> 0:08:15.680 is shaped more like a terrestrial animal would be. It 0:08:15.680 --> 0:08:18.000 looks like a big iguana sort of, but with like 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:22.320 a really gnarly nasty head. But we see it, really, 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:26.160 we see it moving around beneath the water, much like Godzilla. 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:28.640 So I don't know. Is this thing supposed to be 0:08:28.720 --> 0:08:32.520 a master of the seas or the sea's master? I guess. 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:35.440 I mean it can eat a bathosphere, which speaks to 0:08:35.559 --> 0:08:38.600 some mastery of the sea, and it is the beast 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:43.160 from twenty thousand fathoms. But yeah, it seems as comfortable 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:46.600 on land as it is in the water. That poster, 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.320 by the way, also in all caps, lets you know 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:53.679 that it is not suitable for children, which it's always 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:57.440 fun to reflect on that because by today's standards, this 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:00.000 is very suitable for children. It might bore some children 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:05.320 for some set for some segments, but I mean, there's 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:09.040 nothing out of line here at all, even within the 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:09.800 nineteen fifties. 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:12.880 I would say. We were discussing this poster before we 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:15.360 started recording, and one of the things that confused me 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:19.120 was what's this white stuff hanging out of the beast's mouth. 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:21.680 It doesn't. The only thing that would make sense is 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:23.880 it's supposed to be drool, but it doesn't look like that. 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:26.240 It looks like it ate a white wig, yeah, or 0:09:26.280 --> 0:09:27.840 it almost looks like it is supposed to be like 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:32.720 beard material, like they as if they added some motifs 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:35.280 of like Eastern dragons to it or something. 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:39.160 Because it is a very dragon like organism. But yeah, 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:42.080 I could see yeah, like a like a Chinese dragon. 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:46.000 It's got the trailing kind of wind swept thing, beard 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:49.800 like stuff coming from the mouth. Also, we have one 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:52.760 person down in the crowd that's running in terror away 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:55.800 from the dinosaur. One person gets a speech bubble and 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:59.640 they're saying it's alive. Yes, Well, what did they expect? 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:07.000 It's very much alive. All right, If you were curious 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:09.080 about this film and you would like to watch The 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:11.560 Beast from twenty thousand fathoms before we really get into 0:10:11.559 --> 0:10:14.280 the spoilers here and all, well, it is widely available. 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:16.400 It's a whole lot of fun on the big screen, 0:10:16.440 --> 0:10:18.079 but you can very much enjoy it on the small 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.880 screen no matter however small screen you desire. You can 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:24.280 get it in all digital formats, and there's some nice 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:35.080 DVD and Blu ray editions as well. All right, let's 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:38.240 get into the people behind this film, starting with the director. 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.000 This is actually a director we've mentioned on the show before. 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:44.120 This is our second film by this guy. This is 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:48.760 Yuzenne Laurie lived nineteen oh three through nineteen ninety one. 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:54.479 He also directed the nineteen sixty one British kaiju movie Gorgo, Gorgo. 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:57.679 You know, this is a better movie than Gorgo. This 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:01.319 is definitely better than Gorgo. Gorgo had there was a 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:03.240 lot to love about Gorgo. That was the one about 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:06.480 the big lizard rat that attacks off the coast of 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.959 Ireland and then gets captured and brought back to London. 0:11:10.040 --> 0:11:13.040 So really it is the plot of King Kong, except 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:15.040 it treats Ireland to Skull Island. 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:19.920 Yes, yeah, the King Kong connection is key here. You 0:11:20.000 --> 0:11:23.520 alluded to it already. But my understanding is that this 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:28.480 film basically came about because there had been they re 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:31.120 released King Kong in the studio, in the in the theaters, 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:33.640 which of course would come out and come out you know, 0:11:33.720 --> 0:11:36.240 decades earlier. They re released it in the theaters. It 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:38.920 was a big hit, and you know, studio heads were like, well, 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:42.000 why are we not still making giant monster movies that 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:44.560 make us giant money. Let's do some more of those. 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:47.800 And that's where the Beast from twenty thousand fathoms comes in. 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:53.840 And then it by most accounts, partially inspires Godzilla to come. 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:56.920 So it does play a key role in the history 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:02.440 of giant monster movies just Internet nationally m Yeah. Uh. 0:12:02.840 --> 0:12:03.080 You know. 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:08.880 One thing I think King Kong gets right. Gorgo does 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.960 not get right, and this movie gets somewhere in the middle, 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:16.240 is making the human characters of interest. Yeah, you know, 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:20.040 there's like some human interest in King Kong. There is 0:12:20.080 --> 0:12:22.440 not really much at all in Gorgo, and this is 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:24.760 somewhere in the middle. Like the characters in this or 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:26.800 you're not going to be, you know, falling in love 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:29.800 with them. They're not like amazingly compelling, but they're fun 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:32.800 enough to fall especially like the paleontologist guy. 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:35.480 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he is a lot of fun and 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:38.719 it is of course sad when when he gets it. 0:12:39.400 --> 0:12:40.000 We'll get to. 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:45.000 Here, okay, but back to lay Here again, our second 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:48.920 film of his having covered Gorgo before. Russian born French 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:53.160 art director and then a film director his production design 0:12:53.160 --> 0:12:55.280 where it goes back to the early thirties, but his 0:12:55.320 --> 0:13:00.280 first directorial credit was this film, and this scene still 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:03.720 have cemented him as a giant monster director to some extent, 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:06.640 as he followed this up with fifty eight's The Colossus 0:13:06.640 --> 0:13:09.760 of New York, in which a giant robot body has 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:12.040 a dead boy's brain in it controlling It. 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:13.760 That's on my weird house list. 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:15.559 Yeah, I do want to see that one, and I 0:13:15.600 --> 0:13:18.600 see it on the video rental shelves of Video Drone sometimes. 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:22.880 Fifty nine's The Giant Behemoth, which is another Giant Dino movie. 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:25.040 And then he also did an episode of the fifty 0:13:25.120 --> 0:13:28.480 nine TV series World of Giants. This is an incredible 0:13:28.520 --> 0:13:33.280 Shrinking Man inspired series. And then of course he did Gorgo. Yeah, 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:36.319 all right, getting into the screenplay here, one of the 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:40.880 most the more interesting connections here on the script is 0:13:40.920 --> 0:13:44.280 that it is based to some extent on a short story, 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:47.960 very short story by Ray Bradberry, who lived nineteen twenty 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:49.559 through twenty twelve. 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:53.559 Did you notice how in the credits it doesn't name 0:13:53.800 --> 0:13:56.840 the story. It just says based on the Saturday Evening 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.720 Post story by Ray Bradberry. 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:02.200 It really kind of felt like, oh, crap, I forgot 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:03.839 to I've got to write down the name. I'll just 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:05.840 say just just say where it was feltlish. 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:07.280 Yeah, it was in the one in the post. 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:08.839 Yeah, the one in the post. That one what was 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:12.080 it called? It was? It was I'm forgetting the fog Horn. 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:13.400 The fog Horn was the name of the. 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:15.120 Songg fog horn leg Horn. 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:19.400 Yeah, the Foghorn from nineteen fifty one, which which you 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:22.320 can find online. It's it's it's a pretty short story, 0:14:23.280 --> 0:14:25.760 and it's it's it's it's well written, it's nice. I'm 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:28.960 going to read a quick excerpt from it here. Mcdunn 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:31.200 fumbled the switch, but even as he switched it on, 0:14:31.360 --> 0:14:34.240 the monster was rearing up. I had a glimpse of 0:14:34.240 --> 0:14:37.840 its gigantic paws, fish skin glittering in webs between the 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:41.600 finger like projections, clawing at the tower. The huge eye 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:44.160 on the right side of its anguished head glittered before 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:47.360 me like a cauldron into which I might drop screaming. 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:50.920 The tower shook, The fog horn cried, The monster cried. 0:14:51.000 --> 0:14:54.240 It sees the tower and gnashed at the glass, which 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:55.600 shattered in upon us. 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:59.200 Oh okay, So is this the scene that becomes the 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:01.120 attack on the light house in the movies? 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:02.680 Yeah? Okay, Well, one. 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:05.280 Of the better parts of the movie. Very very interesting scene. 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:07.520 Yeah, the emotional heart of the film really as far 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:10.160 as the monster goes, because essentially what appears to be 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:14.320 happening is the monster is confusing the sound of the foghorn, 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:18.400 in confusing the lighthouse with one of its own kind, 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:21.520 and it sort of comes in and tries to hug it, 0:15:21.600 --> 0:15:24.920 to embrace it, to find comfort in its embrace, but 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:29.720 instead just collapses a lighthouse and has then desponded, And 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:32.040 you know, we can understand it's rage at that point. 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:36.040 Yeah, and sadly kills a couple of lighthouse keepers who 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:40.240 were in the middle of a brilliant discourse on body songs. 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:43.400 Yeah, it's true there was human tragedy here as well. 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:47.520 But yeah, this was the Ray Bradbury story. Yeah, we 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:50.440 talked about Bradbury before. He's come up before, but we 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:53.040 talked about The Soul and the Lame Bass short film 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:56.960 Quest from nineteen eighty four, which was based on one 0:15:57.000 --> 0:15:59.960 of his tales. And he's the author of such works 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:04.280 the Martian Chronicles from fifty They Illustrated Man from fifty one, 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:07.240 The October Country from fifty five. And he was of 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:10.000 course a successful screenwriter, having written the screenplay for the 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:14.560 nineteen fifty six adaptation of Moby Dick, and his work 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:16.920 was also adapted for TV and film going back to 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:19.920 the nineteen fifties, including Jack Arnold's It Came from Outer 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:22.960 Space in fifty three, and that's one that has been 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:25.520 kind of on the short list or maybe the long 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:30.120 list for weird house cinema. There's probably one Jack Arnold 0:16:30.160 --> 0:16:32.720 film in particular. In particular we'll get too before that, 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:38.200 but at any rate, Yeah, you do see a little 0:16:38.240 --> 0:16:40.880 bit of the fog Horn in this picture, and it 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:43.840 is kind of the emotional heart of it. I was 0:16:43.880 --> 0:16:47.240 reading about it, and I've found out that there's actually 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:51.120 a nineteen ninety seven episode of the Pokemon TV series 0:16:51.440 --> 0:16:56.120 which also loosely adapts this Bradburry story. It's called Mystery 0:16:56.160 --> 0:16:58.640 at the Lighthouse, and I included a couple of stills 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:01.760 for you here. I did not have a chance to 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:05.960 watch this episode, but based on the screenshots, it appears 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.280 that a large dragon like form I'm assuming this is 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:12.240 what Charizard charizard O. 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:13.280 Yeah, I know that one. 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:16.119 Yeah, it looks like Charizard, except in black and white, 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:19.119 you know, or at least in mist and fog we 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:22.600 don't get are mostly silhouette, and he is indeed attacking 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:29.040 a lighthouse, perhaps mistaking it for I don't know, another Pokemon. Anyway, 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:31.600 Pokemon fans out there, and we know, we certainly know 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:34.960 we have them right in about this episode, we'll learn 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:38.840 more from you, all right. The screenplay credits, however, go 0:17:38.880 --> 0:17:41.920 to two individuals. We have Lou Morheim, who lived nineteen 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:44.360 twenty two through twenty thirteen, writer and producer who's other 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.400 credits as a writer include five episodes of the original 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:50.560 Outer Limits plus a bunch of Westerns, which makes sense 0:17:50.560 --> 0:17:54.840 given the time period. And then also Fred Freiberger nineteen 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:57.080 fifteen through two thousand and three, film and TV writer 0:17:57.160 --> 0:18:00.480 who went on to create the Neanderthal Saturday More live 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:05.280 action TV show Corg seventy thousand BC. This ran from 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:09.600 seventy four through seventy five, nineteen episodes narrated by Burgess. 0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:13.400 Meredith. Huh yeah, I didn't know about that. 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:15.600 Yeah. Yeah, Like I was reading about it and it 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:17.800 was like, oh wow, this is like a serious caveman 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.160 drama and they're like, no Saturday Morning TV. 0:18:20.040 --> 0:18:22.600 Show, Okay, it's not like the Inheritors. 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:24.800 Yeah yeah, that's what I was thinking, Like, is this 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:29.760 a real serious treatment of maybe, you know, somehow connected 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:34.040 to a lot of the other like seriously minded prehistoric 0:18:34.119 --> 0:18:36.960 people novels and so forth. But I don't think that 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:39.359 was the case. More of a light land of the 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:43.200 lost flavor here I think, all right, let's get into 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:48.240 the actors here. So our protagonist is Professor Tom Nesbit, 0:18:49.440 --> 0:18:54.080 played by an actor credited as Paul Christian, his real 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:58.440 name Paul Hubschmid. He was a Swiss actor with film 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:00.800 credits going back to nineteen thirty eight. He lived nineteen 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:05.840 seventeen through two thousand and one. He worked in German cinema, 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:09.960 including during the period of Nazi rule, which he later 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:14.320 expressed regret over and had difficulty finding Swiss roles because 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:17.120 of in the years following the war. I'm to understand 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:21.280 that these German films of the Nazi era he appeared 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:25.960 in were light romantic fare with only faint ideological references, 0:19:26.000 --> 0:19:28.000 but it was still kind of a lasting blight on 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:31.639 his career. So to be clear, not a Nazi, but 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:34.240 a young Swiss actor working in Germany at the time 0:19:34.880 --> 0:19:36.800 who was just kind of going with the flow and 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:40.240 did not ask questions about who he was working for. 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:44.840 But anyway, he kept working and continued to find success 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:48.119 in Europe and then branching over into Hollywood. He signed 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:50.840 a deal with Universal in forty eight, starring in the 0:19:50.840 --> 0:19:54.440 forty nine film Baghdad, alongside the likes of Marin O'Hara 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.760 and Vincent Price, all playing Middle Easterners, and did a 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:01.760 string of other big studio films, including nineteen fifty two's 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.360 No Time for Flowers, directed by Don Siegel. Other credits 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:08.760 include The Indian Tomb from fifty nine, The Day the 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:14.840 Sky Exploded from fifty eight, Oh Sounds, Explosive, Funeral in 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:19.800 Berlin from sixty six, and Skullduggery in seventy, a screwball 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:23.440 adventure movie starring Burt Reynolds that does not sound good, 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:27.480 looks like it has not aged well and probably came 0:20:27.520 --> 0:20:30.840 out of the oven offensive. And then he was also 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:34.440 in the nineteen eighty eight German language horror movie Broken Silence. 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:37.639 When I was watching this, I wondered if I was 0:20:37.800 --> 0:20:41.840 subconsciously holding his accent against him. I hope that's not it, 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:45.680 But he just like he wasn't totally selling the movie 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:45.960 for me. 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:50.320 Oh really, I found his accent charming. I think I 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:52.840 like that. Like he's, for the most part, very much 0:20:52.840 --> 0:20:57.800 by appearances, your square jaw protagonist from an early fifties film, 0:20:57.840 --> 0:21:01.240 Like he's very definitely definitely fits the mold in pretty 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:05.360 much every imaginable way. On that front, but his accent 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:07.119 I felt like, gave him like maybe a little bit 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:09.240 of charm where I was like, oh, this is this 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:12.360 is not just an American monster movie. This is this 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:16.399 is a you know, a Transatlantic monster movie. This is 0:21:16.440 --> 0:21:19.400 a you know, it has a little bit of European 0:21:19.480 --> 0:21:20.119 flare to it. 0:21:20.200 --> 0:21:23.760 Even. Yeah. So he's supposed to be a nuclear physicist 0:21:23.840 --> 0:21:28.280 who exactly what his relationship is to his work is 0:21:28.440 --> 0:21:32.000 not totally clear, And some of the monologues in the movie, 0:21:32.000 --> 0:21:35.600 his character seems to be kind of ambivalent or even 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:40.800 kind of negative about what nuclear technology means. Other Times 0:21:40.800 --> 0:21:44.160 he's like talking about how he's paving the way for tomorrow, 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:46.639 and you know, he's like that he's talking about the 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:51.280 curative properties of the radioactive isotope. So I don't know, 0:21:51.440 --> 0:21:53.399 I feel like there's some ambivalence in the way that 0:21:53.480 --> 0:21:57.440 the character is realized. But also, as I said, I 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:00.440 was saying, I hope it wasn't the accent was making 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:02.959 me feel this, but something about him was awkward for me. 0:22:03.040 --> 0:22:04.440 It didn't totally click. 0:22:04.760 --> 0:22:08.240 Okay, all right, well that's like him or not. That's 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:13.560 her character and the love interest. The supporting character here 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:17.040 is the character Lee Hunter. And she is played by 0:22:17.080 --> 0:22:19.720 Paula Raymond, who live nineteen twenty four through two thousand 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:23.040 and three, American actress with credits going back to thirty eight. 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:26.360 She acted in a variety of genres, including noir such 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:29.760 as fifty threes City That Never Sleeps, westerns such as 0:22:29.800 --> 0:22:33.959 fifties Devil's Doorway, as well as romance. Her other horror 0:22:33.960 --> 0:22:36.919 and sci fi credits include sixty two's Hand of Death, 0:22:37.320 --> 0:22:40.800 starring John Agar as a monster that looks an awful lot. 0:22:40.920 --> 0:22:45.320