Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and today we are re airing our Valentine's Day
Speaker 1: episode from last year. It is our discussion of the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three Tony Scott film The Hunger. This one's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun, so so stylish, So Gothy, let's
Speaker 1: dive right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody
Speaker 1: here in today's episode. You know, I really wanted to
Speaker 1: cover a paranormal love story of some sort for the holiday,
Speaker 1: and I gave myself this task and probably spend a
Speaker 1: little bit too much time looking at different films. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what would be what felt like
Speaker 1: the right fit. I looked at a few different, very
Speaker 1: well regarded films that seemed to fit the mold, but
Speaker 1: ended up being drawn into today's selection the highly stylish
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three erotic horror film The Hunger, a movie
Speaker 1: that was really only on my radar for being a
Speaker 1: film in which David Bowie plays a Vampire. But it's
Speaker 1: actually so much more than just that. It's become a
Speaker 1: cult favorite with many due to its heavy goth vibes.
Speaker 1: It's LGBTQ themes, and it's absolutely bursting at the scenes
Speaker 1: with visual and sonic pizazz. And I tell you, I
Speaker 1: hope you like Venetian blinds because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of them in this movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, and doves, JJ was reminded. JJ also watched the
Speaker 3: movie this week and we were talking about it off
Speaker 3: Mike before we started this. JJ reminded me that there
Speaker 3: are just doves in their house all the time. Is
Speaker 3: full of birds. They have like an open air attic.
Speaker 3: Is just birds coming and going all the time. Yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I watched this one with my wife, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it was partially her suggestion. I was just brainstorming all
Speaker 1: these ideas and she pulled up some lists online of
Speaker 1: paranormal horror films and she was like, how about The
Speaker 1: Hunger And I was like, oh, well, you know, The
Speaker 1: Hunger has been on my radar a little bit. We've
Speaker 1: it's come up in passing on the show before when
Speaker 1: we've discussed David Billie films, And so she watched it
Speaker 1: with me she really enjoyed it. She loved all the
Speaker 1: like the gothy eighty eighties vibe to it. But also
Speaker 1: she pointed out, like this feels like a feature length
Speaker 1: music video, and in many ways that is absolutely accurate
Speaker 1: and one of its strengths.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, turn around Bright Eyes for ninety minutes or
Speaker 3: a hundred or so. It's But don't let don't get
Speaker 3: the wrong idea from that. I do think this is
Speaker 3: actually a very strong film. I liked it a lot,
Speaker 3: despite the fact that critics apparently largely did not appreciate
Speaker 3: it when it came out. But I get the feeling
Speaker 3: this one has has gotten a critical reappraisal, like a
Speaker 3: lot more people like it than did when it first released.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I believe that the cult following for it
Speaker 1: was really building up within the decade following its release,
Speaker 1: so you know, kind of a slow build there, But
Speaker 1: I think it achieved cult status by at least the nineties.
Speaker 1: As we'll discuss now.
Speaker 3: One thing I want to say close to the top
Speaker 3: of this episode is despite the fact that The Hunger
Speaker 3: is not especially plot driven, I'd say it's more of
Speaker 3: a mood driven or character driven film. It does have
Speaker 3: some major surprises in store, and we're going to have
Speaker 3: to talk about those surprises in the episode, so please
Speaker 3: be forewarned if you want to see The Hunger without
Speaker 3: having anything spoiled, and I would recommend that a good
Speaker 3: time to pause and go watch the movie would be Now.
Speaker 1: That being said, this movie is so committed to style.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's one of those where if you're
Speaker 1: spoiled on it, you can still really enjoy it.
Speaker 3: So rob like you. I had never seen The Hunger before,
Speaker 3: but I found it very, as I said, surprise, but
Speaker 3: also delightful, interesting, different. It felt fresh at its core.
Speaker 3: I think you could call this kind of a tainted
Speaker 3: love tale. It's a story primarily about romantic relationships, but
Speaker 3: one in which it is not all, you know, steamy
Speaker 3: arrows and desire and lust like a lot of vampire
Speaker 3: love movies are. It's also not rom com energy. It's
Speaker 3: not like all cute falling for you kind of moments.
Speaker 3: And it's certainly not the case that this is full
Speaker 3: of feel good morals about the eternal and all conquering
Speaker 3: power of love. This movie, like other tainted love tales,
Speaker 3: is about the ambiguities and contradictions of romantic love, the
Speaker 3: sort of vast gray space that defines a lot of
Speaker 3: what love is. Where people might feel one way but
Speaker 3: act another, where it's impossible to put your emotions into words,
Speaker 3: you don't know how to talk about what you're feeling
Speaker 3: or what your frustrations with your love. Are situations in
Speaker 3: which people genuinely love one another but also cause each
Speaker 3: other pain, where love just gets smashed into a million
Speaker 3: pieces against the surface of problems that cannot be fixed.
Speaker 3: And strangely, once I realized that was the kind of
Speaker 3: movie this was, it helped resolve something curious I noticed
Speaker 3: while watching The Hunger. Despite the fact that this movie
Speaker 3: has a different writer, a different director, totally different plot,
Speaker 3: and for much of its runtime a different star, I
Speaker 3: really kept being reminded of the other big David Bowie
Speaker 3: movie we have watched on the show, which was The
Speaker 3: Man Who Fell to Earth from nineteen seventy six, directed
Speaker 3: by Nicholas Rogue. That movie stars David Bowie as a
Speaker 3: tragic alien agent on a mission to Earth to secure
Speaker 3: water resources which could save his home planet. But of
Speaker 3: course that ultimately is a story about failure, about distraction
Speaker 3: and the inability to sort of stay on task and
Speaker 3: getting led astray by television and alcohol and love and
Speaker 3: all that and table tennis right exactly, yes, And so
Speaker 3: I was thinking while I was watching it, why did
Speaker 3: these movies feel so similar despite all the totally different
Speaker 3: creative inputs. Could it just be that the power of
Speaker 3: David Bowie is so strong that it paves over everything
Speaker 3: that might be a little part of it. But I
Speaker 3: really think there are some other truly strong similarities in
Speaker 3: that both stories involve these tainted love themes. They're both
Speaker 3: love stories that have genuine feeling and passion in them.
Speaker 3: They're not just about people using each other for sex
Speaker 3: or for power or whatever. They are love stories, but
Speaker 3: they're also tragic love stories that cannot possibly have happy endings,
Speaker 3: in part because of the sci fi or supernatural mechanics
Speaker 3: that are operating in each story, and in part because
Speaker 3: of the kinds of human failings and contradict that are
Speaker 3: present in all relationships of mortal humans, not just aliens
Speaker 3: and vampires. And I guess, since it's been a while,
Speaker 3: just a refresher. The love story central in The Man
Speaker 3: Who Fell to Earth is the one between David Bowie's
Speaker 3: alien character and an earthling played by Candy Clark. That
Speaker 3: story is at once both genuine and doomed, doomed by
Speaker 3: Bowie's alien mission and then by the pressures of money
Speaker 3: and betrayal and alcoholism. In The Hunger, I think one
Speaker 3: of the central thematic tainted love questions is what if
Speaker 3: you could only be with the person you love by
Speaker 3: dooming them to a fate worse than death if you
Speaker 3: choose to do it anyway, If you choose to be
Speaker 3: with them knowing that your love is an unspeakable curse,
Speaker 3: could it really be love? But at the same time,
Speaker 3: could it really be love if you could stand not
Speaker 3: to be with them in the first place. I guess
Speaker 3: we'll have to answer those questions as we go on
Speaker 3: throughout the up But another similarity I would say between
Speaker 3: The Men Who Fell to Earth and The Hunger is
Speaker 3: certain the presence of certain cinematography choices. Both of them
Speaker 3: are very mood driven, and they both have a kind
Speaker 3: of dreamy, elegic editing style with a lot of slow
Speaker 3: motion and lingering on wistful and melancholy scenes featuring two
Speaker 3: subjects who are suffering but who are unable to fix
Speaker 3: what's wrong between them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's worth noting. In the commentary track which I
Speaker 1: listened to, part of the director Tony Scott does mention
Speaker 1: Nicholas Rogue, the director of the Man Who Fell to Earth,
Speaker 1: being one of his inspirations, though he singles out the
Speaker 1: film performance more than anything. But of course The Man
Speaker 1: Who Fell to Earth is still in the mix there somewhere,
Speaker 1: I imagine.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, I would say The Hunger does
Speaker 3: not have like the comic elements that we got in
Speaker 3: The Man Who Fell to Earth when he's watching all
Speaker 3: the TVs and screaming, get out of my mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's not really much in the way of humor
Speaker 1: in this picture, and I think that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that the critics kind of picked up on. They
Speaker 1: thought it was like too self serious, which I don't know.
Speaker 1: I feel like, if you're dealing with, you know, with
Speaker 1: a story like this, and you're dealing with, you know,
Speaker 1: with these all these gothic vibes on top of it, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't think I really was wanting
Speaker 1: any comic relief in this picture.
Speaker 3: I certainly was not hurting for want of comic relief.
Speaker 3: And no, this movie doesn't need that. It's just not
Speaker 3: its style. It's not what it's about. Another surprising element
Speaker 3: I found about The Hunger, at least a violation of
Speaker 3: my expectations going in, was the relatively grounded science fiction subplot.
Speaker 3: Did not think it would have that kind of thing happening.
Speaker 3: So this will require some discussion of the plot, but
Speaker 3: I guess it's good to lay out a bit of
Speaker 3: the premise here at the top, because we can refer
Speaker 3: back to that as we talk about the cast and
Speaker 3: so forth. So two of the main characters of this
Speaker 3: movie begin the story as vampires, as vampire lovers, and
Speaker 3: they are faced with a unique consequence of their condition.
Speaker 3: In the lore of this movie, the vampire's spawn enjoys
Speaker 3: a long life of suspended youth and vitality for perhaps
Speaker 3: hundreds of years, but at some point it all comes
Speaker 3: crashing down as a kind of rapid degenerative aging disease,
Speaker 3: where the vampire spawn suddenly grows old and withers into
Speaker 3: a powerless but still conscious, crumbling husk over the course
Speaker 3: of a few days or weeks. So in the movie,
Speaker 3: Catherine Denov plays a sort of vampire queen of ancient
Speaker 3: but otherwise uncertain origins named Miriam, who is in a
Speaker 3: centuries long love affair with her vampire spawn, John played
Speaker 3: by David Bowie. Originally a man, she turned into a
Speaker 3: vampire sometime in Europe in the seventeen hundreds. There's like
Speaker 3: a scene of them kissing in a barn in powdered wigs,
Speaker 3: and so the situation is while they seem to have
Speaker 3: been happy and ageless hunting for blood together for hundreds
Speaker 3: of years, suddenly, in the modern day setting of the
Speaker 3: film in New York in the nineteen eighties, John finds
Speaker 3: himself rapidly aging, and he seems to know this was
Speaker 3: something that could happen to him one day, but obviously
Speaker 3: it leaves him greatly demoralized and distressed. So this brings
Speaker 3: him into contact with another one of our major characters,
Speaker 3: Sarah Roberts played by Susan Sarandon, who is a research scientist.
Speaker 3: She's a gerontologist studying diseases that cause accelerated aging, and
Speaker 3: her work provides some hope of a way to stop
Speaker 3: the advance of the cellular clock and arrest the rapid
Speaker 3: advance of agent to and so as John desperately seeks
Speaker 3: her help, she becomes entangled in the lives of these vampires.
Speaker 3: She doesn't initially know their vampires, of course, and she
Speaker 3: becomes it becomes more than just the kind of mechanical
Speaker 3: science fiction connection to the story, like she becomes romantically
Speaker 3: involved as well. But it was so strange to me
Speaker 3: that the movie ended up having so much having as
Speaker 3: much science fiction as it did, and also the form
Speaker 3: the science fiction took, because it was not the kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, the kind of loose fantasy science fiction that
Speaker 3: you get in The Man Who Fell to Earth. It's
Speaker 3: instead a story about like research scientists in their lab
Speaker 3: doing experiments on monkeys. And we can come back to
Speaker 3: that later. But like some of the goorioesst and grossest
Speaker 3: stuff in the movie is not from the horror premise.
Speaker 3: It's from the sci fi premise.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's so as we'll get to in more
Speaker 1: detail in a bed. This is based on a novel,
Speaker 1: a nineteen eighty one novel by Whitley Streiber, And it's
Speaker 1: my understanding that the original novel is essentially one of
Speaker 1: these kind of like how would this work treatments of
Speaker 1: vamporism with sci fi elements backing it up, And I'm
Speaker 1: to understand that the script for the picture ended up
Speaker 1: drifting somewhat away from that vision, and then Tony Scott's
Speaker 1: direction and the work of all the other talented folks
Speaker 1: involved in like the visual and sonic flare of the
Speaker 1: picture are able to bring it into more of a
Speaker 1: surreal territory. So, you know, it's kind of an interesting
Speaker 1: trajectory to like maybe start in something that's a little
Speaker 1: more grounded in the sci fi and ending up via
Speaker 1: a curve, ending up with something more surreal and ambiguous,
Speaker 1: but the sci fi roots are still present.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. But it creates such an an unusual and
Speaker 3: interesting millage of themes. It's just it doesn't really feel
Speaker 3: like any other movie I can think of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really does stand apart. And I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that it just so instantly captivated me.
Speaker 1: Because some of the other picture as I was checking out,
Speaker 1: they felt more like a definite artifact of their time
Speaker 1: and or they fit more clearly into genres that we're
Speaker 1: already more familiar with on the show, and this one, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really stood out. It seemed to have a different
Speaker 1: vision and exist in its own sonic and visual universe.
Speaker 3: Now, another big surprise that this movie had for me
Speaker 3: is that I really expected there to be more David
Speaker 3: Bowie in this David Bowie movie. He almost gets the
Speaker 3: treatment of Steven segall an executive decision. Maybe that's a
Speaker 3: horrible comparison, maybe more like Drew Barrymore in Scream or
Speaker 3: Samuel L. Jackson in Deep Blue Sea. Though, of course
Speaker 3: all of those characters what happens is they die. The
Speaker 3: fate of David Bowie's character in this movie is even
Speaker 3: more tragic and horrifying than death. But I think it's
Speaker 3: interesting that I don't know if there's a formal like
Speaker 3: showbiz term for this, but I would call it like
Speaker 3: a meta shock. You know, it is a violation of
Speaker 3: your expectations, which are established. Those expectations are established not
Speaker 3: through the narrative of the movie itself, but through your
Speaker 3: real world and knowledge of the movie's marketing context. So,
Speaker 3: for example, it is a surprising move to kill off
Speaker 3: the character played by the big star, the presence of
Speaker 3: whom ostensibly brought people into the movie theaters in the
Speaker 3: first place. So that's always a surprising move. It's a
Speaker 3: bold and gutsy move usually, though I think it's a
Speaker 3: lot less gimmicky in The Hunger than it is in
Speaker 3: most of these metashock deaths you get in the film industry.
Speaker 3: In this movie, it it feels less like a gimmicky
Speaker 3: attempt at surprise, and instead it emphasizes the movie's kind
Speaker 3: of shadow themes of unfairness and the injustice of love
Speaker 3: and of real life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And I do want to stress for anyone
Speaker 1: out there who who happens to be interested in The
Speaker 1: Hunger primarily because of David Bowie, still valid reason to
Speaker 1: be interested in this film. David Bowie will not disappoint you.
Speaker 1: The role may have less screen time than you expected,
Speaker 1: but he still makes the most of that screen time.
Speaker 1: So definitely worth checking out for Bowie fans.
Speaker 3: Though also for some of the screen time he does have,
Speaker 3: he looks like Richard Lynch or he looks like he
Speaker 3: Oh this is an unkind comparison, but he looks like
Speaker 3: a better version of Guy Pierce and the old Man
Speaker 3: makeup in Prometheus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great observation. But you know, Prometheus didn't
Speaker 1: have Dick Smith. As we'll be discussing special effects makeup master.
Speaker 1: Dick Smith is largely responsible for the aging of David
Speaker 1: Bowie in this picture. And I think it was Tony
Speaker 1: Scott on the commentary track pointing out how or maybe
Speaker 1: it was maybe with Susan's frand and somebody who's pointing
Speaker 1: out how he's under so much makeup for parts of this.
Speaker 1: But Bowie would just go to sleep in the chair
Speaker 1: like he was like super, he's a going while they
Speaker 1: were replying, you know, hours upon hours of makeup and yeah,
Speaker 1: and nobody did it better than Dick Smith.
Speaker 3: It is really great old man makeup, way better than
Speaker 3: all the other examples I can think of.
Speaker 1: All right, well, more on that in a bit, but
Speaker 1: first let's go ahead and roll out the elevator pitch.
Speaker 1: As the song will play a huge role in the
Speaker 1: opening sequence of a picture. I'm just going to quote
Speaker 1: a few lines from the nineteen eighty two goth rock
Speaker 1: hit Bela Lugosi's Dead by bow House with one pronoun
Speaker 1: change to make it fit better. The virginal brides file
Speaker 1: past her tomb strewn with times, dead flowers, bereft in
Speaker 1: Deathly Bloom, alone in a darkened room, the count.
Speaker 3: Bell refed in Deathly Bloom, Yes exactly, Oh what a delivery.
Speaker 3: Who's the singer of Bowhouse.
Speaker 1: That's Peter Murphy and we'll sleep. We'll see Peter Murphy
Speaker 1: in the opening sequence here.
Speaker 3: Tremendous flat delivery there, very good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's a class, It's probably one of,
Speaker 1: if not the better known, you know, goth tracks out there.
Speaker 1: Like if you're going to do a goth dance night
Speaker 1: at a club or something, they need to play Bella
Speaker 1: Lugosi's dead at least for a little bit. Maybe not
Speaker 1: the whole with like nine and a half minute runtime,
Speaker 1: but even still, like, yeah, go ahead and do the
Speaker 1: nine and a half minute runtime because the whole song's tremendous.
Speaker 1: All Right, we'll come back to baw House in a bit,
Speaker 1: but first let's go ahead and listen to a little
Speaker 1: bit of trailer audio from The Hunger.
Speaker 3: Sarah Roberts is in jeopardy. Hey lady, how about it
Speaker 3: stay with her? Help her, for she has begun to
Speaker 3: feel the awful horror of the hunger. John Blaylock, the
Speaker 3: hunger has given him everlasting life until now. Pray for him.
Speaker 3: Miriam Blaylock.
Speaker 2: She feeds one day in seven on the unsuspecting, and
Speaker 2: soon she will turn into something that you will never
Speaker 2: be able to forget.
Speaker 3: No matter how hard and how long you try fear her?
Speaker 2: What have you done to me.
Speaker 3: For my life? Signs terminate right here.
Speaker 1: Haunting, mysterious, sensual, strange, perverse, riveting The Hunger. All right, well,
Speaker 1: if you would like to watch The Hunger, well, luckily
Speaker 1: for you, it's widely available on digital formats as well
Speaker 1: his home video formats. There's a Blu ray, and I
Speaker 1: was gonna rent the Blu ray, but it was checked
Speaker 1: out when I dropped by Video Drum, so I ended
Speaker 1: up having to make do with the DVD version, which
Speaker 1: was also solid. I believe both the Blue and the
Speaker 1: DVD feature the same commentary track, which is a bit
Speaker 1: dry but still informative, featuring both Tony Scott and Susan Sarandon,
Speaker 1: though it sounds like maybe they weren't in the same room,
Speaker 1: like they recorded them separately and kind of like splice
Speaker 1: them in. So if you like a nice, boisterous commentary track,
Speaker 1: then maybe this one isn't the one, but it's still
Speaker 1: a lot of great info in it. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's run through the people involved here, or at least
Speaker 1: some of them. We can't touch on everybody as usual,
Speaker 1: but the director is, of course Tony Scott. As previously mentioned,
Speaker 1: he lived nineteen forty four through twenty twelve, the late
Speaker 1: younger brother of Ridley Scott, who, like his brother, came
Speaker 1: up through TV commercial production before branching out into films,
Speaker 1: and this was his first feature theatrical film. And it
Speaker 1: really throws everything at you from a stylistic standpoint. It's flashy,
Speaker 1: it's sexy, it's daring, it's somber, it's serious. It delivers
Speaker 1: all the flare of a music video or a high
Speaker 1: end commercial, and as we alluded to at the time
Speaker 1: of its release, it was not a success. Critics panned it,
Speaker 1: including Roger Ebert, who called it quote an agonizingly bad
Speaker 1: vampire movie, circling around an exquisitely effective sex scene. Which
Speaker 1: sex scene, I assume it has to be the big
Speaker 1: love scene between Sarah and Miriam, which I mean it's
Speaker 1: almost I think a disservice to call it a quote
Speaker 1: unquote sex scene because it's so stylish. It is like
Speaker 1: the like the bed is glowing. I think one point,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like it's very surreal. It's not it's
Speaker 1: not raw or explicit, but it is still you know,
Speaker 1: highly erotic and just, and to Ebert's point, it is effective.
Speaker 1: But I also don't feel like it comes off as
Speaker 1: an oasis in a desert in this film or anything
Speaker 1: to that extent.
Speaker 3: No, I just would not agree with Ebert on this one.
Speaker 3: I think the film overall has a lot more to offer. Sorry,
Speaker 3: just now that we're on the subject of Tony Scott,
Speaker 3: I was repeatedly thinking to myself while watching I can't
Speaker 3: believe this is made by the same director as Top Gun.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is crazy to think about this, right
Speaker 1: because Top Gun, which was his follow up, what four
Speaker 1: years later? That was the next time that the studios
Speaker 1: gave him a shot at a film, like three years later.
Speaker 1: We always say, well, what this one's eighty would have
Speaker 1: been made in what an eighty two and either yeah,
Speaker 1: three or four years, so he didn't have to wait
Speaker 1: that long. But still he was kind of shut out
Speaker 1: for a little bit there. But then he comes out
Speaker 1: of the gate with again with Top Gun, which of
Speaker 1: course is a massive hit. It was the highest grossing
Speaker 1: film domestic or otherwise for nineteen eighty six. That's a
Speaker 1: film that cemented Cruise's ascension into long lasting fame and
Speaker 1: established Scott as not a director of erotic horror, but
Speaker 1: as an action and thriller director. You know, because when
Speaker 1: you think about Tony Scott, those tend to be the
Speaker 1: films you think about. You think about things like eighty
Speaker 1: seven's Beverly Hills Cop two, nineteen nineties Days of Thunder,
Speaker 1: ninety three's True Romance, ninety fives, Crimson Tide ninety eight,
Speaker 1: Enemy of the State, two thousand and four's Man on Fire,
Speaker 1: or his final film twenty tens Unstoppable. But yeah, compare
Speaker 1: this film to Top Gun and I'm yeah, like, what
Speaker 1: connective tissue is there? Really? I mean, I'm sure you
Speaker 1: could know, probably get down and point to some of
Speaker 1: the stylistic touches that are distinctly Tony Scott. But it
Speaker 1: does kind of feel like a complete at least in
Speaker 1: my eyes, it feels like a complete, like restart of
Speaker 1: his cinematic trajectory. Now. Tony Scott would return to horror
Speaker 1: twice in the late nineties for two episodes of an
Speaker 1: erotic horror anthology series titled The Hunger, very much spinning
Speaker 1: off of this film. Like I said, this is one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I think we can assume that By
Speaker 1: the late nineties there was a cult following for this
Speaker 1: picture because they decided to produce forty four episodes of
Speaker 1: a spinoff series on it. The first season was hosted
Speaker 1: by Terrence stamp Oh General Zod Yeah, he was your
Speaker 1: Sexy Cryptkeeper for the first season, and then You're a
Speaker 1: Sexy crypt Keeper for the second season was none other
Speaker 1: than David Bowie.
Speaker 3: Got to see this now well.
Speaker 1: The two episodes directed by Tony Scott were The Swords
Speaker 1: from season one and that starred Balthazar Getty, Amanda Ryan,
Speaker 1: and Timothy Spall. And then there was a season two
Speaker 1: episode titled Sanctuary starring Giovanni Ribisi and Lisa Repo Martel.
Speaker 1: I've never watched it again. They made forty four episodes.
Speaker 1: Russell McKay directed like six episodes of it, and the
Speaker 1: cast is pretty extensive as well. Gen Carlo Esposito plays
Speaker 1: a vampire in one of them. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's a major vampire role or a small one, but
Speaker 1: he's in there. Daniel Craig shows up, Margo Kidder, Lori Petty,
Speaker 1: David Warner, Jason Fleming, among many others. I don't know
Speaker 1: where Off the top of my head. I don't know
Speaker 1: where this aired. I'm guessing it maybe showed up on
Speaker 1: USA Network at some point, but I I have no
Speaker 1: memory of this at all.
Speaker 3: Sounds tremendous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, by the late nineties, I feel like
Speaker 1: people were coming back around to this film. It's become
Speaker 1: a cult classic for a variety of reasons. It's style,
Speaker 1: it's cast, it's goth vibes, it's LGBTQ elements. Now Tony
Speaker 1: Scott sadly passed away in twenty twelve, but fourth noting
Speaker 1: that this film and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner from the
Speaker 1: previous year were both dedicated to their older brother Frank,
Speaker 1: who had passed away in nineteen eighty all Right, I
Speaker 1: already mentioned that Whitley Streiber is the author of the
Speaker 1: original novel upon which the based came out in eighty one,
Speaker 1: the first of a trilogy of vampire novels, and these
Speaker 1: were a follow up to his nineteen seventy eight werewolf
Speaker 1: novel The Wolf, in which was also adapted into a
Speaker 1: film nineteen eighty One's Wolfen starring Albert Finnie.
Speaker 3: Which I always confused with the movie Wolf starring Is
Speaker 3: it Wolf starring Jack Nicholson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Wolf is the one with Jack Nicholson. Wolfen is
Speaker 1: the one with Albert Finnie. And then there's the howling.
Speaker 1: You know that. Occasionally there's the big werewolf bump in
Speaker 1: the in the horror industry, and you get several different
Speaker 1: horror horror films about were wolf's more or less at once.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We go through monster waves, don't we.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there have been several werewolf films recently. We're kind
Speaker 1: of experiencing a werewolf bump right now.
Speaker 3: That would make sense. Yeah, But I feel, you know,
Speaker 3: we had like zombies in the two thousands, and then
Speaker 3: you had a vampire craze after that, and I don't
Speaker 3: know what we're in right now. I think we had
Speaker 3: a witch craze for a bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's got to come out mummies again, but I'm
Speaker 1: waiting on it anyway. This author has written numerous books,
Speaker 1: including The Coming Global Superstorm, which was written with Art Bell,
Speaker 1: of all People, and adapted into the two thousand and
Speaker 1: four film The Day After Tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: He's also well known for his nineteen eighty seven ufology
Speaker 1: book Communion, which was adapted into a nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: film in which Christopher Walken plays Whitley Striber.
Speaker 3: I've never read that or seen the movie, but I've
Speaker 3: had general cultural awareness of them. For some reason, for years,
Speaker 3: I had in my mind Whitley Striber categorized as somebody
Speaker 3: who was like a promoter of UFO encounters more than
Speaker 3: like a novelist.
Speaker 1: Well, I think he's apparently both.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 1: He definitely he claimed, you know, very much, claims to
Speaker 1: believe in UFOs and communion is presented as a work
Speaker 1: of nonfiction. But then he also has written a lot
Speaker 1: of as well. I don't, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: he doesn't actually believe in the reality of vampires and werewolves.
Speaker 1: So that's separate from the aliens. Okay now, and as
Speaker 1: far as the screenplay goes here, James Costagan, writing as
Speaker 1: Ian Davis, is one of the credited writers. He lived
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty six through two thousand and seven. Emmy Award
Speaker 1: winning screenwriter for fifty nine's Little Moon of alban seventy
Speaker 1: six is Eleanor and Franklin, and seventy five's Love among
Speaker 1: the Ruins. He was also a writer on nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: five's King David, in which Richard Gear battles George Eastman.
Speaker 1: And then we also have Michael Thomas credited on the screenplay, screenwriter,
Speaker 1: perhaps best known for his work on nineteen eighty five's
Speaker 1: Lady Hawk as well as twenty eleven's The Devil's Double.
Speaker 1: All right, now getting into the cast, starting at the top,
Speaker 1: this film stars Catherine Daneuve, who mentioned her already. She
Speaker 1: plays Miriam Blaylock. This is our vampire queen. And yeah,
Speaker 1: Daneuve very very talented actress here obviously born nineteen forty three.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I had seen her in anything before.
Speaker 1: French actress who has only appeared in a handful of
Speaker 1: genre pictures during the course of her long career. They
Speaker 1: include nineteen sixty five's Repulsion, seventy seven's Lost Soul, seventy
Speaker 1: nine See Here My Love, in eighty eight Frequent Death.
Speaker 1: She's probably best known for such films as sixty four
Speaker 1: As the Umbrellas of Cherbourg, sixty seven's The Young Girls
Speaker 1: of Rockfort, and nineteen seventies Donkey Skin. This is based
Speaker 1: on the Donkey Skin fairy tale, which I think has
Speaker 1: come up on stuff to blow your mind episodes before
Speaker 1: the fairy tale, not the movie.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, I think we might have talked about
Speaker 3: covering the movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I.
Speaker 3: Think it's supposed to be pretty weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'm all for it. You know, if it
Speaker 1: has been move in it, I'm certainly worth another book.
Speaker 1: She also appears in two thousand Dancer in the Dark
Speaker 1: and lends her voice to two thousand and sevens animated
Speaker 1: film Persepolis, based on the graphic novel. She was nominated
Speaker 1: for an Academy Award for her leading role in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three's End of Chime. So yeah, I think she's
Speaker 1: terrific in this, as we'll discuss. While her character certainly
Speaker 1: has plenty of like fem fatale elements, she's never presented
Speaker 1: as like a cold, unfeeling vamp, and certainly Miriam could
Speaker 1: have been presented in that way. Like her passion is real,
Speaker 1: her love is real. I believe these things when I
Speaker 1: experienced her character on the screen, all this despite the tragic,
Speaker 1: supernatural ramifications of that passion and that love.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's a very ambiguous character. Is I mean, is
Speaker 3: she the protagonist of the film or is she the
Speaker 3: villain of the film? Should we think of should we
Speaker 3: think of John and Sarah as the kind of trading
Speaker 3: off protagonists of the film, and in a way Deneve
Speaker 3: is the villain, or in a way, it's more her
Speaker 3: story than it is anybody else's.
Speaker 1: Though, Yeah, it does make me wonder who might be
Speaker 1: the central protagonist of the novel, because there does seem
Speaker 1: to feel it feels like there's maybe a certain amount
Speaker 1: of confusion with this story as as it's presented in
Speaker 1: the film, like, yeah, whose story is it? And you know,
Speaker 1: some would argue, you know, rather strongly that a film
Speaker 1: does need one key protagonist. There may essentially be two,
Speaker 1: but there needs to be in the writing of the thing,
Speaker 1: there needs to be like one central protagonist. The writer
Speaker 1: needs to know who that is.
Speaker 3: I guess you could argue then it might be Sarah,
Speaker 3: But Sarah also is never She's never really made fully
Speaker 3: aware of the of the whole emotional arc of the story.
Speaker 3: The only character who really knows everything is is Miriam,
Speaker 3: and so anyway, I guess we can talk more about
Speaker 3: that in the plot if necessary. But either way, I
Speaker 3: agree with you is wonderful in the movie. I mean,
Speaker 3: there is I think a kind of coldness to her,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't come off as cruelty necessarily.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's the key coldness but not cruelty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she is somebody who's projecting. I mean, I guess
Speaker 3: this is a problem in a lot of vampire movies
Speaker 3: because you have these characters who are supposed to have
Speaker 3: lived many, many lives. You know, they've been around for
Speaker 3: hundreds or thousands of years in her case, and it
Speaker 3: always raises the question that the normal kinds of performances,
Speaker 3: of human feelings and thoughts and intelligence and memory and
Speaker 3: everything that we get in the film in films is
Speaker 3: based on the arc of a normal human lifetime. Like
Speaker 3: you know, part of playing a character is what it
Speaker 3: means to play a character in their youth or in
Speaker 3: middle age or something like that. Vampires achieve a kind
Speaker 3: of age that no human ever does, and so that
Speaker 3: raises questions of like does that age manifest in their character?
Speaker 3: How should it manifest in their emotions and how they
Speaker 3: react to things, and what their philosophical outlook is. And
Speaker 3: I feel like Daneuve contains a lot of that mystery
Speaker 3: in her performance. There is something that feels unreal and
Speaker 3: a little beyond human about her, and a lot of
Speaker 3: times it's because she is difficult to read in situations
Speaker 3: where otherwise an actor might be more inclined to portray
Speaker 3: something very clear and overt.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. You know,
Speaker 1: there are these scenes I think, in particular about some
Speaker 1: of the scenes where David Bowie's character John is like
Speaker 1: trying to discuss not only his aging his illness if
Speaker 1: you will, with her, but also like the ramifications of it,
Speaker 1: and you don't get the sense that she's you know,
Speaker 1: unfeeling to it. But also she doesn't fully engage with
Speaker 1: him on it. Either she's in walking this line where
Speaker 1: it doesn't come off entirely like she's completely blowing him
Speaker 1: off or like, well, that's your problem, John, you solve it.
Speaker 1: But she's also not fully embracing him. She is to
Speaker 1: some degree distancing herself from his suffering, but in a
Speaker 1: way that also feels more real and more mortal and
Speaker 1: is not like just this vamp queen who's like I
Speaker 1: am done with you, you know, you have served your
Speaker 1: purpose or something like that.
Speaker 3: I agree. Again, it's a different take on the vampire
Speaker 3: character than I'm used to seeing.
Speaker 1: We'll have more to say about about this character as
Speaker 1: we get into the plot a bit later. Now moving
Speaker 1: on to David Bowie, who of nineteen forty seven through
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, again playing John Blairlocke. So far in Weird House,
Speaker 1: we've considered films where Bowie plays a space alien and
Speaker 1: the changeland king of a Goblin realm, so it's only
Speaker 1: natural that we now consider him as a vampire. Instead
Speaker 1: of covering all the main notes of his career, we'll
Speaker 1: catch this instead in terms of where he was with
Speaker 1: his music and acting career at the time. So we're
Speaker 1: only six years out from The Man Who Fell to Earth,
Speaker 1: and I believe the only other feature film he'd appeared
Speaker 1: in in addition to The Man Who Fell to Earth
Speaker 1: at this point was seventy eight to Just to Jigglo,
Speaker 1: So he really only had one what we would consider
Speaker 1: now iconic film role in his filmography at this point,
Speaker 1: and I think was far from established as the cult
Speaker 1: film icon that he would later become and certainly would
Speaker 1: be cemented in following his passing in twenty sixteen. Musically,
Speaker 1: this film falls between Scary Monsters and Super Creeps from
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty and Let's Dance from eighty three, both massive
Speaker 1: critical and commercial hits, and by the way, Let's Dance
Speaker 1: includes a track he did with Giorgio Moroder for the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two It Rout a Car film Cat People,
Speaker 1: which of course is a remake of the nineteen forties
Speaker 1: Cat People, except with Malcolm McDowell turning into a cat.
Speaker 3: I've seen the original Cat People years ago, and I
Speaker 3: remember I quite liked it. So we may want to
Speaker 3: come back to that on the show one day, But
Speaker 3: the remake I have not, and I'm to understand it
Speaker 3: goes a little bit harder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I don't know. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: want to watch Malcolm McDowell turn into a cat every
Speaker 1: time he orgasms, But I don't know. It's a product
Speaker 1: of the time, I guess. As for Bowie in this film, though,
Speaker 1: I think he's terrific. As well. As always, Bowie excels
Speaker 1: at playing the outsider, and here he's kind of a
Speaker 1: double outsider. He's a vampire, thus set apart from the
Speaker 1: mortal world and a stranger to many aspects of modernity.
Speaker 1: But he is also, as we come to realize, something
Speaker 1: of a thrall uninitiated into all the intricacies of vampiric existence.
Speaker 1: Much of John Blaylock's journey is one of struggling with
Speaker 1: aging immortality, which Bowie handles with a kind of kind
Speaker 1: of like a quiet anxiety that feels very palpable on
Speaker 1: the screen.
Speaker 3: Even though at some points I think we referred to
Speaker 3: his performance in The Man Who Fell to Earth as
Speaker 3: kind of quailudic. He also did have outbursts in The
Speaker 3: Man Who Filled to Earth, Like there were moments where
Speaker 3: his performance got quite big, kind of like the pressure
Speaker 3: came up and blew the top off and he screams,
Speaker 3: get out of my mind, or when he like smacks
Speaker 3: the tray of cookies in the air. I recall less
Speaker 3: of anything like that in here. This is a much tighter,
Speaker 3: more subdued, controlled performance throughout, despite the fact that we
Speaker 3: can see his character is suffering immensely. John Blaylock is
Speaker 3: a character who you know, he weathers his suffering with
Speaker 3: a kind of with a kind of quiet, melancholy and
Speaker 3: indignant resentment. Like there are parts where you can see
Speaker 3: his ego is wounded it but it never turns into
Speaker 3: a big reaction. Instead, he just kind of he subsumes it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Like there's a scene in the picture where
Speaker 1: he's he's significantly aged, and this this this youth that's
Speaker 1: been coming to the apartment for you know, like music
Speaker 1: lessons and so forth, thinks that he is the father
Speaker 1: of John. And she's like, oh, you know, I thought
Speaker 1: that because you have the same eyes. And yeah. His
Speaker 1: response is so haunting. He's like, he's like, he says
Speaker 1: something the effective Well, that's interesting. I've known him for
Speaker 1: so long and I never realized that, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. The little moments like that are just so
Speaker 1: well executed, all right. And then we also have Susan
Speaker 1: Sarandon playing Sarah Roberts, as we mentioned earlier. Born nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six, she's the first of three Rocky Horror Picture
Speaker 1: Show connections in this film. Susan Sarandon's career entails a
Speaker 1: great deal of mainstream dramatic success, obviously, but for many
Speaker 1: of us, I think she's always going to be a
Speaker 1: legend for her performances. Janet Weiss a heroin in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five film Rocky hor Picture Show. Her screen
Speaker 1: and TV credits go back to nineteen seventy and includes
Speaker 1: such titles as seventy four as the Satan Murders, eighty
Speaker 1: seven's The Witches of Eastwick, ninety one's film and Louise
Speaker 1: ninety five's dead Man Walking and twenty twelve's Cloud Atlas,
Speaker 1: one time Oscar winner for dead Man Walking and five
Speaker 1: time nominee, including a nomination for Film and Louise, And
Speaker 1: you know, I also have nothing but great things to
Speaker 1: say about Sarandon in this picture, she's sporting a great
Speaker 1: androgynous look with short red hair. She is, essentially for
Speaker 1: most of the film our protagonists. I guess you could
Speaker 1: argue a gerontologist whose obsession for her works and transforms
Speaker 1: into an obsession for the mysterious Miriam Blaylock. And while
Speaker 1: our bisexual vampire duo here more stated with Miriam and
Speaker 1: implied with John, are maybe a bit more cliche in
Speaker 1: their depiction of bisexuality, you know, their indiscriminate supernatural beings
Speaker 1: the vampires here, I do feel like Sarah is presented
Speaker 1: in a especially for the time like refreshingly believable light.
Speaker 1: So her attraction to Miriam, despite her character having a boyfriend,
Speaker 1: is not presented as something that is in and of
Speaker 1: itself alarming or something that would otherwise be inconceivable for
Speaker 1: this character, you know, without the supernatural intrigue. So I
Speaker 1: applaud that in this film for sure.
Speaker 3: Oh, that seems to me to be just kind of
Speaker 3: an understood part of her character, Like they don't really
Speaker 3: discuss it explicitly, but like, for example, her kind of
Speaker 3: jerk boyfriend is suspicious of her when he learns that
Speaker 3: she spent the whole afternoon with this mysterious, beautiful woman.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And the fact that it is understood without
Speaker 1: being like really called out in a way where like
Speaker 1: there's no scene where she explains it to him or anything,
Speaker 1: you know. Again, I think that's quite refreshing.
Speaker 3: I think Susan Sarandon's performance here is great, especially in
Speaker 3: the way that in the way that it changes over
Speaker 3: the course of the film, because when we first get
Speaker 3: to know her, she is in work mode. She is
Speaker 3: fully a professional, and all we're seeing is her interaction
Speaker 3: with the research that she does, like her engaging with
Speaker 3: the topics of her work as a professional. And even
Speaker 3: when she first meets John Blaylock played by Bowie, it's
Speaker 3: in that context. It's like a work thing. And then
Speaker 3: there is the strangest and most surprising shift, as like
Speaker 3: she is brought into the vampire characters' lives, that her
Speaker 3: role turns into an emotional and erotic one, and that
Speaker 3: she instead we instead learn about what she wants and
Speaker 3: what she feels, and her desires and her suffering, which
Speaker 3: was not really part of the character at all when
Speaker 3: we first met her, except in so far as like
Speaker 3: her desires and suffering related to her struggles with her research.
Speaker 3: That's a weird kind of arc to pull off within
Speaker 3: a story, and I think Sarandon handles it so well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lesser film and a lesser performance, it would
Speaker 1: have been the character taking her glasses off, you know,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing where it's just a complete shift
Speaker 1: and you just kind of roll with it because that's
Speaker 1: just how movies do it. But her performance brings those
Speaker 1: two sides together and make them both believable parts of
Speaker 1: the same human character. Now we mentioned the jerk boyfriend.
Speaker 1: The jerk boyfriend is Tom have Her played by Cliff
Speaker 1: de Young born nineteen forty five, a sixties rock star.
Speaker 1: The group was clear light not familiar with them. Turn
Speaker 1: Broadway actor. He was in Hair Turn film and TV actor,
Speaker 1: and he absolutely played Brad Major's and Farley flavors in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one Shock Treatment, Richard O'Brien's follow up to
Speaker 1: Rocky Horror, so in this de Young would be was
Speaker 1: taking over the role from Barry Bostwick, who played Brad
Speaker 1: in the original Rocky R Picture Show. Cliff de Young's
Speaker 1: other credits include nineteen eighty nine's Glory, nineteen ninety two's
Speaker 1: Doctor Giggles, and nineteen ninety six Is the Craft.
Speaker 3: Don't Forget. Also that he was in the nineteen eighties
Speaker 3: or maybe early nineties film called Pulse, which is an
Speaker 3: all appliances attack film. Like an evil I don't know,
Speaker 3: alien virus or something gets into the power lines and
Speaker 3: it makes the toasters go crazy and try to kill people.
Speaker 1: Oh man, maximum overdrive. Yeah, all right, we mentioned the youth.
Speaker 1: This is the character Alice. Alice Cavender played by Beth
Speaker 1: Ellers born nineteen sixty eight, a child slash youth actor
Speaker 1: at the time, but she'd go on to a long
Speaker 1: and award winning career on the soap Opera's Guiding Light
Speaker 1: and All My Children.
Speaker 3: Very tragic, innocent character. When you first meet her, you're
Speaker 3: just like, oh no, I think she's going to get
Speaker 3: her blood drank.
Speaker 1: And yeah, now when vampires start drinking folks blood. You know,
Speaker 1: occasionally the law starts sniffing around. In this film, that
Speaker 1: character is Lieutenant Ali Greza, played by Dan Hedeia born
Speaker 1: nineteen forty. We referenced him all the time, I feel like,
Speaker 1: but this is actually our first Dan Hidea film.
Speaker 3: I was shocked how cute Dan Hidea is in this movie.
Speaker 3: I think of him as, oh, you know, perennially crusty, mean, gristly,
Speaker 3: cantankerous old dude, or like the villain in Commando. But
Speaker 3: either way, a kind of perpetually older seeming character actor
Speaker 3: who just has a different energy than the Dan Hodea
Speaker 3: we get in this film. I think the major difference
Speaker 3: being this is one of the only times I've ever
Speaker 3: seen him with his hair grown out this long, and
Speaker 3: he looks positively scruffy as a police detective, which is
Speaker 3: against type anyway. So I don't know what's going on,
Speaker 3: but strange different turn for Dan.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. If you're not familiar with Danadeya, a memorable
Speaker 1: character actor with a real talent for playing often sleazy characters,
Speaker 1: villains and so forth. Be it the vengeful husband in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four's Blood Simple from the Coen Brothers or
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon in nineteen ninety nine. Dick, he's been active
Speaker 1: on screening TV since the mid seventies. And let's see,
Speaker 1: at this point in his career, he had just appeared
Speaker 1: in Alan Rudolph's cattle mutilation thriller in Dangered Species.
Speaker 3: Now, this just came up recently. That's different than the
Speaker 3: cattle mutilation movie that we did with Martin Landau.
Speaker 1: Correct, Yeah, different film. This one is more of a
Speaker 1: conspiracy thriller and it's quite good. So I recommend it
Speaker 1: if if you need to have a viewing party back
Speaker 1: to back cattle mutilation films, you watch those two.
Speaker 3: Also, though Dan Headea's character, correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 3: But I don't think the police make any progress one, no.
Speaker 1: Progress at all. He's completely ineffective. He doesn't even get killed.
Speaker 1: Like when he showed up, I was like, oh, he's
Speaker 1: getting the psycho treatment. This guy's going down the stairs.
Speaker 1: But no, there's just like nothing comes to the investigation,
Speaker 1: and then he comes up, comes back at the end
Speaker 1: of the picture and just kind of pokes around a
Speaker 1: little bit and figures out nothing.
Speaker 3: Why would they make him cute like this? If Atharine
Speaker 3: Danuve's not gonna drink his blood. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: Maybe they had to drop a subplot. I don't know,
Speaker 1: all right. I said there were three Rocky horror reference
Speaker 1: points in this picture. Well, the third is the actor
Speaker 1: Rufus Collins, who lived nineteen thirty five through nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1: He plays the character Charlie Humphreyes. He's one of the
Speaker 1: other research scientists that Sarah is working with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so with Susan Sarandon, Clifty Young, and Rufus Collins
Speaker 3: together are the three gerontologists who were working in this
Speaker 3: lab brutally rotting monkeys alive in order to discover the
Speaker 3: secret of aging.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a stop motion effect. By the way, when
Speaker 1: we see that monkey rot, it's pretty nice.
Speaker 3: But yeah.
Speaker 1: Rufus Collins New York actor who started out in a
Speaker 1: living theater, which is an experimental acting troop of the day.
Speaker 1: He worked in the UK as well, which maybe why
Speaker 1: he's in this film because most of it was filmed
Speaker 1: in London. But he has some wild credits, including Andy
Speaker 1: Warhol's Batman Dracula from sixty four. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: that is entailed. I've seen it referenced almost as like
Speaker 1: a lost film, so some sort of experimental Warhol project.
Speaker 1: But he's in both The Rocky Horror Picture Show and
Speaker 1: Shock Treatment, playing an uncredited, uncredited Transylvanian. In the former,
Speaker 1: if you look in the background, there's like at least
Speaker 1: one black Transylvanian with like really cool hair and sunglasses.
Speaker 1: That's Rufus Collins. Yeah, and then he plays a member
Speaker 1: of the camera crew in the latter picture.
Speaker 3: He wears like some neon sunglasses indoors in this movie.
Speaker 3: Lots of characters were sunglasses indoors in The Hunger, but
Speaker 3: he is one of them, and his sunglasses are cooler
Speaker 3: looking than most.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're a whole sit in. My wife and I
Speaker 1: were coming on this. There's a scene later on where
Speaker 1: I believe a Jigglow is brought back by Miriam purely
Speaker 1: for the purpose or mostly for the purposes of blood,
Speaker 1: and he's wearing sunglasses, as is she. She's a vampire,
Speaker 1: so we're like, Okay, she can wear sunglasses at night,
Speaker 1: but this dude's wearing sunglasses at night anyway. And the
Speaker 1: heart is so dark. Is anyone seeing anything? But yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody's wearing sunglasses. Everyone's smoking, like a chimney, all right.
Speaker 1: And finally it's worth noting that we have little more
Speaker 1: than a cameo here, very bit part. But Willem Dafoe
Speaker 1: pops up playing second phone booth youth and he was
Speaker 1: like he was twenty seven or twenty eight at the time,
Speaker 1: and it is this is the youngest I've seen Dafoe
Speaker 1: in a motion picture. This was only like his fourth
Speaker 1: screen or TV appearance. Dude, he is smooth, yeah, like
Speaker 1: he you know, you think of Dafoe or you know,
Speaker 1: or I think of William Dafoe. I think of like
Speaker 1: that rugged face, you know, you know, a very very
Speaker 1: handsome face, but very rugged. The lines are important to
Speaker 1: the overall work, and it's almost a little jarring to
Speaker 1: see him this young. He doesn't have much to do here.
Speaker 1: He doesn't drink blood, nor get his blood drink, but
Speaker 1: this would This still qualifies as the first of five
Speaker 1: Willem Dafoe vampire films that I know of, alongside A
Speaker 1: two thousand and one Shadow of a Vampire, twenty ten,
Speaker 1: Day Breakers, two thousand and nine circ A Freak The
Speaker 1: Vampire's Assistant, and of course twenty twenty four is Nosferatu.
Speaker 3: He doesn't play a vampire in this, but he looks
Speaker 3: like a vampire in his regular human makeup in Streets
Speaker 3: of Fire.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that would be that. And I guess
Speaker 1: like eighty five's Roadhouse sixty six and To Live and
Speaker 1: Die in La were really those are more the launching
Speaker 1: points of his career. So he was really under the
Speaker 1: radar at this point.
Speaker 3: Have you never seen Streets of Fire and you want
Speaker 3: to have a good time, just look up Willem Defoe
Speaker 3: screaming Streets of Fire. That's that's a good face.
Speaker 1: All right, Really, I'll try and speak this along. I
Speaker 1: realized we're taking a while on the connections here, but
Speaker 1: we mentioned Dick Smith. Make Up illusions is what he's
Speaker 1: credited with here. We live twenty two through twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: You know a host of talented makeup artists we're involved
Speaker 1: in bringing these characters to life. But Dick Smith played
Speaker 1: a key role in David Bowie's on screen aging effects.
Speaker 1: We previously discussed Smith in our episode on Scanners, which
Speaker 1: features number of amazing body horror effects, but he was
Speaker 1: also legendary for his aging makeup effects, most famously that
Speaker 1: of f Murray Abraham's Sealiari in eighty four Zamadaeis, which
Speaker 1: earned him an Academy Award. His other credits include seventy
Speaker 1: three's The Exorcist. In nineteen eighties Altered states.
Speaker 3: Oh does he do the just the de I wonder
Speaker 3: if The Exorcist was just demon makeup or if he
Speaker 3: also was making Father Maren look older.
Speaker 1: Hmm, yeah, I'm not entirely sure, but you know he was.
Speaker 1: You know, clearly he was skilled beyond mere aging effects,
Speaker 1: but he became well known for it. And to your
Speaker 1: point earlier about Prometheus, yeah, I feel like there are
Speaker 1: plenty of examples of movies that probably had more money
Speaker 1: behind them than films that utilized Dick Smith that ended
Speaker 1: up being less convincing in their aging makeup. He had
Speaker 1: a true gift for this sort of thing. Tony Scott
Speaker 1: mentions in the commentary track that Smith was disappointed that
Speaker 1: the lighting wasn't more intense in some of these scenes
Speaker 1: where David Bowie is aged and you know, and you
Speaker 1: know Tony's you know basically think, well, you know, that's
Speaker 1: part of it. Also, it's not just the makeup. You
Speaker 1: got to have the lighting, and you know, it makes
Speaker 1: it more effective. If things are not maybe completely in
Speaker 1: focus or completely lit, but it's kind of telling like
Speaker 1: that's how strongly Dick Smith believed in his makeup effects here.
Speaker 1: It's like, shine the lights on him. They can go
Speaker 1: out in the sun.
Speaker 3: Well, he's good. I understand why you had the confidence. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Costume. We don't always mention costuming, but Molina kind of
Speaker 1: Narrow was the costume and key to the costuming here.
Speaker 1: Born nineteen forty six, another legendary behind the scenes figure
Speaker 1: and thirty three time Oscar winner. Where do you even
Speaker 1: keep all those trophies? I'm not sure, But there's this
Speaker 1: one story, and this is one that that Tony shares
Speaker 1: on the commentary track. She's famously fled the set of
Speaker 1: the film one day and they were like, where is she?
Speaker 1: Where'd she go? Nobody knew. Turns out she flew from
Speaker 1: London to Rome just to get the right cloth for
Speaker 1: like a pocket square on David Bowie's costume. She was like,
Speaker 1: there's nothing here in London, I have to go to
Speaker 1: Rome to get it. So she just just flew in
Speaker 1: her own dime and came back with it.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: She's worked with such directors as Stanley Kubrick, Realley Scott,
Speaker 1: Francis Ford Coppola, and Wes Anderson, some of them, you know,
Speaker 1: multiple times. We're talking such costume rich films as seventy
Speaker 1: one's a Clockwork Orange, nineteen nineties Dick Tracy, and nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine's Titus.
Speaker 3: Those are all eye popping films. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The director of photography was Steven Goldblatt born nineteen forty five,
Speaker 1: South African born cinematographer who worked on such films as
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one's Outland, eighty five's Young Sherlock Holmes, and
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven's Batman Forever, for which he was nominated.
Speaker 3: For an oscar That was the one. Yeah, it's boy
Speaker 3: Ling acid.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna mention the editor. We don't always mention the editor,
Speaker 1: but the editor in this film, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: something else. There's some very alarming editing choices at times.
Speaker 1: Pamela Power born nineteen forty two. She worked with Ridley
Speaker 1: Scott multiple times on seventy seven's The Duellist, his Apple
Speaker 1: Mac commercial from eighty four, eighty five's Legend, and ninety
Speaker 1: seven's Gije. Okay, now we get to the music and
Speaker 1: there are several people to mention on the musical note here,
Speaker 1: so much like the editing, the music is pretty wild.
Speaker 1: We have a mixture of needle drop classical tracks, experimental
Speaker 1: electronic sounds, and then a riveting opening performance by Bauhaus.
Speaker 1: Howard Blake born in nineteen thirty eight was the musical
Speaker 1: director in the film. He also served in this role
Speaker 1: on nineteen eighties Flash Gordon, which we previously talked about.
Speaker 1: Let's see that multiple classical tracks are used here. There's
Speaker 1: also a score by Guinea Jaguera, who also did the
Speaker 1: theme song for TVs The Powers of Matthew Starr, and
Speaker 1: Michael Rubini, who also worked on Matthew Starr but also
Speaker 1: went on to score the Likes of nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: is What Waits below nineteen eighty six is Manhunter and
Speaker 1: ninety two's Nemesis.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's been a while since I've seen it, but
Speaker 3: I remember Man Hunter having intriguing music.
Speaker 1: As a stylish picture. Yeah, all right. And then finally,
Speaker 1: David Lawson or Dave Lawson is credited with performer, additional
Speaker 1: Electronic Music and Effects composer Additional Electronic music and Effects
Speaker 1: uncredited on that latter pump Point. But this guy's pretty
Speaker 1: interesting as well. There are a number of weird supernatural
Speaker 1: synth flourishes in the film, and when I heard them,
Speaker 1: I was like, this sounds like Jim Henson's Labyrinth. You
Speaker 1: know these sort of there's sort of like cascading synth
Speaker 1: waterfalls of supernatural intrigue, and they happen a lot in
Speaker 1: this picture, and they happen periodically in Labyrinth. And sure enough,
Speaker 1: I mean the same guy was involved in both of
Speaker 1: these pictures. Oh wow, yeah, so he Let's see, he
Speaker 1: he did supply. He supplied synthesized electronic sounds for The
Speaker 1: Dark Crystal in eighty two and also contributed to the
Speaker 1: Labyrinth score. Otherwise, he has a handful of film credits
Speaker 1: on the major databases, though sometimes he's not credited on
Speaker 1: the film, but if you look up the score album elsewhere,
Speaker 1: you can find that he's credited. Let's see, he worked
Speaker 1: on ninety four as Frankenstein. He worked with Trevor Jones
Speaker 1: on such films as Angel Heart in eighty seven Mississippi
Speaker 1: Burning in eighty eight. So he's a British keyboardist who
Speaker 1: was a member of the UK progressive rock band Greenslade.
Speaker 1: I was unfamiliar with Greenslade, but I pulled them up
Speaker 1: as I was working on notes here, and I like
Speaker 1: what they're laying down. It's kind of a neat prog
Speaker 1: rock sound with some synth in there. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: feels a little old fashioned, but in a good way,
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, So he's something of a synth legend.
Speaker 1: He played on the soundtrack for seventy six. Is the
Speaker 1: man who fell to Earth and worked with the likes
Speaker 1: of Jimmy Page and Kate Bush said to own one
Speaker 1: of the largest synth systems in Europe.
Speaker 3: The largest synth systems. What does that mean, like the
Speaker 3: physically largest.
Speaker 1: I guess it's kind of like, I think, maybe a
Speaker 1: collection of synths, but they're active and all like hooked together.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I found some. There's a Psychedelic Baby
Speaker 1: magazine has an interview with him from twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: and includes a number of photographs of him back in
Speaker 1: the day and in present times. And yeah, the ones
Speaker 1: from the seventies are pretty great because here's this like
Speaker 1: long haired dude, you know, of course, surrounded by synths
Speaker 1: and keyboards and all looks like he was quite the
Speaker 1: synth wizard of the day.
Speaker 3: I was trying to see if I could recognize any
Speaker 3: brands to know what his style was, But I do
Speaker 3: not know what these are.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, even when I hear guys like this
Speaker 1: talk about their dear I'm just not a gearhead for
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. So all the names of these
Speaker 1: various devices and innovations just go completely over my head.
Speaker 1: But I love the results. So you definitely hear his
Speaker 1: inflous on the sounds of the Hunger. But again, it's
Speaker 1: kind of all over the place. You have electronic, you
Speaker 1: have classical, and also some I guess more traditional score
Speaker 1: hidden in there as well, in addition to contemporary tracks
Speaker 1: like the Bauhause track that opens up the picture.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, is it time to talk a bit about
Speaker 3: the plot?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I let's jump in.
Speaker 3: So this is not one of those movies where we're
Speaker 3: going to do a kind of chronological scene by scene
Speaker 3: talk through the plot like we often do. Sometimes it
Speaker 3: just doesn't feel right with what the movie is. I
Speaker 3: think this is one of those cases. I've already described
Speaker 3: some of the plot, but here I think maybe we
Speaker 3: can do a kind of general overview and then talk
Speaker 3: about some specific scenes and elements and themes. So at
Speaker 3: the beginning of the story, John and Miriam Blaylock. That's
Speaker 3: David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve. They live in a house
Speaker 3: in New York City and they have seemingly been together
Speaker 3: for hundreds of years. Miriam is some kind of ancient being.
Speaker 3: We see brief flashbacks of her in what appeared to
Speaker 3: be palaces and maybe ancient Greece and certainly ancient Egypt.
Speaker 3: There are these different kind of costumes. I think we
Speaker 3: see some kind of Egyptian priesthood paraphernalia. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you had any particular observations about the ancient flashbacks,
Speaker 3: but I couldn't detect a lot of plot from them.
Speaker 3: They were not full of information. They were more full
Speaker 3: of vibe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these are not flashbacks in the Highlander sense where
Speaker 1: it's like, all right, we're going back now, and here's
Speaker 1: a definite time stamp of where we're going and when
Speaker 1: we're going to. It's presented very surrealistically and jarringly. There
Speaker 1: are multiple times like this in the picture where you're like,
Speaker 1: what's happening? Is this is the past? Yes, it must
Speaker 1: be the past, and then you kind of piece it
Speaker 1: together later. But yeah, Greco Egyptian is about the most
Speaker 1: I could make out of it.
Speaker 3: Though you could be forgiven for being confused when we
Speaker 3: cut to these palaces of the past, because in the opening,
Speaker 3: John and Miriam live together in this beautiful house in
Speaker 3: New York City that is very old world like. They
Speaker 3: are apparently fabulously wealthy, and their home is full of
Speaker 3: magnificent art. It's full of marble statues that they say
Speaker 3: are thousands of years old, and it's got these big,
Speaker 3: spacious Baroque rooms and musical instruments and stuff. So it
Speaker 3: seems like the kind of place you might suddenly go
Speaker 3: around a corner and be in a room that looks
Speaker 3: like it is a palace in ancient Egypt.
Speaker 1: When I am in New York and I get to
Speaker 1: walk around New York and I see a home where
Speaker 1: people live, I just assume these are sorts of people
Speaker 1: that live there, and this must be ancient vampires with
Speaker 1: you know, generational wealth and supernatural blood.
Speaker 3: So the flashbacks they showed that, but they also show
Speaker 3: us Miriam and John falling in love when John was
Speaker 3: a mortal, and I believe this is supposed to be
Speaker 3: somewhere in Europe in the seventeenth century. I think I
Speaker 3: read somewhere it said France, but I don't recall the
Speaker 3: movie saying France.
Speaker 1: It feels very French.
Speaker 3: So they are falling in love in powdered Wigland, and
Speaker 3: she promises him eternal life and eternal love, and they
Speaker 3: drink one another's blood to turn John into her youthful
Speaker 3: vampire lover for ages to come. And there's something about
Speaker 3: this scene where they prose the promise is forever, and
Speaker 3: this promise of forever is repeated later in the story,
Speaker 3: like I think I'm remembering this right. There are scenes
Speaker 3: of them early in the film, in their nineteen eighties
Speaker 3: New York phase where they're still trading these reassurances, Like
Speaker 3: there's one part where I think they're in the shower
Speaker 3: and John just asks forever and she says forever. Now.
Speaker 3: Maybe here we should do an aside on the opening sequence,
Speaker 3: because that gives us a flavor of part of what
Speaker 3: they do in their nineteen eighties New York life. Before
Speaker 3: seeing this movie, I really did not know what it
Speaker 3: was going to be like, but I guess I assumed
Speaker 3: that the whole thing was going to be a lot
Speaker 3: more like the first ten minutes. This was not the case,
Speaker 3: but the opening sequence rocks strictly in terms of what happens.
Speaker 3: It's just our two original vampires, Miriam and John. They
Speaker 3: go to a goth club, they pick up a couple
Speaker 3: of dates, they bring them back home and they drink
Speaker 3: their blood. But the sequence is so fun everybody. So
Speaker 3: there's the goth clothing, all this dark leather, people wearing
Speaker 3: sunglasses inside in the dark, and Bawhouse performing apparently inside
Speaker 3: some kind of animal cage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you will observe many things in this film through slits, slats, blinds, cages,
Speaker 1: and of course translucent black capes and drapes and veils.
Speaker 1: And again I also, I hope you're not trying to
Speaker 1: quit smoking while watching this film because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of cigarette smoking. Yes, But yeah, that's Bowhouse, sweet singer
Speaker 1: Peter Murphy performing in the goth club himself looking like
Speaker 1: some sort of an undead creature, and they're performing their
Speaker 1: biggest tip, Bela Lugosi's Dead. I do wish they'd included
Speaker 1: all nine minutes and thirty four seconds of the track
Speaker 1: because it's a tremendous track. I got to see Baohaus
Speaker 1: perform at Coachella back in two thousand and five, and
Speaker 1: they opened with Peter Murphy performing Bela Lugosi's Dead whilst
Speaker 1: suspended upside.
Speaker 3: Down on stage. It was pretty great.
Speaker 1: So here, yeah, we get these scenes of the club,
Speaker 1: Peter Murphy, our vampire couple strolling in, but then we
Speaker 1: get also we can also get some like crazy cuts.
Speaker 1: This is where we first started start getting hit with
Speaker 1: like crazy cuts to them, like driving and stuff later on,
Speaker 1: and then we keep cutting back to Peter Murphy's performance
Speaker 1: during the vampire blood drinking scene that shortly follows.
Speaker 3: That's right, So Miriam and John they both pick up someone,
Speaker 3: they bring them back together to their home, and they
Speaker 3: start like they're going to have sex, but instead they
Speaker 3: end up, of course, cutting them and drinking their blood.
Speaker 3: We'll talk more about the mechanics of the blood drinking
Speaker 3: in a moment, but we do see here something that
Speaker 3: is I think, while a lot of this movie is
Speaker 3: different than other vampire movies and very fresh and unusual,
Speaker 3: a common convention you see in vampire films that's also
Speaker 3: present here is that some of the most erotically charged
Speaker 3: imagery is used in the lead up to blood drinking
Speaker 3: rather than to sex. This does imply a kind of
Speaker 3: blurring of the lines between like the vampire's carnal desires
Speaker 3: and appetites, Like, to them, is the blood sexier than sex?
Speaker 3: And if so, how does this affect the way we
Speaker 3: should think about the vampire's love stories.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a great point. Yeah, multiple points in
Speaker 1: the film, including some very subtle moments, it's clear that
Speaker 1: the desire to feed is also the desire for sex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one, I don't know, I got the impression that
Speaker 1: made that one is not merely a stepping stone for
Speaker 1: the other, like it, Like, I didn't get as much
Speaker 1: the idea that it's like, oh, well, only they only
Speaker 1: do sex because they just want to do blood, like
Speaker 1: the two scene instead.
Speaker 3: I guess you're right, Yeah, they are kind of the same. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a great scene later on where John is aging
Speaker 1: rather rapidly and he's in I guess it's so just
Speaker 1: a restroom, but it feels like a locker room, and
Speaker 1: there's like a shirtless man like splashing his face with
Speaker 1: watter next to him, and he's like eyeing the guy's throat,
Speaker 1: And that too, is also a very like less overt,
Speaker 1: more subtle moment where there's a feeling of the desire
Speaker 1: both for flesh in the sexual sense and also blood
Speaker 1: in the vampiric sense.
Speaker 3: Now a note on the vampire mechanics here. The vampires
Speaker 3: in this movie do not, I believe, have fangs, or
Speaker 3: at least I don't recall ever seeing them. I don't
Speaker 3: know what the novel describes, but I don't think we
Speaker 3: see fangs in the movie, and that would make sense
Speaker 3: because instead they slice. The way they get the blood
Speaker 3: from their victims is they attack with a particular dedicated tool,
Speaker 3: slice their victims' arteries with this little ank blade and
Speaker 3: then like they wear it around their neck like a crucifix,
Speaker 3: except it's an Egyptian style onk and then they cut
Speaker 3: the neck and then they drink the blood like you
Speaker 3: would from a water fountain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I believe you're right, No, fans, I never
Speaker 1: saw any things. And they're tool users and they're feeding.
Speaker 1: There's a really fun Key and Peel sketch from years
Speaker 1: back about or where they discuss how vampires make too
Speaker 1: much of a mess when they feed, like they bite
Speaker 1: and then there's just blood everywhere, and they're not getting
Speaker 1: enough of the blood into their mouths. Well, this vision
Speaker 1: of vampirism at least excuses all the gushing and mess
Speaker 1: making because they don't have like dedicated, like feeding mouth
Speaker 1: parts so much they have to stab, They have to
Speaker 1: allow for there to be a gush and then feed
Speaker 1: on it as best they can.
Speaker 3: I feel like the movie also takes seriously the mess. Yeah,
Speaker 3: like you see them cleaning up afterwards.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cleanup seems to be a big deal. And there's
Speaker 1: some hauntingly beautiful and very power scenes I'm thinking, particularly
Speaker 1: after the first killing, we get the scene of the
Speaker 1: two bloody Anks landing in the sink during the wash up,
Speaker 1: and then of course we see the incineration of the
Speaker 1: corpses of the drained victims and that they're like wrapped
Speaker 1: in black garbage bags. And then they're placing the incinerator and
Speaker 1: the plastic is like, you know, melting around the bodies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all very well executed.
Speaker 3: The police do not seem concerned by the fact that
Speaker 3: John and Miriam have an incinerator in their basement.
Speaker 1: I guess it's like only murders in the building, Like
Speaker 1: all these buildings in New York have powerful incinerators that
Speaker 1: just completely atomized bodies, So I guess they're just used
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 3: So I wanted to pause for a moment here and
Speaker 3: explore the question of what other powers or limitations do
Speaker 3: the vampires have within the lore of the film. So
Speaker 3: we've established that they have arrested aging or unnaturally prolonged youth,
Speaker 3: perhaps turn youth in Miriam's case. Unclear. I was wondering,
Speaker 3: are they supposed to be invulnerable or resistant to regular injuries?
Speaker 3: I really don't think so. In fact, several things happen
Speaker 3: in the movie that made it seem like the vampires
Speaker 3: can be harmed by standard physical forces. I get the
Speaker 3: impression that in this world, like you could really wound
Speaker 3: a vampire. A human, regular mortal could really wound a
Speaker 3: vampire as easily as they could wound another human. But
Speaker 3: maybe I'm forgetting something to the contrary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the vampires do need to drink blood. In fact,
Speaker 3: they have this insatiable craving, and that is really framed
Speaker 3: more I guess this is actually quite common, but it's
Speaker 3: framed more as a weakness than a power. You know,
Speaker 3: It's like they need they need to sate this hunger,
Speaker 3: and it causes them to do things that are in
Speaker 3: some cases destructive to their own well being.
Speaker 1: Right right.
Speaker 3: Empires in the movies often have a kind of super strength.
Speaker 3: I think Miriam does have super strength, because at one
Speaker 3: point we see her throw Sarah clear across the room.
Speaker 3: Does John have in human strength? I don't recall ever
Speaker 3: seeing in any evidence of that.
Speaker 1: If he does, he never employs it. So it's if
Speaker 1: he has that supernatural strength, using it is not really
Speaker 1: a part of his character. But I guess I'm inclined
Speaker 1: to think that maybe he doesn't have it, Like maybe
Speaker 1: that's one of the limitations of him being the vampire spawn,
Speaker 1: the vampire thrall, or a half vampiric being, however you
Speaker 1: want to describe it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now, there's no problem with them going out in sunlight.
Speaker 3: They venture out in the daytime throughout the film, and
Speaker 3: they don't have to sleep in coffins or in their
Speaker 3: native soil. They sleep in a big kind of you know,
Speaker 3: a wind blown music video bed.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I mean I get the impression they sleep
Speaker 1: in a lot, but it's not like they can't go
Speaker 1: out in the sun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't recall any apparent influence of religious imagery
Speaker 3: or material.
Speaker 1: I think there's one. I think one of the phone
Speaker 1: booth guys, not William Dafoe, but the other guy maybe
Speaker 1: has a cross on, but it's ambiguous if it actually
Speaker 1: has any effect on the vampirically affected character who views it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so maybe Miriam has super strength, and unclear if
Speaker 3: John does. But apart from that, really, the only great
Speaker 3: kind of power we see of the vampires, I think
Speaker 3: is just the fact that they live eternally or so
Speaker 3: called eternally, that they do not age, they can maintain
Speaker 3: youth for a long time. Would you say that there's
Speaker 3: any other apparent power on display.
Speaker 1: I think that's mostly it now. Miriam in particular is
Speaker 1: quite seductive and charismatic. People are drawn to her. But
Speaker 1: I never thought that this was presented in a definite
Speaker 1: Dracula's gaze sort of way, like she a Yeah, to
Speaker 1: an extent, you could say she casts a spell Sarah,
Speaker 1: but I don't think in the literal sense, not in
Speaker 1: a way that overrides Sarah's agency in the seduction.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, Sarah doesn't seem like hypnotized. She seems
Speaker 3: more I don't know, encouraged to give in to something
Speaker 3: that she does want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it'd be more like being starstruck, except you know,
Speaker 1: it's like the vampiric version of that, I guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So anyway, worth noting that the vision of vamporism
Speaker 3: in this film is quite mechanically limited compared to most
Speaker 3: vampire lore. Many of the standard horror tropes do not apply.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no garlic in this picture. No steaks, nothing like that.
Speaker 3: There is steak in the picture.
Speaker 1: There's a steak. Yeah, there's rare steak.
Speaker 3: Of course, a quite significant steak scene where after Susan
Speaker 3: Sarandon has been turned, she's like at a restaurant trying
Speaker 3: to eat some steak and just like yuck, only want blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And she's like He's like, I can't believe
Speaker 1: you spent three and a half hours with that woman.
Speaker 1: You need to go to a doctor.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think you have bisexual ititis or something. I don't know.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So to come back to our sort of zoomed
Speaker 3: out overview of the plot. In the opening again, John
Speaker 3: and Miriam they're living this apparently fabulous life. They live
Speaker 3: this big, beautiful house in New York. When they're not
Speaker 3: hunting for victims at goth clubs. They appear to spend
Speaker 3: a lot of their time on artistic leisure. They are
Speaker 3: both musicians. I think Miriam plays the piano and John
Speaker 3: plays the cello, and they like to play music with
Speaker 3: a talented young teenage violinist from the house across the
Speaker 3: street named Alice. Does she take music lessons from them?
Speaker 1: I was unclear on that if she just jams with
Speaker 1: them or she takes lessons at any rate, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's probably fine. This is probably totally okay that she's
Speaker 1: coming over here and hanging out with these two ancient vampires.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not going anywhere good. Anything else to say about
Speaker 3: their apparently somewhat happy life in the beginning, I.
Speaker 1: Mean much other than it does seem like they are
Speaker 1: happy content. That doesn't seem like they particularly have any
Speaker 1: vampire hunters breathing down their necks or anything. And I
Speaker 1: guess they've been going at it for a long time
Speaker 1: and they're staying on top of the fashions like sometimes,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many ways to treat longevity and
Speaker 1: vampires in fiction, and sometimes vampires are depicted as like
Speaker 1: totally out of keeping with modern fads and so forth,
Speaker 1: and certainly technology and also maybe being rather bored, like
Speaker 1: they just run out of passion. These two seem to
Speaker 1: still have a lot of passion for what's popular in
Speaker 1: the world, changing musical genres and so forth, and you know,
Speaker 1: they're staying active. They're still killing people and drinking their
Speaker 1: blood and then burning them in the basement.
Speaker 3: And the way in which their hip seems to be,
Speaker 3: I don't know, basically just keeping pace with culture. You
Speaker 3: don't get like that Saltation view where or it's like
Speaker 3: in Francis Ford Coppola is Dracula, where Gary oldman. You know,
Speaker 3: he's got the big bun head and he's decrepit and
Speaker 3: an old world, and then suddenly all at once he's
Speaker 3: rejuvenated and hip and stylish. Anyway, the trouble of the
Speaker 3: plot starts when John notices that he is losing his
Speaker 3: hair and he can't seem to sleep, and he notices
Speaker 3: several things and realizes he is aging rapidly. Apparently years
Speaker 3: are falling off of his life every day. Now. One
Speaker 3: question here I was trying to remember is what is
Speaker 3: the level of openness between John and Miriam about this.
Speaker 3: I seem to remember that they do talk about it
Speaker 3: as if he knew this might happen at some point,
Speaker 3: Like I remember he asks Miriam how long it took
Speaker 3: for another person to decay in this way? Presumably this
Speaker 3: was a previous lover of Miriam's, but I also don't
Speaker 3: get the impression that he knew this would happen before
Speaker 3: he was turned. Did you take that all the same way?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's this is one of the more thought
Speaker 1: provoking mysteries of the film, I think, because like logically
Speaker 1: in the film, yeah, he seems to be aware that
Speaker 1: there were other lovers in the past, that they they
Speaker 1: went away, that they know faded away one way or another,
Speaker 1: and that something like that could happen to him. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, there is the whole reassurances of things
Speaker 1: being forever. And then of course this also ties into
Speaker 1: how I think, you know, we all to varying degrees
Speaker 1: deal with or don't deal with aging and mortality, Like
Speaker 1: we all know that we will grow old and that
Speaker 1: we will die. That that is like the biological trajectory,
Speaker 1: and that you know, very little can can occur to
Speaker 1: to change that path. And yet I think we often
Speaker 1: carry on like John not thinking about it, finding ways
Speaker 1: to avoid the reality of it, and and then when
Speaker 1: it does begin to occur, it, you know, it comes
Speaker 1: as a shock, but it's not a shock because we
Speaker 1: knew it all along, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Though, I mean for John, there's this interesting dynamic
Speaker 3: because it's like he short sold his life. Essentially. He
Speaker 3: had all these many many years unnaturally extended life and youth.
Speaker 3: He's been young and vigorous for so long, and now
Speaker 3: it's all coming home. It's all coming home at once.
Speaker 3: It's happening so fast. Yeah. So anyway, John is in
Speaker 3: this state and on TV he sees a report about
Speaker 3: the work of a gerontologist named doctor Sarah Roberts. This
Speaker 3: is the character played by Susan Sarandon. She's written a
Speaker 3: book about her work and she's performing experiments along with
Speaker 3: a couple of colleagues, Charlie Humphries and Tom have her
Speaker 3: Tom again is Sarah's boyfriend. Together, they are trying to
Speaker 3: understand the process of aging at the cellular level and
Speaker 3: possibly halt or reverse it, particularly to help children who
Speaker 3: have diseases that cause accelerated aging and deterioration. And these characters,
Speaker 3: the scientist characters, are interesting because On one hand, we
Speaker 3: see what seems to me to be obvious care, a
Speaker 3: real desire to help people, especially children, Like their motivations
Speaker 3: are represented as not impure, and yet they're also not lionized.
Speaker 3: The scientists are not treated as saints. They in some
Speaker 3: ways come off as quite brutal, like we see them
Speaker 3: performing these gory, horrifying experiments on monkeys where one of
Speaker 3: these experiments in a really great special effects shop by
Speaker 3: the way, causes like a monkey to rapidly age and
Speaker 3: then turbo decompose in minutes, like when you drink from
Speaker 3: the fallse Scraale in the Last Crusade. Yeah, we also
Speaker 3: see them. We see just sort of human failings of
Speaker 3: these scientists, like when Sarah and John first meet, Sarah
Speaker 3: is rude and dismissive to him and she lies to him.
Speaker 3: John comes asking for help, and then also Tom have
Speaker 3: her boyfriend, the other scientist. He comes off as a
Speaker 3: total jerk, though at the same time there are also
Speaker 3: indications that he genuinely cares for Sarah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he's put in a tough spot, I
Speaker 1: guess to some degree, and we're not maybe as privy
Speaker 1: as much to his side of things. But Yeah, that
Speaker 1: scene where John is sort of cast aside by Sarah
Speaker 1: and she's like, just wait wait for me in the
Speaker 1: waiting room and I'll get back to you later. And
Speaker 1: then she tells the security guy it's like, there's another
Speaker 1: weirdo here. Just leave him alone. He'll probably get bored
Speaker 1: and leave on his own. And then we the viewer
Speaker 1: watch as John literally grows like decades older in the
Speaker 1: waiting room, a scene that I think could otherwise come
Speaker 1: off as comedic, like because when you're explaining it's like,
Speaker 1: you literally watch him grow old in the waiting room.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a comedic bit, but it's executed in
Speaker 1: a way that does not feel funny. And and the effect,
Speaker 1: the makeup effects are of course so convincing. We don't
Speaker 1: see any kind of like transition effect. It's all you know,
Speaker 1: checking back in with him and seeing that he's visibly
Speaker 1: aged and yeah, like he ends up leaving the waiting
Speaker 1: room a much older man.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then as he's leaving, Sarah sees him again
Speaker 3: and he and he recognizes her, knowing that like she
Speaker 3: totally blew him off and lied to him earlier, but
Speaker 3: she sees now that he has visibly rapidly aged since
Speaker 3: earlier that day, and at this point she tries to
Speaker 3: apologize and she's like, oh, no, come with me. You know,
Speaker 3: we'll bring you in for tests, we'll see what's going on.
Speaker 3: But now John's pride is hurt and he refuses her help.
Speaker 3: And I think we kind of talked about that earlier,
Speaker 3: the way that John's personality is represented as kind of
Speaker 3: when he faces the you know, these extreme troubles, just
Speaker 3: kind of like taking it inside and pushing it underneath. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like this was his last, his only attempt to
Speaker 1: like reach out for help, and it did turn out
Speaker 1: the way he hoped it would, and there's not going
Speaker 1: to be a second chance for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then there's a section here where John is
Speaker 3: you can tell he's hungry, so he's trying to feed.
Speaker 3: We see him have encountered. He's very rapidly aging, turning
Speaker 3: old in the course of this single day. And he
Speaker 3: goes into a bathroom the scene you talked abou where
Speaker 3: he sees the man I don't know, shaving or whatever
Speaker 3: in the sink and he's staring at him. I think
Speaker 3: he tries to attack a skater in a park.
Speaker 1: But oh, it's a roller skater. Yeah. Yeah, Like they
Speaker 1: set up this really cool scene where it's like, what's happening?
Speaker 1: Where are we now? Another music video has started. This
Speaker 1: guy starts doing some cool skating and then here comes John.
Speaker 1: Attempts to stab him and drink his blood, but then
Speaker 1: it doesn't fully pull it off for some reason.
Speaker 3: So he comes home and then oh no, because he's
Speaker 3: so old. Now, when the neighbor girl Alice comes over
Speaker 3: to play music, John has to pretend to be some
Speaker 3: one else because she won't recognize him he looks so
Speaker 3: much older. And then even worse when she's in there,
Speaker 3: he talks her into playing some music for him, and
Speaker 3: we don't see it. It happens off screen, but we
Speaker 3: know what. He kills her and drinks her blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he gets more heartbreaking from there with John,
Speaker 1: because he just gets progressively older. Miriam is walking this
Speaker 1: line between comforting him and keeping him at arm's length,
Speaker 1: and she's having to burn Alice's body in the basement,
Speaker 1: and then John comes down and he's he's sold at
Speaker 1: this point. He asks for one more kiss and then
Speaker 1: he asks if she will kill him, and you know,
Speaker 1: and and in this and like heartbreakingly she tells him, like,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't work like that, Like, you don't die,
Speaker 1: you don't get to die. And and again it's maybe
Speaker 1: a little unclear to what extent he knew this was
Speaker 1: the case or remembered it was the case. I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's quickly made obvious that that, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: not going to grow old and die, He's just going
Speaker 1: to grow perpetually older, but have eternal life in a
Speaker 1: very non glamorous way.
Speaker 3: That's right. There is no death for a vampire. That's
Speaker 3: the twist. There is just aging and pain and decay,
Speaker 3: but actually no end. And then in a ooh for me,
Speaker 3: a hair raising scene where she takes him up to
Speaker 3: the attic and she deposits his aging body inside a
Speaker 3: coffin next to this huge stack of other coffins that
Speaker 3: are filled with Miriam's previous lovers, all of whom are
Speaker 3: reduced to husks inside the coffins, but are not gone.
Speaker 3: They are all still conscious inside, and she bids her
Speaker 3: other previous lovers to keep him company and to treat
Speaker 3: him with kindness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, very haunting. Yeah, thousands of years worth of
Speaker 1: lovers here stored away in neat little stacks.
Speaker 3: So here the story switches. Miriam is left alone, and
Speaker 3: who should come to the house now, but Sarah, Sarah,
Speaker 3: the researcher, the gerontologist. Her initial line of inquiry is
Speaker 3: where is John. She somehow got his address, and she
Speaker 3: is trying to find him because obviously somebody who's aging
Speaker 3: as rapidly as him would be of interest to her research.
Speaker 3: Miriam initially tells tell Sarah that he went to Switzerland.
Speaker 3: I think so she thinks he's at a clinic there.
Speaker 3: But she comes in and she begins to get to
Speaker 3: know Miriam. And this is where the story takes a
Speaker 3: really different kind of turn, because I think the way again,
Speaker 3: Miriam is often presented in a kind of ambiguous way.
Speaker 3: We don't always know exactly what she's feeling. She's more
Speaker 3: hard to scrutinize than many of the human characters. But
Speaker 3: I suspect that the implication is that Miriam is now lonely,
Speaker 3: because there was the idea, of course, she had John,
Speaker 3: and she loved John. And there was also the implication
Speaker 3: that she and John discussed that maybe one day, when
Speaker 3: Alice was older, she would turn Alice into a vampire
Speaker 3: as well, and she would become her new companion, and
Speaker 3: she'd been thinking about this, but of course John killed
Speaker 3: Alice and drank her blood. So now Miriam really doesn't
Speaker 3: seem to have a friend in the world.
Speaker 1: But then, oh, here's Sarah, and Sarah has a lot
Speaker 1: of things going for and there is an opening in
Speaker 1: the significant other market here in Miriam's.
Speaker 3: House that's right now, somewhere in here, I think. Actually,
Speaker 3: Sarah comes twice to visit in between their two visits,
Speaker 3: I think, or when the cops come to investigate, and
Speaker 3: this goes absolutely nowhere.
Speaker 1: Absolutely nowhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but Sarah does eventually come back to visit Miriam again.
Speaker 3: And here is where things really take a turn. Upon
Speaker 3: the second visit, it's it becomes increasingly clear that Miriam
Speaker 3: and Sarah are interested in each other. They are, you know,
Speaker 3: Miriam is is playing the piano and they're talking about
Speaker 3: what the music is. Miriam is explaining the piece of music,
Speaker 3: and Sarah keeps commenting that it sounds like a love song. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And on this second visit, Sarah also you know, shows
Speaker 1: up wearing a sexy outfit and it's not long before
Speaker 1: that outfit gets what some Sherry spilled on it. And
Speaker 1: you know, things things progress as you might expect. Much
Speaker 1: is said about the fact that she doesn't even like Sherry.
Speaker 1: Of course that's the other part. But somehow it's different
Speaker 1: with Miriam, and and so they they imbbe Now.
Speaker 3: I guess this leads to the scene that Roger Ebert liked.
Speaker 3: This is the love scene between Sarah and Miriam, which,
Speaker 3: as we talked about earlier, it there is a kind
Speaker 3: of mingling of the of the romantic desire and the
Speaker 3: desire for blood. And it's pretty clear what Miriam's aims
Speaker 3: are at this point. Miriam wants not only to drink
Speaker 3: Sarah's blood, but to give of her blood to Sarah
Speaker 3: as well, to turn her into a vampire.
Speaker 1: She wants companionship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so it's this weird dreamlike scene where ultimately
Speaker 3: I think in this scene they do drink of each
Speaker 3: other's blood. So there's like a wound in Sarah's arm
Speaker 3: where she's been pierced by the onk, but she has
Speaker 3: also taken of Miriam's blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and again this is a very artful, stylish sequence.
Speaker 1: It's certainly by by today's standards. There's nothing, you know,
Speaker 1: very explicit about it, though it is it is very
Speaker 1: erotically charged. And yeah, to Susan's Randon in her comments
Speaker 1: on you know, says that she thinks it was probably
Speaker 1: ahead of its time, you know, for eighty three, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and to Ebert's point, it is a highly
Speaker 1: effective sequence.
Speaker 3: Now we do see Sarah kind of trying to go
Speaker 3: back to her own, her old life after this, but
Speaker 3: it's just it's not going to work out at this point.
Speaker 3: So there are several different scenes. There are scenes of
Speaker 3: her increasingly tense and failing relationship with Tom, her boyfriend.
Speaker 3: Like they go out to dinner and they discuss things.
Speaker 3: Tom airs his suspicions and they you know, they are
Speaker 3: fighting about that. She doesn't seem to want food for
Speaker 3: some reason. It's like she orders a steak, but she's like,
Speaker 3: I can't eat this, and I think it makes her
Speaker 3: throw up.
Speaker 1: Later, she said them oysters back. There's oysters or muscles
Speaker 1: every see, but she sent them back and he's like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe you did that.
Speaker 3: Also, she starts doing some tests on herself in the
Speaker 3: laboratory and their colleague, Charlie, he explains what's going on.
Speaker 3: He's like, whoops, well, looking at your blood. We see
Speaker 3: that you actually have some kind of alien blood in you.
Speaker 3: There's you, there's you blood, and then there's some other
Speaker 3: non human kind of blood, and they're fighting for dominance
Speaker 3: within your veins, and the other blood is winning.
Speaker 1: And so in this Sarah is feeling the titular hunger.
Speaker 1: She is craving the blood. She is herself becoming a vampire,
Speaker 1: and like Miriam needs to feed, but she doesn't know
Speaker 1: how to do any of these things. She needs Miriam's
Speaker 1: guidance in order to fully transition into this life as
Speaker 1: a creature of the night.
Speaker 3: That's right. So there's more negotiation on these fronts. We
Speaker 3: see that Sarah is not immediately into the idea of
Speaker 3: drinking blood to survive, but she kind of ends up
Speaker 3: without a choice and it doesn't she so she's like
Speaker 3: extremely weakened and she ends up staying at Miriam's house
Speaker 3: and she's like in a bed there and at one
Speaker 3: point they have more interactions, but eventually Miriam's look, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna do the work. I'm gonna show you what to do.
Speaker 3: I'll go get a guy, and so she goes and
Speaker 3: there's like a great scene where she goes out and
Speaker 3: gets a guy wearing sunglasses at night and brings him
Speaker 3: back to the house for Susan Sarandon to eat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the Jiggolow character. And boy, they really
Speaker 1: went out of their ways to make sure you were
Speaker 1: okay with this dude getting fanged. Were not actually fanged?
Speaker 1: Honked and drained because he's like, he's rude, he's looking
Speaker 1: in the liquor cruit cabinet and he like spits his
Speaker 1: chewing gum out in Miriam's apartment. So we're like, we're
Speaker 1: totally okay with this guy getting it, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: take long before he does get it.
Speaker 3: So at this point you might be assuming, okay, well,
Speaker 3: is Sarah just going to embrace the new lifestyle? Is Sarah?
Speaker 3: This is what I am now. I am Miriam's vampire lover.
Speaker 3: I am her vampire spawn. I can have eternal youth,
Speaker 3: and I just need to pick up people at the
Speaker 3: goth club, bring him back here and drink their blood.
Speaker 3: And that's what we're gonna do for I don't know
Speaker 3: however long it takes. I don't recall does she get
Speaker 3: any indication of that what happened to John will also
Speaker 3: happen to her eventually do they talk about that.
Speaker 1: I don't know that they talk about it at all, No,
Speaker 1: But I mean, obviously we the viewer knows that that
Speaker 1: would be the end result, you know, some centuries down
Speaker 1: the line.
Speaker 3: But instead of the full embrace of what happens, there
Speaker 3: is a twist. Sarah proves a more recalcitrant, yeah, kind
Speaker 3: of new Vampa. There's something more of her original humanity
Speaker 3: left than it seems like happened with any of Miriam's
Speaker 3: previous lovers. So instead of fully embracing the new lifestyle,
Speaker 3: there's a confrontation and a big terrible climax. Now I
Speaker 3: forget exactly how it is triggered. What is it that
Speaker 3: Sarah does that ends up with Miriam like carrying her
Speaker 3: upstairs to like rapidly put her away with the other
Speaker 3: old lovers. Is it that she tries to make Miriam
Speaker 3: drink her blood.
Speaker 1: I'm a little unsure about how what exactly happens in
Speaker 1: this moment, but she ends up stabbing herself with the ank. Yeah,
Speaker 1: during a very close embrace, one of these embraces where
Speaker 1: you're not sure at first who is stabbed by and
Speaker 1: who does the stabbing, But yeah, she stabs herself, and
Speaker 1: then Miriam is like, well this is you know, she's
Speaker 1: clearly heartbroken by this. You know, she clearly had very
Speaker 1: strong feelings for Sarah and saw a future with Sarah.
Speaker 1: But now she's going to have to take Sarah up
Speaker 1: to the attic and file her away with the others.
Speaker 3: Right, But then it is revenge of the zombies. The
Speaker 3: ex lovers emerge in their withered, dusty husk forms and
Speaker 3: they all come out and they they take their vengeance
Speaker 3: or should it be thought of as vengeance, I don't
Speaker 3: know exactly what you how you frame it, but they
Speaker 3: they surround and attack Miriam and destroy her.
Speaker 1: There are so many places in this film where I
Speaker 1: feel like a lesser film would have gone in a
Speaker 1: different direction. I think there's certain pitfalls that a movie
Speaker 1: like this might have naturally veered into. And I think
Speaker 1: this is a key example. I think in a lesser picture,
Speaker 1: it would have been a pure vengeance of the zombies,
Speaker 1: like they would have attacked her, torn her apart or something.
Speaker 1: It's because the yeah, the undying husks of her former
Speaker 1: lovers do come out of their boxes. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think a lesser film might have had them be a
Speaker 1: direct physical cause of Miriam's demise. You know, she would
Speaker 1: have been torn apart by her demons in a literal fashion.
Speaker 1: But if we wouldn't have fit here because you know,
Speaker 1: set lovingly aside, they still love her, they still pine
Speaker 1: for her. I don't think they would intentionally hurt her still,
Speaker 1: even in the reduced state. Plus, though they're longing is strong,
Speaker 1: they're physically quite weak and powerless, like they're almost dust
Speaker 1: at this point. What could they do? And she clearly
Speaker 1: has heightened strength. So instead it feels more like it's
Speaker 1: like it's not as much it's their presence, certainly, but
Speaker 1: it's also the cumulative guilt of it all that overcomes
Speaker 1: Miriam and leads to what appears to be her physical
Speaker 1: death or physical demise, and this ends up ending the
Speaker 1: cursed existence of her thralls, like they finally crumble to dust.
Speaker 3: It is not exactly clear what the mechanism, what all
Speaker 3: is going on here, but it feels like it works.
Speaker 3: I will say after this, I mean, it's curious to
Speaker 3: because this is not quite the end of the film.
Speaker 3: We also see something else with Sarah, don't we.
Speaker 1: That's right, because I really at this point in the picture.
Speaker 1: I thought Sarah was dead. I thought she killed herself
Speaker 1: via the unk, that's why she was being filed away.
Speaker 1: But you know, at the end we get this really
Speaker 1: excellent sequence where we see Sarah standing on in the
Speaker 1: balcony of this like modern high rise in what I
Speaker 1: believe is London. And it's quite quite fetching because you
Speaker 1: have the varied and at times quite old bits of
Speaker 1: architecture visible in the city, you know, so it kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, it kind of meshes nicely with this idea
Speaker 1: of empiric life. But Mike, I had several questions, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: is Sarah a vampire now or is she free of
Speaker 1: the curse completely? In his mortal again? Did she? Or
Speaker 1: you know, did she dodge the fate and the curse?
Speaker 1: Has the experience unlocked some key into her own research?
Speaker 1: I assume she's keeping going with her work, but is
Speaker 1: it going to take a new turn now that she
Speaker 1: has has either been a vampire or partially been a
Speaker 1: vampire or is still a vampire? We don't know. We're
Speaker 1: left to ponder it. And what happened to Miriam, Like
Speaker 1: is Miriam completely destroyed or is she in one of
Speaker 1: the boxes now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, good question. Yeah, so a lot of questions
Speaker 3: left open at the ending, and I don't know exactly
Speaker 3: how to interpret it. But but yeah, despite I don't
Speaker 3: know exactly what to say about the ending, but I
Speaker 3: love the film overall.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was. I was quite impressed with it, you know,
Speaker 1: I like you. I kind of thought the first ten minutes,
Speaker 1: we're going to set the tone for the entire picture,
Speaker 1: and it ended up being a much more poignant and
Speaker 1: thought provoking motion picture overall.
Speaker 3: One last thing I wanted to mention before we wrap
Speaker 3: up here, and it was the thought about the interaction
Speaker 3: between the vampire themes of the story and the and
Speaker 3: a common thing that's true about well, I was going
Speaker 3: to say love stories and movies, but actually just love
Speaker 3: in real life, and that is the way that the
Speaker 3: vampire setting really helps the us against the world feeling
Speaker 3: of being in love. I'm not the first person to
Speaker 3: point this out, of course, you know, this is a
Speaker 3: commonly observed thing, but there is a way in which
Speaker 3: true love really kind of it. It does encourage a
Speaker 3: kind of contempt for like the rest of reality. You
Speaker 3: know that when people are in love, they like to talk,
Speaker 3: you know, like to you know, to say mean things
Speaker 3: about other people to each other and to kind of
Speaker 3: be in a conspiracy. When people are in love, they
Speaker 3: like to do kind of selfish or irresponsible things against
Speaker 3: other people outside of that two person conspiracy, it's just
Speaker 3: kind of it happens naturally. I don't know exactly why
Speaker 3: that is, but it just seems to be a thing
Speaker 3: that flows naturally from this two person bond. And that
Speaker 3: works so well when your two characters are vampires, because
Speaker 3: that's exactly the mechanic of the story. It's like we
Speaker 3: together are in on this great secret. We're working this little,
Speaker 3: this little blood conspiracy. And so we can go out
Speaker 3: to the club and only you and I are in
Speaker 3: on the joke that the people that we bring home
Speaker 3: or that we're just going to kill them, and you know,
Speaker 3: their bodies end up in the incinerator. And you know,
Speaker 3: so we've talked about that us against the world quality
Speaker 3: in other great love movies we've done before. It's kind
Speaker 3: of there totally different themes, but they're in a danger diabolic,
Speaker 3: you know, the way that the two lovers are in
Speaker 3: on crimes together. Uh and and the same thing as
Speaker 3: present here, and that is such a fun and mysterious
Speaker 3: and interesting dynamic, Like it's funny to see it play
Speaker 3: out and it feels good, but it also just raises
Speaker 3: these questions like why is that so common that people
Speaker 3: feel and act that way when they're in love? Like
Speaker 3: what is it about being in love that does that
Speaker 3: to us? It kind of kind of makes us bad
Speaker 3: to the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that's one of the appeals of paranormal
Speaker 1: romances and paranormal love stories, because the experience of being
Speaker 1: in love, the experience of being in a romance does
Speaker 1: feel supernatural. It does have that kind of energy to it.
Speaker 1: You know, you're not it feels like you have fallen
Speaker 1: in love with a vampire or a werewolf or a
Speaker 1: sasquatch or a centaur, you know whatever. You know, your
Speaker 1: interest happens to be on the page or on the screen.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, Happy Valentine's Day everybody.
Speaker 1: All right, just a reminder to everybody that's stuffed. To
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird film here on Weird House Cinema. If you
Speaker 1: want to check out a list of all the movies
Speaker 1: we've covered over the years, and sometimes a peek ahead
Speaker 1: of what comes next, you can go to letterbox dot com.
Speaker 1: Our user name there is weird House, and you'll find
Speaker 1: a nice list of everything. And of course you can
Speaker 1: write into us as well let us know what vampire
Speaker 1: film we should do next. You know, sometimes weeks ahead
Speaker 1: we're gonna do some other non vampire films for sure,
Speaker 1: but we'll keep coming back to vampires and were wolves
Speaker 1: and mummies.
Speaker 3: It's inevitable huge things. As always to our excellent audio
Speaker 3: producer Jjposway. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
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