Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamb and oh we have a fun one here for you.
Speaker 1: Today we're gonna be talking about the nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: film Rock and Roll Wolf, also known as Mama. It
Speaker 1: is a Romanian Soviet French co production and a live
Speaker 1: action adaptation of the brothers grim tale The Wolf and
Speaker 1: the Seven Young Goats. It is weird, It rocks, and
Speaker 1: it originally published twelve thirteen, twenty twenty four. Let's jump in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 3: today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be discussing
Speaker 3: the nineteen seventy six Romanian Soviet French produced psychotropic children's
Speaker 3: fairytale musical Mama aka Rock and Roll Wolf, directed by
Speaker 3: the Romanian filmmaker Elisa Beta Boston. And I really mean
Speaker 3: it when I say this movie has everything. It is
Speaker 3: so much, so fast, and so wonderful, infectiously lovable music.
Speaker 3: Russian ballet dancer is dressed up like spiders and or sparrows.
Speaker 3: Nearly just NonStop locomotive energy. Maybe flags a little bit
Speaker 3: in the second half of the movie, but at least
Speaker 3: the first half is like it is. It is a
Speaker 3: freight train, it does not stop. It's got diverse frolicking,
Speaker 3: theeomorphs in a secret village in the deep woods. It's
Speaker 3: got rooftop seesaws, bridges over nothing, goat boy, levitation, ice
Speaker 3: based wolf traps, strawberries coated and honeydew, a rainbow parrot
Speaker 3: with like mad auctioneer energy, plaintive donkey, solos, pendulum beds,
Speaker 3: secret passwords, red squirrel, acorn rituals, a dangerously handsome bad
Speaker 3: boy wolf man, a gorgeous angelic goat mother, and NonStop
Speaker 3: historical smoking. Yes, this is one of those where I
Speaker 3: am definitely in how have I never seen this before? Territory?
Speaker 3: A rock and roll wolf is so so in my
Speaker 3: wheelhouse and I can't recommend it enough, super weird and
Speaker 3: pushes like every single sensory boundary at once.
Speaker 1: I showed part of this to my wife at line
Speaker 1: after I'd finished watching it, and she thought it looked
Speaker 1: like an acid trip. And her follow up question was,
Speaker 1: how did Joe find out about this movie? And I
Speaker 1: don't have the answer. Do you have an answer? Can
Speaker 1: you answer it? For this?
Speaker 3: I wish I remember it. No, I honestly, I don't
Speaker 3: know how this movie first came onto my radar. I've
Speaker 3: like had it on a list of movies I was
Speaker 3: gonna come back and check out later, and then this
Speaker 3: week I did. I looked at my list and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, okay, what's the deal with this one?
Speaker 3: So I know. The one reason I became intrigued this
Speaker 3: week is that I started looking into user reviews and
Speaker 3: comments online just how people were reacting to this movie,
Speaker 3: and I noticed there were several distinct tranches of audience reaction.
Speaker 3: One type was pretty similar to how I'm reacting now, like, wtf,
Speaker 3: I just discovered this insane movie as an adult. My
Speaker 3: senses are overwhelmed and I am delighted and confused. But interestingly,
Speaker 3: another type of reaction was and I think this is
Speaker 3: probably particularly common in people from certain countries in Europe.
Speaker 3: It was a reaction like I grew up watching this
Speaker 3: over and over on TV, and it is intensely nostalgic
Speaker 3: for me. I couldn't verify this, but I read a
Speaker 3: bit of unsourced trivia online that this movie was played
Speaker 3: every year at Christmas on Norwegian television, where I believe
Speaker 3: it would have been known as a RockA uven, meaning
Speaker 3: the rock Wolf. And so I don't know, I guess
Speaker 3: we are in Christmas movie territory, whether whether or not
Speaker 3: we meant to be this week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's when we get into the plot later on,
Speaker 1: it does seem like there is some sort of well,
Speaker 1: you know, there is some winter folkloric magic going on here,
Speaker 1: so it does seem to fit well within like the
Speaker 1: Holiday movie universe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we get a winter fairy who comes and
Speaker 3: saves a little goat boy who has gotten lost in
Speaker 3: the in the wilderness. Oh but I should mention the
Speaker 3: third major type of reaction, So we've got the this
Speaker 3: movie is is weird. I love it. We've got this
Speaker 3: movie is nostalgic for me. I saw it when I
Speaker 3: was a kid. And then the third type is my
Speaker 3: fanatical celebrity crush. Is a weird pipe smoking wolf or
Speaker 3: a heavenly goat mother or both. And this type of
Speaker 3: reaction could overlap with one of the other histories possibly,
Speaker 3: but a lot of people crushing on the main sort
Speaker 3: of lead animals in this movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this movie has dare I say, strong furry energy
Speaker 1: to it. If you if you at any point in
Speaker 1: your life you've really gotten into the practical makeup effects
Speaker 1: for the cat's musical or perhaps the I finally remember
Speaker 1: this show Zubli Zoo starring Ben Vereen. This was like
Speaker 1: a kid's musical dance show, very Broadway, and all the
Speaker 1: makeup was very cats.
Speaker 3: I've never seen Zubalizo, but I watched part of this
Speaker 3: movie with my wife and she she compared it to
Speaker 3: Zublizu as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, strong Zubali Zoo energy, and yeah, it has a
Speaker 1: lot of attractive people dressed up as these animals. So
Speaker 1: I did have to wonder at times like if I
Speaker 1: was bringing that energy into it, if other people were
Speaker 1: having that reaction as well, Because I just came off
Speaker 1: a couple of viewings of nineteen seventy six is were
Speaker 1: Wolf Woman. So I don't know if I'm letting like
Speaker 1: the were Wolf Woman experience taint my viewing of a
Speaker 1: family children's Christmas story, you know, from several countries away.
Speaker 3: No, I mean, it's not the only movie of this sort,
Speaker 3: but I think from what I can tell, everything explicit
Speaker 3: about it is you know, very it's very family friendly
Speaker 3: and it's you know, it's a children's movie. It's a
Speaker 3: fairy tale movie. But there's sort of a second level
Speaker 3: of interpretation that a lot of people I think, look
Speaker 3: back on it with after they grew up watching it,
Speaker 3: and in fact regarding that first type of reaction, like
Speaker 3: all the people who were saying, oh, I watched this
Speaker 3: so many times as a child, like maybe on Norwegian
Speaker 3: TV or in Norway. Somehow this connects to another interesting
Speaker 3: thing I found online, which was a trailer for a
Speaker 3: live musical stage adaptation which played at the Norwegian National
Speaker 3: Theater in twenty eleven. And I so wish I could
Speaker 3: go back in time and see this. I would fly
Speaker 3: to Norway. If they do a revival, I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe they keep doing this thing. But kind of interesting
Speaker 3: thing about it is the movie I think is firmly
Speaker 3: aimed at kids. It's like a it's extremely weird, but
Speaker 3: it is a family fairy tale adventure. Just from the trailer,
Speaker 3: this stage musical looks to me more explicitly aimed at adults.
Speaker 1: It has slight, slight, rocky horror energy.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, soft, but yes, I see what you're saying
Speaker 3: like the little clips in the trailer feel like something
Speaker 3: in one sense aimed at adults who have passionate nostalgia
Speaker 3: for a movie they loved as children, but with a
Speaker 3: sense of irony about the weirder aspects. For example, a
Speaker 3: few of the clips from the stage version really seem
Speaker 3: to press on the sexual tension between Mama Goat and
Speaker 3: mister Wolf. Like. I pulled out a few screenshots for
Speaker 3: you to look at. Rob. This is again, this is
Speaker 3: not from the movie. This is from the stage version,
Speaker 3: where we've got Mama Goat here spanking the wolf them
Speaker 3: just like making weird faces each other. And then here's
Speaker 3: this one scene where suddenly Mama Goat has had a
Speaker 3: costume change and she's no longer in her Romanian folk
Speaker 3: dress and is wearing some kind of black leather thing
Speaker 3: with a bunch of metal rivets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at this point, I feel like we're in a
Speaker 1: meat love video.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, but no yeah again. To be clear, this
Speaker 3: does not happen in the movie. I think adult viewers
Speaker 3: will find it impossible to miss the weird tension between
Speaker 3: the wolf Titisuru and the goat mother Rata, but it's
Speaker 3: not explicit in the movie, and it's not played for
Speaker 3: laughs like it seems to be here. So technically, this
Speaker 3: movie is a film adaptation of one version of the
Speaker 3: fairy tale known as The Wolf and the Seven Young
Speaker 3: Kids in the Brother's Grim Catalog, and we'll get to
Speaker 3: the details of that story later on. I'll summarize it
Speaker 3: when we get to the plot, but overall the movie
Speaker 3: is quite loose on plot. Rock and Roll Wolf is
Speaker 3: like many musicals of an experience. It's kind of hard
Speaker 3: to communicate how much experience is packed into this eighty
Speaker 3: minute movie, the kind of time I personally had with it.
Speaker 3: The runtime just flew by, especially in the first half,
Speaker 3: with the song and dance numbers just coming so fast,
Speaker 3: and the tone and the visual and sonic texture constantly
Speaker 3: switching up with this kind of rapid shuffling deck of
Speaker 3: cards kind of feeling. I loved Rock and Roll Wolf,
Speaker 3: and I think it's a real shame that, as far
Speaker 3: as I'm aware, there is not like a high quality
Speaker 3: blu ray of the English version available today. I really
Speaker 3: really want that, because this is a gem of a film.
Speaker 3: Oh and I guess sorry. That brings up a second
Speaker 3: impressive thing about this movie. It is a film where
Speaker 3: the main creative inputs were Romanian and Russian. But there
Speaker 3: is a native English version of the film, so not
Speaker 3: just subtitles, not even just to d U. There is
Speaker 3: a version of the movie where the songs have lyrics
Speaker 3: in English and are performed in English by the cast. Now,
Speaker 3: it might be different voice actors than the people playing
Speaker 3: the characters on screen. I'm not sure, because I did
Speaker 3: listen to snippets of songs from the different versions. There's
Speaker 3: at least one in Romanian, one in Russian, and one
Speaker 3: in English. I don't know if there are any other
Speaker 3: language versions, And the voices sound kind of different to me,
Speaker 3: so I think it might be different singers. But like
Speaker 3: one example was that I recall in the Russian version
Speaker 3: the wolf sounded a lot less suave than in the
Speaker 3: English version and more kind of rascally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did notice that the English track was recorded
Speaker 1: in London, so you know, I mean, that kind of
Speaker 1: leads me to believe it is a different a different
Speaker 1: vocal cast for the English cut. But the English cut's
Speaker 1: the version we watched. That's at least a version that
Speaker 1: as of this recording is floating around out there. I
Speaker 1: asked around about this movie at Video Drome here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: the video rental store, and John, one of the guys
Speaker 1: who works there, is quite knowledgeable. He was looking around
Speaker 1: looking stuff up and he pointed out there is a
Speaker 1: DVD version of this film or a DVD R. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure in the technical specs there, but there is
Speaker 1: some sort of diss you can buy. You might have
Speaker 1: to go on eBay to get it, he said, but
Speaker 1: it does exist. But in terms of like a really
Speaker 1: nice like Blu ray edition, which clearly a film like
Speaker 1: this deserves, he said. You know, a good place to
Speaker 1: watch out for it would maybe be the Deaf Crocodile guys.
Speaker 1: That company puts out a number of great films, some
Speaker 1: you know, some Russian films for sure, and so that
Speaker 1: those would be the guys to pester with your with
Speaker 1: your requests for Rock and Roll Wolf aka Mama.
Speaker 3: Well, yes, I fully endorse that please put this out
Speaker 3: because this is you can tell you can just look through.
Speaker 3: The core of visual assets are fantastic. This is a
Speaker 3: movie of beautiful production values. It has these great sets.
Speaker 3: It's set in this fairy tale animal village in the
Speaker 3: middle of a forest with all these you know strang
Speaker 3: like these Romanian folk cabins and weird sets. But it's
Speaker 3: also got like some disco kind of sets. Oh yeah
Speaker 3: for sure. So yeah, the psychotropic elements dominate as well.
Speaker 3: The costumes and the makeup are just you know, push
Speaker 3: to eleven. It's almost constantly something something beautiful to behold.
Speaker 1: It is definitely a nineteen seventies musical, There's absolutely no
Speaker 1: doubting that. Like if you have ever seen like the
Speaker 1: original film adaptation of Godspell, indeed Rocky Heart Picture Show
Speaker 1: or a movie if we've talked about on the show
Speaker 1: before The Apple, which came out in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: but he's still a seventies rock musical, Like this has
Speaker 1: all of that energy, the rock and rolls there, the
Speaker 1: disco elements are there, and also that kind of like
Speaker 1: bohemian vibe, you know of these troubadours and bards floating
Speaker 1: around in a troubled decade but still keeping some of
Speaker 1: that energy of the late nineteen sixties alive in their art.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Hey, hey, hey, Wolf's on the way. So like
Speaker 3: I can see that comparison with The Apple and all that,
Speaker 3: and another one I saw people a comparison I saw
Speaker 3: people making online was Tommy, you know, the adamiation of
Speaker 3: the Who album. So yeah, I absolutely see that though
Speaker 3: something about this does feel a little It has common
Speaker 3: esthetic elements, but it feels less decadent than a lot
Speaker 3: of your western seventies rock operas. It feels more wholesome
Speaker 3: and kind of forest magic based.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It is ultimately angling for children and features a lot
Speaker 1: of child characters. So yeah, it's it's it's managing to
Speaker 1: be all these things at once.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, don't want to over sell
Speaker 3: the wholesomeness or make its ound bland like it does
Speaker 3: have strong Mother Goose drops acid energy.
Speaker 1: Is that your elevator pitch?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's gotta be Mother Mother Goose drops acid and
Speaker 3: joins the spiders from Mars.
Speaker 1: All right, you know, I'm not sure we actually have
Speaker 1: any trailer audio for this one, given the nature of
Speaker 1: the picture. We'll hunt around a little bit and if
Speaker 1: we can find something, we'll throw it in here. If not,
Speaker 1: maybe we can get JJ to sample just a tiny
Speaker 1: bit of the audio. If not, you know, you'll never
Speaker 1: hear this part because we'll cut it down.
Speaker 3: I should say home now you can open the door.
Speaker 1: Don't be afraid now not any more.
Speaker 2: He suus coucis plains, tell us an occuntation.
Speaker 3: We lend a helping hand in suit operation.
Speaker 1: I'm the don't keeper trincle. He ho my brother a
Speaker 1: good kicker. All right, if you want to see this
Speaker 1: film for yourself, we already discussed ways you might be
Speaker 1: able to find it, and perhaps find it in the future.
Speaker 1: Who knows, but this is always the case. We do
Speaker 1: urge you to watch it in the best quality possible,
Speaker 1: however you obtain it. All right, Let's get into the
Speaker 1: people behind this picture, all right. Starting at the top,
Speaker 1: we have ELIZABETHA. Boston born nineteen thirty one, the director
Speaker 1: Romanian film director and screenwriter whose credits include nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four's Memories of My Childhood, nineteen sixty eight's Kingdom in
Speaker 1: the Clouds, seventy two is Veronica, and seventy threes Veronica
Speaker 1: Comes Back. She's been involved in various stage and screen
Speaker 1: projects over the course of her long career, as well
Speaker 1: as in academia concerning film.
Speaker 3: Apparently, these Veronica movies she did are also sort of wild,
Speaker 3: sort of fairy tale fantasies aimed at children. And I'm
Speaker 3: interested in checking those out because oh we didn't. I
Speaker 3: guess we didn't mention this yet. But one of the
Speaker 3: appeals of getting into this movie this week is that,
Speaker 3: of course every Christmas season, Rob and I get in
Speaker 3: mind the mind of Jack Frost or Morosco the Great
Speaker 3: the Christmas Tale of the Russo Finished Taiga, But that
Speaker 3: one I saw little echoes of that in the movie
Speaker 3: we're talking about today. And in the screenshots I saw
Speaker 3: from the Veronica movies, I saw some comparisons one could
Speaker 3: make to moros Co as well. So those are going
Speaker 3: to be on my radiar. I want to come back
Speaker 3: and check them out.
Speaker 1: All right. As for the writing here, we have two
Speaker 1: screenplay credits. One is a Russian and the other is
Speaker 1: a Romanian. We have a Yuri Intin born nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: Russian author, a musician whose other credits include various other
Speaker 1: children's pictures. And then we have Vasilica Istrad lived nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four through two thousand and two, Romanian producer and
Speaker 1: writer who works several times in a writing capacity with Bustan.
Speaker 1: And this is a good a time as any to
Speaker 1: add usual caveat my apologies for any mispronunciations of the
Speaker 1: various Russian, Romanian and French names that are going to
Speaker 1: be involved in this multi national production. Here, all right,
Speaker 1: this film, there's no doubt about it, stars Ludmila Gorshenko
Speaker 1: playing Rata the Goat. This is the titular Mama from
Speaker 1: the versions of the film you'll find with the title Mama,
Speaker 1: and she lived nineteen thirty five through twenty eleven.
Speaker 3: Radiating goodness and light even when the forest is dark.
Speaker 3: She has strong you know, she's the paladin, she's the
Speaker 3: heroin character, and she comes off as so good and
Speaker 3: so pure, even when she's like flirting with the wolf
Speaker 3: who's going to eat her children.
Speaker 1: I mean, you very well may think that you were
Speaker 1: immune to the wiles of various satyrs and Baphamets and
Speaker 1: even mister Tumness. But you know, you need to watch
Speaker 1: this film and see how Rada hits for you, because
Speaker 1: her charisma, her brightness or just absolute goodness shines through.
Speaker 1: And also something about you know, she has this little
Speaker 1: button nose that seems to just work so well with
Speaker 1: the big goat horns and all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, she does have goat horns and they do
Speaker 3: the It feels like a very Eastern Bloc style of
Speaker 3: makeup effects. Though I think the makeup in this movie
Speaker 3: might have been done by the fringe. I'm not sure, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I saw at least some French credits
Speaker 1: for the makeup. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, anyway, it's something I recognized from Morosco as well,
Speaker 3: the freckles she has, which are just done. It looks
Speaker 3: like with like a black felt tip pin, just black
Speaker 3: felt tip, little freckles on her cheeks. Well.
Speaker 1: Grushenko was a Ukrainian born, Russian and Soviet actress, singer,
Speaker 1: and overall entertainer. While she at times was seen as
Speaker 1: too Western by Soviet entertainment tastemakers earlier in her career,
Speaker 1: she went on to be a highly regarded actress in
Speaker 1: Soviet and post Soviet Russia, receiving the highest acting honors
Speaker 1: during both eras she worked well into her seventies on
Speaker 1: stage and in TV and film. She put out several
Speaker 1: albums in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, and her best
Speaker 1: known films include nineteen fifty six's Carnival Nights, nineteen seventy Nines,
Speaker 1: Sibera Day, and nineteen seventy six is Twenty Days Without War,
Speaker 1: which was apparently suppressed to some degree due to its
Speaker 1: anti war themes and wasn't released until nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: and that was after the success of seventy nine Siberi Day,
Speaker 1: so you know, at that point there was no stopping her.
Speaker 1: I was exploring her filmography a bit I have. This
Speaker 1: is the only film I've seen starring her, but clearly
Speaker 1: she's a huge name and a number of prestige pictures,
Speaker 1: like she's not an actress that you find in any
Speaker 1: like sci fi and horror pictures. But of note, there's
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one's Sex Kaska, which I think translates to
Speaker 1: sex story, and it's a fantasy mystery picture. It looks
Speaker 1: like it has some like sexy aspects to it, but
Speaker 1: also seems to have a very almost kind of noir
Speaker 1: quality to the filmmaking. The only other two films that
Speaker 1: I think fall roughly into a fantasy genre for her
Speaker 1: were nineteen sixty ones The Man from Nowhere in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one's Ten. So yeah, this is my first time
Speaker 1: seeing her in a film, but it seems based on
Speaker 1: what I was reading and like the oh bit that
Speaker 1: ran in The Guardian when she passed it seems difficult
Speaker 1: to overstress how successful she was as an actress in Russia.
Speaker 3: It seems hard to believe that she didn't do more
Speaker 3: like sci fi and genre type movies when you look
Speaker 3: at some of her press photos. Yeah, there's one you share.
Speaker 3: I don't know what this is from, but there's one
Speaker 3: photo you shared with me. It's clearly from some kind
Speaker 3: of magazine shoot or something where she's I guess she's
Speaker 3: having a picnic. She's sitting out in the middle of
Speaker 3: a field with a blanket spread out under her, and
Speaker 3: she's got you know, kind of like a ratan lined
Speaker 3: wine bottle there, but she's got several daggers in ornate sheaths.
Speaker 3: She's wearing one of those like felt mountaineer hats with
Speaker 3: feathers in it. She's got a flask of some guy
Speaker 3: next to her, just some kind of bunches of grapes
Speaker 3: lying around, and then a falcon in her hand like
Speaker 3: it's per she's got one those leather gloves and just yeah, falconing.
Speaker 1: Between this image and the still I shared with you
Speaker 1: from sex Story, in which she's wearing like some sort
Speaker 1: of like she got crazy makeup on and this big
Speaker 1: furry hat like both of these images, and I really
Speaker 1: to an extent. Also the screen cap here we have
Speaker 1: from today's movie. If I encountered all of these and
Speaker 1: like a Google image search, I would be like, get
Speaker 1: this AI stuff out of here. Nice try mid journey.
Speaker 1: But I'm not believing that this is a real image
Speaker 1: of a woman with a falcon and a ceremonial dagger
Speaker 1: and a big flowery hat out on a picnck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, somebody put into the prompt like a Russian actress
Speaker 3: as Edward scissor hands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but these are all real, These are actual photos.
Speaker 1: I think I found the bird one on a blog
Speaker 1: about like Russian pop culture. All right, so that that
Speaker 1: is our star. That is mama that. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, this film was also known as rock and
Speaker 1: Roll Wolf, So who is our wolf? Well, the character
Speaker 1: is Titisuru played by Mikhail Boyarsky born nineteen forty nine
Speaker 1: Russian actor and singer, apparently best known for some adventure
Speaker 1: films he did, especially a nineteen seventy nine Soviet Three
Speaker 1: Musketeers movie in which he played the lead role of d'Artagnan.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think the name of that movie this
Speaker 1: may be in translation or you know international releases, but
Speaker 1: I saw it referenced as d'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers,
Speaker 1: so he must have stood out from the rest of
Speaker 1: the bunch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, wait a minute, No is d'Artagnan one of
Speaker 3: the three Musketeers. I think he might not be.
Speaker 1: He's not. It's been a long time sin they've done
Speaker 1: Three Musketeers.
Speaker 3: But I gotta look this up. I'm not gonna be
Speaker 3: able to rest until I know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I haven't. As a kid, I watched at least
Speaker 1: one of the versions that had Oliver Reid in it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's been a long time since they interacted.
Speaker 1: Because sometimes there are four of them, right, they're three Musketeers.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, it's d'Artagnan, Athos Aramis, and Porthos. I could.
Speaker 3: I just looked it up. So Porthos was Oliver Reed. Okay,
Speaker 3: I didn't know that, but yeah, that's right. It's like
Speaker 3: d'Artagnan appreciates these other three guys, the Three Musketeers.
Speaker 1: All right, well, there you go. Well this is apparently
Speaker 1: his big role that skyrocketed his career.
Speaker 3: I believe he's.
Speaker 1: Currently retired from acting, but apparently remains an active voice
Speaker 1: in Russian politics.
Speaker 3: So this guy is obviously a big part of the
Speaker 3: impression this movie makes on people. Like I think there's
Speaker 3: a reason that one of the release names, like the
Speaker 3: international title was rock and Roll Wolf, because people online
Speaker 3: have thoughts about this guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I mean he's a slind, tall slender really,
Speaker 1: you know, has like kind of kind of liking you know,
Speaker 1: aspects to his his body and face already. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he's wearing all black. He's constantly smoking a pipe, and
Speaker 1: I mean constantly. I don't know if there's a single
Speaker 1: scene where he isn't smoking a pipe. Yeah, he has
Speaker 1: a real rock star energy. Reminded, I was reminded at
Speaker 1: times of like Frank Zappa, you know.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, a little bit Frank Zappa, because he's got
Speaker 3: that He's got a strong mustache and part of a
Speaker 3: little beard with with the dark hair and the heavy eyebrows.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking a cross between somewhere between Jerreth the Goblin
Speaker 3: King and I remember in Almost Famous, when Billy Krudip
Speaker 3: plays a rock star, there's a little bit of a
Speaker 3: resemblance there.
Speaker 1: He's the one I'm a Golden God, right remember remember, yeah?
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah, So there's a good bit of that. But
Speaker 3: he is just a just a rascally gyrate and rock
Speaker 3: star in the middle of this fairy tale village with
Speaker 3: with a twinkle in his eye so bright it would
Speaker 3: be like registered on telescopes and other other star systems.
Speaker 3: Like he he is up to no good. Oh and
Speaker 3: I almost forgot him in. This is true of most
Speaker 3: of the characters in the movie, but it's especially notable
Speaker 3: in his case wearing an Amadeas style wig, gigantic voluminous
Speaker 3: wig in his case, with just these you know, kind
Speaker 3: of swishes of curly wavy hair going all over the place.
Speaker 3: Everybody's got their own type of voluminous wig, but his
Speaker 3: is I don't know. It looks really good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we'll have a lot more to say about
Speaker 1: this performance, but at this point we're going to get
Speaker 1: into some of the supporting players and animals playing Donkey.
Speaker 1: We have George Mihaitz born nineteen forty eight. This is
Speaker 1: a Romanian actor and direct director, apparently a pretty big
Speaker 1: name in Romanian cinema. His films include nineteen sixty eight's
Speaker 1: Reconstruction and two thousand and eight Silent Wedding, as well
Speaker 1: as the sci fi comedy, A Fantastic comedy from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five. This was I thought one of the creepier
Speaker 1: characters in the film. I don't know, every time Donkey
Speaker 1: was on screen, I was at least a little creeped out,
Speaker 1: in part because he falls in with the gang that
Speaker 1: is supporting mister Wolf, that's supporting Suru in his various schemes.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, there's something about his face, like
Speaker 1: he puts out this like calm, serene kind of clown face,
Speaker 1: but he's like actively supporting the main villain. And he's
Speaker 1: a donkey, like not this is not an animal that
Speaker 1: I would necessarily think of as, Oh, yeah, the Donkey's
Speaker 1: gonna definitely fall in with the wolf.
Speaker 3: He's the only herbivore in the wolf gang.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what does that mean? Maybe it gets into I
Speaker 1: don't know, it could be something cultural. We've talked before
Speaker 1: about about donkeys and how sometimes they are associated, at
Speaker 1: least in ancient Babylon or ancient Sumeria, with various demons
Speaker 1: and so forth. So I don't know.
Speaker 3: His emotional key is strange. He's like a morose gray clown.
Speaker 3: Where we were just talking about everybody's wigs. His wig
Speaker 3: is great Nigel Toughnell, and he has got big donkey
Speaker 3: ears on top, though he strangely has a lot of
Speaker 3: soul at a few moments. Do you remember the he
Speaker 3: haw song, Like the part where he's just plaintively singing
Speaker 3: he haw, he haw, he haw.
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, and Andy gets a love interest later then
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but that was decided we needed that,
Speaker 1: so so yes, Donkey, We'll come back to Donkey. Fascinating
Speaker 1: character in the Rock and Roll Wolf universe. Another care
Speaker 1: this is one we're introduced to, like right off the bat,
Speaker 1: we have the character Parrot. It is kind of a
Speaker 1: stretch to see him as a parrot. At first, he
Speaker 1: seems like maybe he's some sort of a clown, but yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a parrot. Played by Florian Pittis who of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty three through two thousand and seven. This is a
Speaker 1: Romanian actor, a folk musician and general entertainer.
Speaker 3: They mainly signal that he's a parrot just by giving
Speaker 3: him a very colorful outfit and wig. But yeah, he
Speaker 3: doesn't have a beak or anything. And the role of
Speaker 3: the parrot here is interesting because he's a kind of
Speaker 3: entertainer slash vender or slash auctioneer. You know, he's kind.
Speaker 1: Of a traveling bard or something, perhaps you know, music man. Perhaps,
Speaker 1: I don't know. At times I was like, it was
Speaker 1: this guy up to no good? Is he a con
Speaker 1: man or something? But now he's just here to tell
Speaker 1: stories and sing songs and gather everyone together inside the
Speaker 1: Magical Disco Ball.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting the level that they go to communicate
Speaker 3: what animal each person is. So i'd say, you know, Rada,
Speaker 3: I mean, she looks very human in one sense, but
Speaker 3: you can tell she's a goat. She's got the clear
Speaker 3: in the ears. There's no mistaking a parrot here. I
Speaker 3: don't know. Yeah, he could just be like a human clown.
Speaker 3: And there's another one, like the Bear family. They don't
Speaker 3: work that hard to make them come off as bears.
Speaker 3: They just look like humans in strange makeup.
Speaker 1: They just look like human clowns. And in fact, I
Speaker 1: don't think the next character, Father Martin the Bear, is
Speaker 1: named in the English version that we watched, but Father
Speaker 1: Martin the Bear is played by noted Soviet and Russian
Speaker 1: clown and circus artists Oleg Popoff, who lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: through two twenty sixteen. Not to be confused. I think
Speaker 1: there's an Olegg pop Off MMA fighter right now. This
Speaker 1: is different. This guy's a lover, not a fighter, and
Speaker 1: a laugher not a fighter. Maybe mostly worked in purely
Speaker 1: Russian film, but also appeared in nineteen seventy six is
Speaker 1: the Bluebird. I wasn't familiar with this, but this is
Speaker 1: apparently an American Soviet co production, an American Soviet co
Speaker 1: production made during the height of the Cold War, starring
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Fonda.
Speaker 3: I did not know there was such a thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know much about it beyond that, but
Speaker 1: that's fascinating. As for Oleg pop Off, I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but I feel like this is a name I had
Speaker 1: heard before. I don't know if in the past, someone
Speaker 1: like I ran into a clowning enthusiast at a party
Speaker 1: or something and they decided to tell me about the
Speaker 1: Great Oily pop Off, But I feel like this name
Speaker 1: has come up for me before. And this is also,
Speaker 1: by the way, a guy. When you see him in
Speaker 1: the film, you're like, this guy's a pro clown. There's
Speaker 1: no doubt about.
Speaker 3: It, not at all. In how he physically looks, but
Speaker 3: in the way that he is dressed here and the
Speaker 3: way that he acts like his physical comedy reminded me
Speaker 3: of Harpo Marx.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, yes, all right. Next we have a severely Kramarov
Speaker 1: playing the young wolf. Let's see, there's another. They refer
Speaker 1: him as something else, like little nephew Wolf something. But
Speaker 1: he's definitely part of the villain gang obviously, I mean
Speaker 1: he's a blood relative.
Speaker 3: But yeah.
Speaker 1: He lived nineteen thirty four through nineteen ninety five, a
Speaker 1: Soviet actor who then ended up immigrating to the US
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine at the what was apparently the
Speaker 1: height of his popularity in the USSR, and his subsequent
Speaker 1: US films included nineteen eighty four's Moscow in the Hudson
Speaker 1: starring Robin Williams, twenty ten, The Year We Make Contact,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six is Armed and Dangerous, nineteen eighty eight's
Speaker 1: Red Heat, and nineteen eighty nine's Tango in Cash. I
Speaker 1: don't have to tell you that he generally played supporting
Speaker 1: Russian characters and or Russian bad guys in these pictures.
Speaker 3: One of these days I got to watch Red Heat,
Speaker 3: not that I expected to be good. It just seems
Speaker 3: like one of those that would be a kind of
Speaker 3: history lesson.
Speaker 1: I think of those the films I just named, twenty
Speaker 1: ten is the one I need to see. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen that one, and I've heard that while it's no
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, it is interesting in its own right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've seen it. It's not bad, but it's I
Speaker 3: don't know. I just don't know if I feel like
Speaker 3: two thousand and one needs a sequel film, but I
Speaker 3: don't know, you know, go for it.
Speaker 1: I saw Moscow in the Hudson though at a very
Speaker 1: young age, way too young. It has as I recall,
Speaker 1: there's like a lot of naked rock and Williams in it,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember its quality beyond that. I don't
Speaker 1: think I was at an age to understand what this
Speaker 1: movie was even about. Let's see moving on, Okay. This
Speaker 1: is just a very supporting character, but she stands out
Speaker 1: all the time in the scenes because she's our hot
Speaker 1: squirrel lady. She is played by Marina Poliak born nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one, Russian actress best known for this film. Maybe
Speaker 1: she was a squirrel woman, I don't know, and if so,
Speaker 1: like it's it's hard to get work in serious cinema.
Speaker 3: You mean, in real life she was part squirrel. I
Speaker 3: think she.
Speaker 1: I don't think she's in makeup here. She's just a
Speaker 1: humanoid squirrel person.
Speaker 3: There are near constant squirrel antics in this film. You know,
Speaker 3: there'll be a scene where you're trying to focus on
Speaker 3: what the main characters are doing, but then a squirrel
Speaker 3: just like runs through the frame. All right.
Speaker 1: The next character is the Swallow. I thought she was
Speaker 1: a spider when I watched the film, because the spider
Speaker 1: people like, she kind of looks like a spider woman.
Speaker 3: I don't know, like she lives in a tree in
Speaker 3: dangles from threads.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like she doesn't have a beak, and she also
Speaker 1: doesn't have like mandibles or anything. But but yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought she was a spider. She's played by Violetta Andrei
Speaker 1: born nineteen forty one, a Romanian actress whose credits include
Speaker 1: the East German sci fi film The Dust of the Stars,
Speaker 1: which I believe I've seen and it's one that's been
Speaker 1: on the Weird House Cinema list for a while. To
Speaker 1: come back to okay, all right, and then coming to
Speaker 1: the musical credits, we have two one's French, one's Romanian.
Speaker 1: The French composer that's credited is Gerard Bourgeois, who lived
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six through twenty sixteen, not to be confused
Speaker 1: with the French silent film era director of the same name.
Speaker 1: This guy's a composer songwriter. He composed a few songs
Speaker 1: that were made famous by Bridget Bardoux in the late sixties,
Speaker 1: and he also had a singles run as a musician
Speaker 1: in the early to mid nineteen sixties. And then on
Speaker 1: the Romanian side, we have to Mestoicole Popa or Papa
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty one through twenty thirteen. He's a Romanian composer
Speaker 1: who worked with the director of this film on numerous projects.
Speaker 1: I think he scored Veronica. I could be wrong on that,
Speaker 1: but if it wasn't Veronica, it was one of the
Speaker 1: other pictures that she'd done.
Speaker 3: As I said earlier, I think the music in the
Speaker 3: movie is quite strong and constant.
Speaker 1: This is so, you know, there are different types of musicals,
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't even know that I have
Speaker 1: the terminology in my head for the different types, but
Speaker 1: this is one where there are a handful of songs,
Speaker 1: but we keep coming back to them again and again,
Speaker 1: different characters singing them, also different renditions of those numbers,
Speaker 1: and it's nearly constant. It's not one of these where
Speaker 1: all right, we've had a little dialogue and now it's
Speaker 1: time for a full blown song. So much, but it's
Speaker 1: also not opera, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it really varies in terms of genre. Like
Speaker 3: parts of this are full on like rock opera. They're
Speaker 3: like rock songs, almost prog rock. Others feel more like
Speaker 3: traditional kind of stage musical numbers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and at times it's a little like we've got
Speaker 1: some almost kind of like a Caribbean drum beat going
Speaker 1: on at times.
Speaker 3: You know, and the parrot songs, Yeah, the parrot.
Speaker 1: Songs, which I guess that makes sense, like what's a
Speaker 1: parrot doing here? Like it came from somewhere else, maybe
Speaker 1: we brought some different drum beats with it. And then
Speaker 1: other times there's certainly what feels like more of a
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, you know, Russo or Romanian
Speaker 1: like folk music kind of mentality there. Certainly in some
Speaker 1: of like the more lullabot eccentric songs we.
Speaker 3: Hear, Yeah, I agreed, So I figure when we start
Speaker 3: off talking about the plot, we should talk about the
Speaker 3: folk tale this is based on I mentioned earlier. This
Speaker 3: is based on a traditional fairy tale, and so the
Speaker 3: Grim's fairy Tales rendition of this story is known as
Speaker 3: The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids. Here, I'm going
Speaker 3: to be drawing on a translation that's available online by d. L. Ashleman,
Speaker 3: and the story goes like this. So you've got a
Speaker 3: mother goat who has seven children, and they live together
Speaker 3: in a house in the forest, and one day mother
Speaker 3: has to leave home to forage for something to eat.
Speaker 3: She warns her children that there is a wolf in
Speaker 3: the woods, and while she is gone, the wolf of
Speaker 3: the woods will come to the door and ask to
Speaker 3: be let inside, and if they let him through the door,
Speaker 3: he will eat them all up, so they better keep
Speaker 3: the door shut. The children ask, how are we to
Speaker 3: know if it's you coming home, mummy, And so she says,
Speaker 3: if the young goat's here knocking at the door, they'll
Speaker 3: be able to know that it's their mother by listening
Speaker 3: for her soft voice and looking at her feet either
Speaker 3: under the door or through the window. And the wolf
Speaker 3: will have a rough voice and will have furry black
Speaker 3: paws and so she goes out. She leaves the house,
Speaker 3: and then the text reads quote, it was not long
Speaker 3: before someone knocked at the door and called out, open
Speaker 3: the door, children, Dear, your mother is here and has
Speaker 3: brought something for each one of you. But the little
Speaker 3: kids knew from the rough voice that it was the wolf.
Speaker 3: We will not open the door, they cried out. You
Speaker 3: are not our mother. She has a soft and gentle voice,
Speaker 3: but your voice is rough. You are the wolf. So
Speaker 3: after this, the wolf is like, hmm okay, thwarted. So
Speaker 3: he goes to a shop and he buys a piece
Speaker 3: of chalk, and then he eats the chalk and that
Speaker 3: makes his voice soft. Don't know how that works, but
Speaker 3: that is what the story says. He goes back to
Speaker 3: the house again and pretends to be the mother, goat
Speaker 3: on once again. This time the kids they hear the
Speaker 3: soft voice. But then they look out the window and
Speaker 3: they see the wolf's black paw and they know he
Speaker 3: is a wolf, and they tell him to go away.
Speaker 3: And then the text reads quote, So the wolf ran
Speaker 3: to a baker and said, I have sprained my foot.
Speaker 3: Rub some dough on it for me. After the baker
Speaker 3: had rubbed a dough on his foot. The wolf ran
Speaker 3: to the miller and said, sprinkle some white flour on
Speaker 3: my foot for me. The miller thought this wolf wants
Speaker 3: to deceive someone and refused to do it. So the
Speaker 3: wolf said, if you will not do it, I will
Speaker 3: eat you up. That frightened the miller, and he made
Speaker 3: his pall white for him. Yes, that is the way
Speaker 3: people are morals in the middle of the story, that
Speaker 3: is the way people are. So anyway, Now that he
Speaker 3: has swallowed the chalk to make his voice soft and
Speaker 3: gotten the flowered up dough foot, the wolf goes back
Speaker 3: to the house and tries tries again. This time he
Speaker 3: does trick the young goats, and the little goats led
Speaker 3: him inside, and he eats all of them except for
Speaker 3: the youngest one, who hides inside a clock. Then, satisfied,
Speaker 3: the wolf goes off takes a nap in a meadow. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: mother goat comes home from her foraging, and she finds
Speaker 3: the house all in disarray and her children missing. And
Speaker 3: then she finally she locates the youngest goat hiding in
Speaker 3: the clock, who tells her what happened, and together they
Speaker 3: run to the meadow and find the wolf sleeping off
Speaker 3: his meal. But they see something moving and jiggling inside
Speaker 3: the wolf's belly. And then the text reads quote the
Speaker 3: mother goat sent the kid home and to fetch scissors
Speaker 3: and a needle and thread, and then she cut open
Speaker 3: the monster's paunch. She had scarcely made one cut before
Speaker 3: a little kid stuck its head out, And as she
Speaker 3: continued to cut, one after the other, all six jumped out,
Speaker 3: and they were all still alive. They were not even hurt,
Speaker 3: for in his greed, the monster had swallowed them down hole.
Speaker 3: How happy they were. They hugged their dear mother and
Speaker 3: jumped about like a tailor on his wedding day. But
Speaker 3: the mother said, go now and look for some big stones.
Speaker 3: We will fill the godless beast's stomach with them while
Speaker 3: he is still asleep. So the kids go gather the stones,
Speaker 3: they bring him back. They put the stones in the
Speaker 3: wolf's belly, and then they sew him up again, and
Speaker 3: the wolf wakes up thirsty, and he decides, well, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna go to a nearby well and get some water.
Speaker 3: But when he begins to walk, he cries out in pain.
Speaker 3: He cries out quote what rumbles and tumbles inside of me.
Speaker 3: I thought it was kids, but its stones that they be.
Speaker 3: And so the story finishes quote when he got to
Speaker 3: the well and leaned over the water to drink, the
Speaker 3: heavy stones pulled him in and he drowned miserably. When
Speaker 3: the seven kids saw what had happened, they ran up
Speaker 3: and cried out, the wolf is dead. The wolf is dead,
Speaker 3: and with their mother they danced for joy around about
Speaker 3: the well. So how much does this overlap with the
Speaker 3: plot of the movie. I would say medium moderately. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: in this movie they never cut the wolf open and
Speaker 3: fill him up with stones, But the major conflict of
Speaker 3: the film is the same. And I guess because the
Speaker 3: plot here is very loose, we should just sort of
Speaker 3: summarize up top, and then we can go and fill
Speaker 3: in some texture when we talk about individual songs and scenes.
Speaker 3: But the general plot is that Mama Goat aka Missus
Speaker 3: Rada lives in a house in the forest with her
Speaker 3: goat children. In this case, it's within a kind of
Speaker 3: animal village where one house is full of rabbit people,
Speaker 3: one house's sheep, one house is squirrels, and so forth,
Speaker 3: and there's also a donkey, and there is a pipe
Speaker 3: smoking wolf in this village named Titisuru who he lives
Speaker 3: in town, and he spends the first quarter of the
Speaker 3: movie telling Rada that he is going to eat her children,
Speaker 3: and she tells him no, and then they dance and
Speaker 3: make eyes at each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of like, no, for real, I'm
Speaker 1: going to eat your brats, like he calls them brats essentially,
Speaker 1: and he is pretty clear, like I'm a predator there,
Speaker 1: baby goats, i am going to eat your children. And
Speaker 1: she's like, oh, no, you won't. But there's kind of
Speaker 1: a wink there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. And so in the movie, kind of like
Speaker 3: in the folk tale, there's a secret code that Mamorada
Speaker 3: uses to enter the goat castle, but in the movie,
Speaker 3: it's a song. It's a song that Rada teaches her children,
Speaker 3: and she has to say it note for note perfect
Speaker 3: to be granted access. And I'm sure anybody who's seen
Speaker 3: this movie will have this song burned in their brain forever.
Speaker 3: You hear it many many times, in both its correct
Speaker 3: form and in its incorrect form. When when crudely attempted
Speaker 3: by the wolf and his companions, but he goes MoMA's home.
Speaker 3: Now you can open the door and it goes on
Speaker 3: with this whole thing about like I've brought you strawberries
Speaker 3: covered in honeydew and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And so the idea is the kids will listen, is like,
Speaker 1: is that is that Mama? I don't know. Let's hear yep,
Speaker 1: that's her. Her voice sounds perfect, it's beautiful. Then you
Speaker 1: open the door and she comes in right now.
Speaker 3: Sue Ru spends much of the movie trying to learn
Speaker 3: to sing this song correctly. He's like outside the house
Speaker 3: eavesdropping and writing out sheet music quickly as he hears it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, So he spends a lot of time
Speaker 1: like workshopping at with his his buddies, the Donkey, the
Speaker 1: what the.
Speaker 3: The Links, the Lynk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they're all working on it, and at times
Speaker 1: it's just, you know, it's it's too rock and roll.
Speaker 1: You know, he is a rock and roll wolf after all,
Speaker 1: So it takes him a while to really refine the
Speaker 1: performance to the point where he can attempt to pull
Speaker 1: off this this scheme.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, there's a subplot in the middle here where
Speaker 3: one of the Goat children, the older boy Mattei, wants
Speaker 3: to escape the house and go to the fair while
Speaker 3: Mama is out even though it's dangerous and the wolf
Speaker 3: is prowling around, so he runs out and then he
Speaker 3: gets into trouble and he gets pursued by the wolf
Speaker 3: and his allies. But that's just sort of a b
Speaker 3: plot in the middle of the movie. Eventually, the wolf
Speaker 3: and his goons kidnap a couple of the goat kids,
Speaker 3: and even though early on it was suggested that the
Speaker 3: wolf would eat the children, he doesn't eat them. It
Speaker 3: seems what he really wants is to hold them for
Speaker 3: ransom so that Mama Rada must pay him a bag
Speaker 3: of gold. He's like, give me the gold. He has
Speaker 3: this short speech about how much he wants gold. Of
Speaker 3: what use is gold to a wolf? I don't know,
Speaker 3: but he wants gold, gold, gold.
Speaker 1: Well, I think one of his cronies ask him, like,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do with the gold, and
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm gonna do what everybody does with the gold, baby,
Speaker 1: which is spend it. But I mean, again, what's he
Speaker 1: going to spend it on? I guess I don't know. Food.
Speaker 3: The wolf in the Brother's Grim story does buy something. Remember,
Speaker 3: he goes and he buys chalk and then eats it.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, so open question then yeah, so.
Speaker 3: Anyway, yeah, so a couple of the goat children get kidnapped,
Speaker 3: but then Rada comes up with a plan to get
Speaker 3: her children back and get revenge. So she first there's
Speaker 3: a lot of dancing, like ice skating and dancing around
Speaker 3: on the ice, and the whole village comes out to
Speaker 3: the frozen pond in the wintertime and ice skates around
Speaker 3: and dances and stuff. And then Rada dances with the
Speaker 3: wolf and there, you know, it's very flirty dancing. But
Speaker 3: then also he's like, give me the gold, and what
Speaker 3: the gold? And so she eventually uses what I don't
Speaker 3: know if it's actually a bag of gold, but it's
Speaker 3: something made to look like a bag of gold. She
Speaker 3: uses it as bait to trick him into falling into
Speaker 3: a trap that the villagers have made in the ice
Speaker 3: of the frozen pond. So the wolf falls into the water,
Speaker 3: and while he's drowning in the freezing water, his co
Speaker 3: conspirators again, the younger Wolf, the Lynx, and the donkey,
Speaker 3: they sort of have a change of heart and they
Speaker 3: bring Roda's children back to her, and then mister Wolf
Speaker 3: is pulled from the water and allowed to live, and
Speaker 3: he promises he has a changed wolf, he will never
Speaker 3: kidnap her children again, and everyone lives happily ever after.
Speaker 1: That's it, and that's how it goes down. Nobody is
Speaker 1: cut open, no stones are implanet in anybody's body, and
Speaker 1: everyone learns their lesson. But we cannot stress how much
Speaker 1: dancing and dare I say prancing occurs on the road?
Speaker 1: Did this conclusion?
Speaker 3: Oh, unbelievable amounts of gambling and gyrating about Oh, and
Speaker 3: I haven't mentioned this anywhere else, so I guess I'll
Speaker 3: just throw it in he or I mentioned that the
Speaker 3: you know, the visual textures of the movie are good,
Speaker 3: like the costumes and the and the makeup and the
Speaker 3: sets and all that are great. But I just really
Speaker 3: want to emphasize again how much how much landscape texture
Speaker 3: there is in the village set, which is a great
Speaker 3: is a great compliment to the choreography and the dancing.
Speaker 3: So it's in this lovely natural setting in the forest,
Speaker 3: but there are just all these interesting little things for
Speaker 3: the dancers to kind of move around and react to,
Speaker 3: all these little pathways and gates and staircases and ladders
Speaker 3: and railings and little bridges, and it's all very rustic
Speaker 3: and pretty, and it makes for a perfect landscape for
Speaker 3: these rambling dance numbers that lead the characters from one
Speaker 3: edge of the village to another.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah, it really the environment feels very authentic, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's almost like they these actors, as these animals
Speaker 1: lived here for months or something leading up to the
Speaker 1: actual filming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, you want to talk about the individual scenes
Speaker 3: and musical numbers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's start at the beginning, because, you know, Joe,
Speaker 1: they pull a reverse Holy Mountain on us here, which
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So we start outside of the story with
Speaker 3: the credit sequence taking place over shots of the actors
Speaker 3: being introduced with credits as they get into costume and
Speaker 3: have their makeup applied. Interesting choice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And for some reason for me, this really drove
Speaker 1: home the nineteen seventies musical quality. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just because you're seeing, you know, guys and
Speaker 1: gals who are clearly denizens of the nineteen seventies, like
Speaker 1: in their casual clothing, being transformed into these timeless woodland creatures.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is a softening, kind of humanizing element to
Speaker 3: it because, for example, One of the things we see
Speaker 3: is the actor who plays the villain, who plays mister Wolf,
Speaker 3: is like sitting in a chair in his makeup chair,
Speaker 3: and the kids who play the goat children in the
Speaker 3: movie are like play They're like putting funny makeup on
Speaker 3: his face and they're all laughing about it. So it's like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: he's the bad guy in the movie, but in real
Speaker 3: life they're all friends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all in good fun. Children. Yeah, don't be
Speaker 1: stressed out by anything. You're about to see.
Speaker 3: Kind of interesting cinematography choice here in the scene where
Speaker 3: we're meeting all the characters is that most often sometimes
Speaker 3: we just get like a headshot where they smile at
Speaker 3: the camera, but more often we see performers making eye
Speaker 3: contact with the camera through a mirror, so the camera's
Speaker 3: over their shoulder and we're looking into their makeup mirror
Speaker 3: and connecting with them that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, did you notice how in this part, basically everybody
Speaker 3: is smiling as they meet the camera except the actor
Speaker 3: who plays Donkey, who's just grimacing and looking like, you know,
Speaker 3: why go on with this masquerade of.
Speaker 1: A well, he's method. You know, he's Donkey from the
Speaker 1: get go. He showed up this morning, donkey, before he
Speaker 1: even put the makeup or the ears on.
Speaker 3: He looks like he has just about had it with
Speaker 3: this job. I'm sick of playing donkey. Okay, but let's
Speaker 3: go into the world. Now. We go into the forest,
Speaker 3: into the village of fantastic magical creatures. And what's our
Speaker 3: first song?
Speaker 1: Oh, the first one is I honestly don't remember what
Speaker 1: the song is, but this one is by a parrot
Speaker 1: and it's kind of an upbeat, prancing tune set to
Speaker 1: some furious, kind of almost Caribbean drumming.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, yeah, this is the one that goes
Speaker 3: ladies and gentlemen. So before the song even starts, I
Speaker 3: think one of the first things we see is like
Speaker 3: the squirrel lady. She's she's looking out at the road
Speaker 3: leading to the village and she screams like here he comes.
Speaker 3: And then mister Parrot, a tweet voiced master of ceremonies
Speaker 3: type presence in a teal tuxedo jacket, a red cravat
Speaker 3: and a rainbow wig is riding into town on this
Speaker 3: rag and bone shop velocipede, singing a song I had
Speaker 3: to This is one of the many parts where when
Speaker 3: I went back and I listened to the lyrics more closely,
Speaker 3: I was like, wait, what is this about. It sounds
Speaker 3: like the song is about artifacts he has stolen from
Speaker 3: various places around the world. He says that he went
Speaker 3: to Tehran where he got a rock that shows the future,
Speaker 3: and from Bali he took something referred to as the
Speaker 3: ancient magic tree.
Speaker 1: Well, I've got news for mister Parrett. I feel like
Speaker 1: those artifacts and tales of their exploits are going to
Speaker 1: be lost on this crowd, because then these animals are
Speaker 1: a little more down to earth in their yeah, their
Speaker 1: needs and aspirations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they would rather have like some cakes
Speaker 3: and stuff. Yeah, this is the shire. In fact, this
Speaker 3: is exactly this is the shire. Because the other thing
Speaker 3: is the implication in this song is that everybody loves Parrot.
Speaker 3: And it's like when Gandalf arrives at the Shire in
Speaker 3: his cart, the children are all running around screeching with joy.
Speaker 3: Parrot here does not set off any fireworks, but he
Speaker 3: might as well. We also get several close up shots
Speaker 3: of the various like lady animals of the village watching
Speaker 3: Parrot's arrival with rapturous admiration, Like we see the lamb
Speaker 3: lady looking at him like what a honk. But anyway,
Speaker 3: the whole number has this traveling medicine show quality to it.
Speaker 3: He comes in on his velocipede cart and then they
Speaker 3: set up a kind of stage where he stands there
Speaker 3: singing to the crowd, and Parrot's arrival is presaging a
Speaker 3: fare that will be held I think the following day.
Speaker 1: Now, he doesn't particularly have any role in the plot.
Speaker 1: He's just here to facilitate dance numbers though, so unlike.
Speaker 3: Gandalf, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Anyway, while all this
Speaker 3: is going on, we also see another major carecharacter, the Wolf.
Speaker 3: He's up in his tower. I don't know what you
Speaker 3: would call this building he lives in, but he's in
Speaker 3: this building that's like got a view up and over
Speaker 3: everything else, and he's standing standing watching the celebrations suspiciously
Speaker 3: through a wooden spyglass.
Speaker 1: Up in his wolf tower.
Speaker 3: So he's there with his flowing mane of hair, a
Speaker 3: strong eyebrows, strong mustache. He makes an impression the first
Speaker 3: time you see him, and also he's keenly peering out
Speaker 3: at things going on. He has a predator's gaze. You
Speaker 3: know he's ready. He's ready to eat some of the
Speaker 3: herbivores of the village, and wolf begins to watch a
Speaker 3: single family among the crowd, that of mother Goat missus
Speaker 3: Rada and her children who are on their way home.
Speaker 3: The children are begging to be taken to the upcoming fair,
Speaker 3: and this leads into the second song, which is performed
Speaker 3: by the wolf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a bold, sauntering number that it occupies
Speaker 1: that place where comedic brass and seductive brass meet. It's
Speaker 1: also it's basically his allow me to introduce myself toune
Speaker 1: where he tells you who he is and what he's
Speaker 1: all about.
Speaker 3: This got funny era once again when I went and
Speaker 3: transcribed the lyrics. He's saying, how do you do? I'm
Speaker 3: Titi Suru, friendliest wolf you've met. You'll hear the strangest
Speaker 3: things about me, for it's been said that I could
Speaker 3: be responsible for incidents unexplained. People do invent the oddest tales.
Speaker 3: That's not what I would put in my cover letter.
Speaker 3: The first thing you're hearing from is from him is
Speaker 3: people tell a little lies about me.
Speaker 1: M m yeah. People will try to pin various unsolved
Speaker 1: murders on me. But there's actually no connection. My alibi
Speaker 1: is pretty solid. Yeah, it's not a convincing start.
Speaker 3: It's great when like the first thing somebody says when
Speaker 3: you meet them is like, my haters are all lying.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Titisuru goes out dancing through the middle of the
Speaker 3: village with his posse, which includes his nephew, the young
Speaker 3: and as we mentioned earlier, also a lynx and the
Speaker 3: town donkey, who is a kind of dolorous clown. And
Speaker 3: mister Wolf greets people in town and they mostly seem
Speaker 3: to regard him with naive trust. Is that how you
Speaker 3: took this in the beginning, Like everybody seems to be like, oh,
Speaker 3: mister Wolf, Yeah, he's handsome, he's a nice guy. He says,
Speaker 3: he's nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. They have kind of this I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know this, this kind of like passive response to
Speaker 1: the predator in their midst is like, well, he's not
Speaker 1: attactively attacking anyone right now, so I guess we'll keep grazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But then Wolf comes up. He squares off with
Speaker 3: Rada and her children. Rada, the way she reacts to
Speaker 3: him is complex. It's like she sees through this, and
Speaker 3: she knows better than to trust him, So there's no
Speaker 3: she doesn't have the naive reaction that the other villagers have,
Speaker 3: like she knows immediately what's up with this guy. She's
Speaker 3: too wise and so she rebukes him. But there is
Speaker 3: also a con instant, simmering underlying element of hubba hubbah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's basically like, I know you're a bad boy,
Speaker 1: but I kind of like bad boy, And that's basically
Speaker 1: their tension throughout the picture with the but with the
Speaker 1: added detail that said bad boy wants to kill and
Speaker 1: eat her children.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so he explains in the song, well, he
Speaker 3: doesn't say that at first. Instead, at first he says,
Speaker 3: your children, uh number one, they make too much noise
Speaker 3: and they tease me and I can't tolerate that. So
Speaker 3: he says, this is your final warning, and also I
Speaker 3: am a wolf and my wolf instinct will not be suppressed.
Speaker 3: But then, almost as if to play down the danger,
Speaker 3: SUERU just kind of like dances off. He does like
Speaker 3: a little tap dance number with his goons, and he's
Speaker 3: you know, running around the village dancing, and while he's
Speaker 3: off with his guys, he starts singing about how ooh,
Speaker 3: of all the children I've ever seen, missus Rawda's kids
Speaker 3: would be the finest cuisine. So he's like, I am
Speaker 3: going to eat those goats.
Speaker 1: So this leads almost immediately into the third song. I
Speaker 1: guess this one's performed by Rada basically putting the wolf
Speaker 1: in his place, saying, let my children be. Basically, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go into and out of a lot of songs
Speaker 1: in this picture at the drop of a hat, but
Speaker 1: sometimes just for like less than a minute even, and
Speaker 1: then sometimes for longer. You never know how long they're
Speaker 1: going to sing a particular song which keeps you on
Speaker 1: your feet. You know, you don't get that. It's easy
Speaker 1: to get worn out with musicals where it's like, oh
Speaker 1: I hear another song coming on. Well, yeah, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get hit with them constantly, but some of them are
Speaker 1: very short. Okay, where are we in the plot to
Speaker 1: kidnap the goat children?
Speaker 3: Well, I think there isn't a plot. Yeah, we've just
Speaker 3: had the conflict between between Wolf and Rada, like they've
Speaker 3: had their their square off. It's kind of flirting but
Speaker 3: also threatening each other. Rada is seeing through the wolf
Speaker 3: suave exterior, but she's wary of him, but she's also
Speaker 3: kind of into him, and so that's strange. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so so far, that's where we are. And here we
Speaker 3: get into a medley that was one of my favorite
Speaker 3: parts of the movie because it's just sort of a
Speaker 3: string of songs that are mostly sung by the bad
Speaker 3: guys but then interrupted by some good dance numbers by
Speaker 3: the good characters. But this string of songs by the
Speaker 3: Wolf's Gang goes on for like ten minutes and it's
Speaker 3: just one wacky, hard hitting Tommy style rock opera song
Speaker 3: after another. And I was thinking about how, you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes people say that a Batman movie is really only
Speaker 3: as good as its villain, Like, you know, Batman's always
Speaker 3: you know, I don't want to discount differences, but Batman's
Speaker 3: always just sort of Batman. So it's really the villain
Speaker 3: that defines the film.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that translates into musicals too,
Speaker 1: Like in Disney musicals, the villains always have the best songs.
Speaker 1: In Rocky Horror, all the best songs are sung by
Speaker 1: the villains. I guess they're villains and so forth. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna have a musical film like this Phantom
Speaker 1: of the Opera, He's got all the great songs, obviously.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So I was gonna say, I think the same
Speaker 3: thing is often true about musicals, musicals and especially rock operas.
Speaker 3: The villains get the best songs, and so it's the
Speaker 3: villain songs that end up kind of sticking with you
Speaker 3: and defining how the musical feels. And that is definitely
Speaker 3: how I feel about this part of the movie. So
Speaker 3: the first tune in this Bad Guy medley is the
Speaker 3: Wolf's gang singing a song about the confrontation between Rada
Speaker 3: and the Wolf, and we see all like the townspeople
Speaker 3: running and hiding, slamming their doors shut. After watching the altercation.
Speaker 3: The squirrely squirrel lady is very upset. You can see
Speaker 3: she's nervous. And it's this song. It's the one that
Speaker 3: goes where they're singing like wahoo t tsuru's furious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the one where they're like, mother goat
Speaker 1: Rata better run away, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay, Yeah, Rada's future is dubious. It's sort
Speaker 3: of like like there's just been a rap battle and
Speaker 3: they're their guy lost, and so they're walking away, being like, oh,
Speaker 3: next time it's gonna be it's gonna be really bad.
Speaker 3: We're gonna get you. But interestingly, while everybody else runs
Speaker 3: and hides, Rada and her children do not hide at all.
Speaker 3: They're not afraid, and they do a frenetic dance number
Speaker 3: on their front lawn. They're very happy. They're like sliding
Speaker 3: down this extremely splintery looking wooden plane and playing on
Speaker 3: all kinds of stuffy. They go swinging, all seven of
Speaker 3: them on one wooden rope, swing all seven at the
Speaker 3: same time, and then they get on the rooftop seesaws,
Speaker 3: which got what.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, I meant to go back and rewatch this
Speaker 1: sequence because my recollection is there's no way they fake this.
Speaker 1: I mean, there may not be actual children up there,
Speaker 1: but there might be, I don't know. It looks like
Speaker 1: a sizeable building with kids on seesaws up there, you know,
Speaker 1: at the most extreme height, they're what twenty thirty feet
Speaker 1: off the ground or something like. It's intimidating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's at the apex of the roof is the
Speaker 3: fulcrum of the teeter totter, and the kids are just
Speaker 3: going up and down and maybe it's adult stunt performers,
Speaker 3: but it looks not faked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, does not look like a model.
Speaker 3: So Rata is not one of these safety obsessed helicopter parents.
Speaker 3: She's like children. We will now be playing on equipment
Speaker 3: that is illegal in most countries. And also you're going
Speaker 3: to have to defend the goat house on your own
Speaker 3: against wolf attacks while I am gone at the fair.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But anyway, while the children are playing, the bad guys
Speaker 3: kind of peep over the fence and watch the goats
Speaker 3: at play. And there is an interesting moment here where
Speaker 3: we see a lot of this throughout the film, where
Speaker 3: we get a close up on Donkey and at first
Speaker 3: he's smiling. It's like he's having a lot of fun
Speaker 3: watching the goats play. Oh, isn't it nice? And then
Speaker 3: suddenly his smile just fades. It melts into the saddest
Speaker 3: face you've ever seen yours if you will, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 3: And so this is kind of establishing a theme upon
Speaker 3: rewatching For me, I didn't catch it as much the
Speaker 3: first time, but Donkey was really emerging as one of
Speaker 3: the most interesting and subtle characters. But from here we
Speaker 3: get into one of my favorite tracks, which is a
Speaker 3: rock number where the members of the Wolf's gang introduce
Speaker 3: themselves and sing about their loyalty to Titisuru. I think
Speaker 3: it starts with kind of a chant where they say
Speaker 3: like one for all and all for Suru. So there,
Speaker 3: it's very top down, you know, leader oriented kind of
Speaker 3: friend group.
Speaker 1: Yes, hees big followers of Suuman here. You know, we
Speaker 1: have links Donkey and oh yeah, yeah, Little Bad Wolf.
Speaker 1: I believe he's referred to either one way or another
Speaker 1: in this bed the nephew and yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of snarling, moderate cartwheels added to the general prancing. And yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some great lyrics in here, like tears our occupation
Speaker 1: well into helping hand in Titusuru's operation. So they're just
Speaker 1: all like trying to really get it out there that
Speaker 1: they're as close as friends. And they also throw in
Speaker 1: some added little tidbits, like one of them's like, I've
Speaker 1: never read a book.
Speaker 3: Okay, well they're contrasting that little I think Little Bad
Speaker 3: Wolf says I've never read a book, because he's contrasting
Speaker 3: with the fact that Donkey says he does read books.
Speaker 1: Hmmm. Yeah, I think they're getting a little off track
Speaker 1: in their commitment to speech here.
Speaker 3: But okay, so we hear from the Links. He says,
Speaker 3: I'm Rasul the Links. My missions are nocturnal. When your
Speaker 3: eyes start to blink, my role becomes essential. And then
Speaker 3: the donkeys verse goes, he he haw, he haw, I'm
Speaker 3: the Donkey Patrica, he he haw. I'm rather a good kicker,
Speaker 3: And so he's bragging about how good at kicking he is.
Speaker 3: But then he also mentions I like to read books,
Speaker 3: and so there's tension in the gang. Rassele, the Lynx
Speaker 3: and Little Bad Wolf mock the Donkey first of all
Speaker 3: because they think he's he's delusional for thinking he's very
Speaker 3: strong and a good kicker. They don't agree, but they
Speaker 3: also mock him by saying I've never read a book.
Speaker 3: The implication is like, that's for nerds, and I'm not
Speaker 3: fully grasping the significance. I think there might be some
Speaker 3: kind of cultural archetype coding going on with Donkey, but
Speaker 3: like he's one of the bad guys, but he doesn't
Speaker 3: really fit in with them. The other bad guys mock him,
Speaker 3: and there are scenes of him with conflicted emotions that
Speaker 3: the other bad guys don't show, or at least Little
Speaker 3: Bad Wolf and Links don't show you get some conflicted
Speaker 3: emotions from the main bad wolf. But anyway, I just
Speaker 3: think it's interesting the way Donkeys is set apart from
Speaker 3: the other villains.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is something to contemplate. Yeah, he seemed I
Speaker 1: don't know, like maybe we're really supposed to to put
Speaker 1: ourselves in Donkey's shoes.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Now we eventually go back to the house here, right,
Speaker 1: And I want to point out that the inside of
Speaker 1: the goat household it looks like a cat cafe. If
Speaker 1: you've ever been to a cat cafe, that's kind of
Speaker 1: the vibe I'm getting here. Lots of little shelves and
Speaker 1: places for cats or I guess goats to walk around on.
Speaker 1: That would make sense, you know, goats like to be
Speaker 1: up high. And then they have like cool what hanging
Speaker 1: beds or loungers here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the the young goats sleep in these like pendulum beds.
Speaker 3: They're dangling from the ceiling like a I don't know,
Speaker 3: like a like a planter.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They put a lot of thought at the end
Speaker 1: of this. I'm actually a little bit reminded of the
Speaker 1: kids rooms in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, you know,
Speaker 1: where they're like, what do the Martian children's bedrooms look like?
Speaker 1: How do Martians sleep? And so forth.
Speaker 3: But this scene also has an interesting part where one
Speaker 3: of the kids asks Rada, why does the wolf want
Speaker 3: to take us away?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and the answer is, well, because he's lonely
Speaker 1: and childless, which it's an interesting way to view predation,
Speaker 1: but that's what she tells them.
Speaker 3: One of the children ask she says this, and one
Speaker 3: of the children says, is it wrong to be lonely?
Speaker 3: And Rada says, no, it just makes you feel bad.
Speaker 1: Hmm. Maybe something's was lost in translation a bit into
Speaker 1: the English version.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Oh, but then after this we go
Speaker 3: straight into a psychedelic disco dance number by the Bad
Speaker 3: Guys who Oh yeah, there's no singing. They're just like
Speaker 3: out in inside a five dimensional kaleidoscope doing some real
Speaker 3: like Saturday night fever moves.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, this is like the dark disco scene. And
Speaker 1: I was really hoping this would erupt into vocalizations as well,
Speaker 1: but it's just you know, darkness prancing. It's like a
Speaker 1: raven Mordoor or something. I'm not sure, but it's it's fun.
Speaker 3: I like it in some parts of the choreography here
Speaker 3: reminded me of that Okay Go Treadmill video.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they really get into it. They get
Speaker 1: some but.
Speaker 3: They're like standing out on some kind of bridge in
Speaker 3: the darkness with like the night sky behind them, and
Speaker 3: sometimes there's this aurora in the sky and sometimes it
Speaker 3: looks like a giant fish pig face. But then here
Speaker 3: we go into a lullaby sung by Rada, which we
Speaker 3: sort of go around and see all the villagers going
Speaker 3: to sleep. I gotta say, I've been playing some of
Speaker 3: the music from this movie in my house and my
Speaker 3: toddler is obsessed with this lullaby song. She asked me
Speaker 3: to play like ten times yesterday. It's the night Night
Speaker 3: song to her, and she loves it.
Speaker 1: This is the You know, one of the great things
Speaker 1: about early parenthood is you get to choose what really
Speaker 1: obscure nonsense you and jacked into your child's life that
Speaker 1: will become a part of their their wholesome recollection years later,
Speaker 1: but no one else in their friend group will share.
Speaker 1: They'll be like, hey, did you guys watch that weird
Speaker 1: Russo Franco Romanian family animal picture every holiday? And they're like, no,
Speaker 1: we have no idea what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, out on the playground, you don't know the tickets
Speaker 3: tickets song. But okay, yeah, so this is a lullaby.
Speaker 3: But there is an interesting moment here where the wolf
Speaker 3: comes in and sings along at the end of the song.
Speaker 3: So it's Rada singing to her children and she's like,
Speaker 3: close your eyes, I'm here beside you. And then suddenly
Speaker 3: the wolf is outside the house and he's like singing
Speaker 3: at Rada, And I thought this maybe is playing up
Speaker 3: on the idea that like, underneath his wickedness, he really
Speaker 3: is just lonely, like Rada was talking about. Maybe the
Speaker 3: subtext is that if he had someone to love, he
Speaker 3: wouldn't be trying to harm the goats, which plays directly
Speaker 3: against what he himself said, which is like, I have
Speaker 3: a wolf nature and it will not be suppressed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know. I also wasn't sure if we're
Speaker 1: supposed to think that she can hear him, and because
Speaker 1: she has kind of like a you know, winkie smile
Speaker 1: thing at the end here, and I don't know if
Speaker 1: that's more of her like oh suru, or if I'm
Speaker 1: just reading into it because we have been spending so
Speaker 1: much time already with their sort of teasing predator prey relationship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh right. Then we get a song about equilibrium from
Speaker 1: the children where they they're playing on a pair of
Speaker 1: enormous sea saws, and we see a lot of other
Speaker 1: children there in the scene. They're sheep children of course,
Speaker 1: the squirrel children, Donkey grinning like an absolute maniac, Donkey,
Speaker 1: Lynx and Little Bad Wolf joining into the song. They
Speaker 1: dance and prance around. The dance becomes cocky and aggressive
Speaker 1: till finally what one of the kids has enough. This
Speaker 1: may be the oldest kid, and he starts riding Donkey
Speaker 1: around and then like somebody has come break it up.
Speaker 3: This is Matteia, the oldest goat son who will sneak
Speaker 3: out of the house later he you know, he is
Speaker 3: up to mischief. But yeah, he rides Donkey around and
Speaker 3: I don't know, Donkey really gets put in his place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, somebody they send the ref end to break
Speaker 1: it out there like.
Speaker 3: Out of hand. Rada comes in. Rada always puts a
Speaker 3: stuff up to the nonsense. And then the next scene
Speaker 3: is we get one of the main themes of the movie,
Speaker 3: which is the song that Rada sings teaches her children
Speaker 3: in order for them to know it's her at the
Speaker 3: door and not someone else. So this is the mommy's home.
Speaker 3: Now you can open the door and don't be afraid
Speaker 3: children anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a beautiful little number about stranger danger
Speaker 1: for latchkey kids.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like, don't open that door for anybody, anybody except
Speaker 1: for me. Except for me. I'm here to protect you, right.
Speaker 3: So she sings the song, and meanwhile outside the wolf
Speaker 3: is listening and furiously scribbling notes on how the song
Speaker 3: goes so that he can get into the house when
Speaker 3: Rada goes to the fair. So she goes off to
Speaker 3: the fair. What's going on at the fair?
Speaker 1: Oh, tickets is what's going on at That's the main
Speaker 1: thing I got. Because we run back, we meet Parrot
Speaker 1: Guy again, and we're in this fun house of mirrors.
Speaker 1: We're gonna spend a lot of time in this set,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty gorgeous. It feels like it feels like
Speaker 1: we're inside a disco ball, and there's yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of general discussion of tickets. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: were able to make sense of this when you went
Speaker 1: back through the lyrics.
Speaker 3: Joe, No, I did not understand at all. The parrot
Speaker 3: is like throwing little like ticker tape, you know, bits
Speaker 3: of you know, confetti. Basically, tickets are in the air,
Speaker 3: and he's standing in these mirrors with silver tinsel all around.
Speaker 3: He's still in his rainbow outfit, and the lyrics are
Speaker 3: like tickets to your life, tickets to find your wife.
Speaker 3: I think maybe the idea is that, I don't know,
Speaker 3: it's some kind of commercialization or commodification, like the parrot
Speaker 3: is selling a kind of shallow promise of good fortune.
Speaker 3: But I don't know. Parrot is not really presented as
Speaker 3: a villain of the film. It's just kind of like, oh,
Speaker 3: here's what's going on at the fair. There's some kind
Speaker 3: of there's some kind of nonsense happening.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I have to point out that at this point the
Speaker 1: episode is probably getting a little long, and I feel
Speaker 1: like I could probably talk about each and every little
Speaker 1: musical number because I made notes about all the weird
Speaker 1: little things they threw, and like suddenly there's a trampoline
Speaker 1: for the squirrels and I love it. Yeah, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to let you drive here, Joe, and just I'm
Speaker 1: gonna follow you through your favorite moments of the rest
Speaker 1: of this film, and I'll jump in if I have
Speaker 1: some thoughts.
Speaker 3: Well, we've already talked about the general outline, so you
Speaker 3: know that the wolf is going to keep trying to
Speaker 3: sing the song and sneak into the house. He fails
Speaker 3: the first few times we know that Mattee sneaks out
Speaker 3: of the house, he runs around outside, he gets chased
Speaker 3: by the bad guys. Of course, while we're here at
Speaker 3: the fair, some various things will happen. There's a bunch
Speaker 3: of just like songs and big ensemble numbers where everybody's singing.
Speaker 3: We get a ballet sequence where the people that you
Speaker 3: thought were spiders but I think are actually supposed to
Speaker 3: be sparrows. These are played by ballet dancer. I think
Speaker 3: these might be the Bolshoi Ballet or some Moscow based
Speaker 3: ballet dancers who do a very good but I don't know.
Speaker 3: Ballet might not exactly be my thing. But you can
Speaker 3: tell that they're great at what they do, and they
Speaker 3: do it in front of these very interesting painted backdrops.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the effects are very cool here, like it's
Speaker 1: it's not just a performance of dance on stage. And
Speaker 1: we've been seeing a lot of actual dance performance, but
Speaker 1: here we have high level ballet with cool effects.
Speaker 3: And I think maybe in some parts of these songs
Speaker 3: they're like balancing on tethers or whatever you call that, tetherwalking.
Speaker 1: Or it's made to look like I couldn't tell if
Speaker 1: this is effects or yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: At the fair, there's more of a wolf following Rada around,
Speaker 3: being like, hey, let's dance, and so first they don't dance,
Speaker 3: and then they do dance. But one thing we definitely
Speaker 3: should mention is the the Sheep and Donkey song.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, well this is a mid movie romance
Speaker 1: between the two.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Would you characterized this song as like a seduction
Speaker 3: of Donkey by the Lamb character.
Speaker 1: I think so. I mean, he's into it, but it
Speaker 1: kind of comes out of nowhere, like I wasn't really
Speaker 1: thinking about Donkey's romantic prospects. And likewise, you know, Lamb
Speaker 1: is one of the many cute animal ladies in the film,
Speaker 1: but you know, she's very much been in the background,
Speaker 1: and we're just like, oh, there's Lamb lady, you know,
Speaker 1: much like Squirrel Lady. You know she's there, but I
Speaker 1: didn't know that she was actually gonna do anything other
Speaker 1: than jump around and maybe do a trampoline flip.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I was curious why is Lamb so into Donkey?
Speaker 3: The framing implies that Lamb is like the most eligible
Speaker 3: bachelorette in town, but so far Donkey has been portrayed
Speaker 3: as a pitiable loser, like he is the outcast of
Speaker 3: the village's criminal gang, and yet Lamb is coming on
Speaker 3: to him very strong. So I don't know, like what
Speaker 3: makes Donkey attractive to her? Maybe the fact that he
Speaker 3: reads books, Like is she into a a well read ass?
Speaker 1: Perhaps? Perhaps you know, I want to I want to
Speaker 1: throw in here because I'm looking at one of the
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the still you have of Lamb lady,
Speaker 1: and the attention to the curling hair on her lamb
Speaker 1: ears on her sheep ears here absolutely top notch, like
Speaker 1: they would. These costumes they do. You know, they're very
Speaker 1: much costumes. You're not gonna believe that this is. This
Speaker 1: is not like you know, were wolf, an American werewolf
Speaker 1: in London here or anything when it comes to combining
Speaker 1: the animal and the human form. But on another level,
Speaker 1: it kind of is, because look at these ears, look
Speaker 1: at the amount of tension they put into this hair.
Speaker 3: There is.
Speaker 1: This is something, this is something. This is a key
Speaker 1: part of the movie's alchemy. I'm sure.
Speaker 3: I totally agree. Yeah, the costuming and the makeup effects
Speaker 3: that they are all so wonderful, Like.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to do that for this film. But
Speaker 1: someone's like, no, no, no, these ears need to look
Speaker 1: one percent authentic. They need to be warm to the touch.
Speaker 3: Now, I think somewhere in here is we when we
Speaker 3: get that scene where the wolf is explaining to his
Speaker 3: goons that he no longer wants to eat the goat children.
Speaker 3: He wants gold. We've got to get gold, gold, you fools.
Speaker 3: It's very out of nowhere, but I like it. I
Speaker 3: wonder if the commercialism of the fair, like the whole
Speaker 3: tickets thing, inspires Wolf to switch his switch up, like
Speaker 3: his animal nature, his desire to just eat prey animals,
Speaker 3: and instead become a more civilized kind of villain that
Speaker 3: wants money. Do you think that? Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: I guess so, and I it ties into a number
Speaker 1: we're gonna see later where we have this real after
Speaker 1: the kidnapping has been carried out, Rada has this bit
Speaker 1: where she's like, you know, why is why is the
Speaker 1: world like this? Why do people want to hurt you?
Speaker 1: Why are they hurting you still? Why are they going
Speaker 1: to hurt you in the future? And it's got kind
Speaker 1: of this real, you know, dark somber number. But you know,
Speaker 1: it makes sense then that you would have the wolf
Speaker 1: change his predatory approach from something that is purely an
Speaker 1: animal world activity into something that is, you know, more
Speaker 1: akin to human crime.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. Okay, just a couple of little
Speaker 3: texture observations as we go along. There's one scene that
Speaker 3: is obviously this came earlier, but it feels straight out
Speaker 3: of the first Lord of the Rings film where the
Speaker 3: you know, the mattee is hiding from the bad guys
Speaker 3: and they go looking out over the edge of the
Speaker 3: there's like an outcropping and they're looking out and he's
Speaker 3: hiding right underneath it.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, this and you know, and I think just
Speaker 1: must be an accident because I think the main framing
Speaker 1: of that that we're familiar with the Peter Jackson Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings is based on a sequence in the
Speaker 1: seventy eight animated Lord of the Rings.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we were before that here, So this is
Speaker 3: seventy six. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's just just I don't know, just just
Speaker 1: great framing. I don't know.
Speaker 3: There's it's a sad scene at some point where Rada
Speaker 3: comes home and she's been like out in a storm
Speaker 3: in the winter and she can't sing the song to
Speaker 3: get into the house. You know, she's trying to sing
Speaker 3: the password song, but her voice is all torn up.
Speaker 1: And yeah, she sounds like she's been hitting the bottle
Speaker 1: a little bit grief, and they're like, that's not mama.
Speaker 1: Mama's voice is good. I don't know what this thing
Speaker 1: is out there howling in the darkness, but we're not
Speaker 1: opening the door.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And there's also a very sweet part where I
Speaker 3: think it's the oldest Goat daughter. The child sings a
Speaker 3: song for it's like an inversion of the mother's song
Speaker 3: to the children. She sings a song about mommy. It's
Speaker 3: extremely sweet.
Speaker 1: Oh, and then at some point we get the song
Speaker 1: about modern decline. The children today are not the same, Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm not the same, not the same. Children today don't
Speaker 1: even know how to sit on a shovel. They don't
Speaker 1: say that, but it made me think of that moment in.
Speaker 3: Jack FROs Now there is a part here where Mattee
Speaker 3: has run out into the wilderness and gotten lost. He's
Speaker 3: like stranded on some kind of rocky spire in the
Speaker 3: middle of nothing, and the snow is falling, and it's like,
Speaker 3: what's going to happen to him? Well, what happens is
Speaker 3: we get one of the musical numbers from the Star
Speaker 3: Wars Holiday Special. It's like when the old Wookie puts
Speaker 3: the VR goggles on and he sees Diane Carroll, he's
Speaker 3: singing to him that kind of thing. Or it's no,
Speaker 3: it's those acrobats jumping around. Yes, yes, very holiday special stuff.
Speaker 3: But what we see instead is all these like silver
Speaker 3: ice skaters who are fairies. These represent the presence of
Speaker 3: the Winter Fairy and they come and they help matte
Speaker 3: magically and send him back home.
Speaker 1: Yes, the time has come for every start of shine
Speaker 1: on where you are the angels, the fairies, the stars.
Speaker 1: And I was looking this up. We have a lot
Speaker 1: of ice skating to round out the picture. And I
Speaker 1: believe this is a combination of the Moscow Circus and
Speaker 1: the Moscow Ice Ballet according to the credits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so skipping ahead to the the final confrontation, So
Speaker 3: of course, the wolf does eventually kidnap the children. We
Speaker 3: have this big showdown in this frozen pond where everybody's
Speaker 3: ice skating, and as we said earlier, Rada outsmarts the
Speaker 3: wolf in the end and tricks him into falling in
Speaker 3: into the water through the ice and his lackeys give
Speaker 3: up and they're like, okay, here are your kids back,
Speaker 3: and in the end the wolf learns his lesson.
Speaker 1: That's right. Everybody. Everybody comes around, but they really threaten
Speaker 1: him with cold drowning in the lake. Rod is like like,
Speaker 1: we'll just let you drown right here, wolf unless you
Speaker 1: come around like your cronies just did. And they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've changed, and he's like, you know, I've looked at
Speaker 1: deep inside myself and I realize I need to change
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 3: That's right, and he does, and we kind of seasonal
Speaker 3: transition as well, don't we.
Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. There's this idea that it's like
Speaker 1: we're coming out of winter now it's becoming spring. So
Speaker 1: this alone, we alluded to this earlier. Like this, I
Speaker 1: can see why this film would make so much sense
Speaker 1: as holiday movie, even if there's nothing directly related to
Speaker 1: you know, ideas of a Christian Christmas and so forth
Speaker 1: or Santa Claus like, no, it's still getting into that
Speaker 1: deep primal idea of the winter holidays. Like what is
Speaker 1: the magic be it? You know, you know, capital M
Speaker 1: magic or lower case magic that is going to help
Speaker 1: us through to the spring.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but at the ending is a spring festival. I'm
Speaker 3: a little disappointed that we did not put the wolf
Speaker 3: in a Wickerman Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, if you had had like the ritual disembowment
Speaker 1: of the wolf, the removal of the children, the insertion
Speaker 1: of the stones, and the throwing of the wolf into
Speaker 1: the water, like I guess that would have this more
Speaker 1: of a Wickerman esque ritualistic vision. And you know, I
Speaker 1: can very much envision a sort of I don't know,
Speaker 1: Midsummer esque horror movie in which someone visits this small
Speaker 1: town perhaps in perhaps in Romania, where hey, everyone is
Speaker 1: dress as animals and they've made me wear this wolf
Speaker 1: hat for some reason, and what is this big, big
Speaker 1: festival that I've been invited to, and you know it's
Speaker 1: going to have absolutely horrifying results.
Speaker 3: Christopher Lee in a big wig with pigtails?
Speaker 1: Who would Christopher Lee? Would Christopher Lee be Donkey in this.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I think Christopher Lee would be the wolf
Speaker 3: of course.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so he would get sacrificed.
Speaker 3: Well, spoilers for The Wickerman if you haven't seen it.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's an old movie, but it is great
Speaker 3: to see it without spoilers if you get a chance.
Speaker 3: But here they come at the end of The Wickerman.
Speaker 3: You know the inspector. What he yells at Christopher Lee
Speaker 3: is he says, it's you know, this is not going
Speaker 3: to save your crops, and when it doesn't work next year,
Speaker 3: they'll put you in this thing.
Speaker 1: That's right. I forget. It's been a long time since
Speaker 1: I've seen it. I forgot about that twist. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it is worth noting that. Yeah, film like this, as
Speaker 1: wholesome as it is, it's really only two or three
Speaker 1: degrees removed from Full Car. So that's one of its charms.
Speaker 3: So that is Mama aka rock and roll Wolf. I
Speaker 3: did not know how much I needed this in my life,
Speaker 3: but I love this movie.
Speaker 1: A film that I feel just inevitably spread the seeds
Speaker 1: of furry fandom throughout throughout Europe.
Speaker 3: To be clear, that's not the appeal for me. I'm
Speaker 3: not judging no judgment there, No, no, no, that's that's
Speaker 3: not what I'm saying. But I think it has appeal
Speaker 3: beyond that as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is a film that can be enjoyed
Speaker 1: on multiple levels and is and is very very kid friendly.
Speaker 1: All right, well we're gonna go ahead and close out
Speaker 1: this episode. Yeah, I get this was a holiday episode.
Speaker 1: We'll go ahead and make it official of Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: Just a reminder, let's see if you enjoy our Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema episodes. These are curved Friday and the Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind podcast feed primarily science and culture,
Speaker 1: but on Fridays we set most of that aside to
Speaker 1: really just dig into a weird film. And if you
Speaker 1: want to see a list of all the movies we've
Speaker 1: covered so far, go over to letterbox dot com. You
Speaker 1: know letterboxed. Our user name there is weird House, and
Speaker 1: we have a nice, big old episode list of everything
Speaker 1: we've covered so far, and sometimes there's a peak ahead
Speaker 1: at what's coming up next. There's currently a peak ahead
Speaker 1: at what's coming up next, and it is another uh
Speaker 1: technically uh technically a holiday film, so uh to go
Speaker 1: check that out if you're if you were interested, and likewise,
Speaker 1: if you were on the Instagram, we're on there as
Speaker 1: STBYM podcast. That's our that's our main account, that's the
Speaker 1: one that gets up updated frequently. UH. You can follow
Speaker 1: us there and keep an eye on what's coming up
Speaker 1: on the you know, the core episodes, but also what's
Speaker 1: happening in Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
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