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Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob

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Speaker 1: Lamb and today's episode is from our vault. It is

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Speaker 1: one from last year, and it ties in nicely with

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Speaker 1: the other Fall Break reruns that we ran this week.

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Speaker 1: This is going to be our discussion of the nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy two super weird sci fi thriller Horror Express. This

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Speaker 1: one has Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and it all

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Speaker 1: takes place on a train, so it's a perfect fit.

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Speaker 1: Let's jump right in.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: All Right, all aboard, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. This

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Speaker 1: is Rob Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And actually I was just thinking, Rob,

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Speaker 3: is this technically our first Weird House Cinema episode of

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Speaker 3: the Halloween season? Or are you count Absurd the movie

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Speaker 3: we did last week even though it wasn't October yet.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead and count Absurd.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, you were jumping the gun a bit, but

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Speaker 3: that's okay.

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Speaker 1: If Load's and Home Depot can do it, then so

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Speaker 1: can so can we.

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Speaker 3: If I told you about how my daughter has been

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Speaker 3: getting Halloween brained.

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Speaker 1: You've told me a little bit about this. I've seen

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Speaker 1: some some curious illustrations from your house as well.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Rachel may have showed you. Okay, So my

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Speaker 3: daughter is almost two years old, and I didn't do

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Speaker 3: this on purpose. I don't know how this happened. She

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Speaker 3: has become obsessed with skeletons, and so one of her

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Speaker 3: favorite activities over the past I don't know, probably two

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Speaker 3: or three weeks now, has been demanding that that my

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Speaker 3: wife and I draw skeletons for her and extend, you know,

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Speaker 3: any friends or family visiting the house. Also, they are

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Speaker 3: supposed to draw skeletons. So we have big pieces of

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Speaker 3: cardboard on the back porch and she'll she'll like lead

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Speaker 3: you out under the porch and say draw it, sketon,

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Speaker 3: Draw it, sketon, And so we do, and then she

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Speaker 3: wants another one, and another one and another one, and

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Speaker 3: the demand for skeletons is unlimited. She will keep asking

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Speaker 3: you to draw them until you just say no, I

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Speaker 3: am done, no more skeletons. And then she also likes

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Speaker 3: to name them. The other day, I think I drew

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Speaker 3: four of them and they were named teeth, Teeth, Big teeth,

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Speaker 3: and teeth and so somehow I don't know if it's

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Speaker 3: genetic or whatever, but she has got Halloween on the brain.

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Speaker 1: Oh that's awesome. Yeah, you guys got to bust out

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Speaker 1: some skeleton based media here.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know if there are any child friendly

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Speaker 3: skeleton movies now.

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Speaker 1: I haven't watched it in a while, so I can't

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Speaker 1: speak to anything that might be inappropriate in it, because

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Speaker 1: this is the case when you get into some of

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Speaker 1: these older cartoons. But the nineteen twenty nine Skeleton Dance

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Speaker 1: Silly Symphony from Walt Disney Dancing Skeletons, that is a

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Speaker 1: lot of fun and pretty tame unless there's something that

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Speaker 1: I am not remembering. At the top of my head.

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Speaker 1: I think it's on Disney Plus, so maybe that's a

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Speaker 1: good sign that maybe it's and there's nothing objectionable in it,

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Speaker 1: but I'm not.

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Speaker 3: Sure technically, I don't even know if she knows that

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Speaker 3: skeletons are supposed to be scary. Maybe just no one

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Speaker 3: has communicated to her that this is frightening material.

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Speaker 1: Does she know that there's one inside each of us?

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Speaker 3: We've talked about this. I don't know if the fact

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Speaker 3: has really sunk in, But Yeah, we've told her that

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Speaker 3: she has a skeleton, and we all have skeletons. They're

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Speaker 3: all under the skin.

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Speaker 1: Such an exciting time.

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Speaker 3: Oh but sorry to divert us along the Baby Looked

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Speaker 3: at Me track. Today on Weird House Cinema, we are

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Speaker 3: going to be talking about the nineteen seventy two train

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Speaker 3: horror thriller Horror Express during Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Sylvia Tortosa,

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Speaker 3: and Telly Savalis. Now, you might automatically think, based on

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Speaker 3: the cast list, especially the first two names, that this

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Speaker 3: is a Hammer Film production, but actually it is not.

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Speaker 3: I have no proof of this, but I would suspect

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Speaker 3: the filmmakers were consciously trying to get some Hammer special

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Speaker 3: sauce on their product by casting both Lee and Cushing.

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Speaker 3: That's your classic, you know, Dracula movie or Mummy movie,

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Speaker 3: whatever it is. The Hammer Film's pairing. Usually Christopher Lee

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Speaker 3: is Dracula, Peter Cushing is Van Helsing. Here they play

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Speaker 3: with the formula a little formula a little bit. Neither

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Speaker 3: one of them is the villain of the film, but

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Speaker 3: you do get both, that's right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, this was actually a British Spanish co production

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Speaker 1: on the British side of things, we have Benmark Productions.

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Speaker 1: They would go on to make or they made Psychomania,

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Speaker 1: which came out this following year. Wonderful film that we've

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Speaker 1: discussed in the show before.

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Speaker 3: I think about Psychomania all the time. That was one

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Speaker 3: of our supernatural biker movies. It is the one where

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Speaker 3: a British biker gang does witchcraft and realizes they can

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Speaker 3: come back from the dead. I think, what's the catch.

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Speaker 3: They just have to really believe that it'll work or something,

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Speaker 3: and so they get to come back from the dead

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Speaker 3: and be undead biker revenants and ride around like knocking

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Speaker 3: things over in grocery stores and terrorizing motorists.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a wonderful film with a nice grim sense

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Speaker 1: of humor at the heart of everything. So yeah, Benmar

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Speaker 1: Productions on the British side. And then on the Spanish

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Speaker 1: side of things, we have Granada Films, which I'm not

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Speaker 1: certain on this, but as best I can tell, this

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Speaker 1: is a separate entity from Granada Television, which was a

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Speaker 1: British company named after a city in Spain that the

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Speaker 1: founder had just visited on holiday. It was like Granada,

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Speaker 1: That's that's what I should name my television production company

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Speaker 1: that'll go on to make Trelock Comes TV and so forth.

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Speaker 1: This would be a separate Granada as far as I

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Speaker 1: understand it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and also separate from the Hello Muta, Hello Fata.

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, of course. So Horror Express is a film

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Speaker 1: we've been looking to do for a while and we

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Speaker 1: just kind of wanted to line it up with core

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Speaker 1: episodes of stuff to blow your mind that had to

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Speaker 1: do with trains, so it finally worked. But this movie

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Speaker 1: is a lot of things. It is a splendid looking

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Speaker 1: period horror film and the hammer tradition set in Imperial Russia.

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Speaker 1: It's a monster movie. It's a murder on a train story.

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Speaker 1: It's also a science fiction tale with some of the

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Speaker 1: loosest and sloppiest sigh ever to back up some figh

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Speaker 1: but it also manages to stir the viewers' thoughts and imagination,

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Speaker 1: even as it at times insults your understanding of science.

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Speaker 1: It's a film built around the classically trained performances of

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Speaker 1: Cushing and Lee, but it's also a showcase for native

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Speaker 1: Spanish talent other international talent, and I guess the brasher

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Speaker 1: acting style of America's Telly Savalis that's right.

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Speaker 3: I'm excited to talk about his role.

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Speaker 1: So again, there's a lot of things, but it is delightful, unique,

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Speaker 1: and I think often highly effective as well. Like it

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Speaker 1: does feel a little sloppy and loose in places and

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Speaker 1: can be a little confusing in places also, but I

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Speaker 1: think largely succeeds, and that's why it's developed a cult

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Speaker 1: following over the decades.

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Speaker 3: It is known as ludicrous, but also I think it's

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Speaker 3: super entertaining. The twists just keep coming, and they're very

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Speaker 3: i don't know, to my mind, at least very fun twists.

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Speaker 3: It also, like you're saying, it has this excellent cast

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Speaker 3: of unusual characters, I will say a limitation is the

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Speaker 3: first time I saw it, my attention was slightly divided

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Speaker 3: on first viewing, and I ended up mixing up several

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Speaker 3: of the characters in my head and getting extremely confused

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Speaker 3: as to who was who. I think I was mixing

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Speaker 3: up Inspector Mirov and the engineer who knows about science

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Speaker 3: and rockets and gravity, and then I was also mixing

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Speaker 3: up Sylvia Tortosa and Helga Line possibly some other characters

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Speaker 3: as well. Also. I showed this movie to some good

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Speaker 3: friends last night, and I could tell it a couple

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Speaker 3: of parts. I think they were confused because they had

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Speaker 3: mixed up a couple of characters. Also, so warning it

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Speaker 3: is one of those sometimes this happens, especially with older movies.

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Speaker 3: But do not let that discourage you. Horror Express is

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Speaker 3: just wonderful. Even if you get a few of the

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Speaker 3: characters mixed up, it's gonna be okay. Also, despite the

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Speaker 3: problems it creates with remembering all the different identities, the

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Speaker 3: large cast of characters is useful for the plot because

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Speaker 3: the monster really runs through them at a quite efficient pace. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: A couple of other acting notes about this. I was

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Speaker 3: thinking about this movie made me think about how there

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Speaker 3: are really two different types of Christopher Lee Rolls. So

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Speaker 3: Christopher Lee, I think you could argue, is the main

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Speaker 3: protagonist of this film, though I don't know. It's more

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Speaker 3: of an ensemble cast. I would say, but christaph Lee

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Speaker 3: is like the person who speaks in the opening narration,

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Speaker 3: so we're with him before anyone else. And so the

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Speaker 3: two different types of Christopher Lee Rolls are the jolly,

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Speaker 3: ironic christpher Lee and the severe Christopher Lee. And in

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Speaker 3: this movie we do get the severe christ FH. Lee.

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Speaker 3: I would say the jolly Christopher Lee prototype in my

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Speaker 3: mind is the Lord Sumerle performance in The wicker Man.

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Speaker 3: And they are two very different kinds of presences. And

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Speaker 3: so maybe we can talk later on about, you know,

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Speaker 3: what the difference in feeling is and why you deploy

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Speaker 3: each one. But I thought that was kind of interesting

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Speaker 3: because he's also with Peter Cushing in this film, and

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Speaker 3: Peter Cushing kind of gets to be the more jolly

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Speaker 3: or ironic version of Christopher Lee here. Peter Cushing usually,

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Speaker 3: I don't know, he plays a slightly cheekier, jollier, more

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Speaker 3: enthusiastic stick character than Peter Cushing often does.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Peter Cushing And what I saw an

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Speaker 1: extra with the director of this film pointed out that

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Speaker 1: Peter Cushion could often play a warmer character. Now at

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Speaker 1: the same time, Peter Cushon could also play evil characters

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Speaker 1: and and could play you know, ridiculous and silly characters.

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Speaker 1: He was a highly skilled and professional actor. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: Christopher Lee, there's the jolly and there's the stern. Though

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Speaker 1: it is clear which one of these two Christopher Leees

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Speaker 1: you know, cash the pay checks. Yeah, it's the stern.

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Speaker 1: Christopher Lee that most people wanted to cast. And so

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Speaker 1: there's even a spectrum there where you have like the

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Speaker 1: stern hero side of things, like the lead character and

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Speaker 1: the Devil Rides Out, Yes, which.

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Speaker 3: Was zimon, I'd rather see you dead than practicing black magic.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, a character that is at once the hero and

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Speaker 1: also so stern as to be thoroughly.

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Speaker 3: Unlikable, constantly sending other characters to bed. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And in this film, you know, we have a stern

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Speaker 1: Christopher Lee that also has a few wrinkles to the

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Speaker 1: character that I think make it a little more interesting

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Speaker 1: than that. And then of course there's a whole other

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Speaker 1: realm of stern villain Christopher Lee, where you have the

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Speaker 1: likes of Dracula and Sorrowman. So yeah, this is this

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Speaker 1: is I think one of the more nuanced and human

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Speaker 1: Christopher Lee performances we've discussed on the show before.

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Speaker 3: Yes, this severe Christopher Lee is very different than the

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Speaker 3: one in The Devil Rides Out. The one in The

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Speaker 3: Devil Rides Out. This is a good point you make.

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Speaker 3: And the Devil Rides Out, he is moralistic and paternalistic,

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Speaker 3: and that's not how he is here. Instead, he is

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Speaker 3: a very cold and amorl and intellectual until he sort

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Speaker 3: of has to have a has to have a heroic

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Speaker 3: moment at the end.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and is also eventually self aware a little bit.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Like there's a part where a character asks him if

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Speaker 1: he doesn't care about the people that have died so far,

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Speaker 1: at which at that point was like a thief and

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Speaker 1: a man that worked in the baggage car. And he's like, no,

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Speaker 1: I don't care, but I should. Like, it's an interesting

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Speaker 1: wrinkle to the character that, like, he realizes that he's

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Speaker 1: cold and insensitive and he should strive to be better.

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Speaker 3: I would be a better man if I did care. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: But also on the acting front, I think this movie

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Speaker 3: is interesting because it is part of a category of

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Speaker 3: films that you might call the third act takeover films,

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Speaker 3: in films in which a brand new character shows up

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Speaker 3: in the final third of the movie and completely seizes

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Speaker 3: command of the screen. I don't know if you would

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Speaker 3: agree with me, but that's how I feel. That's what

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Speaker 3: I feel Telly Savalis does in this movie. Once Telly

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Speaker 3: Savalis shows up, the movie just becomes the Telly Savalis

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Speaker 3: Show until he is until he is dispatched by the monster.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

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Speaker 3: I agree.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting too that he was clearly prominently featured in

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Speaker 1: the promotional material for this movie, but he doesn't show

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Speaker 1: up for an hour, and even then it's like he's

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Speaker 1: not really he's not a major character. He plays an

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Speaker 1: important role and when he is on screen thoroughly captivating.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, definitely a third act takeover. I like that terminology.

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Speaker 3: Listeners right in with other examples of this. I want

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Speaker 3: to start making a list.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I guess one of the chief examples

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Speaker 1: would be Kurts and Apocalypse Now another charismatic bald man.

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Speaker 1: So I don't know how many third act takeovers are

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Speaker 1: by charismatic bald men. I would be interested to know.

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Speaker 1: Maybe it's just these two listeners. Let us know, all right,

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Speaker 1: what's the elevator pitch here? Joe?

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Speaker 3: Well, So, the official tagline on the poster is I

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Speaker 3: think one of the worst I've ever heard. It says,

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Speaker 3: your non stop ride to hell boards at eight pm?

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Speaker 3: Can it be stopped?

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Speaker 1: I don't know.

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Speaker 3: Is it NonStop or isn't it? I think that could.

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Speaker 3: I could stand a bit of work shopping.

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Speaker 1: But I do like that it gets into some of

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Speaker 1: the ideas. We discussed about train horror fiction on the

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Speaker 1: core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind this week.

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Speaker 1: The idea that the train cannot be stopped, that the

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Speaker 1: train is a journey of fate. Yes, and perhaps that

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Speaker 1: fate is very much in question. What will happen to

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Speaker 1: us at the end of this line?

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Speaker 3: Mm, yeah, that's a good point. But what's our weird

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Speaker 3: house cinema elevator pitch? I'm gonna say, climb aboard a

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Speaker 3: human being, disembark with butt cheek brain.

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Speaker 1: I feel like you're gonna have to go ahead and

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Speaker 1: explain butt cheek brain. So people, No, you're not just

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Speaker 1: being inn here.

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Speaker 3: No, just wait, wait, the listeners will wait. We'll talk

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Speaker 3: about it in the plot section.

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Speaker 1: All right, it is related to the plot. It is

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Speaker 1: related to the plot. All right. Let's go ahead and

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Speaker 1: listen to just a little bit of the trailer audio

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Speaker 1: from this picture because it has some fun narration.

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Speaker 4: Million years in these subterranean caves, a creature of superhuman

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Speaker 4: evil was entombed in a wall of ice, waiting to

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Speaker 4: be free, waiting to live again. Travel with us on

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Speaker 4: a journey into a world where nightmare becomes reality.

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Speaker 1: Are you telling me that an ape that lived two

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Speaker 1: million years ago got out to that rate, killed the

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Speaker 1: baggage man and put him in there. Yes, I am,

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Speaker 1: it's alive.

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Speaker 3: It must be.

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Speaker 4: Travel with us if you dare on the Horror Express.

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Speaker 1: All right, If you would like to go watch Horror

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Speaker 1: Express before proceeding with the rest of this episode, we

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Speaker 1: encourage it. Go watch it or rewatch it. It is

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Speaker 1: widely available. I watched it on the excellent Severin Blu ray,

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Speaker 1: rented from Atlanta's own videodrome. Here. There also seems to

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Speaker 1: be an excellent Aero Films Blu ray with many of

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Speaker 1: the same special features. I'm not sure which one is

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Speaker 1: the most recent release and which one's more easily accessible

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Speaker 1: if you're ordering this online, But as usual, we just

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Speaker 1: urge you to watch it in the best quality you

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Speaker 1: can find, be that physical or digital, because it's actually

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Speaker 1: a great looking film, and I think it long circulated

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Speaker 1: in subpar quality, so yeah, get as good of a

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Speaker 1: cut as you can find.

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Speaker 3: There. I think is a version streaming on Amazon Prime

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Speaker 3: that does not look very good, so I don't know

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Speaker 3: if there are multiple versions on there. Maybe there's a

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Speaker 3: better looking one than the one I initially watched, but

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Speaker 3: at least one of them on there is not the best,

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Speaker 3: so yeah, seek it out in the good quality. Also,

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Speaker 3: you know, we were talking talking about how the cast

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Speaker 3: list seems to be trying to call to mind Hammer films,

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Speaker 3: it also looks like a Hammer film. And did you

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Speaker 3: notice that the use of the technicolor, the sets, the photography,

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Speaker 3: the costumes, it's all. It has an extremely Hammer reminiscent

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Speaker 3: visual style.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I think they do a great job of

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Speaker 1: creating a like a period look that you completely buy,

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Speaker 1: even as the film delves increasingly into speculative and wild territory.

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Speaker 1: All right, let's talk about the people involved here, Beginning

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Speaker 1: with the director. It's Eugenio Martin, who lived nineteen twenty

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Speaker 1: five through twenty twenty three, Spanish director, probably best known

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Speaker 1: internationally anyway for this film and a handful of other

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Speaker 1: horror pictures, nineteen sixty two's Hypnosi, nineteen seventy one's The

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Speaker 1: Fourth Victim starring Carol Baker, nineteen seventy three is a

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Speaker 1: Candle for the Devil starring Judy Gleeson, nineteen eighty's The

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Speaker 1: House and the Outskirts, and nineteen eighty two's Return of

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Speaker 1: the Poltergeist, which features one of the best bits of

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Speaker 1: terrible VHS box art ever.

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Speaker 3: Is that the one that looks like a like a

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Speaker 3: werewolf aerobic exercise tape.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like it's gripping a bowling ball or something. I

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Speaker 1: don't know, but it looks pretty wild. He also directed

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Speaker 1: the nineteen sixty six western The Ugly Ones and the

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two film Pancho Villa starring Telly Savas, and

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Speaker 1: the film Pancho Villa is actually a key to understanding

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Speaker 1: this film. So that was an Italian Spanish spaghetti western

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Speaker 1: featuring several connections to this film, but most notably the

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Speaker 1: train itself, which the producers had purchased for the production

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Speaker 1: of Pancho Villa, and in order to maximize their investment,

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Speaker 1: they said, well, what else can we do with this train?

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Speaker 1: Let's do another train movie. Somebody get me another script,

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Speaker 1: and this eventually led to the creation of the script

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Speaker 1: for a Horror Express, reusing the same train. So you know, set,

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Speaker 1: slash location, slash train and presumably the really I thought

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Speaker 1: excellent train model. So any of these external, moving wide

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Speaker 1: shots of the train in this movie are model shots.

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Speaker 3: Oh wow, I didn't realize that I thought some of

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Speaker 3: them were real.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, same here. It wasn't until I went into the

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Speaker 1: extras on the disc and there's an interview with the

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Speaker 1: director here with Martin, and he's like, oh, yeah, we

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Speaker 1: had a lot of fun with this train, Like say,

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Speaker 1: Peter Cushion and Christopher Lee were there with me and

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Speaker 1: we would just run this train around. But it's like

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Speaker 1: a large scale model, so it doesn't look as small,

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Speaker 1: and they did, I think, a great job with the

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Speaker 1: landscapes for it, so excellent model train, Like you don't

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Speaker 1: even think about it being a model train until like

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Speaker 1: one key scene towards the end of the picture.

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Speaker 3: We were talking in our episode about the Green Slime

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Speaker 3: about how I love miniature models, even when they're bad.

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Speaker 3: But these are good. These are like really realistic, solid,

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Speaker 3: excellent looking crossing the Siberian landscape.

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Speaker 1: All right, Moving on to the writers, we have Arnaul Dussau,

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Speaker 1: who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen ninety American playwright and

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Speaker 1: B movie screenwriter. The son of noted Silent era screenwriter

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Speaker 1: and director Leon du Sou and actress O'tala Nesmith. Arnault

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Speaker 1: here wrote some serious plays. He wrote nineteen forty One's

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Speaker 1: Lady Scarface, as well as a handful of other projects,

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Speaker 1: but his career seems to have been impacted by the

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Speaker 1: Hollywood Blacklist in nineteen fifty. He was also a writer

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Speaker 1: on nineteen seventy three Psychomania. Likewise, we should mention that

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Speaker 1: this film, as with Pancho Villa, was produced by American

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Speaker 1: writer producer Bernard Gordon, who was also forced to work

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Speaker 1: in exile, mostly in Spain, due to the Hollywood Blacklist.

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Speaker 1: His productions include Flesh and Fury from fifty two, Earth

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Speaker 1: Versus the Flying Saucers from fifty six, fifty five, Days

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Speaker 1: at Pee King from sixty three, and The Day of

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Speaker 1: the Triffids nineteen sixty three. On some films he ended

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Speaker 1: up working like uncredited due to his blacklisted status.

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Speaker 3: Mmmm oh but wait, so with Dusseau here, it's not

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Speaker 3: just the same production company on the British side as Psychomania,

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Speaker 3: but literally one of the same writers.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, okay, two very different films. Like they don't

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Speaker 1: feel like spiritual siblings, but in a sense they are.

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Speaker 3: I guess can you imagine if Christopher Lee had been

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Speaker 3: in Psychomania? How good it would be?

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Speaker 1: Oh? Man, Yeah, yeah, I mean, there was a role

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Speaker 1: for him there, but yeah, it would have been a yeah,

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Speaker 1: it would have been a different trajectory for that picture.

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Speaker 1: I think, you know, if you get a name like

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Speaker 1: Lee in there. Let's see, there's another writer credit, and

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Speaker 1: that's Julian Zimmitt, who lived nineteen nineteen through twenty seventeen,

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Speaker 1: American born writer whose other screenwriting credits include Pancho Villa

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Speaker 1: and Psychomania Wow. Now getting into the cast, we have

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Speaker 1: a number of repeat performers for Weird House, So as

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Speaker 1: usual for names like this, we're not going to go

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Speaker 1: add deep into their filmographies. We're just going to maybe

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Speaker 1: try and put them in the context of this production.

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Speaker 1: Starting at the top top build, we have of course

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Speaker 1: Christopher Lee playing Professor Sir Alexander Saxton. Lee lived nineteen

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Speaker 1: twenty two through twenty fifteen, British horror legend. Here cast

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Speaker 1: as as we said, essentially the good guy scientist. He's

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Speaker 1: you know, but it's also again it's interesting because he's

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Speaker 1: a bit cold, but he's he acknowledges that he's a

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Speaker 1: bit too cold and unfeeling. He's also the guy who

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Speaker 1: unleashes a murderous monster on everyone and he's also I

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Speaker 1: thought I enjoyed some of the details about him being

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Speaker 1: a bit naive about the realities of international travel.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. When he first shows up at the train

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Speaker 3: station at the beginning of the movie, you know, he

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Speaker 3: can't get aboard the train, and he's like, but I

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Speaker 3: have arranged I have arranged passage, and they're like, yeah, sorry,

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Speaker 3: you're not in the books. And then Peter Cushing just

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Speaker 3: walks in. He's like, you're supposed to pay them a bribe.

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Speaker 3: Look here, here's how you do the bribe, and Lee

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Speaker 3: is like, I refuse and instead just like throws all

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Speaker 3: the guy's stuff off his desk and bullies him into

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Speaker 3: getting him on the train. So, yeah, I don't know

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Speaker 3: what's what's the morally superior act there to participate in

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Speaker 3: a corrupt system and give a bribe to or to

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Speaker 3: bully the station master until they let you on the train.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess there's maybe a case to be

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Speaker 1: made that they're both they're both examples of some sort

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Speaker 1: of British ideal.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So this film came out the same year as Dracula

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Speaker 1: AD nineteen seventy two, and also alongside The London Underground

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Speaker 1: cannibal film Deathline, as well as there's like a Spanish

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Speaker 1: absurdist movie that has Lee in it from the same

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Speaker 1: year as well, um umbrackel Umbrossel. I'm not sure exactly

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Speaker 1: how to say this, but a less known absurdist film.

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Speaker 1: I don't know that Lee even has a big role

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Speaker 1: in it, but he is credited.

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Speaker 3: I don't know anything about that. Are we going to

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Speaker 3: talk about Deathline one day?

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Speaker 1: I hope. So that is a film about underground cannibals.

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Speaker 1: It has Christopher Lee in a very typical Christopher Lee role,

433
00:24:15,280 --> 00:24:19,240
Speaker 1: but then it has Donald Pleasance in a wonderfully atypical

434
00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:23,440
Speaker 1: casting as a blue collar police inspector. It's a lot

435
00:24:23,440 --> 00:24:26,800
Speaker 1: of fun, though the monsters just kind of like gross.

436
00:24:28,160 --> 00:24:30,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's cannibals in the tube. I think we talked

437
00:24:30,560 --> 00:24:33,560
Speaker 3: about this movie not in a Weird House, but we

438
00:24:33,600 --> 00:24:36,399
Speaker 3: talked about it in Passing in a core episode we

439
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:38,640
Speaker 3: did about the London underground mosquitoes.

440
00:24:38,880 --> 00:24:42,439
Speaker 1: Hmm, that's right, that's right. Peter Cushing, of course, is

441
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:45,480
Speaker 1: in this plays Doctor Wells. He lived nineteen thirteen through

442
00:24:45,520 --> 00:24:50,280
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, legendary horror icon, frequently co star and

443
00:24:50,560 --> 00:24:54,000
Speaker 1: Cushing's character has elements of his often type cast role

444
00:24:54,040 --> 00:24:57,800
Speaker 1: as a relatable elder scientist or investigator, though again with

445
00:24:57,880 --> 00:25:00,639
Speaker 1: some a few added touches of a p upper British

446
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:03,119
Speaker 1: scoundrel that I liked. You know, he knows how to

447
00:25:03,119 --> 00:25:06,840
Speaker 1: bribe local officials. He seems to be maybe a bit

448
00:25:06,880 --> 00:25:07,439
Speaker 1: of a flirt.

449
00:25:07,880 --> 00:25:09,719
Speaker 3: He's got a bit more of a twinkle in his

450
00:25:09,800 --> 00:25:11,480
Speaker 3: eye in this movie than he does in a lot

451
00:25:11,480 --> 00:25:15,000
Speaker 3: of his roles. More often he plays a very straight

452
00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:19,080
Speaker 3: forward good guy. Here he's a bit of a rascal,

453
00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:19,880
Speaker 3: and I like that.

454
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:24,640
Speaker 1: This film is notable in Cushing's careers that occurs as

455
00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:28,440
Speaker 1: a number of other films do in this period, directly

456
00:25:28,480 --> 00:25:31,959
Speaker 1: following the death of his wife, Violet, which reportedly had

457
00:25:32,080 --> 00:25:34,480
Speaker 1: just a devastating effect on him, to the point that

458
00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:37,440
Speaker 1: he initially expressed his desire to just not do this film.

459
00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:41,280
Speaker 1: He apparently like flew out to meet the director and

460
00:25:41,400 --> 00:25:43,080
Speaker 1: was like, look, I wanted to tell you this in person,

461
00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:46,040
Speaker 1: but I don't think I can do this. And it

462
00:25:46,080 --> 00:25:49,199
Speaker 1: was Christopher Lee, who was not only his frequent co

463
00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:51,600
Speaker 1: star but a close friend, who convinced him to press on,

464
00:25:52,119 --> 00:25:54,920
Speaker 1: you know, to keep working and supported him through the production,

465
00:25:55,640 --> 00:25:58,440
Speaker 1: and Cushing seems to have really thrown himself into work

466
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:01,080
Speaker 1: during this period, because they're six different films from this

467
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:04,160
Speaker 1: year featuring Cushing. There's Tales from the Crypt Dracula AD

468
00:26:04,320 --> 00:26:08,360
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, Doctor Five's Rises Again, Asylum, Fear the Night,

469
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:11,480
Speaker 1: and Horror Express. And really, I mean Cushing is always

470
00:26:11,560 --> 00:26:14,399
Speaker 1: such a consummate professional and so great on screen.

471
00:26:15,280 --> 00:26:15,520
Speaker 3: You know.

472
00:26:15,600 --> 00:26:18,800
Speaker 1: I see people review these films and discuss ways in

473
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:22,200
Speaker 1: which they can see this effect on his performance. But

474
00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:24,960
Speaker 1: I've never been able to see that. I feel like

475
00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:28,919
Speaker 1: like Cushing is still the consummate pro. He's still great

476
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:33,680
Speaker 1: at embodying a character on screen. I don't, for my money,

477
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: I would not notice this, you know, inner suffering that

478
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:39,560
Speaker 1: may have been going on at the time. Again, it's

479
00:26:39,560 --> 00:26:43,480
Speaker 1: a fun role and not you know, sometimes he would play,

480
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:45,960
Speaker 1: even in films from around this time period, a more

481
00:26:46,000 --> 00:26:49,320
Speaker 1: haunted character, which I guess might reflect what he was

482
00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:51,280
Speaker 1: going through more. But this is this is not a

483
00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:53,880
Speaker 1: haunted character. This is a guy who's I think, mostly

484
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:57,440
Speaker 1: having a good time as he travels across the continent.

485
00:26:58,880 --> 00:27:01,040
Speaker 1: All Right, we mentioned Telly's This is the first time

486
00:27:01,040 --> 00:27:03,720
Speaker 1: we've talked about a film with Telly Savalis. He plays

487
00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:08,639
Speaker 1: a Cossack by the name of Captain Kazan, who, again,

488
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:11,679
Speaker 1: as you said, shows up an hour into the picture

489
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:12,560
Speaker 1: in the third act.

490
00:27:13,200 --> 00:27:15,760
Speaker 3: If you've only seen the movie once a long time ago,

491
00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:20,000
Speaker 3: you will probably misremember him as being there throughout the

492
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:22,560
Speaker 3: entire movie because he makes such an impression when he

493
00:27:22,600 --> 00:27:25,320
Speaker 3: shows up. As we said earlier, he just takes over

494
00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:29,600
Speaker 3: once he arrives, and it's his movie until he's gone. Yeah.

495
00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:31,240
Speaker 1: Plus, I mean it is the kind of character he

496
00:27:31,280 --> 00:27:37,960
Speaker 1: plays a Yeah, a belligerent captain who is tyrannical to

497
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:41,200
Speaker 1: everybody except for you know, the count of the Countess.

498
00:27:42,400 --> 00:27:42,760
Speaker 3: So yeah.

499
00:27:42,800 --> 00:27:46,399
Speaker 1: Savalis lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety four. Third

500
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:48,840
Speaker 1: build on this and often a key part of the

501
00:27:48,840 --> 00:27:51,920
Speaker 1: promotion for the film, even though he doesn't appear till later.

502
00:27:53,400 --> 00:27:55,480
Speaker 1: It's a very memorable role. He believes it brings a

503
00:27:55,480 --> 00:27:59,840
Speaker 1: lot of chaotic energy, you know, a different acting style.

504
00:28:01,320 --> 00:28:04,639
Speaker 1: Martin and the extras talked about how with Cushing and

505
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:07,920
Speaker 1: Lee you got pretty much the same, the same thing

506
00:28:07,960 --> 00:28:10,840
Speaker 1: every take because they you know, they had everything down

507
00:28:10,880 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 1: in their head and they knew exactly how they were

508
00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:14,160
Speaker 1: going to play it, and they'd give you the same

509
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:19,320
Speaker 1: thing again. But Savalis had just a different like operating

510
00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:22,879
Speaker 1: method in place, like he might try radically different things.

511
00:28:22,920 --> 00:28:24,800
Speaker 1: He'd want to mix it up. He'd want other things

512
00:28:24,800 --> 00:28:27,120
Speaker 1: to be different so that he could like act off

513
00:28:27,119 --> 00:28:29,840
Speaker 1: of them. And I think you see that in some

514
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:31,440
Speaker 1: of the like when he's a board, he's like he's

515
00:28:31,440 --> 00:28:34,640
Speaker 1: taking a shot of vodka and just throwing the shot glass,

516
00:28:35,359 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 1: you know, across the train car. Things like that that

517
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 1: do feel wild. And he has essentially taken the whole

518
00:28:41,840 --> 00:28:44,440
Speaker 1: train hostage during this this sequence as well, So it

519
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:44,960
Speaker 1: makes sense.

520
00:28:45,480 --> 00:28:48,560
Speaker 3: What would you say the alignment of this character is.

521
00:28:48,640 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 3: I feel like he vacillates between sort of chaotic neutral,

522
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:55,400
Speaker 3: lawful evil and then chaotic evil.

523
00:28:55,880 --> 00:29:00,240
Speaker 1: I think, so, yeah, there's a waffling there. He's he's

524
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:03,280
Speaker 1: there to just impose his will as much as actually

525
00:29:03,360 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 1: solve anything. But we'll get more into the details of

526
00:29:06,320 --> 00:29:09,080
Speaker 1: his arrival when we get to it in the plot.

527
00:29:09,120 --> 00:29:12,960
Speaker 1: But American actor here, who's TV credits date back to

528
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: the late nineteen fifties. He came up in radio and

529
00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 1: then television insteadily got more and more into TV acting

530
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:21,920
Speaker 1: and then film, But everything apparently changed for him when

531
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 1: he finally shaved that beautiful head of his for the

532
00:29:24,600 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 1: role of Pontea's Pilot and the greatest story ever told

533
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty five, a look that he's stuck with

534
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:32,920
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. He obviously had a

535
00:29:32,920 --> 00:29:37,240
Speaker 1: great knack for playing tough guys, heavies, villains, and characters

536
00:29:37,240 --> 00:29:41,760
Speaker 1: of dubious moral character, which of course culminates in such

537
00:29:41,840 --> 00:29:45,120
Speaker 1: roles as Blofeld in nineteen sixty nine's On Her Majesty's

538
00:29:45,160 --> 00:29:45,960
Speaker 1: Secret Service.

539
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:48,720
Speaker 3: That's a James Bond movie that kind of stands out

540
00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:52,680
Speaker 3: because it was the only film to feature George Lazenbye

541
00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:55,000
Speaker 3: in the role of James Bond. But it also stands

542
00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:58,040
Speaker 3: out for a number of reasons. A lot of people

543
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:00,120
Speaker 3: rank it as like one of the best or the

544
00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 3: best of the series. I really love it because it

545
00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:06,480
Speaker 3: has Diana Rigg as the character of Teresa, who James

546
00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:09,200
Speaker 3: Bond gets married to. People forget that James Bond gets

547
00:30:09,200 --> 00:30:13,560
Speaker 3: married in one of these movies. Yeah, she locked him

548
00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:18,280
Speaker 3: down briefly, and unfortunately the movie ends tragically with her death.

549
00:30:18,960 --> 00:30:21,960
Speaker 3: But yeah, Telly Sabalis is the villain In this one,

550
00:30:22,080 --> 00:30:26,880
Speaker 3: he plays Blofeld, a Blofeld who is oddly concerned with

551
00:30:27,840 --> 00:30:31,000
Speaker 3: trying to get a claim to being part of some

552
00:30:31,120 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 3: kind of line of British nobility verified by some kind

553
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,040
Speaker 3: of I don't know, a house that like verifies your

554
00:30:37,120 --> 00:30:41,360
Speaker 3: heraldry or something. So that's like James Bond's in into

555
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:44,360
Speaker 3: Blofeld's organization. In this movie. He pretends to be somebody

556
00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:47,840
Speaker 3: who like verifies that somebody is part of a British

557
00:30:47,840 --> 00:30:52,720
Speaker 3: aristoocratic line. And so Blofeld is doing that, and he's

558
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:55,720
Speaker 3: running an allergy clinic, I think in the Swiss Alps,

559
00:30:55,760 --> 00:30:57,200
Speaker 3: and so there are all these people there who are

560
00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:00,320
Speaker 3: trying to get cured of their allergies. And so that

561
00:31:00,400 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 3: leads to this bizarre Telly Savalis recorded monologue where somebody

562
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 3: was apparently allergic to chicken, and he's giving this hypnotic

563
00:31:09,880 --> 00:31:12,640
Speaker 3: speech about adote. You remember how I taught you to

564
00:31:12,800 --> 00:31:18,920
Speaker 3: love chickens, their taste, their voice.

565
00:31:19,680 --> 00:31:22,760
Speaker 1: Oh man, it's been a while since I've seen that one. Yeah,

566
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:26,720
Speaker 1: let's see. He also played a memorable, memorable sinister role

567
00:31:26,880 --> 00:31:29,680
Speaker 1: in Mario Bava's Lisa and the Devil from seventy three.

568
00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:32,760
Speaker 1: I say memorable, but I really couldn't make it through

569
00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:34,440
Speaker 1: that picture. Maybe it was just the wrong time for

570
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:35,360
Speaker 1: me to try and watch it.

571
00:31:35,760 --> 00:31:38,480
Speaker 3: I love Mario Bava. That was one of my least

572
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 3: favorites of his that I've tried to watch.

573
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:44,160
Speaker 1: He also played Elsie's So Tough in nineteen seventy nine

574
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:45,080
Speaker 1: is the Muppet Movie.

575
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:45,680
Speaker 3: You know.

576
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:49,200
Speaker 1: Savalis is one of those guys that, especially as his

577
00:31:49,280 --> 00:31:53,800
Speaker 1: career matured, he became like just a staple like celebrity.

578
00:31:53,840 --> 00:31:56,280
Speaker 1: You know, he was just He's Telly Savalas who loves

579
00:31:56,280 --> 00:31:59,200
Speaker 1: your baby. He did a lot of action films in

580
00:31:59,280 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: various European productions, though, including a nineteen seventy one spaghetti

581
00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:05,640
Speaker 1: western titled A Town Called Bastard that I've heard good

582
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:09,000
Speaker 1: things about, and on TV. He's best remembered for, of course,

583
00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 1: playing police detective and lollipop aficionado Kojak, with the whole

584
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:17,000
Speaker 1: thing being, of course, that Kojack is quit smoking, so

585
00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:20,239
Speaker 1: he's using lollipops all the time to stand in for

586
00:32:20,440 --> 00:32:23,400
Speaker 1: cigarettes or what have you, which apparently is what Telly

587
00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:25,360
Speaker 1: Savalis himself was doing in real life.

588
00:32:25,800 --> 00:32:27,040
Speaker 3: Dentists hate him.

589
00:32:28,440 --> 00:32:32,120
Speaker 1: Savalas is apparently a big personality and had a reputation

590
00:32:32,320 --> 00:32:34,640
Speaker 1: for if you were his friend, you know, he stood

591
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:36,360
Speaker 1: up for you, he'd help you out, he'd get you

592
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:39,120
Speaker 1: some work. And we'll get to an example of that

593
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:41,240
Speaker 1: here in a bit when we get to the music

594
00:32:41,320 --> 00:32:41,960
Speaker 1: for this film.

595
00:32:42,240 --> 00:32:45,880
Speaker 3: Oh okay, oh, but hey, hold on, this movie essentially

596
00:32:45,960 --> 00:32:48,560
Speaker 3: has a Rasputant in it that we've got to talk about.

597
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:54,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is this character's name again? It's father Kujar Gardov. Yeah,

598
00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:59,600
Speaker 1: played by the excellent Alberto de Mendoza of the nineteen

599
00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:03,800
Speaker 1: twenty three through twenty eleven. Sometimes Mendozo's given higher billing

600
00:33:03,840 --> 00:33:06,880
Speaker 1: than Savalis, as he should, because he plays a far

601
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:10,719
Speaker 1: more pivotal and I think equally memorable role in the picture.

602
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:15,320
Speaker 1: A rest putin esque Eastern Orthodox monk and advisor to

603
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:18,440
Speaker 1: the Count and countest. Just a wonderful screen presence, a

604
00:33:18,480 --> 00:33:22,360
Speaker 1: real worm tongue who begins starts out devoted to the

605
00:33:22,360 --> 00:33:25,560
Speaker 1: mysteries of our Lord, but is ready to instantly jump

606
00:33:25,560 --> 00:33:28,640
Speaker 1: ship to Satan or any other power that provides better

607
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:30,880
Speaker 1: evidence of the unseen world.

608
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:33,560
Speaker 3: You know, there is actually a scene earlier in the

609
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:37,880
Speaker 3: movie where I realized upon second viewing. This is telegraphed

610
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:41,240
Speaker 3: because he presents himself as a principled man of God

611
00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:43,680
Speaker 3: who will not be swayed. And then late, yeah, later

612
00:33:43,720 --> 00:33:47,080
Speaker 3: he jumpship to Satan. But early on there's a scene

613
00:33:47,080 --> 00:33:49,840
Speaker 3: where he's like trying to convince the Count and countest

614
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:54,240
Speaker 3: not to do something unseemly or evil, and the Count

615
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 3: is like, shut up, I am the Count, I rule

616
00:33:56,840 --> 00:33:59,680
Speaker 3: over you, and Father Pujardov is like, forgive me master.

617
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:02,760
Speaker 1: I guess wasn't it like she was going to wear

618
00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:04,360
Speaker 1: a blue dress or something she was.

619
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:06,360
Speaker 3: Going to wear. She was going to wear I think

620
00:34:06,360 --> 00:34:09,520
Speaker 3: a somewhat revealing dress while she goes and makes an

621
00:34:09,560 --> 00:34:13,400
Speaker 3: appeal to the Englishman because you know, they know you

622
00:34:13,440 --> 00:34:16,920
Speaker 3: can manipulate the Englishman with a bit of bosom showing,

623
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:20,440
Speaker 3: and so that's the idea. And he's like, no, no, no,

624
00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 3: you can't do that. And then the Count is like,

625
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:24,719
Speaker 3: but I am in charge, and he's like, that's right,

626
00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:25,760
Speaker 3: you are in charge.

627
00:34:27,800 --> 00:34:31,080
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. This is such a fun character. Mendoz

628
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:33,600
Speaker 1: is great. He was an Argentine actor who, in addition

629
00:34:33,640 --> 00:34:37,000
Speaker 1: to work in Argentine cinema, also crossed over into numerous

630
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:40,640
Speaker 1: spaghetti westerns and European productions for a time. His many

631
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:44,040
Speaker 1: credits include seventy one's Lizard in a Woman's Skin and

632
00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:47,120
Speaker 1: the Case of the Scorpion's Tail, as well as nineteen

633
00:34:47,160 --> 00:34:50,560
Speaker 1: seventy six is The People who Own the Dark. This

634
00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:53,920
Speaker 1: last one, The People who Own the Dark, also featured

635
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:58,200
Speaker 1: Spanish horror icon Paul Nashi in a small role. Incidentally,

636
00:34:58,239 --> 00:35:03,640
Speaker 1: I've seen this role of father Pujardev incorrectly credited to

637
00:35:03,680 --> 00:35:09,319
Speaker 1: Paul Nashi, including on the current Wikipedia page for Horror Express. What. Yeah,

638
00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:11,279
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I guess there's sort of

639
00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 1: aism once there. But as much as I love Paul Nashi,

640
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 1: he is not in this film. It's Alberto de Mendoza

641
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:17,880
Speaker 1: and he's incredible.

642
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:20,400
Speaker 3: That's funny. I know, I looked at that wiki, but

643
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:24,200
Speaker 3: I did not catch that mistake. That's funny, not Paul Nashi.

644
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:25,239
Speaker 3: All right.

645
00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:31,799
Speaker 1: We mentioned the Countess, Countess Irina Petrovski played by Silvia Tortosa,

646
00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:35,160
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen forty seven through twenty twenty four, Spanish

647
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:38,879
Speaker 1: actress active from sixty four through at least twenty twenty one.

648
00:35:38,920 --> 00:35:41,200
Speaker 1: If I remember correctly, we've discussed her on the show

649
00:35:41,239 --> 00:35:45,239
Speaker 1: before because she appeared in Armando Diosario's nineteen seventy three

650
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:49,920
Speaker 1: film The Lareles Grasp. Here she's a Russian countess de

651
00:35:50,040 --> 00:35:54,919
Speaker 1: facto damsel in distress and wife to the count Marian Petrovski,

652
00:35:55,000 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 1: played by Argentine actor Jorge Regod who lived nineteen oh

653
00:35:59,280 --> 00:35:59,960
Speaker 1: five through nineteen.

654
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:03,759
Speaker 3: She's also quite good in this and has some very

655
00:36:03,800 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 3: funny scenes where she's trying to butter up the Englishman,

656
00:36:07,360 --> 00:36:10,680
Speaker 3: being like, oh, you know, we we love England. We'll

657
00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:13,200
Speaker 3: get more into this later, while she's holding a dog

658
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:16,960
Speaker 3: that's squirming and basically screaming to get out of her arms.

659
00:36:17,320 --> 00:36:20,359
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great scene because of course the father,

660
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:24,439
Speaker 1: father of Prijordov, is like, he smells death. This train

661
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 1: smells like death.

662
00:36:25,760 --> 00:36:30,040
Speaker 3: Yes, the dog smells the devil on the strain. But

663
00:36:30,280 --> 00:36:33,280
Speaker 3: she's great. But I forgot that. Sylvia Tortosa is also

664
00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:35,640
Speaker 3: in the Louralized Grasp because we have at least two

665
00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:38,360
Speaker 3: actors who were in Lauralized Grasp. But don't we Helga

666
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:39,360
Speaker 3: Line is in this.

667
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:43,800
Speaker 1: Yes, Helgaalainee. She played the Laura in The Lauralied Grasp

668
00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:46,879
Speaker 1: and she was also in seventy three's Horror Rises from

669
00:36:46,880 --> 00:36:50,560
Speaker 1: the Tomb, part of the Occult Power couple with Paul Nashi,

670
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:55,719
Speaker 1: and in this she plays Natasha, a suspicious character on

671
00:36:55,760 --> 00:37:00,719
Speaker 1: the train, a very stylish character who wears this like

672
00:37:00,800 --> 00:37:06,040
Speaker 1: green dragon dress. But yeah, she as we've previously discussed,

673
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:09,880
Speaker 1: she you know, stunning German born redhead who played a

674
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of fem fatals but also a

675
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:16,840
Speaker 1: lot of supernatural vixens. In both of the films that

676
00:37:16,840 --> 00:37:19,920
Speaker 1: we've covered, she plays some sort of supernatural creature or

677
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:24,600
Speaker 1: being or you know, magic user. And here she's it's

678
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:28,280
Speaker 1: a little less exciting, but she's still it's still always

679
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:29,880
Speaker 1: a treat when she's in a picture, Like, what's she

680
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:32,560
Speaker 1: up to? Probably nothing good, it may not be raising

681
00:37:32,600 --> 00:37:35,680
Speaker 1: the dead, but but she's she's got some sort of scheme.

682
00:37:35,760 --> 00:37:36,399
Speaker 3: You just know it.

683
00:37:37,640 --> 00:37:40,960
Speaker 1: And then oh, we have the character Inspector Mirov played

684
00:37:40,960 --> 00:37:44,520
Speaker 1: by Julio Pena lived nineteen twelve through nineteen seventy two,

685
00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:48,080
Speaker 1: another great role in the picture, a doomed investigator aboard

686
00:37:48,080 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 1: the Horror Express. He was a Spanish actor with credits

687
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:54,640
Speaker 1: going back to nineteen thirty who died shortly after the

688
00:37:54,680 --> 00:37:55,800
Speaker 1: completion of this film.

689
00:37:56,200 --> 00:37:58,759
Speaker 3: It's funny we're saying the Horror Express, like that is

690
00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:01,440
Speaker 3: the name of the train canonically in the film, it

691
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:03,319
Speaker 3: is not. I don't remember what they call it, but

692
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:05,600
Speaker 3: I think it's supposed to be going on the Trans

693
00:38:05,640 --> 00:38:07,359
Speaker 3: Siberian Railroad, right, Yeah.

694
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:10,520
Speaker 1: I think the Spanish title, the actual original title, translates

695
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:13,920
Speaker 1: to like panic on the Trans Liberian Railway or something,

696
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:16,799
Speaker 1: So nobody calls it the Horror Express, but it's easy

697
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:20,000
Speaker 1: to think of it as like, all aboard our express leaving. Yeah,

698
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:25,520
Speaker 1: hack up your possessed apes, it's time to go, all right.

699
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:28,480
Speaker 1: A couple of just small credits here. The baggage man

700
00:38:28,520 --> 00:38:31,360
Speaker 1: is very memorable. This is Victor Israel, who lived nineteen

701
00:38:31,360 --> 00:38:34,440
Speaker 1: twenty nine through two thousand and nine, prolific Spanish actor

702
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: with something like two hundred and fifteen credits. Very memorable face,

703
00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:39,319
Speaker 1: very memorable eyes.

704
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:43,800
Speaker 3: He's got a look. He's bald, but with tremendous mutton chops.

705
00:38:44,040 --> 00:38:48,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then oh, this is one of those situations

706
00:38:48,080 --> 00:38:51,040
Speaker 1: where I can't even point out which role he's playing here,

707
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:53,759
Speaker 1: he's just one of the Russian guards. But it is

708
00:38:54,120 --> 00:38:59,440
Speaker 1: a Spanish actor, Jose Canalas who lived nineteen twenty five

709
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:02,760
Speaker 1: through twenty five fifteen. He played the creepy character Murdo

710
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:05,880
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three's Return of the Blind Dead that

711
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:07,480
Speaker 1: we talked about in the show previously.

712
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:09,759
Speaker 3: Oh, the kind of gravedigger guy.

713
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:13,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, the gravedigger guy who sells out the town to

714
00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 1: undead templars.

715
00:39:15,080 --> 00:39:18,399
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Okay, looked a bit like Stephen King.

716
00:39:18,600 --> 00:39:19,680
Speaker 3: Do I remember that? Right?

717
00:39:19,760 --> 00:39:22,480
Speaker 1: Yep, yep. So you have fun roll in that here

718
00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:25,600
Speaker 1: he's basically invisible, but he's in there somewhere. And then

719
00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:29,279
Speaker 1: finally the composer. It's John Cassovus who lived nineteen thirty

720
00:39:29,320 --> 00:39:33,600
Speaker 1: through twenty fourteen. There's a fun interview with him on

721
00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:36,200
Speaker 1: the As a Blu Ray extra on a couple of

722
00:39:36,200 --> 00:39:39,640
Speaker 1: the discs that I referenced earlier. American composer who previously

723
00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:43,000
Speaker 1: worked as an arranger on sixty sevens The Dirty Dozen

724
00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:46,720
Speaker 1: and did I believe the theme song for Pancho Villa.

725
00:39:47,080 --> 00:39:49,719
Speaker 1: He'd previously met Telly Savalis in London and the two

726
00:39:49,719 --> 00:39:53,239
Speaker 1: became fast friends. So Savalas helped him break into film

727
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:56,160
Speaker 1: scores with this movie. And I have to say, it's

728
00:39:56,200 --> 00:39:58,400
Speaker 1: a pretty fun score. You got this like haunting little

729
00:39:58,440 --> 00:40:02,279
Speaker 1: melody that keeps recurring. And then how would you describe

730
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:04,120
Speaker 1: the electric guitar work in this picture?

731
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:07,920
Speaker 3: Joe ah Well, full disclosure. Actually just had to pause

732
00:40:07,960 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 3: recording for a second to go look it up because

733
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:12,799
Speaker 3: I'd forgotten what you were referring to. But yeah, it's

734
00:40:12,840 --> 00:40:15,520
Speaker 3: an interesting electric guitar sound. I mean, in some cases

735
00:40:15,520 --> 00:40:18,440
Speaker 3: it's almost a bit surf rock. There's a lot of reverb.

736
00:40:18,560 --> 00:40:24,320
Speaker 3: It's a kind of echoee vibe electric guitar sound, some

737
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:28,560
Speaker 3: kind of droning notes, a lot of arpeggios. But then also, yeah,

738
00:40:28,560 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 3: it'll hit a big chord and just.

739
00:40:33,760 --> 00:40:37,440
Speaker 1: I love it. Cassavas composed the scores as well to

740
00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:41,240
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three's The Satanic Rites of Dracula, various other pictures,

741
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:44,400
Speaker 1: and moved into TV work in Hollywood, working on a

742
00:40:44,480 --> 00:40:48,680
Speaker 1: number of mainstream TV series, including of course Kojak. Because

743
00:40:48,680 --> 00:40:51,839
Speaker 1: who loves you, Baby, Tellisavalis loves you and can help

744
00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:54,279
Speaker 1: you get some work. So that's the fun connection. Back

745
00:40:54,280 --> 00:40:59,000
Speaker 1: to tell Savalis sticking up for his friends. The Cassavas.

746
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:02,040
Speaker 1: Here in the interview extra, shares a story about how

747
00:41:02,080 --> 00:41:05,880
Speaker 1: he was he met Savalis at a hotel, and Savalas

748
00:41:05,960 --> 00:41:07,240
Speaker 1: was like, I'm gonna go up and take a nap,

749
00:41:08,120 --> 00:41:11,319
Speaker 1: and so because I was just waiting downstairs, and like

750
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:13,440
Speaker 1: some guy comes in who had worked with them on

751
00:41:13,440 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 1: a previous picture, and like Savalas comes down and like

752
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:18,399
Speaker 1: gives them, you know, a couple hundred bucks or something.

753
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 1: You know, it's just apparently always doing things like that

754
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:23,200
Speaker 1: for people that were in his good graces.

755
00:41:32,800 --> 00:41:34,760
Speaker 3: All right, are you ready to talk about the plot?

756
00:41:35,160 --> 00:41:36,640
Speaker 1: Yes, let's jump right into it.

757
00:41:36,719 --> 00:41:38,359
Speaker 3: All right, A couple of things right at the top

758
00:41:38,360 --> 00:41:40,360
Speaker 3: of this section here. First of all, I will say

759
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:44,600
Speaker 3: this movie has a number of twists and reveals in

760
00:41:44,680 --> 00:41:49,320
Speaker 3: it that I found mighty pleasing to experience for myself.

761
00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:52,719
Speaker 3: I've read they're ludicrous twists, and so I would be

762
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:56,480
Speaker 3: really sad if I spoiled them without warning, so be warned.

763
00:41:57,000 --> 00:42:00,160
Speaker 3: I think this movie is a lot of fun you

764
00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:03,799
Speaker 3: see without having anything spoiled, and to get to experience

765
00:42:03,840 --> 00:42:08,160
Speaker 3: the WTF moments for yourself, So please do take that

766
00:42:08,200 --> 00:42:11,120
Speaker 3: into consideration. I think this one is really fun to

767
00:42:11,120 --> 00:42:14,319
Speaker 3: to learn the weird the weird developments in real time

768
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:17,080
Speaker 3: as you watch it. But if you haven't seen it

769
00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:19,960
Speaker 3: and you want to keep listening anyway, That is okay.

770
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:22,880
Speaker 3: One thing I will do to kind of preserve some

771
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:24,800
Speaker 3: of the surprise later on, though we are going to

772
00:42:24,880 --> 00:42:27,600
Speaker 3: talk about some of the weirdest reveals, is I think

773
00:42:27,600 --> 00:42:30,399
Speaker 3: we'll get fuzzier in our description of the plot as

774
00:42:30,400 --> 00:42:33,200
Speaker 3: we go on, so we might kind of do a

775
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:37,200
Speaker 3: pretty detailed first act description and then and then zoom

776
00:42:37,200 --> 00:42:41,359
Speaker 3: out to to focus more on the on the big movements. Yeah.

777
00:42:41,520 --> 00:42:45,040
Speaker 3: So the credits begin with kind of sad, dreamy music.

778
00:42:45,120 --> 00:42:49,120
Speaker 3: It's this melody that we will hear repeated many times

779
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:52,680
Speaker 3: throughout the film, sometimes whistled by a mysterious character. You

780
00:42:52,680 --> 00:42:54,800
Speaker 3: don't know quite who it is, but the other characters

781
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:57,960
Speaker 3: are hearing it, sometimes played by the countest on the piano,

782
00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:02,279
Speaker 3: sometimes just in the background on the soundtrack. But we

783
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:05,920
Speaker 3: get this sad, dreamy melody. We see the darkness of

784
00:43:05,920 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 3: a tunnel, blinding headlamps in the distance, and the sound

785
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:14,400
Speaker 3: of railcars clattering over the tracks. The action begins with

786
00:43:14,520 --> 00:43:19,160
Speaker 3: a long pan over a chain of black, jagged mountaintops

787
00:43:19,560 --> 00:43:24,520
Speaker 3: with a starless blue twilight behind them, and the unmistakable

788
00:43:24,560 --> 00:43:28,760
Speaker 3: voice of Christopher Lee comes in narrating. Here's what Christopher

789
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:31,799
Speaker 3: Lee says. He says, the following report to the Royal

790
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:36,560
Speaker 3: Geological Society by the undersigned Alexander Saxton is a true

791
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:40,480
Speaker 3: and faithful account of events that befell the Society's expedition

792
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:44,600
Speaker 3: in Manchuria. As the leader of the expedition, I must

793
00:43:44,680 --> 00:43:48,479
Speaker 3: accept responsibility for its ending in disaster, but I leave

794
00:43:48,520 --> 00:43:51,560
Speaker 3: to the judgment of the honorable members the decision as

795
00:43:51,600 --> 00:43:55,680
Speaker 3: to where the blame for the catastrophe lies. After seeing

796
00:43:55,719 --> 00:43:58,360
Speaker 3: the whole movie, I think I know where the blame lies.

797
00:43:58,400 --> 00:44:02,520
Speaker 3: I'm that it seems pretty to me. Another thing about

798
00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:04,600
Speaker 3: the beginning of this movie is that we are getting

799
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 3: constantly contradictory signals about geographic locations within China. Did you

800
00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:10,799
Speaker 3: notice this?

801
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:13,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is one of the areas where the

802
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 1: film feels a little sloppy.

803
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:19,480
Speaker 3: Yeah. Like so, the monologue says that they're in Manchuria,

804
00:44:19,960 --> 00:44:22,359
Speaker 3: but then there's a title on the screen that says

805
00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:25,600
Speaker 3: the mountains are in Sichuan Province, which are different places.

806
00:44:26,120 --> 00:44:28,840
Speaker 3: And then later when we get to the train station,

807
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:32,040
Speaker 3: there's a title on the screen that says it's in Peking,

808
00:44:32,320 --> 00:44:35,799
Speaker 3: which is Beijing. But the characters are talking about being

809
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:41,480
Speaker 3: in Shanghai. Yeah, anyway, So back to either Sichuan Province

810
00:44:41,560 --> 00:44:45,920
Speaker 3: or Manchuria, whichever it's supposed to be. As this monologue unfolds,

811
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:49,160
Speaker 3: we see a team of men dressed in heavy furs

812
00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:52,919
Speaker 3: tramping through the remote mountains in the snow, and then

813
00:44:53,080 --> 00:44:56,600
Speaker 3: they come upon an icy cavern with Christopher Lee in command.

814
00:44:56,719 --> 00:44:59,520
Speaker 3: So he's going into the cavern with an old man

815
00:44:59,560 --> 00:45:03,600
Speaker 3: as a guy. And in this role Christopher Lee, he

816
00:45:03,719 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 3: has a very I don't know, it's a very pompous

817
00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:10,319
Speaker 3: kind of look, even for Christopher Lee. He's sporting a

818
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:14,000
Speaker 3: black mustache, he's wearing a long red scarf and has

819
00:45:14,040 --> 00:45:17,759
Speaker 3: this tall, boxy fur hat. I love his look for

820
00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:21,440
Speaker 3: the outdoor weather here. But the question is what lies

821
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:25,880
Speaker 3: within the cave. Why it's a humanoid figure frozen solid

822
00:45:25,920 --> 00:45:29,319
Speaker 3: in ice. So it's a toothy, waxy dude, a bit

823
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:34,000
Speaker 3: skeletal and a bit resinous, with sunken eyes and missing

824
00:45:34,040 --> 00:45:37,040
Speaker 3: the cartilage part of the nose. And of course we

825
00:45:37,080 --> 00:45:40,120
Speaker 3: get a dramatic music cue and a zoom in on

826
00:45:40,200 --> 00:45:42,640
Speaker 3: the skeleton when they find it, or is it a skeleton?

827
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:44,080
Speaker 3: I guess it does have flesh on it.

828
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:49,200
Speaker 1: We're getting into one of the big questions of the

829
00:45:49,640 --> 00:45:52,480
Speaker 1: picture here, and that is what is a fossil because

830
00:45:52,520 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 1: the movie share as Hell doesn't seem to know.

831
00:45:54,719 --> 00:45:59,319
Speaker 3: It is a stone. Robert, A fossil means a stone, yes.

832
00:45:59,320 --> 00:46:02,680
Speaker 1: But then all so it can thaw out and move around.

833
00:46:03,080 --> 00:46:08,120
Speaker 1: It's like, there's, yeah, there's some inconsistency regarding the condition

834
00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:09,200
Speaker 1: of this specimen.

835
00:46:09,600 --> 00:46:14,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we see later that this fossil quote unquote

836
00:46:15,040 --> 00:46:18,319
Speaker 3: has you know, a frozen body slash fossil has been

837
00:46:18,360 --> 00:46:21,360
Speaker 3: locked inside a large crate wrapped in a canvas cloth

838
00:46:21,520 --> 00:46:26,480
Speaker 3: and chains with a padlock, and Saxton's companions are hauling

839
00:46:26,520 --> 00:46:30,200
Speaker 3: the box down the mountain side. So they eventually arrive

840
00:46:30,280 --> 00:46:33,480
Speaker 3: at a train station. Again, the confusion because the thing

841
00:46:33,520 --> 00:46:37,640
Speaker 3: on the screen says it's in Peaking, and then characters

842
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:40,719
Speaker 3: start talking about being in Shanghai. It's possible I'm just

843
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:43,760
Speaker 3: missing something or confused here, but it really it looks

844
00:46:43,760 --> 00:46:47,160
Speaker 3: to me like a goof on the filmmaker's part. But anyway,

845
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:50,360
Speaker 3: either way, Saxton is here the train station looking to

846
00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:53,480
Speaker 3: transport his grade find back to Europe by way of

847
00:46:53,520 --> 00:46:56,920
Speaker 3: the Trans Siberian Railroad. And here's where we get to

848
00:46:56,960 --> 00:47:00,120
Speaker 3: the drama about Saxton having booked passage on this tra

849
00:47:00,280 --> 00:47:03,080
Speaker 3: weeks in advance, but when he arrives, the station master

850
00:47:03,200 --> 00:47:06,680
Speaker 3: is like, yeah, sorry, nothing, Yeah, I don't have any

851
00:47:06,719 --> 00:47:09,160
Speaker 3: record of this, and so he's supposed to be paying

852
00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:11,799
Speaker 3: a bribe. But eventually he just kind of muscles his

853
00:47:11,880 --> 00:47:15,799
Speaker 3: way onto the train by throwing the station masters all

854
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:18,200
Speaker 3: the contents of his desk on the floor. I think

855
00:47:18,239 --> 00:47:21,320
Speaker 3: he also gets some backup because some British soldiers arrive

856
00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:26,240
Speaker 3: and they're like, station master, do what Christopher Lee says,

857
00:47:26,320 --> 00:47:29,239
Speaker 3: and they're like, okay, I will. Anyway. Here at the

858
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:32,240
Speaker 3: train station, Saxton runs into a couple of other characters.

859
00:47:32,600 --> 00:47:35,400
Speaker 3: We meet another scientist. I think he's supposed to be

860
00:47:35,520 --> 00:47:39,320
Speaker 3: a friendly professional rival, but either way, he's known to

861
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:42,400
Speaker 3: Saxton and his name is doctor Wells. This is the

862
00:47:42,520 --> 00:47:45,719
Speaker 3: character played by Peter Cushing. Did you interpret him as

863
00:47:45,719 --> 00:47:48,239
Speaker 3: a professional rival, like they sort of know each other,

864
00:47:48,320 --> 00:47:51,160
Speaker 3: but they're working at odds against one another in a way.

865
00:47:51,440 --> 00:47:56,400
Speaker 1: Yes, we don't really learn a lot regarding Wells's activities,

866
00:47:56,480 --> 00:48:01,000
Speaker 1: like why exactly he's out this far, and he seems

867
00:48:01,040 --> 00:48:04,200
Speaker 1: reluctant to really engage in his profession. Like, there's a

868
00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:06,120
Speaker 1: great scene earlier where they're like, doctor, we need you,

869
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:08,000
Speaker 1: and he's like, well, can I wait till I finish

870
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:12,239
Speaker 1: my meal? You know, he's not eager to get to work.

871
00:48:12,280 --> 00:48:14,560
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm just gonna enjoy this train ride.

872
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:17,800
Speaker 3: They're clearly both members of the Royal Society, because Wells

873
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:21,920
Speaker 3: is very curious about what Saxton has discovered and Saxton

874
00:48:22,080 --> 00:48:23,920
Speaker 3: is like, you will find out about it when I

875
00:48:23,960 --> 00:48:25,400
Speaker 3: present to the Royal Society.

876
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:28,759
Speaker 1: I guess there is some evidence there for if they're

877
00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:34,520
Speaker 1: not rivals. He's very curious, to the point of paying

878
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:37,440
Speaker 1: somebody to mess with the crate. Yeah, so not quite

879
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:40,200
Speaker 1: sabotage his work, but like, if you need to remove

880
00:48:40,239 --> 00:48:42,640
Speaker 1: some screws on this great, if you need to drill

881
00:48:42,640 --> 00:48:44,520
Speaker 1: a few holes and it, go for it. You know,

882
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:45,960
Speaker 1: here's a twenty.

883
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:49,040
Speaker 3: Yes, but within the context of this plot, once again,

884
00:48:49,760 --> 00:48:53,800
Speaker 3: Christopher Lee's character is very rigid and brittle and serious,

885
00:48:54,120 --> 00:48:57,040
Speaker 3: and doctor Wells is a little more He goes with

886
00:48:57,080 --> 00:49:02,040
Speaker 3: the flow. Yeah. Also, we meet doctor Wells a bacteriologist

887
00:49:02,200 --> 00:49:06,280
Speaker 3: named Miss Jones played by Alice Reinhardt, and I love her.

888
00:49:06,920 --> 00:49:09,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wasn't familiar with her She lived nineteen ten

889
00:49:09,320 --> 00:49:11,239
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety three, and this was one of her

890
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:13,520
Speaker 1: last films, but it came off a lot of TV

891
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:15,600
Speaker 1: and radio work. I think she was like a staple

892
00:49:15,680 --> 00:49:19,600
Speaker 1: in TV soap operas for a very long time. I'm sorry,

893
00:49:19,719 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 1: radio soap operas, but possibly TV soap operas as well,

894
00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:24,560
Speaker 1: but definitely radio soap operas.

895
00:49:25,000 --> 00:49:27,480
Speaker 3: Ah okay, well, yeah, I like her. She makes it.

896
00:49:27,600 --> 00:49:32,960
Speaker 3: She makes like some cheeky jokes. Yeah, and well you

897
00:49:33,000 --> 00:49:36,920
Speaker 3: know so Wells describes Saxton to Miss Jones by saying

898
00:49:36,960 --> 00:49:40,759
Speaker 3: he dabbles in fossils and bones, so I think a

899
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:44,440
Speaker 3: little bit of ribbing there, no pun intended. But anyway,

900
00:49:44,480 --> 00:49:46,759
Speaker 3: they're going to be aboard the train where Saxton is

901
00:49:46,760 --> 00:49:49,920
Speaker 3: looking to get a spot. Now, as the two scientists

902
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:53,400
Speaker 3: are catching up out on the platform, Saxton's crate is

903
00:49:53,440 --> 00:49:55,479
Speaker 3: waiting to be loaded in with the rest of the freight,

904
00:49:56,160 --> 00:49:59,799
Speaker 3: and a thief comes along. A thief in a very

905
00:49:59,840 --> 00:50:03,240
Speaker 3: well dressed thief in like a brand new hat comes

906
00:50:03,239 --> 00:50:06,080
Speaker 3: along and picks the lock on the box or on

907
00:50:06,160 --> 00:50:09,000
Speaker 3: the chains holding the box shut. He wants to get

908
00:50:09,000 --> 00:50:12,319
Speaker 3: what's inside. But shock, when we cut back to the

909
00:50:12,320 --> 00:50:15,839
Speaker 3: crate a few Moments later, a local man finds there's

910
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:19,000
Speaker 3: like a body sprawled out on the ground on the platform,

911
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:22,200
Speaker 3: and the local man pulls the sheet from over the

912
00:50:22,239 --> 00:50:25,279
Speaker 3: body and reveals that it is a dead man. It

913
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:28,880
Speaker 3: is the thief, and he's dead and only the whites

914
00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:32,640
Speaker 3: of his eyes are showing pure white. Also, the viewing

915
00:50:32,719 --> 00:50:35,840
Speaker 3: slot on the crate is hanging mysteriously open.

916
00:50:36,320 --> 00:50:39,160
Speaker 1: It's a shame that this nameless thief played here by

917
00:50:39,760 --> 00:50:42,759
Speaker 1: Hiroshi Kitatawa, he is really the only Asian character in

918
00:50:42,800 --> 00:50:46,640
Speaker 1: the film, despite a clear Asian setting and numerous background

919
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:50,160
Speaker 1: Asian characters throughout the picture. So I would say missed

920
00:50:50,160 --> 00:50:51,000
Speaker 1: opportunity here.

921
00:50:51,400 --> 00:50:54,520
Speaker 3: Yep, yep. So the thief is lying dead on the ground,

922
00:50:54,560 --> 00:50:57,400
Speaker 3: and then a strange monk comes out of nowhere or

923
00:50:58,160 --> 00:51:00,960
Speaker 3: actually so, I don't know exactly battle the offices and

924
00:51:01,040 --> 00:51:04,160
Speaker 3: hierarchies of the Russian Orthodox Church, But I don't know.

925
00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:07,719
Speaker 3: But I think this guy is presented as a monk,

926
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:11,640
Speaker 3: but people are also calling him father, which in my knowledge,

927
00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:14,759
Speaker 3: which would mostly come from Catholicism, I think would be

928
00:51:14,800 --> 00:51:17,640
Speaker 3: a priest, not a monk. I think a monk would

929
00:51:17,640 --> 00:51:19,960
Speaker 3: be brother. But I don't know. Maybe I don't know

930
00:51:19,960 --> 00:51:22,920
Speaker 3: what I'm talking about there. Anyway, they call somebody calls

931
00:51:23,000 --> 00:51:25,920
Speaker 3: him a monk, but he's also called father. He is

932
00:51:25,960 --> 00:51:28,960
Speaker 3: some kind of religious official. He's in all black. He

933
00:51:29,040 --> 00:51:31,960
Speaker 3: kneels next to the thief's body and he begins to chant.

934
00:51:32,280 --> 00:51:38,000
Speaker 3: And this is father Pujardov. Again. He has notes of rasputant, tangled, greasy,

935
00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:41,879
Speaker 3: black beard, haunted eyes. I think they put like dark

936
00:51:41,920 --> 00:51:45,200
Speaker 3: makeup under his eyes to make him look look kind

937
00:51:45,239 --> 00:51:48,640
Speaker 3: of unwell in some way. He looks like a man

938
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:52,040
Speaker 3: who has obsessions and who is maybe just like not

939
00:51:52,160 --> 00:51:52,919
Speaker 3: doing so hot.

940
00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:56,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a lot of a lot of worm telling

941
00:51:56,320 --> 00:51:58,759
Speaker 1: energy to this character. Again, I love him anytime he's

942
00:51:58,760 --> 00:51:59,280
Speaker 1: on the screen.

943
00:52:01,239 --> 00:52:04,640
Speaker 3: Now we meet another character as well. This is Inspector Mirov,

944
00:52:04,800 --> 00:52:07,680
Speaker 3: who is a guy who has sideburns connecting to a

945
00:52:07,760 --> 00:52:11,319
Speaker 3: mustache with no beard, so that's a good look. He

946
00:52:11,560 --> 00:52:14,319
Speaker 3: arrives on the platform and says that he knew the

947
00:52:14,360 --> 00:52:17,440
Speaker 3: dead man. He was a locksmith who operated as a

948
00:52:17,480 --> 00:52:19,840
Speaker 3: thief on the side. Or he calls him a locksmith.

949
00:52:19,840 --> 00:52:21,600
Speaker 3: I don't know if maybe that just means like he's

950
00:52:21,600 --> 00:52:24,920
Speaker 3: a thief who was good at picking locks. But anyway,

951
00:52:24,920 --> 00:52:27,640
Speaker 3: he says that he could open any lock with a hairpin.

952
00:52:28,400 --> 00:52:30,920
Speaker 3: And then father Poujardov says, but wait a minute, how

953
00:52:30,960 --> 00:52:34,040
Speaker 3: could this guy be a thief because he is blind?

954
00:52:34,200 --> 00:52:36,319
Speaker 3: And they show his face again referring to the all

955
00:52:36,360 --> 00:52:40,040
Speaker 3: white eyes, and Inspector Mirov is shocked to see this

956
00:52:40,200 --> 00:52:43,120
Speaker 3: and he says, like my God, implying he was not

957
00:52:43,360 --> 00:52:46,880
Speaker 3: like this before. So he previously known to this policeman,

958
00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:50,800
Speaker 3: but was not always like this. So something has happened

959
00:52:50,800 --> 00:52:55,399
Speaker 3: to him, and Poujardov starts to get really amped up here.

960
00:52:55,760 --> 00:52:58,000
Speaker 3: He says that it's the work of the devil, and

961
00:52:58,040 --> 00:53:00,640
Speaker 3: then he turns his attention to the crate, runs over

962
00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:03,040
Speaker 3: to the crate, starts shaking it to pry it open,

963
00:53:03,120 --> 00:53:06,319
Speaker 3: but he is interrupted by Saxton. So Christopher Lee comes

964
00:53:06,360 --> 00:53:09,440
Speaker 3: out wearing this tall black what do you call this

965
00:53:09,520 --> 00:53:11,120
Speaker 3: kind of hat? I don't know, It's like the sort

966
00:53:11,160 --> 00:53:15,319
Speaker 3: of cylindrical black Russian hat, and he says, can I

967
00:53:15,360 --> 00:53:19,239
Speaker 3: be of any assistance father, and Poujardov says, you know,

968
00:53:19,280 --> 00:53:22,040
Speaker 3: whatever you've got in this crate here is unholy and

969
00:53:22,160 --> 00:53:27,200
Speaker 3: it must be destroyed. And Saxton explains to Inspector Mirov

970
00:53:27,280 --> 00:53:29,400
Speaker 3: that the death could not have been caused by the

971
00:53:29,440 --> 00:53:32,560
Speaker 3: contents of the crate because the crate contains only fossils.

972
00:53:32,960 --> 00:53:36,480
Speaker 3: And here is where we get the explanation. Mirov is like,

973
00:53:36,560 --> 00:53:39,040
Speaker 3: what is a fossil? I've never heard of that, and

974
00:53:39,600 --> 00:53:46,000
Speaker 3: Saxton explains that a fossil is a stone. Now, for

975
00:53:46,040 --> 00:53:50,160
Speaker 3: some reason, Poojardov is not calmed by this. He's like stones.

976
00:53:50,360 --> 00:53:52,920
Speaker 3: And then we get a chiming of an ominous bell,

977
00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:54,800
Speaker 3: which at first I thought was on the soundtrack, but

978
00:53:54,840 --> 00:53:57,040
Speaker 3: I think it's actually the train. It's a you know,

979
00:53:57,239 --> 00:54:01,319
Speaker 3: diegetic sound effect of the train. And then Father Poojardov

980
00:54:01,440 --> 00:54:05,279
Speaker 3: goes on to explain, quote, where there is God, there

981
00:54:05,360 --> 00:54:08,520
Speaker 3: is always a place for the cross, even on this

982
00:54:08,680 --> 00:54:11,600
Speaker 3: stone floor. Just so. So he pulls out a piece

983
00:54:11,640 --> 00:54:15,600
Speaker 3: of chalk and he draws across on the train platform

984
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:20,200
Speaker 3: and then he says, but Satan is evil, and where

985
00:54:20,239 --> 00:54:22,960
Speaker 3: there is evil, there is no place for the cross.

986
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:26,200
Speaker 3: And then he tries to draw across on the canvas

987
00:54:26,239 --> 00:54:28,640
Speaker 3: on the side of the crate, and the chalk won't

988
00:54:28,680 --> 00:54:32,400
Speaker 3: leave a mark. I have questions about this. Does chalk

989
00:54:32,440 --> 00:54:34,160
Speaker 3: normally draw well on canvas?

990
00:54:35,320 --> 00:54:40,640
Speaker 1: Ah, this is ludicrous, you know, it's like this seems

991
00:54:40,640 --> 00:54:43,080
Speaker 1: like a place for something that's a little more ambiguous,

992
00:54:43,200 --> 00:54:47,200
Speaker 1: Like birds will not light on this crate, which means

993
00:54:47,239 --> 00:54:49,360
Speaker 1: there's something un holy in it, or you know, a

994
00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:52,400
Speaker 1: common thing is, oh, well, cats hiss at it, dogs

995
00:54:52,440 --> 00:54:55,080
Speaker 1: bark at it, that sort of thing. But you can't

996
00:54:55,160 --> 00:54:58,560
Speaker 1: draw on it with chalk. It's a little harder to buy.

997
00:54:59,360 --> 00:55:02,640
Speaker 1: Like you probably can, and if you can't, the answer

998
00:55:02,760 --> 00:55:07,239
Speaker 1: is entirely material. It's not based on like holiness.

999
00:55:07,480 --> 00:55:09,799
Speaker 3: Well, it's even more than that. So it's not just

1000
00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:11,960
Speaker 3: that you can't draw on it, it's that you can't

1001
00:55:12,080 --> 00:55:13,279
Speaker 3: draw across.

1002
00:55:14,160 --> 00:55:15,640
Speaker 1: So you should be able to at least start the

1003
00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:17,640
Speaker 1: cross and finish it exactly.

1004
00:55:17,719 --> 00:55:19,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, you should be able to draw like one line,

1005
00:55:19,920 --> 00:55:22,240
Speaker 3: but I don't know, the second line wouldn't work or something.

1006
00:55:22,880 --> 00:55:26,080
Speaker 3: Satan will tolerate a line, but if you draw.

1007
00:55:26,080 --> 00:55:28,920
Speaker 1: The cross upside down, Satan's okay with it. But then

1008
00:55:28,960 --> 00:55:29,760
Speaker 1: you flip the crate.

1009
00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:35,520
Speaker 3: What happens. Satan must know that you're planning on drawing

1010
00:55:35,520 --> 00:55:37,799
Speaker 3: a cross before you start, and that's why he won't

1011
00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:39,360
Speaker 3: even let you get the one line.

1012
00:55:39,920 --> 00:55:42,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, at any rate, this is how it goes down.

1013
00:55:42,840 --> 00:55:47,000
Speaker 1: And and of course the non religious types present don't

1014
00:55:47,000 --> 00:55:48,319
Speaker 1: buy it. They're like, this is some sort of a

1015
00:55:48,400 --> 00:55:49,880
Speaker 1: trick or whatever exactly.

1016
00:55:49,920 --> 00:55:54,440
Speaker 3: Saxton says, rubbish, a conjumer's trick. Anyway, they take the

1017
00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:57,279
Speaker 3: body of the locksmith away. They load the fossil crate

1018
00:55:57,360 --> 00:56:01,040
Speaker 3: into the train and the baggage car. Somewhere in here,

1019
00:56:01,080 --> 00:56:04,160
Speaker 3: there's a moment where Saxton and Wells are standing next

1020
00:56:04,200 --> 00:56:07,520
Speaker 3: to the crate, and the crate kind of groans, and

1021
00:56:07,560 --> 00:56:11,680
Speaker 3: then Saxton checks inside but nothing seems amiss. But Wells

1022
00:56:11,680 --> 00:56:14,319
Speaker 3: has questions. He's like, you know, oh, I want to

1023
00:56:14,320 --> 00:56:16,839
Speaker 3: know you know what's in the crate. And Saxton isn't

1024
00:56:16,840 --> 00:56:18,359
Speaker 3: going to tell him anything. He's like, you can read

1025
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:21,680
Speaker 3: about it in the Society's annual report. You know, it's

1026
00:56:21,719 --> 00:56:25,200
Speaker 3: just a fossil. But Wells is not buying it. He's like,

1027
00:56:25,480 --> 00:56:29,040
Speaker 3: you've heard it's making sounds there is something alive in there,

1028
00:56:29,120 --> 00:56:32,040
Speaker 3: and Saxton is like, nope, nope, nothing alive in there.

1029
00:56:32,760 --> 00:56:35,319
Speaker 3: And there's some joke that really I think does not

1030
00:56:35,480 --> 00:56:38,839
Speaker 3: land very well. Wells says, you won't need to feed

1031
00:56:38,880 --> 00:56:42,160
Speaker 3: it then, and Saxton says, the occupant hasn't eaten in

1032
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:45,319
Speaker 3: two million years, and Wells says, that's one way to

1033
00:56:45,400 --> 00:56:47,120
Speaker 3: economize on food bills.

1034
00:56:47,760 --> 00:56:50,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have. There are a few gags thrown in

1035
00:56:50,640 --> 00:56:54,200
Speaker 1: here at times between these two, and sometimes they land,

1036
00:56:54,239 --> 00:56:54,959
Speaker 1: sometimes they don't.

1037
00:56:55,360 --> 00:56:57,600
Speaker 3: I feel like that one could have used another few

1038
00:56:57,600 --> 00:56:58,680
Speaker 3: minutes in the writer's room.

1039
00:56:59,000 --> 00:57:00,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a good one coming up.

1040
00:57:09,400 --> 00:57:12,080
Speaker 3: Now. As the train leaves the station for the Trans

1041
00:57:12,120 --> 00:57:15,960
Speaker 3: Siberian Railroad, we start to meet more of the characters.

1042
00:57:16,040 --> 00:57:19,960
Speaker 3: We meet the character of Countess Irena. This is Sylvia Tortosa.

1043
00:57:20,280 --> 00:57:22,600
Speaker 3: She comes into the baggage car with a dog in

1044
00:57:22,640 --> 00:57:27,040
Speaker 3: her arms, and so, I don't know how you interpreted this.

1045
00:57:27,560 --> 00:57:31,480
Speaker 3: The dog is supposed to be freaking out because it

1046
00:57:31,560 --> 00:57:35,080
Speaker 3: doesn't like whatever's in the crate. But it looked to

1047
00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:38,280
Speaker 3: me like this dog was just not into filming this scene.

1048
00:57:38,360 --> 00:57:41,040
Speaker 3: It's like squirming, trying to get out of her arms.

1049
00:57:41,120 --> 00:57:42,720
Speaker 3: It does not want to be in this movie.

1050
00:57:43,520 --> 00:57:45,640
Speaker 1: So maybe they didn't go with an actor dog. They

1051
00:57:45,680 --> 00:57:49,040
Speaker 1: went with just somebody's untrained pet.

1052
00:57:49,440 --> 00:57:52,680
Speaker 3: They got what they could get anyway. The Countess is

1053
00:57:52,720 --> 00:57:55,400
Speaker 3: here to drop off a valuable parcel to be stored

1054
00:57:55,440 --> 00:57:57,360
Speaker 3: in the safe in the baggage car. She hands it

1055
00:57:57,400 --> 00:57:59,680
Speaker 3: off to the baggage man, but she also gets to

1056
00:57:59,680 --> 00:58:03,640
Speaker 3: meet English heroes. So her intro is to come up

1057
00:58:03,680 --> 00:58:07,440
Speaker 3: to Christopher Lee and she's like, Alinka is afraid of

1058
00:58:07,480 --> 00:58:09,360
Speaker 3: whatever you have in that crate. The dog's name is

1059
00:58:09,400 --> 00:58:12,919
Speaker 3: a Linka, and he responds, there's nothing in this crate

1060
00:58:12,960 --> 00:58:16,520
Speaker 3: that would interest a Linka, And then the conversation gets weird.

1061
00:58:17,080 --> 00:58:21,520
Speaker 3: The Countess says, normally she likes englishmen. All we polls

1062
00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:30,200
Speaker 3: do Oh yes, England Queen Victoria crumpets Shakespeare. Okay, Saxton says,

1063
00:58:30,280 --> 00:58:33,120
Speaker 3: I admire poland Madam, I believe there is a bond

1064
00:58:33,200 --> 00:58:36,960
Speaker 3: between our two countries. And then the Countess says, my husband,

1065
00:58:36,960 --> 00:58:39,800
Speaker 3: the count Petrowsky says that in the fifteenth century, your

1066
00:58:39,880 --> 00:58:44,880
Speaker 3: king Henry betrayed us to the Russians. Hmmm, and Saxton's like, well,

1067
00:58:45,200 --> 00:58:51,360
Speaker 3: I apologize, And the whole time the dog is going nuts. Eventually,

1068
00:58:51,560 --> 00:58:53,720
Speaker 3: Saxton and the Countess leave to go back to the

1069
00:58:53,760 --> 00:58:57,560
Speaker 3: passenger carriage. He escorts her back to her car, but

1070
00:58:57,720 --> 00:59:00,760
Speaker 3: on the way we get to meet another character. He

1071
00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:03,200
Speaker 3: actually says, I think that he's an engineer, but he

1072
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:08,280
Speaker 3: is our scientist character. This is Yev to Tushinko and

1073
00:59:09,040 --> 00:59:12,880
Speaker 3: Saxton stops along the way and leans into his compartment

1074
00:59:13,360 --> 00:59:16,080
Speaker 3: because he I don't know. I think he's dropped something

1075
00:59:16,240 --> 00:59:19,160
Speaker 3: or oh yeah, it's a chess piece or something like that. No, no, no,

1076
00:59:19,200 --> 00:59:20,720
Speaker 3: well wait is it a chess piece or is it

1077
00:59:20,720 --> 00:59:22,959
Speaker 3: a piece of chalk? Because the scene involves a piece

1078
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:23,360
Speaker 3: of chalk.

1079
00:59:23,520 --> 00:59:26,520
Speaker 1: This is so he is furiously playing chess with himself

1080
00:59:26,560 --> 00:59:28,800
Speaker 1: the whole time we see him pretty much, but this

1081
00:59:28,920 --> 00:59:30,720
Speaker 1: scene he does have the piece of chalk because he's

1082
00:59:30,800 --> 00:59:33,480
Speaker 1: like the piece of chalk that would not write on

1083
00:59:33,600 --> 00:59:37,720
Speaker 1: the grate. I collected it and I analyzed it, and

1084
00:59:37,840 --> 00:59:40,120
Speaker 1: it is just normal chalk bump bump bum.

1085
00:59:40,400 --> 00:59:42,880
Speaker 3: Right. I am an engineer, a scientist, and this is

1086
00:59:43,000 --> 00:59:46,640
Speaker 3: ordinary chalk. But I don't know how do you determine that?

1087
00:59:47,520 --> 00:59:49,720
Speaker 3: Are you a specialist in chalk? I'm a. I'm a

1088
00:59:49,800 --> 00:59:52,320
Speaker 3: I have a degree in chalk studies, I guess.

1089
00:59:52,520 --> 00:59:54,920
Speaker 1: Or then it also raises the question it's like, like

1090
00:59:55,000 --> 00:59:57,520
Speaker 1: you could never just use mundane chalk to pull off

1091
00:59:57,520 --> 00:59:59,160
Speaker 1: some sort of a scam or a trick.

1092
00:59:59,280 --> 01:00:02,400
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, that's right, So you have two SHANKO

1093
01:00:02,520 --> 01:00:05,360
Speaker 3: is like, because I'm a scientist, I can verify that

1094
01:00:05,480 --> 01:00:07,720
Speaker 3: this should have written on the canvas on the side

1095
01:00:07,720 --> 01:00:09,680
Speaker 3: of the crate. Why did it not write on the crate?

1096
01:00:10,080 --> 01:00:15,320
Speaker 3: And Saxton says, hypnosis, yoga. These mystics can be terribly convincing.

1097
01:00:15,440 --> 01:00:19,560
Speaker 3: They can even hypnotize themselves. It doesn't seem like an answer.

1098
01:00:19,800 --> 01:00:23,000
Speaker 1: The power of yoga can can definitely keep you from

1099
01:00:23,120 --> 01:00:24,240
Speaker 1: marking on things with chalk.

1100
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:27,680
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, Cushing is back in the baggage car and this

1101
01:00:27,760 --> 01:00:29,920
Speaker 3: is where he's offering a bribe to the baggage man

1102
01:00:30,000 --> 01:00:32,520
Speaker 3: to drill a hole in Saxon's box and take a

1103
01:00:32,560 --> 01:00:36,120
Speaker 3: look at what's inside. Wells is really interested in this,

1104
01:00:36,200 --> 01:00:39,920
Speaker 3: He really wants to know. Later, we meet another character.

1105
01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:44,280
Speaker 3: We meet Helga Line as Natasha. She is in the

1106
01:00:44,320 --> 01:00:49,320
Speaker 3: compartment with Wells and she's like, I'm in trouble. I

1107
01:00:49,360 --> 01:00:51,000
Speaker 3: have to get out of Shanghai, but I don't have

1108
01:00:51,040 --> 01:00:54,680
Speaker 3: a ticket. I need to stay in your compartment. Oh

1109
01:00:54,720 --> 01:00:57,760
Speaker 3: and for some reason, also, Wells and Saxton are bunk

1110
01:00:57,840 --> 01:01:01,480
Speaker 3: mates on the train. It's sort of an odd couple thing.

1111
01:01:01,920 --> 01:01:03,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are parents. All three of them are staying

1112
01:01:03,760 --> 01:01:07,360
Speaker 1: in this this one cabin somehow. Yes, so they're making

1113
01:01:07,400 --> 01:01:10,520
Speaker 1: it work, you know, But but I'm not sure where

1114
01:01:10,560 --> 01:01:11,680
Speaker 1: everybody's sleeping.

1115
01:01:11,320 --> 01:01:14,640
Speaker 3: Here anyway, This is all working up to the very

1116
01:01:14,680 --> 01:01:18,360
Speaker 3: first murder on board the train. So we did have

1117
01:01:18,400 --> 01:01:21,240
Speaker 3: one murder at the station, but now something is on

1118
01:01:21,320 --> 01:01:25,880
Speaker 3: the train itself. So the baggage man, this is the

1119
01:01:25,920 --> 01:01:29,240
Speaker 3: bald guy with the tremendous mutton chops. He has been

1120
01:01:29,240 --> 01:01:32,840
Speaker 3: paid off by Wells to peek inside Saxton's crate and

1121
01:01:32,880 --> 01:01:36,080
Speaker 3: see what's in there. So in the night he drills

1122
01:01:36,120 --> 01:01:39,600
Speaker 3: a hole in the wood and he peeps in to

1123
01:01:39,640 --> 01:01:42,800
Speaker 3: see what's inside, and then he steps away for a minute.

1124
01:01:43,400 --> 01:01:47,000
Speaker 3: And while he has stepped away, we see a hairy

1125
01:01:47,040 --> 01:01:52,080
Speaker 3: fossil hand reaching out from the crate and ooh, it's

1126
01:01:52,080 --> 01:01:54,320
Speaker 3: a good it's a good hand. I was thinking of

1127
01:01:54,360 --> 01:01:56,560
Speaker 3: it as a werewolf hand. I know the creature is

1128
01:01:56,600 --> 01:01:59,880
Speaker 3: not a werewolf, but we see a lot of it's

1129
01:02:00,080 --> 01:02:03,080
Speaker 3: body without seeing its face in the movie, and every

1130
01:02:03,120 --> 01:02:05,680
Speaker 3: time you see its hand or something, it's where wolf.

1131
01:02:06,040 --> 01:02:08,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess it Like it's technically supposed to be

1132
01:02:08,720 --> 01:02:13,120
Speaker 1: some sort of an ape creature. I guess, but it

1133
01:02:13,120 --> 01:02:15,320
Speaker 1: doesn't like straight up look like an ape creature.

1134
01:02:15,480 --> 01:02:16,200
Speaker 3: It's really is.

1135
01:02:16,200 --> 01:02:17,920
Speaker 1: If we see more and more of it, I think

1136
01:02:17,920 --> 01:02:21,600
Speaker 1: it's a pretty quality monster costume. It like, it doesn't

1137
01:02:21,680 --> 01:02:25,160
Speaker 1: read just undead gorilla. It doesn't read where wolf. It

1138
01:02:25,520 --> 01:02:27,640
Speaker 1: feels unique unto itself.

1139
01:02:27,480 --> 01:02:32,200
Speaker 3: Sort of red eyed skeleton yetty. Yeah, anyway, what does

1140
01:02:32,280 --> 01:02:36,440
Speaker 3: this wolf hand do? Well, it reaches out of out

1141
01:02:36,440 --> 01:02:39,680
Speaker 3: of the hole in the crate and it feels around

1142
01:02:40,040 --> 01:02:43,600
Speaker 3: in its environment, and it finds a nail, and it

1143
01:02:43,640 --> 01:02:46,520
Speaker 3: picks up the nail and it bends the tip of

1144
01:02:46,520 --> 01:02:49,320
Speaker 3: the nail and then inserts the tip of the nail

1145
01:02:49,520 --> 01:02:53,120
Speaker 3: into the lock, the padlock on the chains around the

1146
01:02:53,160 --> 01:02:55,120
Speaker 3: crate and picks the lock.

1147
01:02:55,920 --> 01:02:58,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is it seems pretty astounding at this point.

1148
01:02:58,520 --> 01:03:01,760
Speaker 1: Usually you don't think about your crate being capable of

1149
01:03:02,360 --> 01:03:06,680
Speaker 1: creating an impromptu lock pick and dealing with a mechanism

1150
01:03:06,760 --> 01:03:10,680
Speaker 1: like this. Certainly the Great Dweller in Stephen King's Creep

1151
01:03:10,720 --> 01:03:13,959
Speaker 1: Show wouldn't have pulled this off, that's right. But it'll

1152
01:03:13,960 --> 01:03:16,280
Speaker 1: all make sense as we proceed, That's right.

1153
01:03:16,400 --> 01:03:18,960
Speaker 3: This creature has powers that the crate dweller does not.

1154
01:03:19,800 --> 01:03:22,360
Speaker 3: So the baggage Man returns, and when he does, we

1155
01:03:22,480 --> 01:03:26,880
Speaker 3: get our first image of what happens. What the creature

1156
01:03:26,960 --> 01:03:30,000
Speaker 3: in this movie does to people. It is the eye

1157
01:03:30,040 --> 01:03:33,919
Speaker 3: beam lock. Wait, I guess that's kind of confusing, because

1158
01:03:33,960 --> 01:03:36,360
Speaker 3: an I beam is actually something used in construction. But

1159
01:03:36,440 --> 01:03:40,760
Speaker 3: what can we describe what it does? It looks out

1160
01:03:40,840 --> 01:03:44,520
Speaker 3: with red eyes into the eyes of its victim, and

1161
01:03:44,600 --> 01:03:47,480
Speaker 3: a type of fatal hypnosis begins.

1162
01:03:48,000 --> 01:03:50,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, with I think a single red eye, like it

1163
01:03:50,040 --> 01:03:53,320
Speaker 1: only has one functional eyeball anymore, but it glows red

1164
01:03:53,680 --> 01:03:57,360
Speaker 1: and it instantly captivates you and then has a fatal

1165
01:03:57,400 --> 01:04:01,080
Speaker 1: effect on you, leaving you with like like boiled egg,

1166
01:04:01,160 --> 01:04:05,200
Speaker 1: white eyes, blood coming out of your pores and your face,

1167
01:04:05,680 --> 01:04:06,959
Speaker 1: and you are of course dead.

1168
01:04:07,240 --> 01:04:10,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, pingpong ball eyes, blood coming out of

1169
01:04:10,160 --> 01:04:12,640
Speaker 3: the eyes, blood coming out of the nose, dead on

1170
01:04:12,680 --> 01:04:17,920
Speaker 3: the floor. And what happens after that, who knows. So anyway,

1171
01:04:18,040 --> 01:04:21,840
Speaker 3: elsewhere on the train, we go to the private car

1172
01:04:21,920 --> 01:04:26,000
Speaker 3: of Countess Irena, father Poojardov, and a new character, Count Petrovski,

1173
01:04:26,760 --> 01:04:31,360
Speaker 3: IRENA's husband. So it's a luxurious first class cabin with

1174
01:04:31,400 --> 01:04:36,080
Speaker 3: fancy furniture, drapes, embroidered drapes and so forth, and Poujardov

1175
01:04:36,200 --> 01:04:38,560
Speaker 3: is like, there's a stink of hell on this train.

1176
01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:41,920
Speaker 3: Even the dog knows it. And the Count and the

1177
01:04:41,960 --> 01:04:46,240
Speaker 3: Countess are discussing what dress the Countess should wear to

1178
01:04:46,360 --> 01:04:52,040
Speaker 3: best manipulate the Englishman, and Pujardov disapproves of this conversation.

1179
01:04:52,520 --> 01:04:55,560
Speaker 3: He's like, you're making a mockery, you're jesting with her

1180
01:04:55,600 --> 01:04:59,520
Speaker 3: immortal soul. And the Count says, that's why we keep you, Pujardov.

1181
01:05:00,280 --> 01:05:05,440
Speaker 3: Souls are your concerns. So they're outsourcing holiness. And then

1182
01:05:05,800 --> 01:05:09,840
Speaker 3: after he has chastened father, Poojardov says, forgive me, your

1183
01:05:09,880 --> 01:05:13,120
Speaker 3: excellency and my concern for the spiritual welfare of the countess.

1184
01:05:13,160 --> 01:05:16,680
Speaker 3: I forgot myself. I will pray for humility, and the

1185
01:05:16,760 --> 01:05:20,120
Speaker 3: Count says, pray hard, poojar Dov, or you will find

1186
01:05:20,120 --> 01:05:23,920
Speaker 3: yourself praying for a job too. So Poojardov, you know

1187
01:05:24,000 --> 01:05:27,800
Speaker 3: he fancies himself this this unshakable principled man of God,

1188
01:05:27,880 --> 01:05:30,440
Speaker 3: But really he's a he's a craven worshiper of power

1189
01:05:30,480 --> 01:05:31,680
Speaker 3: and he wants that paycheck.

1190
01:05:32,120 --> 01:05:34,560
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love how he's like, you know, or or

1191
01:05:34,560 --> 01:05:36,480
Speaker 1: else you'll find yourself praying for a job. But you

1192
01:05:36,480 --> 01:05:41,360
Speaker 1: know what, Pujardov is already shopping around. He's been updating

1193
01:05:41,400 --> 01:05:44,600
Speaker 1: his spiritual LinkedIn profile, he's ready to go.

1194
01:05:45,280 --> 01:05:48,360
Speaker 3: Oh. Also in the scene, it's notable that they the

1195
01:05:48,440 --> 01:05:52,520
Speaker 3: characters in this carriage, they hear the repeatedly whistled melody,

1196
01:05:52,800 --> 01:05:55,080
Speaker 3: you know, the melody that we heard in the opening credits,

1197
01:05:55,080 --> 01:05:57,400
Speaker 3: and the countess tries to like play along on the piano.

1198
01:05:58,200 --> 01:06:01,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. I have no idea how I was to interpret that.

1199
01:06:01,240 --> 01:06:03,960
Speaker 1: Is this is the fossil beast whistling somewhere on the train,

1200
01:06:04,000 --> 01:06:07,840
Speaker 1: and they're overhearing it. I'm not sure, but still it's

1201
01:06:07,840 --> 01:06:10,600
Speaker 1: such a great little creepy ditty. I'm happy to hear

1202
01:06:10,640 --> 01:06:11,560
Speaker 1: it every time they play it.

1203
01:06:12,440 --> 01:06:17,000
Speaker 3: Anyway. There is a confrontation after the baggage man goes missing.

1204
01:06:17,160 --> 01:06:20,280
Speaker 3: Inspector Mirov is sort of the police presence for this

1205
01:06:20,560 --> 01:06:25,720
Speaker 3: portion of the film, and he questions Saxton on the crate.

1206
01:06:25,800 --> 01:06:27,520
Speaker 3: He's like, what exactly have you got in that crate?

1207
01:06:27,560 --> 01:06:29,200
Speaker 3: I need you to open it, And at one point

1208
01:06:29,240 --> 01:06:34,240
Speaker 3: he has his soldiers threaten threatened, Saxton say give me

1209
01:06:34,280 --> 01:06:38,280
Speaker 3: the key to the padlock or you know, or else

1210
01:06:38,320 --> 01:06:39,760
Speaker 3: I guess we're going to hit you with the butt

1211
01:06:39,760 --> 01:06:43,120
Speaker 3: of this gun. And Saxton is very brittle as usual.

1212
01:06:43,240 --> 01:06:45,200
Speaker 3: He's like no, and he throws the key out the

1213
01:06:45,240 --> 01:06:49,680
Speaker 3: window of the moving train. That's how protective he is

1214
01:06:49,840 --> 01:06:53,520
Speaker 3: of his quote fossil. But they get it open anyway.

1215
01:06:53,600 --> 01:06:55,680
Speaker 3: I think they just get a guy with an axe

1216
01:06:55,760 --> 01:06:58,640
Speaker 3: to this is I remember one of the least convincing

1217
01:06:58,720 --> 01:07:01,280
Speaker 3: looking effects shots in the movie is the guy using

1218
01:07:01,320 --> 01:07:03,439
Speaker 3: the axe to open the crate because he's just kind

1219
01:07:03,440 --> 01:07:07,280
Speaker 3: of going. But they get it open, and what do

1220
01:07:07,360 --> 01:07:10,240
Speaker 3: they find inside? Is it the fossil No, it is

1221
01:07:10,360 --> 01:07:13,440
Speaker 3: the baggage man with the hard boiled egg eyes and

1222
01:07:13,480 --> 01:07:16,560
Speaker 3: the blood running down his face. And thus the murder

1223
01:07:16,600 --> 01:07:17,800
Speaker 3: mystery begins.

1224
01:07:18,280 --> 01:07:20,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, not only did the fossil beasts pick the lock

1225
01:07:20,880 --> 01:07:23,800
Speaker 1: and climb out, but killed the man, put him back

1226
01:07:23,840 --> 01:07:27,520
Speaker 1: in in his place inside the crate, and then locked

1227
01:07:27,560 --> 01:07:27,840
Speaker 1: it up.

1228
01:07:28,200 --> 01:07:30,360
Speaker 3: Okay, from here on I think we should we should

1229
01:07:30,400 --> 01:07:32,720
Speaker 3: go in a little bit less seen by scene detail

1230
01:07:32,760 --> 01:07:35,080
Speaker 3: and instead talk in some of the broad strokes. But

1231
01:07:35,160 --> 01:07:37,560
Speaker 3: there is a lot of good stuff left to discuss.

1232
01:07:38,880 --> 01:07:41,040
Speaker 3: One of the things is, oh, you remember there's this

1233
01:07:41,480 --> 01:07:44,080
Speaker 3: There's this great scene where some of the scientific themes

1234
01:07:44,120 --> 01:07:47,640
Speaker 3: of the movie are articulated. So the Countess comes to

1235
01:07:48,120 --> 01:07:52,920
Speaker 3: visit Professor Saxton in his room. While they're all dining,

1236
01:07:53,000 --> 01:07:54,800
Speaker 3: you know. So there's a shot in the dining car

1237
01:07:54,880 --> 01:07:59,000
Speaker 3: where Professor Wells and I believe Natasha are having dinner

1238
01:07:59,400 --> 01:08:03,520
Speaker 3: and Wells ends up seeing a boiled fish and its

1239
01:08:03,560 --> 01:08:06,720
Speaker 3: eyeball is entirely white, and he's like, look, the eyeball

1240
01:08:06,840 --> 01:08:10,800
Speaker 3: is white, and yet yet Vushenko or oh yev Tushenko

1241
01:08:10,880 --> 01:08:13,840
Speaker 3: I think is his name, he's there and he's like, oh, yes,

1242
01:08:13,840 --> 01:08:16,160
Speaker 3: of course it's white. It's a boiled fish. And this

1243
01:08:16,240 --> 01:08:20,320
Speaker 3: is a reveal for some reason. But we also get

1244
01:08:20,320 --> 01:08:23,960
Speaker 3: the scene with Saxton and the Countess in his compartment

1245
01:08:23,960 --> 01:08:26,960
Speaker 3: where he's dining alone and she joins him, and she

1246
01:08:27,120 --> 01:08:29,479
Speaker 3: asks him about what it was in the crate, the

1247
01:08:29,520 --> 01:08:32,879
Speaker 3: importance of this fossil, and he says, well, this fossil

1248
01:08:32,960 --> 01:08:35,760
Speaker 3: is very important. It could change our entire understanding of

1249
01:08:35,800 --> 01:08:39,520
Speaker 3: science because it could prove correct the theory of evolution.

1250
01:08:40,200 --> 01:08:42,679
Speaker 3: And she's like, oh, no, evolution, that's immoral.

1251
01:08:46,160 --> 01:08:49,360
Speaker 1: Yes, like sounds evil or something like yeah. It's like

1252
01:08:49,360 --> 01:08:50,200
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, no.

1253
01:08:50,360 --> 01:08:52,799
Speaker 3: But I think that's how we're supposed to understand Professor Saxton.

1254
01:08:52,880 --> 01:08:55,879
Speaker 3: He's just very much devoted to the advancement of science

1255
01:08:55,880 --> 01:08:58,639
Speaker 3: and knowledge, to the point that you know, if murders happen,

1256
01:08:58,720 --> 01:09:05,200
Speaker 3: that's just none of my Eventually there are some more murders,

1257
01:09:05,240 --> 01:09:09,760
Speaker 3: and we get more scenes of characters becoming isolated, and

1258
01:09:10,000 --> 01:09:14,040
Speaker 3: when they get isolated, something comes up behind them and

1259
01:09:14,280 --> 01:09:16,519
Speaker 3: looks at them with red eyes, and then they too

1260
01:09:16,760 --> 01:09:19,240
Speaker 3: are left with the hard boiled egg eyes and the

1261
01:09:19,560 --> 01:09:22,640
Speaker 3: blood running out of them and are eventually discovered. So

1262
01:09:22,720 --> 01:09:28,639
Speaker 3: there are multiple deaths by red eye hypnosis, eventually leading

1263
01:09:28,720 --> 01:09:30,599
Speaker 3: up to a scene where there's sort of a false

1264
01:09:30,680 --> 01:09:34,519
Speaker 3: resolution of the conflict because there is a scene where

1265
01:09:35,520 --> 01:09:41,000
Speaker 3: Inspector Mirov catches the fossil creature, the sort of prehistoric

1266
01:09:41,120 --> 01:09:43,960
Speaker 3: ape creature with the red eye, in the act of

1267
01:09:44,000 --> 01:09:46,559
Speaker 3: doing a murder, and then shoots it and it seems

1268
01:09:46,640 --> 01:09:49,360
Speaker 3: to fall down dead. So movie's over right.

1269
01:09:51,600 --> 01:09:53,880
Speaker 1: So at this point, as we've just got we've had

1270
01:09:53,960 --> 01:09:56,960
Speaker 1: bodies piling up, and then we also get the creature

1271
01:09:57,000 --> 01:10:01,400
Speaker 1: itself seemingly dead. They have to have some autopsies. We

1272
01:10:01,479 --> 01:10:04,639
Speaker 1: have like numerous autopsy scenes in this film, and they're

1273
01:10:04,640 --> 01:10:08,519
Speaker 1: all pretty great that they're nice and gory and feel

1274
01:10:09,120 --> 01:10:12,040
Speaker 1: you feel like they're actually cutting into something. You know

1275
01:10:12,080 --> 01:10:14,960
Speaker 1: that the lighting's really nice, but we get some weird

1276
01:10:15,000 --> 01:10:17,560
Speaker 1: take homes from these autopsies and necropsies.

1277
01:10:17,680 --> 01:10:19,680
Speaker 3: Oh boy, do we ever. So yeah, there are a

1278
01:10:19,680 --> 01:10:22,400
Speaker 3: couple of different autopsies that reveal different things. One of

1279
01:10:22,439 --> 01:10:26,760
Speaker 3: them is the dissection of the victims of the prehistoric

1280
01:10:26,800 --> 01:10:29,759
Speaker 3: ape creature. So you know, they're looking at him like, wow,

1281
01:10:29,800 --> 01:10:32,280
Speaker 3: the eyes are all messed up. But then for some reason,

1282
01:10:32,360 --> 01:10:35,240
Speaker 3: doctor Wells is like, well, let's just saw this cranium

1283
01:10:35,280 --> 01:10:37,400
Speaker 3: open and get a look at that brain. I want

1284
01:10:37,400 --> 01:10:39,960
Speaker 3: to see the brain. So, you know, they cut the

1285
01:10:40,000 --> 01:10:42,280
Speaker 3: head open and they look at the brain and what

1286
01:10:42,400 --> 01:10:45,400
Speaker 3: do you know, there is not a wrinkle on it.

1287
01:10:45,600 --> 01:10:48,560
Speaker 3: There's a line involving one of my least favorite cliches

1288
01:10:48,600 --> 01:10:52,000
Speaker 3: in the English language. Miss Jones is looking at the

1289
01:10:52,000 --> 01:10:55,200
Speaker 3: dead guy's brain and she goes, smooth is a baby's bottom.

1290
01:10:57,240 --> 01:11:00,599
Speaker 3: And they show it and you know what, it's exactly right, wrinkles.

1291
01:11:00,680 --> 01:11:03,960
Speaker 3: The brain just looks like it's like a butt. It's

1292
01:11:04,000 --> 01:11:06,080
Speaker 3: like a you know, it's got the lone the hemisphere

1293
01:11:06,120 --> 01:11:08,720
Speaker 3: line down the middle, but it's like two butt cheeks. Yeah.

1294
01:11:08,800 --> 01:11:12,040
Speaker 1: Whatever this creature is doing to people, it is completely

1295
01:11:12,080 --> 01:11:15,040
Speaker 1: smoothing out their brain. Yeah, and turning it into just

1296
01:11:15,320 --> 01:11:18,080
Speaker 1: a big mass of smoothed out silly putty.

1297
01:11:18,520 --> 01:11:22,000
Speaker 3: Now these scientists in the movie begin to explain what's

1298
01:11:22,040 --> 01:11:25,200
Speaker 3: going on there. They're like, well, you know, all the

1299
01:11:25,280 --> 01:11:29,920
Speaker 3: wrinkles in the brain represent all of your knowledge and memories.

1300
01:11:30,240 --> 01:11:33,600
Speaker 3: So if this creature is stealing the wrinkles out of

1301
01:11:33,640 --> 01:11:37,400
Speaker 3: people's brains and leaving the brain smooth as a baby's bottom,

1302
01:11:37,800 --> 01:11:40,360
Speaker 3: that means it is stealing all of their memories. So

1303
01:11:40,720 --> 01:11:43,360
Speaker 3: by killing them, it gains all of their knowledge.

1304
01:11:43,720 --> 01:11:47,720
Speaker 1: Okay, so at this point we can safely reveal that

1305
01:11:47,840 --> 01:11:52,000
Speaker 1: whatever this creature is, it keeps absorbing people's memories, absorbing

1306
01:11:52,080 --> 01:11:56,320
Speaker 1: their minds and moving forward through the train through the

1307
01:11:56,360 --> 01:11:59,400
Speaker 1: plot with enhanced mental capabilities.

1308
01:11:59,520 --> 01:12:03,040
Speaker 3: That's right, And so it knows things like remember when

1309
01:12:03,080 --> 01:12:04,680
Speaker 3: we saw it bend to the nail and know how

1310
01:12:04,680 --> 01:12:06,800
Speaker 3: to pick a lock. One of the people it had

1311
01:12:06,840 --> 01:12:11,000
Speaker 3: already killed was the lock picker. Yeah, and so who

1312
01:12:11,000 --> 01:12:13,320
Speaker 3: all has it killed at this point? Wow, it really

1313
01:12:13,360 --> 01:12:15,760
Speaker 3: starts to get all kinds of knowledge. I think it

1314
01:12:15,760 --> 01:12:19,280
Speaker 3: gets the knowledge of because it kills Hellga Lina and

1315
01:12:19,320 --> 01:12:21,519
Speaker 3: she is revealed to be a spy, Is that right?

1316
01:12:21,680 --> 01:12:24,360
Speaker 1: It had or a jewel thief, a jewel thief and

1317
01:12:24,520 --> 01:12:27,559
Speaker 1: or a spy. Okay, but because I think it gets

1318
01:12:27,600 --> 01:12:30,439
Speaker 1: her while she's stealing some jewels that are locked up

1319
01:12:30,479 --> 01:12:31,400
Speaker 1: in a safe.

1320
01:12:31,520 --> 01:12:33,639
Speaker 3: So it gets her kind of knowledge as a spy

1321
01:12:33,840 --> 01:12:36,000
Speaker 3: or a thief. It already has some thief knowledge about

1322
01:12:36,000 --> 01:12:39,120
Speaker 3: picking locks. It has the knowledge of the baggage man,

1323
01:12:39,160 --> 01:12:41,040
Speaker 3: which I guess is knowledge about like how the train

1324
01:12:41,200 --> 01:12:43,639
Speaker 3: works and everything. So it's just becoming more and more

1325
01:12:44,040 --> 01:12:48,000
Speaker 3: intellectually powerful as as it piles up victims.

1326
01:12:48,280 --> 01:12:51,200
Speaker 1: Until it's shot and seemingly killed dead.

1327
01:12:51,360 --> 01:12:55,679
Speaker 3: Right, that's right. But once the ape creature is shot,

1328
01:12:56,120 --> 01:12:59,479
Speaker 3: they oh my god. Then begins another different type of

1329
01:13:00,160 --> 01:13:03,320
Speaker 3: body dissection, which is even better than the last one.

1330
01:13:03,400 --> 01:13:06,120
Speaker 3: So last time we learned about butt cheek brains. This

1331
01:13:06,200 --> 01:13:09,880
Speaker 3: time we're going to learn about how eyes work and

1332
01:13:09,960 --> 01:13:12,919
Speaker 3: the way eyes work. In this movie. This is science

1333
01:13:13,479 --> 01:13:16,920
Speaker 3: is that if you stick a needle into an eyeball

1334
01:13:17,200 --> 01:13:19,800
Speaker 3: and extract some of the liquid inside it. I think

1335
01:13:19,840 --> 01:13:24,760
Speaker 3: in reality that's called aqueous humor or vitreous humor. The

1336
01:13:24,840 --> 01:13:27,639
Speaker 3: humor is inside the eyeball. You extract some of that

1337
01:13:27,760 --> 01:13:30,960
Speaker 3: in a needle, You squirt it out on a plate,

1338
01:13:31,120 --> 01:13:34,080
Speaker 3: and you put it under a magnifying glass, you can

1339
01:13:34,160 --> 01:13:37,400
Speaker 3: look into the liquid and see. At first, they say

1340
01:13:37,560 --> 01:13:42,800
Speaker 3: the last thing that the dead person saw before they died.

1341
01:13:43,200 --> 01:13:47,120
Speaker 3: And this actually does correspond to a pseudoscientific belief that

1342
01:13:47,160 --> 01:13:52,080
Speaker 3: people used to have what's this called retinal optography.

1343
01:13:52,720 --> 01:13:55,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is something I remember discussing this with

1344
01:13:55,880 --> 01:13:58,880
Speaker 1: Christian at one point back on an older episode of

1345
01:13:58,880 --> 01:14:01,280
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind, And yeah, it was the

1346
01:14:01,320 --> 01:14:06,559
Speaker 1: idea that you could that you could, as a forensic

1347
01:14:06,640 --> 01:14:10,840
Speaker 1: technique look at a person's eye and get an image

1348
01:14:10,840 --> 01:14:13,800
Speaker 1: of the last thing they saw. And so it ended

1349
01:14:13,880 --> 01:14:17,960
Speaker 1: up it was like cutting edge forensic info that was

1350
01:14:18,040 --> 01:14:20,559
Speaker 1: used in a lot of fiction of the time period

1351
01:14:20,560 --> 01:14:24,160
Speaker 1: of late nineteenth early twentieth century. So you know, by

1352
01:14:24,160 --> 01:14:27,559
Speaker 1: the time this movie is is written and produced, it

1353
01:14:27,640 --> 01:14:31,559
Speaker 1: is very outdated and it's definitely been debunked. So it's

1354
01:14:31,880 --> 01:14:34,679
Speaker 1: but it is also kind of an interesting curio to

1355
01:14:34,680 --> 01:14:37,320
Speaker 1: throw in. It is always really stood out as just

1356
01:14:37,400 --> 01:14:40,560
Speaker 1: another like ludicrous aspect of this plot, along with the

1357
01:14:40,720 --> 01:14:44,400
Speaker 1: discussions of what is and isn't a fossil and so forth.

1358
01:14:45,080 --> 01:14:48,360
Speaker 3: Right, well, no, it gets weirder because so I think

1359
01:14:48,400 --> 01:14:51,040
Speaker 3: the idea of that is you would look at the retina.

1360
01:14:51,120 --> 01:14:53,640
Speaker 3: You would like project through the retina and look on it,

1361
01:14:53,680 --> 01:14:55,600
Speaker 3: and you'd be able to see the last thing the

1362
01:14:55,600 --> 01:14:58,920
Speaker 3: person saw when they died, which is not correct. But

1363
01:14:59,040 --> 01:15:02,639
Speaker 3: this is like their distracting little droplets of liquid from

1364
01:15:02,680 --> 01:15:03,679
Speaker 3: inside the eye.

1365
01:15:04,000 --> 01:15:06,960
Speaker 1: Right, they take it one step beyond. Like initially they

1366
01:15:06,960 --> 01:15:09,880
Speaker 1: pull up an image of the inspector shooting the monster. Okay,

1367
01:15:09,920 --> 01:15:14,080
Speaker 1: fair enough, within the confines of the fiction of optography,

1368
01:15:14,120 --> 01:15:17,360
Speaker 1: that makes sense. But then they pull out an image

1369
01:15:17,400 --> 01:15:21,280
Speaker 1: of a dinosaur and they're looking at it on the microscope.

1370
01:15:21,280 --> 01:15:24,320
Speaker 1: It's like, look, this creature existed in the time of dinosaurs,

1371
01:15:24,320 --> 01:15:27,960
Speaker 1: because here is clear medical evidence that it once saw

1372
01:15:28,000 --> 01:15:29,719
Speaker 1: a brontosaurus in the wild.

1373
01:15:30,320 --> 01:15:34,719
Speaker 3: Right, it's looking at an Encyclopedia illustration from nineteen sixty

1374
01:15:35,040 --> 01:15:38,720
Speaker 3: seven of a brontosaurus yeap, and it's just beautiful. This

1375
01:15:38,800 --> 01:15:40,760
Speaker 3: might have been my favorite moment of the whole movie

1376
01:15:40,800 --> 01:15:44,559
Speaker 3: when they got to the dinosaur. Yes. Oh, and it

1377
01:15:44,600 --> 01:15:46,920
Speaker 3: doesn't stop at the dinosaur because they're like, okay, so

1378
01:15:47,479 --> 01:15:50,000
Speaker 3: this thing was alive at the same time as dinosaurs,

1379
01:15:50,400 --> 01:15:55,120
Speaker 3: which is not true of any hominid human ancestor you know, mammals.

1380
01:15:55,120 --> 01:15:58,680
Speaker 3: At the time. There were no hominids. Yet then it

1381
01:15:58,720 --> 01:16:01,320
Speaker 3: gets weirder because they're like, Okay, what's the next thing

1382
01:16:01,360 --> 01:16:04,240
Speaker 3: we can extract. They pull some more jelly out and

1383
01:16:04,280 --> 01:16:06,080
Speaker 3: they put it on another plate and they're looking at

1384
01:16:06,120 --> 01:16:08,800
Speaker 3: it and they're like, what's that. Oh, it's not a map.

1385
01:16:09,240 --> 01:16:12,679
Speaker 3: This is a picture of the Earth as seen from space.

1386
01:16:13,120 --> 01:16:13,640
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1387
01:16:13,680 --> 01:16:16,400
Speaker 3: I was actually I think this is a good scientific question.

1388
01:16:16,439 --> 01:16:18,000
Speaker 3: I don't know the answer right now. Maybe we can

1389
01:16:18,040 --> 01:16:20,040
Speaker 3: come back to this in listener mail or something. I

1390
01:16:20,080 --> 01:16:24,160
Speaker 3: was like, would somebody at the supposed time of this

1391
01:16:24,280 --> 01:16:29,040
Speaker 3: movie be able to recognize a picture of Earth from space?

1392
01:16:29,080 --> 01:16:32,040
Speaker 3: Obviously they never had a photograph of Earths from space,

1393
01:16:32,080 --> 01:16:37,800
Speaker 3: But would they have enough sort of ability to simulate

1394
01:16:37,920 --> 01:16:40,519
Speaker 3: what that would look like that they would recognize a

1395
01:16:40,600 --> 01:16:41,559
Speaker 3: real image of it?

1396
01:16:42,000 --> 01:16:45,479
Speaker 1: Well, especially if the imagery is lo fi, as seems

1397
01:16:45,479 --> 01:16:48,080
Speaker 1: to be the case here. Yeah, it seems like there

1398
01:16:48,080 --> 01:16:50,679
Speaker 1: maybe would be more room to misinterpret it as something else.

1399
01:16:50,960 --> 01:16:53,000
Speaker 3: But they immediately know what it is. They're like, this

1400
01:16:53,040 --> 01:16:56,679
Speaker 3: is the Earth from space, which means bomb, bomb bomb.

1401
01:16:57,040 --> 01:17:00,439
Speaker 3: This creature is not only from the time of the

1402
01:17:00,479 --> 01:17:05,000
Speaker 3: dinosaurs and able to absorb people's memories through its eyes,

1403
01:17:05,520 --> 01:17:07,639
Speaker 3: it also is an alien from outer space.

1404
01:17:08,280 --> 01:17:11,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is the point where it's worth mentioning

1405
01:17:11,840 --> 01:17:14,439
Speaker 1: that some people say, well, this is obviously drawing a

1406
01:17:14,479 --> 01:17:18,200
Speaker 1: bit on the nineteen thirty eight sci fi horror novella

1407
01:17:18,400 --> 01:17:21,719
Speaker 1: by John W. Campbell, Who Goes There, which of course

1408
01:17:21,800 --> 01:17:24,120
Speaker 1: was the basis for the Thing from Another World John

1409
01:17:24,120 --> 01:17:27,200
Speaker 1: Carpenter's The Thing and so forth right, And you know,

1410
01:17:27,280 --> 01:17:29,200
Speaker 1: there are some parallels there. I don't know to what

1411
01:17:29,320 --> 01:17:34,160
Speaker 1: extent they you know, actually directly based the plot of

1412
01:17:34,240 --> 01:17:39,440
Speaker 1: this film on Who Goes There, but you know, undeniable similarities.

1413
01:17:39,720 --> 01:17:43,040
Speaker 3: So we are learning all this, but roughly the same time,

1414
01:17:43,120 --> 01:17:46,439
Speaker 3: in the middle of the movie, you think that the

1415
01:17:46,800 --> 01:17:50,639
Speaker 3: monster has been killed, but strangely, we're seeing some kind

1416
01:17:50,720 --> 01:17:55,360
Speaker 3: of other creature whose face is not revealed, sneaking around

1417
01:17:55,360 --> 01:17:58,559
Speaker 3: on the train with another werewolf hand. It's got the claws,

1418
01:17:58,600 --> 01:18:02,439
Speaker 3: it's got the fingers. What's going on here, Well, it

1419
01:18:02,560 --> 01:18:06,240
Speaker 3: seems that the creature has created a copy of itself

1420
01:18:06,280 --> 01:18:10,000
Speaker 3: through sort of backwards eyeball hypnosis, so it can it

1421
01:18:10,040 --> 01:18:13,240
Speaker 3: can steal other people's minds by staring into their eyes,

1422
01:18:13,640 --> 01:18:17,080
Speaker 3: but we learn it can also transmit its own soul

1423
01:18:17,280 --> 01:18:19,800
Speaker 3: with all of its memories out of its eyes so

1424
01:18:19,800 --> 01:18:23,519
Speaker 3: it can upload or download into somebody else's brain, and

1425
01:18:23,600 --> 01:18:27,120
Speaker 3: it has done that with Inspector Mirra bumb bumb boom,

1426
01:18:27,240 --> 01:18:28,280
Speaker 3: yet another twist.

1427
01:18:28,560 --> 01:18:31,120
Speaker 1: It makes sense though, because like the missing Link was

1428
01:18:31,160 --> 01:18:33,800
Speaker 1: not its original form, it's just a form it occupied,

1429
01:18:33,840 --> 01:18:36,559
Speaker 1: and now it has a new host. But the whole

1430
01:18:36,600 --> 01:18:40,599
Speaker 1: monster hand, like now Mirav has the monster hand. And

1431
01:18:40,880 --> 01:18:43,880
Speaker 1: when I first saw that in my recent rewatch of it,

1432
01:18:43,920 --> 01:18:46,000
Speaker 1: I was like, did I miss something? How did has

1433
01:18:46,120 --> 01:18:48,479
Speaker 1: he get the monster hand on his body? There's no

1434
01:18:48,560 --> 01:18:50,400
Speaker 1: explanation for that, as I recall.

1435
01:18:50,360 --> 01:18:53,200
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. It just kind of grows that way

1436
01:18:53,280 --> 01:18:55,599
Speaker 3: once you transfer the soul through the eyes, I think.

1437
01:18:55,920 --> 01:18:58,200
Speaker 1: I mean, I love the results. It's a great monster

1438
01:18:58,280 --> 01:19:01,240
Speaker 1: hand and it adds to the creepiness of the host

1439
01:19:01,360 --> 01:19:05,439
Speaker 1: character here. But I never understood why this was supposed

1440
01:19:05,439 --> 01:19:08,880
Speaker 1: to happen. It doesn't seem to happen in subsequent transfers,

1441
01:19:09,439 --> 01:19:17,520
Speaker 1: just this one.

1442
01:19:18,880 --> 01:19:21,080
Speaker 3: Now, It's interesting that in this section of the movie,

1443
01:19:21,200 --> 01:19:25,919
Speaker 3: Mirov becomes a little bit while the monster is in Mirov.

1444
01:19:26,000 --> 01:19:27,960
Speaker 3: You get a little bit of sympathy for the monster

1445
01:19:28,120 --> 01:19:31,240
Speaker 3: because Mirov like goes to you have to Shenko the

1446
01:19:31,280 --> 01:19:35,760
Speaker 3: scientist and he's like, hey, you're a scientist, right, you

1447
01:19:35,880 --> 01:19:39,479
Speaker 3: know things about gravity, right? Do you know of any

1448
01:19:39,479 --> 01:19:42,880
Speaker 3: way to escape Earth's gravity? Yeah, which would be kind

1449
01:19:42,920 --> 01:19:47,520
Speaker 3: of a strange question coming from just a Russian imperial investigator.

1450
01:19:48,560 --> 01:19:51,639
Speaker 3: But the scientist is like, oh, yes, actually, my mentor

1451
01:19:52,160 --> 01:19:55,559
Speaker 3: was the inventor of rockets. We can discuss rockets, and

1452
01:19:55,920 --> 01:19:59,480
Speaker 3: Mirovs like, no need to discuss, and then he hypnotodes

1453
01:19:59,520 --> 01:20:01,920
Speaker 3: him in the eye, kills him, steals all of his

1454
01:20:02,040 --> 01:20:05,320
Speaker 3: rocket knowledge. So this this creature just wants to get home.

1455
01:20:05,439 --> 01:20:08,120
Speaker 3: I think it wants to build a rocket and escape Earth.

1456
01:20:08,520 --> 01:20:10,960
Speaker 1: I think the other interesting thing to look at with

1457
01:20:11,040 --> 01:20:16,400
Speaker 1: this character, the being from another world here is that

1458
01:20:17,400 --> 01:20:22,439
Speaker 1: as it absorbs information from each victim, that alters its

1459
01:20:22,520 --> 01:20:26,160
Speaker 1: identity to some extent. And so in a way, by

1460
01:20:27,000 --> 01:20:32,280
Speaker 1: absorbing rational characters and even you know, characters with not

1461
01:20:32,320 --> 01:20:36,080
Speaker 1: only rationable but maybe you know, you know other sensibilities,

1462
01:20:36,760 --> 01:20:42,240
Speaker 1: these end up changing its own cognitive state. And so

1463
01:20:42,560 --> 01:20:46,240
Speaker 1: you know, it is more relatable at this point because

1464
01:20:46,320 --> 01:20:49,439
Speaker 1: of who it is killed and absorbed. But if it

1465
01:20:49,520 --> 01:20:52,599
Speaker 1: makes some missteps in who it kills and absorbs, well

1466
01:20:53,200 --> 01:20:56,000
Speaker 1: things could change. And we do see that change coming up.

1467
01:20:56,520 --> 01:20:58,839
Speaker 3: That's right. So all this middle of the movie intrigue

1468
01:20:58,840 --> 01:21:01,439
Speaker 3: goes on for a while, there are more more murders,

1469
01:21:01,479 --> 01:21:04,280
Speaker 3: more plotting by the being in the guise of Mirov.

1470
01:21:04,320 --> 01:21:07,320
Speaker 3: But eventually a big sort of shift occurs because the

1471
01:21:07,360 --> 01:21:10,479
Speaker 3: train is stopped along the way and the authority is

1472
01:21:10,560 --> 01:21:14,280
Speaker 3: intervene and that authority is in the form of Tellisavalis.

1473
01:21:14,800 --> 01:21:15,000
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1474
01:21:15,200 --> 01:21:17,680
Speaker 3: Now, I gotta be honest, I don't even remember what

1475
01:21:17,840 --> 01:21:20,920
Speaker 3: Tellisivalis's goal is when he gets on the train. I

1476
01:21:20,960 --> 01:21:23,080
Speaker 3: think he's just like, something is going wrong on the

1477
01:21:23,120 --> 01:21:26,360
Speaker 3: train and he's intervening for some reason. But he shows

1478
01:21:26,439 --> 01:21:29,160
Speaker 3: up and just starts barking orders at everybody. He's like,

1479
01:21:29,200 --> 01:21:32,519
Speaker 3: everyone on this train is under arrest. You're all under arrest.

1480
01:21:33,240 --> 01:21:37,479
Speaker 1: Basically, he's a drunken regional tyrant. Yes, and he is

1481
01:21:37,560 --> 01:21:40,360
Speaker 1: totally going to enact his will on the train. And

1482
01:21:40,479 --> 01:21:42,120
Speaker 1: his whole thing is like, you've got some sort of

1483
01:21:42,160 --> 01:21:43,800
Speaker 1: murders going on here, Well, I think we just need

1484
01:21:43,840 --> 01:21:48,000
Speaker 1: to apply beatings to everybody until we get the truth. Yes,

1485
01:21:48,080 --> 01:21:51,080
Speaker 1: And he's just into the beatings as he is into

1486
01:21:51,120 --> 01:21:54,439
Speaker 1: finding the truth, if not more into the beatings again,

1487
01:21:54,560 --> 01:21:57,679
Speaker 1: regional tyrant and it is endangering everything.

1488
01:21:58,160 --> 01:22:01,479
Speaker 3: There's also a whole subplot here where, like I think

1489
01:22:01,600 --> 01:22:05,679
Speaker 3: the count is trying to transport some special kind of steel.

1490
01:22:05,840 --> 01:22:09,280
Speaker 3: There's like a like a technology spy caper going on.

1491
01:22:09,400 --> 01:22:09,880
Speaker 3: You remember this.

1492
01:22:10,439 --> 01:22:14,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems a little much for the duration of

1493
01:22:14,280 --> 01:22:16,519
Speaker 1: the picture to have this as an added B or

1494
01:22:16,600 --> 01:22:18,080
Speaker 1: C plot, but okay, we have it.

1495
01:22:18,120 --> 01:22:20,280
Speaker 3: That's I think that's just yet another thing that the

1496
01:22:20,320 --> 01:22:22,760
Speaker 3: alien kills somebody to absorb. He's like, tell me about

1497
01:22:22,760 --> 01:22:29,439
Speaker 3: this steel hypnotad And then eventually what happens, though, is

1498
01:22:29,479 --> 01:22:32,639
Speaker 3: that Telly savalis, after giving this great monologue scene where

1499
01:22:32,680 --> 01:22:35,720
Speaker 3: he's just bullying everybody around on the train, there is

1500
01:22:35,720 --> 01:22:40,200
Speaker 3: a violent confrontation and he mortally wounds Mirov. He and

1501
01:22:40,240 --> 01:22:42,760
Speaker 3: his men do and so what's going to happen? Oh,

1502
01:22:42,800 --> 01:22:45,320
Speaker 3: the creature is trapped in there. Well, meanwhile, we've seen

1503
01:22:45,360 --> 01:22:49,479
Speaker 3: some developments in Father Pooh Jardov, who is I don't know,

1504
01:22:49,600 --> 01:22:52,519
Speaker 3: not quite so committed to the Christian God anymore.

1505
01:22:53,520 --> 01:22:58,000
Speaker 1: He sees clear evidence that the Inspector is possessed and

1506
01:22:58,040 --> 01:23:00,839
Speaker 1: he believes it to be Satan. He's like, like, Satan,

1507
01:23:00,960 --> 01:23:01,799
Speaker 1: let me serve.

1508
01:23:01,600 --> 01:23:05,479
Speaker 3: You yeah, it's like Satan. Satan is where it's at.

1509
01:23:05,960 --> 01:23:07,840
Speaker 3: You know. He's if you can't be with the one

1510
01:23:07,880 --> 01:23:11,160
Speaker 3: you love, love the one you're with, and Satan. So

1511
01:23:11,960 --> 01:23:14,000
Speaker 3: he thinks it's Satan, and he's like, Satan, come in

1512
01:23:14,000 --> 01:23:17,200
Speaker 3: to me, come in to me. And so the Satan does.

1513
01:23:17,320 --> 01:23:19,320
Speaker 1: Can't remember if he actually explains this, but it maybe

1514
01:23:19,360 --> 01:23:22,760
Speaker 1: becomes a little clear that I'm not actually Satan. I'm

1515
01:23:22,800 --> 01:23:26,559
Speaker 1: an alien from another world who's been trapped in life

1516
01:23:26,600 --> 01:23:31,120
Speaker 1: forms throughout Earth's history. Good enough, Yeah, Pittorda's like works

1517
01:23:31,120 --> 01:23:34,880
Speaker 1: for me, bro let's do it. But he's he's like,

1518
01:23:35,120 --> 01:23:37,719
Speaker 1: he's like, come into me, and he's like, I don't

1519
01:23:37,720 --> 01:23:40,320
Speaker 1: want you. There's nothing in your mind I need, which

1520
01:23:40,320 --> 01:23:42,559
Speaker 1: is you know him kind of you know, as a slam.

1521
01:23:42,920 --> 01:23:46,240
Speaker 1: But it's also it implies, like it knows that if

1522
01:23:46,240 --> 01:23:50,080
Speaker 1: I absorb this man's consciousness and thoughts, it is going

1523
01:23:50,160 --> 01:23:52,600
Speaker 1: to perhaps be a detriment to my mission and my

1524
01:23:52,920 --> 01:23:56,840
Speaker 1: attempt to escape here, because this is an unhinged individual

1525
01:23:56,920 --> 01:24:00,519
Speaker 1: with a lot of dangerous ideas and values his head.

1526
01:24:00,840 --> 01:24:05,839
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, so I love this relationship. Actually, it's funny

1527
01:24:05,880 --> 01:24:07,880
Speaker 3: and it's weird and all that. But he does end

1528
01:24:07,960 --> 01:24:10,240
Speaker 3: up going into the body of the monk.

1529
01:24:10,760 --> 01:24:15,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this leads into our big showdown where a

1530
01:24:15,720 --> 01:24:19,679
Speaker 1: number of things are happening at once. There's the raising

1531
01:24:19,720 --> 01:24:21,920
Speaker 1: of the dead, like all the people that have been

1532
01:24:22,040 --> 01:24:25,920
Speaker 1: killed thus far are brought back as red eyed zombies.

1533
01:24:26,640 --> 01:24:33,560
Speaker 1: There's an attempt to get the survivors into the baggage

1534
01:24:33,720 --> 01:24:38,160
Speaker 1: car and then detach it because at the same time,

1535
01:24:38,600 --> 01:24:41,360
Speaker 1: the authorities have received a signal that oh, well, we

1536
01:24:41,400 --> 01:24:43,160
Speaker 1: need to send this train off the side of a

1537
01:24:43,160 --> 01:24:45,640
Speaker 1: cliff because there's something terrible on it, and they're like,

1538
01:24:45,640 --> 01:24:47,120
Speaker 1: why would we have to do that, I mean, it

1539
01:24:47,160 --> 01:24:49,559
Speaker 1: must be something related to war, so we got to

1540
01:24:49,600 --> 01:24:52,000
Speaker 1: do it. So a number of things here are coming

1541
01:24:52,000 --> 01:24:54,920
Speaker 1: to a head. And we also get a big final

1542
01:24:54,960 --> 01:25:01,520
Speaker 1: showdown between Christopher Lee's character Saxton and the the alien

1543
01:25:01,680 --> 01:25:05,840
Speaker 1: that is possessing now Father Pujarativ's body, and we get

1544
01:25:05,840 --> 01:25:08,680
Speaker 1: some nice discussion about their goals.

1545
01:25:08,960 --> 01:25:12,120
Speaker 3: I think the alien tries to tempt Saxton into helping

1546
01:25:12,160 --> 01:25:15,840
Speaker 3: it by offering him knowledge, you know. Yeah, and this

1547
01:25:15,880 --> 01:25:18,600
Speaker 3: is what Saxton was saying earlier on. Saxton was like,

1548
01:25:18,720 --> 01:25:20,800
Speaker 3: I don't really care about the people who have died.

1549
01:25:20,840 --> 01:25:23,760
Speaker 3: I only care about advancing scientific knowledge, and then what

1550
01:25:23,800 --> 01:25:25,880
Speaker 3: do you know at the end of the aliens, like, look,

1551
01:25:26,000 --> 01:25:28,160
Speaker 3: just just let me kill all these people and I'll

1552
01:25:28,200 --> 01:25:31,479
Speaker 3: give you great, great technology and knowledge. You can advance

1553
01:25:31,520 --> 01:25:32,759
Speaker 3: science by one hundred years.

1554
01:25:33,240 --> 01:25:36,439
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So it's you know, it's it's a legitimate temptation.

1555
01:25:36,640 --> 01:25:37,000
Speaker 3: I think.

1556
01:25:37,040 --> 01:25:39,880
Speaker 1: You know, here is someone who has or something that

1557
01:25:39,920 --> 01:25:46,160
Speaker 1: has existed, you know, through for large expanses of Earth's history,

1558
01:25:46,240 --> 01:25:49,519
Speaker 1: and also has knowledge of world beyond the Earth and

1559
01:25:49,520 --> 01:25:55,200
Speaker 1: technologies beyond earth capabilities. But is it worth all of

1560
01:25:55,240 --> 01:25:59,880
Speaker 1: this death and perhaps future death and madness? And ultimately

1561
01:26:00,080 --> 01:26:03,360
Speaker 1: Christopher Lee's character says no, I don't want any part

1562
01:26:03,400 --> 01:26:03,599
Speaker 1: of that.

1563
01:26:03,960 --> 01:26:07,799
Speaker 3: Saxton refuses, and in the end, the heroes work together

1564
01:26:08,200 --> 01:26:11,920
Speaker 3: to uncouple the what is it the break car or something,

1565
01:26:12,200 --> 01:26:14,000
Speaker 3: one of the cars from the rest of the train

1566
01:26:14,400 --> 01:26:17,120
Speaker 3: so that it can separate while the rest of the

1567
01:26:17,120 --> 01:26:19,400
Speaker 3: train is sent off the edge of a cliff with

1568
01:26:19,479 --> 01:26:21,600
Speaker 3: all of the with the alien and all of the

1569
01:26:21,680 --> 01:26:24,000
Speaker 3: zombies it has created within it. Wait, I can't did

1570
01:26:24,000 --> 01:26:25,840
Speaker 3: you already say it resurrects zombies? Yeah?

1571
01:26:25,880 --> 01:26:28,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, resurrected a bunch of red eyed zombies. So even

1572
01:26:28,439 --> 01:26:32,720
Speaker 1: like undead Telly Savalis is walking around. Yeah, so I

1573
01:26:32,800 --> 01:26:35,719
Speaker 1: like the commitment because these look like very uncomfortable contacts

1574
01:26:35,720 --> 01:26:38,280
Speaker 1: that everyone is wearing. Yes, and I'm kind of I'm

1575
01:26:38,360 --> 01:26:41,040
Speaker 1: kind of glad that even the bigger built stars also

1576
01:26:41,080 --> 01:26:43,880
Speaker 1: had to wear them. But yeah, the train goes off

1577
01:26:43,880 --> 01:26:46,000
Speaker 1: a cliff, blows up, and this is the first time

1578
01:26:46,040 --> 01:26:48,559
Speaker 1: we really, or at least I really realized, oh, this

1579
01:26:48,640 --> 01:26:51,360
Speaker 1: is a model train, mainly because you know, they're not

1580
01:26:51,400 --> 01:26:54,439
Speaker 1: going to send an actual train, multiple train cars off

1581
01:26:54,439 --> 01:26:56,760
Speaker 1: of a cliff. But it still looks pretty good. Still

1582
01:26:56,800 --> 01:26:59,160
Speaker 1: looks it's a pretty good model nonetheless, And.

1583
01:26:59,120 --> 01:27:01,760
Speaker 3: Do I remember right that we get no comment whatsoever

1584
01:27:01,840 --> 01:27:03,880
Speaker 3: from our heroes at the end of the film. It's

1585
01:27:03,960 --> 01:27:07,120
Speaker 3: just the car goes the train goes off, the tracks, explodes,

1586
01:27:07,120 --> 01:27:07,800
Speaker 3: and that's the end.

1587
01:27:08,040 --> 01:27:11,360
Speaker 1: There's no closing monologue. I think, you know, it's the

1588
01:27:11,360 --> 01:27:15,240
Speaker 1: seventies at this point. You know, the preachiness of the

1589
01:27:15,280 --> 01:27:19,360
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties is over. In the seventies, it's more

1590
01:27:19,400 --> 01:27:23,559
Speaker 1: of a gosh, what can I tell you? There's ancient

1591
01:27:23,600 --> 01:27:26,680
Speaker 1: evil out there in the world and the future is uncertain.

1592
01:27:27,040 --> 01:27:29,600
Speaker 1: I'm not going to sugarcoat it for you. Sometimes you

1593
01:27:29,720 --> 01:27:31,360
Speaker 1: just got to run trains off of a cliff.

1594
01:27:31,800 --> 01:27:34,320
Speaker 3: Can you imagine if we had had christ per Lee

1595
01:27:34,479 --> 01:27:37,479
Speaker 3: saying he learned almost too late that man is a

1596
01:27:37,520 --> 01:27:38,960
Speaker 3: feeling creature.

1597
01:27:39,360 --> 01:27:42,360
Speaker 1: It would have sort of worked, you know, all right?

1598
01:27:42,400 --> 01:27:46,080
Speaker 1: So that's horror express it sure is. Again, this is

1599
01:27:46,120 --> 01:27:49,519
Speaker 1: a super fun one. I highly recommend seeking it out

1600
01:27:49,520 --> 01:27:52,080
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it, and if you have seen it, hey,

1601
01:27:52,160 --> 01:27:54,559
Speaker 1: this is a fun one to revisit. You'll always find

1602
01:27:54,600 --> 01:27:58,160
Speaker 1: something new, a lot of fun plot elements, a lot

1603
01:27:58,200 --> 01:28:02,720
Speaker 1: of fun performances. Treat just a reminder to everyone that

1604
01:28:02,800 --> 01:28:04,720
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a science and

1605
01:28:04,720 --> 01:28:07,680
Speaker 1: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This

1606
01:28:07,720 --> 01:28:10,719
Speaker 1: week they were both train related, related to haunted trains

1607
01:28:10,760 --> 01:28:12,880
Speaker 1: and ghost trains, so check those out if you if

1608
01:28:12,920 --> 01:28:15,720
Speaker 1: you haven't already. But on Fridays we set aside most

1609
01:28:15,720 --> 01:28:17,720
Speaker 1: series concerns to just talk about a weird film, such

1610
01:28:17,760 --> 01:28:19,840
Speaker 1: as this one on Weird House Cinema. If you want

1611
01:28:19,840 --> 01:28:21,479
Speaker 1: a full list of all the movies we've covered on

1612
01:28:21,520 --> 01:28:23,400
Speaker 1: Weird House over the years, and even a peek ahead

1613
01:28:23,400 --> 01:28:26,240
Speaker 1: at what's coming up next, go to letterbox dot com.

1614
01:28:26,280 --> 01:28:28,320
Speaker 1: It's l E T T E R box d dot

1615
01:28:28,320 --> 01:28:31,120
Speaker 1: com and our user name there is weird House. That's

1616
01:28:31,120 --> 01:28:32,280
Speaker 1: where you'll find a list.

1617
01:28:32,560 --> 01:28:36,600
Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.

1618
01:28:37,000 --> 01:28:38,559
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1619
01:28:38,560 --> 01:28:40,880
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1620
01:28:40,960 --> 01:28:43,080
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1621
01:28:43,360 --> 01:28:46,080
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1622
01:28:46,080 --> 01:28:53,600
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1623
01:28:53,720 --> 01:28:56,680
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1624
01:28:56,760 --> 01:29:00,600
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app podcasts,

1625
01:29:00,680 --> 01:29:03,000
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.