Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick. In today's film is going to
Speaker 3: be the nineteen eighty three adventure movie Treasure of the
Speaker 3: Four Crowns, a film that ever since I saw the trailer,
Speaker 3: and I would say the movie itself mostly delivers on this.
Speaker 3: The concept to me has seemed to be Italian disco
Speaker 3: Indiana Jones.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean it doesn't. It maybe doesn't deliver on
Speaker 2: the Italian disco so much as in great music.
Speaker 3: But I don't mean in terms of music. I mean
Speaker 3: in terms of the look.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and the look absolutely. I guess the thing
Speaker 2: is that judgment of it being Italian disco Indiana Jones.
Speaker 2: It doesn't bear a lot of close scrutiny, nor does
Speaker 2: the movie itself, but that's one of its great charms.
Speaker 3: So I should mention at the top that this movie
Speaker 3: is actually a listener suggestion. It was sent to us
Speaker 3: by Megan from Montreal, who wrote an email. This was
Speaker 3: actually after our episode on Clash of the Titans. Meghan says,
Speaker 3: I just listened to your weird House cinema episode on
Speaker 3: Clash of the Titans, a film my family rented many
Speaker 3: times for my sister and I when we were kids.
Speaker 3: We loved it. It was fun to hear the Weird
Speaker 3: House breakdown on this nostalgic classic. It brought to mind
Speaker 3: another film my family watched when I was young and
Speaker 3: that we have long held is the worst movie we
Speaker 3: ever rented. But I just rewatched it and realized it
Speaker 3: would be perfect for Weird House, called Treasure of the
Speaker 3: Four Crowns. It is an Italian American Spanish co production
Speaker 3: originally made as a three D film, and boy, oh boy,
Speaker 3: does it make the most of that. I won't spoil
Speaker 3: any thing else about it, but I would love to
Speaker 3: hear your take on this, Hammy Jim and family legend. Meghan. Well, Meghan,
Speaker 3: thank you for the suggestion. It was a real When
Speaker 3: I went to watch the trailer for this, I just
Speaker 3: knew we had to do it. So this movie is
Speaker 3: a lot of things. As Meghan says, it is an
Speaker 3: international collaboration, a joint production with American, Spanish, and Italian elements.
Speaker 3: It's also an occult archaeological adventure movie. Another way of saying,
Speaker 3: as many critics alleged, probably somewhat fairly, that it is
Speaker 3: strongly derivative of Raiders of the Lost Arc, but at
Speaker 3: the same time it's also an ensemble heist caper like
Speaker 3: an episode of Mission Impossible or the A Team had
Speaker 3: a lot of strong A Team vibes.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3: But on top of that, it's also a Canon Films distribution.
Speaker 3: You can really tell if you look up the poster.
Speaker 3: It has that classic Canon Films poster look where there's
Speaker 3: like there's a machine gun it's blasting you know, the
Speaker 3: car tuny visages of the heroes are coming right at you,
Speaker 3: and in fact come and right at you. I would
Speaker 3: call that the best way to describe the cinematic style
Speaker 3: of this movie, because more than anything else, I would
Speaker 3: say Treasure of the Four Crowns is three D. If
Speaker 3: this makes any sense, It's not just a three D movie,
Speaker 3: it's the most three D movie I have ever seen.
Speaker 3: The jabbing of objects, both deadly and mundane into the
Speaker 3: camera lens is relentless.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's like not just one arrow coming at you,
Speaker 2: it's multiple arrows in a row. And then also maybe
Speaker 2: a flaming eyeball from a skull and maybe a spear,
Speaker 2: maybe a snake, maybe somebody's butt. While they're repelling from
Speaker 2: the ceiling. You never know what is going to be
Speaker 2: thrown at the camera, but you get the impression that
Speaker 2: if too much time passes in the film without something
Speaker 2: coming directly at the camera, a lot of anxiety breaks
Speaker 2: out at the filmmakers and they realize they've got to
Speaker 2: get something up there.
Speaker 3: Allow me to read from Roger Ebert's review at the
Speaker 3: time this movie was released. Ebert said, it's fun to
Speaker 3: find a three D movie that doesn't beat around the bush.
Speaker 3: Within sixty seconds after Treasure of the Four Crowns begins,
Speaker 3: the movie is throwing things at the audience. This is,
Speaker 3: of course, in the great tradition of three D movies
Speaker 3: that began in nineteen fifty three with Bwana Devil, a
Speaker 3: horrible movie that made a lot of money by throwing stones, spears,
Speaker 3: and elephants at the audience. You want to get your
Speaker 3: money's worth. Here is my rough checklist of things thrown
Speaker 3: at the audience in Treasure of the Four Crowns. Knives, spears, darts, bones,
Speaker 3: jeweled daggers, balls of fire, laser beams, boulders, ropes, attack, dogs, bats,
Speaker 3: shards of stained glass, a set of dishes, a large kettle,
Speaker 3: a stove, a corpse, a python, snake, an empty glove, birds,
Speaker 3: both real and artificial, arrows, unidentifiable glowing objects shot from guns, keys,
Speaker 3: letter openers, several human heads, skeletons, large sections of an
Speaker 3: exploding castle, and one bottle of booze, and assorted spoons.
Speaker 2: Two and a half stars by the way.
Speaker 3: By the way, there are definitely a few things I
Speaker 3: caught that Ebert did not manage to mention. There the
Speaker 3: stuff never stops coming at you. There's also like, there's
Speaker 3: one great part where just like an antenna extends toward
Speaker 3: the camera, there's another one where a broom handle pokes
Speaker 3: in your face.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little technological hacking tool or something like. Any
Speaker 2: and everything that can be jabbed at the camera will
Speaker 2: be jabbed at the camera.
Speaker 3: And because this is the most three D movie I
Speaker 3: have ever seen, it really invited me to think a
Speaker 3: bit about the nature of three D films, especially in
Speaker 3: their afterlife, as after they have left the theater on
Speaker 3: their initial run, when they are relics on home video
Speaker 3: where very few people who watch them will see them
Speaker 3: with the proper equipment to experience the three D effects intact.
Speaker 3: So I was trying to think of an analogy, and
Speaker 3: this isn't perfect, but it's sort of like going on
Speaker 3: a haunted house ride at an amusement park where all
Speaker 3: of the animatronics have been turned off, so the car
Speaker 3: might be moving, like you go through the same course,
Speaker 3: and you're traveling through the same plot, but something is
Speaker 3: fundamentally wrong with the experience, like the core appeal of
Speaker 3: it has been removed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, because three D films are spectacle,
Speaker 2: and we've been looking at a lot of them, you know,
Speaker 2: I've certainly been looking at a huge list of them,
Speaker 2: because part of the whole gimmick here is we're not
Speaker 2: just doing one three D film. We have committed to
Speaker 2: doing three three D films in a row, so we
Speaker 2: have to pick two more after this that are enjoyable.
Speaker 2: And there are a lot out there that don't really
Speaker 2: invite viewing in the t in the two D format,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: I think this is one of them.
Speaker 2: Actually, Well, this one at least is stupendous enough that
Speaker 2: it's a lot of fun. I think just a lot
Speaker 2: of them are very very uninviting, and they're they're it's
Speaker 2: very obvious that they were rushed to market with three
Speaker 2: D at the forefront of anybody's intentions. And again that's
Speaker 2: pretty much the case with this film as well. But
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the things that make the
Speaker 2: Treasure of the Four Crown so much fun is that
Speaker 2: yet it stars three D. It's all about three D.
Speaker 2: Three D is the reason for this film. But then
Speaker 2: everything else behind that seems to have been very earnestly
Speaker 2: constructed as well. Not well constructed, but at least played seriously.
Speaker 2: Like this is not a film that's self aware. It
Speaker 2: doesn't know that its hero looks dopey, or at least
Speaker 2: it's not willing to admit that on screen or to
Speaker 2: realize that on screen.
Speaker 3: No, it's got the heart of Homer Simpson trying to
Speaker 3: make the kids love Pouci. Yeah, And in that spirit also,
Speaker 3: it's very much like three D is the main character
Speaker 3: of this movie. And I think the intention was when
Speaker 3: three D is not on screen, all the other characters
Speaker 3: should be asking where's three D. It's true, so this
Speaker 3: was not the only early eighties movie in three D.
Speaker 3: You know, three D kind of comes in waves. There
Speaker 3: was there was one in the fifties with like you know,
Speaker 3: a House of Wax and all those things. I think
Speaker 3: there was another craze in the sixties and then you know,
Speaker 3: they come and it kind of bursts over the course
Speaker 3: of a few years. It seems that around nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: one to eighty three or so, there were a bunch
Speaker 3: of three D movies, including Friday the Thirteenth Part three
Speaker 3: three D that was nineteen eighty two. That one actually
Speaker 3: does have great disco music in it. You get Jaws
Speaker 3: three D in nineteen eighty three, Amityville three D in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty three. All of these are horror movies. By
Speaker 3: the way, this one kind of distinguishes itself by being
Speaker 3: like a PG rated, moderately family friendly, Indiana Jones style adventure.
Speaker 3: I don't know there. I guess there is some kind
Speaker 3: of gory melting right at the end, but.
Speaker 2: Otherwise nobody, nobody's behind this melting right. But oh.
Speaker 3: Another one is a movie we've covered on the show before,
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighty three film Metal Storm, the Destruction of
Speaker 3: Jared Sin.
Speaker 2: And I remember when we were watching that one, there
Speaker 2: were there were numerous shots where it's like, whoa, look
Speaker 2: at this tree branch, you know, obvious three D effects,
Speaker 2: and we had some fun commenting on that. But Metal
Speaker 2: Storm it shows so much restraint compared to Treasure of
Speaker 2: Four Crowns.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, and so, as I said, this is the
Speaker 3: most three D movie I've ever seen, and so the
Speaker 3: three D effects make up. Oh, I don't know, if
Speaker 3: I timed it out, I would guess at least fifty
Speaker 3: percent of the runtime is like three D effects shots,
Speaker 3: and in most other movies it feels a little more
Speaker 3: tacked on, you know, maybe like twenty percent of the
Speaker 3: runtime or ten even is three D gags where you know,
Speaker 3: it's mostly a normal movie and they've just fit a
Speaker 3: few of them in Treasure of the Four Crowns is
Speaker 3: built entirely around the gags. They are why the movie
Speaker 3: is here.
Speaker 2: Worth noting that, there, of course different ways of creating
Speaker 2: three D effects in some of these different boom periods,
Speaker 2: And then of course so many films have different patented
Speaker 2: names for their three D effects. For instance, this film
Speaker 2: is filmed in supervision three D.
Speaker 3: It sounds like it's like you need adult supervision to
Speaker 3: play with this toy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you also have films that came out at different times,
Speaker 2: where maybe not everything was shot in three D. They
Speaker 2: maybe have just certain scenes that are in three D.
Speaker 2: And then it's amazing just how many genres ended up
Speaker 2: being covered, like horror, science fiction, action makes sense, but
Speaker 2: a lot of comedies were shot in three D. You
Speaker 2: also have different erotic pictures that were shot in three D.
Speaker 2: I think am Manuel four is a three D picture,
Speaker 2: it's just And then of course even like educational fair
Speaker 2: especially when you get into like the Imax era, they're
Speaker 2: a number of those. Oh and then to say nothing
Speaker 2: of like pure you talked about these being like amusement
Speaker 2: park rides. You get into stuff like what is it?
Speaker 2: T two three D? Which was like a basically a
Speaker 2: three D ride film that came out after T two?
Speaker 2: The What's the Michael Jackson video that Francis Ford Coppola
Speaker 2: directed that Lucas was involved in that.
Speaker 3: Was smooth criminal.
Speaker 2: No, it was well, I just looked it up.
Speaker 3: Is it Captain EO?
Speaker 2: That's it? Yes, I only have.
Speaker 3: The vaguest awareness of this in memory. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Is this a ride like a ride at the theme park?
Speaker 2: I believe so. I think it was at Disney and
Speaker 2: I never saw it. I've never seen it. I think
Speaker 2: you can watch it at streaming now on some of
Speaker 2: the platforms. But it's like seventeen minutes long, which in
Speaker 2: a way is more honest, Like, let's just get right
Speaker 2: to it. Let's treat this like what it is. This
Speaker 2: is just about three D spectacle for twenty minutes or less.
Speaker 3: I'd agree with that. Yeah, I think there is some
Speaker 3: confusion about how genres were doing feature length films that
Speaker 3: rely this much on three D gags. I'm trying to
Speaker 3: think of an analogy. It's almost like releasing like a
Speaker 3: long novel length pop up book if you knew that
Speaker 3: after the first month or so, the pop ups wouldn't
Speaker 3: pop up anymore.
Speaker 2: Now we mentioned Ebert's critique on the three D in
Speaker 2: this film, it's worth noting well. First of all, of course,
Speaker 2: though Roder Ebert died before he could see some of
Speaker 2: the later three D pictures. But when Ridley Scott's Prometheus
Speaker 2: came out in twenty twelve, Ebert gave it a very
Speaker 2: glowing review, gave it four stars, and said that it
Speaker 2: was the best use of three D that he'd ever seen.
Speaker 3: I didn't even remember Prometheus was in.
Speaker 2: Three D, and I think that's key because I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I don't think I saw it in three D because
Speaker 2: I at some point I realized that three D pictures
Speaker 2: tend to give me a headache and I would prefer
Speaker 2: not to watch them in that format. But from what
Speaker 2: I understand, the three D elements and Prometheus are kind
Speaker 2: of kind of relegated to like, you know, sci fi
Speaker 2: displays that are being utilized star maps and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So it's not it's I don't think there's any creature
Speaker 2: jumps in your face sort of stuff. It's more subtle.
Speaker 2: And anyway, Ebert praised it for going going at three
Speaker 2: D in that fashion.
Speaker 3: Well, whatever you have to say positive or negative about
Speaker 3: that movie, it clearly was not defined entirely by the
Speaker 3: presence of the three D gags like that's that was
Speaker 3: just sort of a little flourish on it. Not the
Speaker 3: not the reason for the season.
Speaker 2: By the way, missed opportunity that we're not doing this
Speaker 2: podcast in three D sound that has been that has
Speaker 2: been pushed in the past.
Speaker 3: That's the thing in the Yeah, okay, are we ready
Speaker 3: for the elevator? Pitch on Treasure hit us four magical
Speaker 3: crowns containing magical gold balls containing magical gems, at least
Speaker 3: one of which contains a magical scroll, were created by
Speaker 3: the Visigoths. An evil cult leader named Brother Jonas has
Speaker 3: possession of approximately two of the four crowns. This is
Speaker 3: bad for some reason. Your mission, should you choose to
Speaker 3: accept it, is to dangle around on ropes for about
Speaker 3: forty five minutes in the room where these crowns are
Speaker 3: stored and hopefully steal them. In the process, this table
Speaker 3: self destruct in five seconds.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that is an excellent cell, but perhaps
Speaker 2: we should allow the wizards at Canon Films to give
Speaker 2: us a cell on this picture as well. Let's listen
Speaker 2: to the audio from the trailer.
Speaker 4: You've seen Raiders, Star Wars, Aliens, and Close Encounters, but
Speaker 4: you are about to experience a totally new dimension in entertainment,
Speaker 4: forged from the wealth of kings, source of the magical
Speaker 4: powers of good and evil, unleashed in the hands of
Speaker 4: a madman. Now five daring heroes dead by the odds
Speaker 4: in a deadly question to capture the greatest prize of
Speaker 4: them all.
Speaker 2: You'll form some treasure of the war Crowns.
Speaker 4: Share the ultimate modern adventure treasure of the Poor Crows
Speaker 4: in Supervision three D and coming soon from Kennon releasing
Speaker 4: to blesk you out of your seats.
Speaker 3: The signature move of a Golden Globus film is massive
Speaker 3: over promising. It's like, you know, you've seen Indiana Jones,
Speaker 3: you've seen Star Wars trash compared to this so much better.
Speaker 3: The posters over promise the trailers. They like they this
Speaker 3: Canon Films was the king of writing checks the movie
Speaker 3: could not cash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean and on some level too, they're like,
Speaker 2: they're like, look, if you don't believe your movie is
Speaker 2: the greatest film ever made. If you don't say it,
Speaker 2: who else is going to say it. So you've got
Speaker 2: to say it. Go ahead and put it in the trailer.
Speaker 2: Let the people think that, and then once they're in
Speaker 2: the theater, you know they're not going to get their
Speaker 2: money back.
Speaker 3: Now. One thing we should be fair about is that,
Speaker 3: as I said, we, like most people who watch three
Speaker 3: D movies on home video, we're watching it without the
Speaker 3: three D glasses that you need in order to have
Speaker 3: the real experience. I think there are at least some
Speaker 3: re releases of this on disc that provide the glasses
Speaker 3: for you, so you can have some version of the
Speaker 3: three D experience. I don't know if it'd be quite
Speaker 3: the same as it was in the theater.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm kind of kicking myself that I didn't
Speaker 2: at least try this, But yeah, if you want to
Speaker 2: try it out there, listeners, I recommend it. I mean,
Speaker 2: this film is about the spectacle of three D, so
Speaker 2: you might as well embrace it to whatever extent you can.
Speaker 2: You can find this movie in some DVD packs. You
Speaker 2: can find it on VHS tapes, but there's also a
Speaker 2: three D special edition Blu Ray from Keno Labris Studio Classics.
Speaker 2: It has some really cool extras, including both BD three
Speaker 2: D polarized and anaglyphic red cy M three D versions.
Speaker 2: It comes with one pair of anaglyphic three D glasses
Speaker 2: as well, in case you don't have any like kicking
Speaker 2: around the house to put on. So, I mean, really,
Speaker 2: you might as well embrace three D and try and
Speaker 2: watch it in that format, though I'm not sure what
Speaker 2: else you need to watch a three D picture these
Speaker 2: days on the Blu Ray, if you know special screens
Speaker 2: and whatnot. It's just not my area of expertise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've never gotten into the home three D thing.
Speaker 3: As again, I think most people have not. It seems
Speaker 3: like there was a time a while back where they
Speaker 3: were trying to promote that, like the whole like three
Speaker 3: D TVs at home and all that, and I never
Speaker 3: really understood it seemed like a trend that did not
Speaker 3: pick up.
Speaker 2: I think it's just the curse of three D. It's
Speaker 2: gonna always be this thing that pops up and it
Speaker 2: becomes really popular for a while, and then people get
Speaker 2: tired of it, and then it comes back again, and
Speaker 2: then it goes away, but it'll never completely go away,
Speaker 2: all right. Well, before we get back to the plot
Speaker 2: of this film and start talking about all the things
Speaker 2: that fly out your face, let's talk about the people
Speaker 2: who made it, starting with the director. It was directed
Speaker 2: by Ferdinando Baldi, who lived nineteen seventeen through two thousand
Speaker 2: and seven, an Italian director mostly known for action films
Speaker 2: and thrillers, and to the extent that I think he
Speaker 2: maybe only directed one horror film Ajallo titled nine Guests
Speaker 2: for a Crime from nineteen seventy seven. Everything else is
Speaker 2: a lot more action and western e He's mostly known
Speaker 2: for such action films as nineteen sixty eight's Django Prepare Coffin,
Speaker 2: which has George Eastman in it. Oh, Yep, yep, nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty six Texas Audios that one has Frank Nero in it,
Speaker 2: though he's not in the other, not in the Django
Speaker 2: film that he directed, nineteen seventy one's blind Man co
Speaker 2: starring Ringo star What Yeah, and This is Key. The
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one three D picture Coming at youa a
Speaker 2: three D spaghetti western that seems to largely be considered
Speaker 2: the picture that kickstarted the eighties resurgence of three D cinema.
Speaker 3: I love how the title that it might as well
Speaker 3: have just been called three D the movie Coming at You.
Speaker 3: It's like coming out of the screen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and with a name like that, and also the
Speaker 2: posters kind of lean into this, it looks like Coming
Speaker 2: Atcha is going to be kind of a wacky affair.
Speaker 2: But I've read that it's basically just a straightforward, if
Speaker 2: not kind of dark, spaghetti western. But moron coming at
Speaker 2: you here in a bit, because multiple people involved in
Speaker 2: this picture were involved in that. This is very much
Speaker 2: the spiritual sequel to Coming at You. Baldy also directed
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight's Hate Thy Neighbor with George Eastman in it,
Speaker 2: and then also the Ultimate Mission, an outrageous nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: eight action film with Mark Gregory in it.
Speaker 3: Was George Eastman ever in a three D movie, because
Speaker 3: that would be worth getting the glasses for to see
Speaker 3: George Eastman's face coming out of the screen.
Speaker 2: That's I think one of the things about this movie.
Speaker 2: There are so many great genre actors that were active
Speaker 2: during this time period in Italy and Spain, and why
Speaker 2: are they not in this film? Why do we have
Speaker 2: I mean not to shame the entire cast, but why
Speaker 2: do we have the cast that we have here when
Speaker 2: you had guys like George Eastman around?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I don't want to be mean, but this is
Speaker 3: one of the dullest casts of any movie we've ever covered,
Speaker 3: to the point where it almost comes full circle and
Speaker 3: becomes like entertaining in its dullness.
Speaker 2: Yes, I agree, all right. The writing credits several individuals
Speaker 2: credited here. One is Lloyd Battista born nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 2: American actor who wrote for an acted in various Tony
Speaker 2: Anthony pictures. Tony Anthony is also the star of this
Speaker 2: movie and coming at you more on him in just
Speaker 2: a bit. But Lloyd Battista does not act in this
Speaker 2: particular film, but he did a lot of American TV
Speaker 2: as an actor in the late sixties and early seventies
Speaker 2: and stayed active as an actor up until I think
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven. We also have a writing credit
Speaker 2: for someone named Jim Brice no additional information on this person,
Speaker 2: but then starring in this playing JT. Striker, a soldier
Speaker 2: of fortune. Also a producer. Also has a story credit
Speaker 2: is Tony Anthony.
Speaker 3: Now would you be shocked to learn that Tony Anthony
Speaker 3: is not his real name? He was not born Anthony Anthony.
Speaker 2: That's right. He's an American actor born Tony Roger Petito,
Speaker 2: So he was a born nineteen thirty seven, still alive
Speaker 2: as of this recording, A writer and producer who made
Speaker 2: fourteen films between nineteen sixty one and nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: with this being his final acting role, though he did
Speaker 2: continue to produce until I think nineteen ninety eight. So basically,
Speaker 2: he and his collaborators experienced early success with a couple
Speaker 2: of American pictures, then managed to jump in on the
Speaker 2: spaghetti western craze right when it was kicking off. And
Speaker 2: then with cumin Atcha and this picture he managed to
Speaker 2: not only jump start the nineteen eighties three D boom
Speaker 2: but also get in a second helping of the success
Speaker 2: with this picture Treasurer of the Four Crowns, after which
Speaker 2: credit where credits due. I like to think maybe he
Speaker 2: watched his performance in this film and said, you know,
Speaker 2: I think I'm good. I think I'm good. I think
Speaker 2: maybe this is the last film I've acted that beings said,
Speaker 2: I've seen plenty of films with less express actors than
Speaker 2: Tony Anthony. Tony Anthony, he pulls a lot of interesting
Speaker 2: faces in this film, and there's a lot of fun
Speaker 2: to be had trying to figure out his approach to
Speaker 2: this character. So he's certainly not boring.
Speaker 3: No, but also I think not quite what the filmmakers
Speaker 3: were hoping for.
Speaker 2: Right, And he is one of the filmmakers, so you know,
Speaker 2: he bears some of the responsibility. But one way I
Speaker 2: was thinking about it is that he carries himself in
Speaker 2: this movie like he thinks he's John Saxon, whereas really
Speaker 2: he has his actual screen presence is maybe a little
Speaker 2: more in the direction of Richard Lynch, but without the
Speaker 2: actual acting chops of either.
Speaker 3: Actor Richard Lynch, but without the creepiness or menace just yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it just more Richard Lynch with a strong disgust reflex.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But then again, it's kind of the pitfalls of
Speaker 2: the leading man role because you could also imagine a
Speaker 2: world in which Tony Anthony plays more villains or plays
Speaker 2: supporting characters and maybe excels in that department. So I
Speaker 2: don't know, there's a lot of ins and outs to
Speaker 2: trying to figure out how all this works. But at
Speaker 2: any rate, still Tony Anthony fun in this picture worth watching.
Speaker 2: We're gonna come back to his performance, Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: On the poster, the Tony Anthony character has a woman
Speaker 2: in his arms that he's like swinging through the air with,
Speaker 2: so obviously we have to have some sort of It
Speaker 2: turns out she's not really a damsel in distress. She's
Speaker 2: a member of the heist crew, and this is the
Speaker 2: character Liz played back Anna Obergone.
Speaker 3: The poster also makes it look like they are like
Speaker 3: in love, but I don't recall any kind of love
Speaker 3: plot at all. Is there anything like that?
Speaker 2: I don't think so, which I kept expecting them to
Speaker 2: maybe decide they needed to have that and just sort
Speaker 2: of tack it on, which is certainly something you see
Speaker 2: in plenty of movies. So to their credit, they didn't
Speaker 2: even try and make that happen in this film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so she's just a member of the impossible mission force.
Speaker 3: I think the skill she brings is trapeze acrobatics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which normally you might not think that's very important,
Speaker 2: but for this mission, as you teased out earlier, very important.
Speaker 3: This is a dangling heavy mission.
Speaker 2: Yes, so. Obergon born nineteen fifty five is a Spanish
Speaker 2: actor who apparently has like long standing celebrity status in
Speaker 2: Spain and you know, gets covered in celebrity publications a lot.
Speaker 2: Probably is more known, more well known internationally in international
Speaker 2: audiences for her roles in nineteen eighty four's Ballero and
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty one's Mystery on Monster Island, a Jewles Vern
Speaker 2: adaptation that had Terrence Stamp and Peter Cushing in it,
Speaker 2: well as well as a co starring Spanish genre mainstays
Speaker 2: Paul Nashi, Frank Brona and Lewis Barbou.
Speaker 3: Whoa Whoa whoa whoa Whoa a Jewles Vern adaptation where
Speaker 3: the title contains the frame Monster Island that has General
Speaker 3: z Odd, Grandmov Tarkin, Paul Nashi, Frank Barana, and Louis Barbu.
Speaker 3: Did did I get that right?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, well this has got we got to cover this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't know much about it, but just just
Speaker 2: on paper, the cast is very interesting. So Obergon also
Speaker 2: did some Spanish, other Spanish films, some Spanish action films
Speaker 2: I think mostly, And she pops up on American television
Speaker 2: appearing on Days of Our Lives, the actual A team
Speaker 2: and Who's the Boss?
Speaker 3: Okay, so direct a team crossover.
Speaker 2: Now, yes, all right. The next person to talk about
Speaker 2: this is also a member of the heist team. This
Speaker 2: is the character Edmund, played by Gene Quintano. Quintano also
Speaker 2: has a story credit and guess what was one of
Speaker 2: the producers. Just kind of a mustachioed guy. I can't
Speaker 2: even remember if he's bald or not, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I see he's bald on top.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, very much. Seems like he has the presence
Speaker 2: of someone who should do nothing more than be in
Speaker 2: the Q roll of the of the heist. That he
Speaker 2: should be like, he should just say here's the plan,
Speaker 2: here's the materials, But no, he comes on the heist
Speaker 2: and he's there for the whole.
Speaker 3: Thing baffling decision. He's introduced as Okay, this is the
Speaker 3: dweeb who is the professor's assistant, you know, the professor's
Speaker 3: professor exposition shows up to give some more you know,
Speaker 3: about thirty minutes into the movie, and this guy's operating
Speaker 3: the slide projector for him. And then it turns out,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, okay, he's going to be along for the
Speaker 3: whole ride. He's going to be there the whole darn time. Okay.
Speaker 2: So Jeane here was. He was born in nineteen forty six.
Speaker 2: He was a producer on both three D Tony Anthony
Speaker 2: movies and acted in both of them and acted in
Speaker 2: nothing else, So it's mostly a writer with some directing credits.
Speaker 2: Some of the standout films from his filmography include nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five's King Solomon's Minds. He was a writer on that.
Speaker 2: That was another canon film. Nineteen eighty six is Alan
Speaker 2: Quatermain in the City of the Lost of Gold, another
Speaker 2: canon film. He was a writer on Police Academies three, four,
Speaker 2: and five.
Speaker 3: Oh, those are the best ones.
Speaker 2: He was. He was the writer and director of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three's Loaded Weapon One. I seen it, okay, and
Speaker 2: then he is He was a writer and I think
Speaker 2: has a directing credit alongside another gentleman on two thousand
Speaker 2: and four's Funky Monkey. This is a chimpanzee movie in
Speaker 2: which I believe the chimpanzee actor allegedly bit Matthew Modine
Speaker 2: on the hand. Matthew Modine essentially stars in it, but
Speaker 2: you also have Gilbert Godfried, Fred Ward and Jeffrey Tambour
Speaker 2: in it. Wow. Wow, can safely say I will never
Speaker 2: watch this movie your net?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: Well, guess what I'm picking for next week?
Speaker 2: It's not in three D. I'm safe. I'm safe Funky
Speaker 2: Monkey for at least two weeks, all right. Also, we
Speaker 2: have a character named refresh my memory is Rick, the.
Speaker 3: Climber, mountain climber, the drinking guy, the guy who's his
Speaker 3: he drinks any knows things well.
Speaker 2: Rick is played by Jerry Lazarus. And guess what. He
Speaker 2: was also a writer on this picture. Born nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 2: another member of the crew, but he did a little
Speaker 2: more acting. He acted in nineteen eighty six is The
Speaker 2: Delta Force and nineteen eighty eight's Police Academy five for example.
Speaker 2: Now there are also some more distinguished actors in this picture.
Speaker 2: Believe it or not, we have a character by the
Speaker 2: name of Socrates. Socrates is, of course the strong man.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yes, well, there's probably a lot to unpack
Speaker 2: about Socrates as we get into the picture. But Socrates
Speaker 2: is played by Francisco Rabal, who was a prolific Spanish actor, director,
Speaker 2: and screenwriter of both stage and screen live nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: six to two thousand and one. He had a pretty
Speaker 2: robust career going back to the early nineteen forties, spanning
Speaker 2: multiple genres and involving quite a few notable international actors
Speaker 2: of the day.
Speaker 3: You know, I think this guy does have a bit
Speaker 3: more screen charisma, but it's like his role is underwritten
Speaker 3: and he's not given enough to do other than kind
Speaker 3: of have heart problems and die.
Speaker 2: Yeah that is about all that he does. But you
Speaker 2: can he's more believable in his scenes, his few scenes
Speaker 2: where he gets to do more than just sort of
Speaker 2: hang upside down and so forth. So I kept wondering, like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe this is the actor who really should have played
Speaker 2: the villain. Maybe he could have made the villain role
Speaker 2: more interesting. I'm not sure. Internationally, he's probably more recognizable
Speaker 2: to audiences for his roles in nineteen seventy seven Sorcerer.
Speaker 2: This is, of course the remake of Wages of Fear
Speaker 2: that has the amazing Tangerine Dream score. He's also in
Speaker 2: two thousand and one's Day Gone, a Stuart directed Spanish
Speaker 2: production that's an adaptation of lovecraft shadow over in Smith.
Speaker 3: Oh who is he in that?
Speaker 2: He's the old man who gets tortured by fish people.
Speaker 3: Oh, he's the one guy in the village who's not
Speaker 3: a fish person. Yeah, yeah, okay, I remember him. He Oh,
Speaker 3: he divulges the lore. He's like, here's he divulges the lore.
Speaker 2: And then I think he gets his face torn off
Speaker 2: or something. That's right, But he's definitely in it. His
Speaker 2: other big credits, though, include nineteen eighty nine's Tie Me Up,
Speaker 2: Timey Down. This is a film that of course had
Speaker 2: Antonio Banderas in it, nineteen eighty four is The Holy Innocence.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety nine's Goya and Bordeaux, he had the
Speaker 2: title role in that. He'll also find him in various
Speaker 2: European hearth and thrillers, including Umberto Lindsay's Nightmare City from
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty, nineteen seventy eight's Hotel Fear, and he co
Speaker 2: starred with John Saxon in nineteen seventy five's Fight to
Speaker 2: the Death.
Speaker 3: Okay, I've watched some other movies with Francisco rebal He
Speaker 3: as I said, he's an underwhelming presence in this movie.
Speaker 3: But I don't think that's his fault. I think it's
Speaker 3: it's the writing of his character. He brings a really tough,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of sandbag heavy Robert Dovey energy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he has. It's notable that later in his career,
Speaker 2: certainly the period in which we find this film, he
Speaker 2: has some pretty extensive, extensive facial scarring. Apparently he was
Speaker 2: in a couple of really bad car crashes, I think
Speaker 2: in sixty three and nineteen eighty according to his oh bit.
Speaker 2: But if you go back, like in this film, he's
Speaker 2: kind of he has, you know, kind of he's a
Speaker 2: little heavier, balding on top, you know, the very rugged face.
Speaker 2: You look at him in his prime though, and man,
Speaker 2: he was quite the leading man, rather different kind of
Speaker 2: screen presence. So again, very well regarded actor during the
Speaker 2: decades during which he was active.
Speaker 3: Okay, so in your dream casting, you were saying, maybe
Speaker 3: we would have had Francisco Reball as the villain, but
Speaker 3: instead as the villa, and we've got Emilio Redondo, who. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know, what would you scale of one to ten?
Speaker 3: How well would you rate his pleas for worship?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's not. His whole cult leader thing is basically
Speaker 2: to wear a bunch of bells in a hooded robe,
Speaker 2: which is fine, that's a solid choice. But then there's
Speaker 2: just kind of a lot of yelling and threatening of hell,
Speaker 2: which again not out of the you know, not beyond
Speaker 2: the realm of possibility for a cult leader. But I
Speaker 2: don't know, there's just nothing charismatic about him. You know,
Speaker 2: there's nothing where it's like I want to hear what
Speaker 2: this guy has to say.
Speaker 3: They don't really show how he wins converts. He's always
Speaker 3: just screaming at people to worship him. And you know,
Speaker 3: I am your God, believe it me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, you think of some of the great
Speaker 2: roles played by perhaps better actors and definitely better screenplays,
Speaker 2: and they all get you get that scene where you
Speaker 2: get to sort of taste the the cult leader charisma.
Speaker 2: You know, you think of like Conan the Barbarian in
Speaker 2: those scenes where you get to see see Thulsa Doom
Speaker 2: just really you know, chew up the scenery and share
Speaker 2: some of his theology and also just captivate the audience.
Speaker 2: And we just don't get any kind of moments like
Speaker 2: that from brother Jonas. No, there is no what is
Speaker 2: the answer to the riddle of steel? He's just demanding
Speaker 2: everyone love him. Yeah. So Redondo lived nineteen thirty seven
Speaker 2: through twenty fourteen Spanish actor. He was also in Timey Up,
Speaker 2: Timey Down. His other credits include seventy twos Anthony and Cleopatra.
Speaker 2: This was the one that starred and was directed by
Speaker 2: Charlton Heston. He was in nineteen seventy four's The Dead,
Speaker 2: the Devil and the Flesh. He was in seventy six
Speaker 2: is The People Who Own the Dark. That one has
Speaker 2: a bit part by Paul Nashey. By the way. He
Speaker 2: was in nineteen eighty two's Morte in Vodicano. So I
Speaker 2: guess like Death in the Vatican, I think it's a thriller, Okay.
Speaker 2: He was in nineteen eighty t three's Black Venus that
Speaker 2: had hell Galline in it, who's a factored into I
Speaker 2: think a couple of films we've watched German actor and
Speaker 2: he was also a nineteen eighty eight Fist Fighter starring
Speaker 2: Jorge Rivero and Matthias Who's This is a poster that
Speaker 2: I've come across a few times. I had to share
Speaker 2: it with you here, Joe, because I think it has
Speaker 2: the most abs per movie poster ever, regardless of genre.
Speaker 3: Yes, all of the abs looked like the plates on
Speaker 3: the exoskeleton of like a deep ocean isopod or insect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they each seem to have like a ten pack,
Speaker 2: And I would suspect that this was some sort of
Speaker 2: AI generated image if I didn't know for certain that
Speaker 2: this is the authentic poster from a previous decade.
Speaker 3: Right, Like you can't get the number of fingers or teeth, right,
Speaker 3: it's giving people fourteen abs.
Speaker 2: All right. One other thing of note about this film
Speaker 2: on the surface anyway, not so much notable once you
Speaker 2: actually get into the film, But this is an a
Speaker 2: Neo Morricone score. So this light the humanoid that we
Speaker 2: watched in another episode from nineteen seventy nine has a
Speaker 2: score by one of the most famous composers of really
Speaker 2: the twentieth century. And beyond a little bit, but certainly
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century.
Speaker 3: I will say, first of all, this is not his
Speaker 3: best work that I've heard, but it is better than
Speaker 3: standard B movie score. A problem, though, is mismatch between
Speaker 3: the score and what's happening on screen, Like there will
Speaker 3: be scenes where suddenly a kind of a kind of
Speaker 3: glorious romantic theme is playing well, like a skeleton that's
Speaker 3: got rotten bits of flesh all over. It is like
Speaker 3: emerging from the fog. It just doesn't the drama and
Speaker 3: the soundtrack seem off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I would agree not Morcone's best work,
Speaker 2: but among his best scores, the good, the Bad, and
Speaker 2: the Ugly from sixty six, the mission from eighty John
Speaker 2: Carpenter is the thing from eighty two. So you know,
Speaker 2: lots of great scores from this man. But he wrote
Speaker 2: over four hundred scores for the big screen and the
Speaker 2: small screens, so you know they can't all be zingers.
Speaker 3: This was the David Pumpkins of Morconey scores.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but uh yeah, again, it's it's kind of surprising
Speaker 2: who's not in this film, like Frank Bronna, for example,
Speaker 2: being the main one. I was thinking that that guy
Speaker 2: would have been perfect for this film, just to be
Speaker 2: one of the cult members standing in the background. But
Speaker 2: he's not in it. Sad.
Speaker 3: So I looked what was he busy with in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty two eighty three. Apparently he was making pod People
Speaker 3: and Hundra Hondra the uh this looks like a Lady
Speaker 3: Conan basically.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, it does look look potentially interesting, but hey,
Speaker 2: pod People, I wouldn't take that away from him. I
Speaker 2: wouldn't want pod People to be threatened just to just
Speaker 2: to make Treasure of the Four Crowns a little interesting.
Speaker 3: On the cast side, though, I am surprised there's not
Speaker 3: some cast overlap with pod People. It seems like seems
Speaker 3: like it should be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Pod People have like a thousand people in it,
Speaker 2: so there's plenty of people to go around.
Speaker 3: All right, You ready to talk about the plot.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's let's get into the plot.
Speaker 3: How do you think this movie should open? Should Should
Speaker 3: it have a Star Wars style text crawl?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, So I don't know why it chooses to do.
Speaker 3: There's not like background we need, so it's not like,
Speaker 3: you know, it is a ton It is a dark
Speaker 3: time for the rebel alliance or whatever. It's just it's
Speaker 3: just sort of telling us the themes stuff that will
Speaker 3: be reiterated anyway. It says in the universe, there are
Speaker 3: things man cannot hope to understand. Powers he cannot hope
Speaker 3: to possess, forces he cannot hope to control. The Four
Speaker 3: Crowns are such things. Yet the search has begun. A
Speaker 3: soldier of fortune takes the first step. He seeks a
Speaker 3: key that will unlock the power of the Four Crowns
Speaker 3: and unleash a world where good and evil collide.
Speaker 2: I love all of this because, I mean, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of hope squashing, like things you can't hope to understand,
Speaker 2: you can't hope to visit, possitz, you can't hope to control.
Speaker 2: But then this whole thing about prepared to end real
Speaker 2: world where good and evil collide. I was thinking, isn't
Speaker 2: a world where good and evil collide? Isn't that just
Speaker 2: the mundane world? Isn't that just every day that's already
Speaker 2: the world? Yeah, maybe they'll collide more than ever before.
Speaker 2: So the very opening of this movie is a temple raid,
Speaker 2: obviously modeled on the prologue of Raiders of the Lost Dark,
Speaker 2: where our hero must plunge into the bowels of a
Speaker 2: forgotten catacomb full of deadly booby traps to retrieve a
Speaker 2: sacred artifact. Yeah, it is very much like the temple
Speaker 2: rate at the beginning of Raiders, except yeah, I guess,
Speaker 2: like everything else in the films, it doesn't actually copy
Speaker 2: anything that made that sequence so amazing.
Speaker 3: Right, you know? Yeah? Yeah, So instead of an ancient
Speaker 3: temple in the Peruvian rainforest, the setting is a big,
Speaker 3: blocky castle in Spain with no trees anywhere in sight.
Speaker 3: Somehow doesn't have quite the same charm. Also, instead of
Speaker 3: a whip cracking Harrison Ford in a leather jacket and
Speaker 3: a fedora, we've got Tony Anthony and he's he's in
Speaker 3: a candy apple red leather jacket instead of you know,
Speaker 3: your classic brown leather jacket. He's got perpetual ick face,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. Yeah, and he's smoking a cigarette.
Speaker 3: When we first seen he's just added like a field,
Speaker 3: smoking a cigarette and he's looking at the castle like
Speaker 3: a god, I don't want to do this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that watching the opening of this film, as
Speaker 2: he's approaching, I really experienced strong vibes of this can't
Speaker 2: possibly be our hero. Right, I'd seen like a still
Speaker 2: of Tony Anthony before, but I wasn't sure. I wasn't
Speaker 2: one hundred percent sure this was Tony Anthony. I was like,
Speaker 2: this is a guy that dies in the first ten minutes, right,
Speaker 2: we were not really up to the Tony Anthony scenes.
Speaker 2: But no, this is Tony Anthony. This is your hero
Speaker 2: for the duration of the picture.
Speaker 3: It's a hard pill to swallow, but yeah, and we
Speaker 3: will later find out the name of our hero. This
Speaker 3: is JT. Striker, a soldier of Fortune, solid solid so Disco, Indiana.
Speaker 3: Jones smokes a cigarette and then begins his descent into
Speaker 3: the tomb and he you know, there are of course
Speaker 3: traps awaiting him. The first twenty minutes of this movie
Speaker 3: is an unbelievably drawn out, just series of traps during
Speaker 3: the raid on the castle. And again, to reiterate, this
Speaker 3: is the most three D movie I have ever seen,
Speaker 3: and that was evident after the first several minutes. In
Speaker 3: the three D gags in the opening are non stop,
Speaker 3: and their logical relationship to the progression of the plot
Speaker 3: here is often questionable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's in Raiders. You you have a strong sense
Speaker 2: of cause and effect with booby traps. There's no such
Speaker 2: feeling in this picture. These are not traps that even
Speaker 2: seem to have some unbelievable mechanical operation behind them, but
Speaker 2: just sort of random, supernatural what have you.
Speaker 3: That's right. So in Raiders, yeah, you've got like you
Speaker 3: step on the floor tile the dart comes out, or
Speaker 3: you you move into the light, the spikes shoot. This time,
Speaker 3: I don't know, it's just you know, he's going through
Speaker 3: and then there's like, oh, here are some spikes poking out,
Speaker 3: and then a bunch of birds attack, and there's but
Speaker 3: except it's three birds and one pterodactyl. It's a pterodactyl.
Speaker 2: It's like a cute little puppetterodactyl.
Speaker 3: Why is there a pterodactyl? And also, if this is
Speaker 3: an ancient tomb, have there been living birds in there
Speaker 3: for hundreds of years?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes no sense. And and again it's not
Speaker 2: like the traps in Raiders make a lot of sense
Speaker 2: if you analyze him too much, Like that whole light trap,
Speaker 2: How on earth was that supposed to work? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Hold up to close scrutiny. But this film, like tops
Speaker 2: the insanity that raiders brings like by two or three scoops.
Speaker 3: So it goes bird trap, no spike trap, bird trap,
Speaker 3: tterodact featuring pterodactyl, and then snake trap. Just like a
Speaker 3: snake attacks, well, it doesn't attack him, actually, a snake
Speaker 3: just kind of slithers over him harmlessly and he freaks out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I love the like the puky face that
Speaker 2: he makes during contact with the snake, like it just
Speaker 2: kind of like who kind of a face like he's
Speaker 2: about to wretch. And I just couldn't help but imagine
Speaker 2: what if Indiana Jones had made this face around the
Speaker 2: snakes that he hated. You know what would that have
Speaker 2: done to the picture?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so instead of yelling about how he hates snakes,
Speaker 3: he just like barfs or looks like he's gonna barf. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so uh okay, So there's bird, there's spikes, then birds, pterodactyl, snake,
Speaker 3: and then dogs dogs attack and just dogs chasing him
Speaker 3: around while he runs up and down on ramps and
Speaker 3: stuff trying to get away from him. He eventually gets
Speaker 3: away from the dogs by falling through a hole in
Speaker 3: the floor and then we see it like a three
Speaker 3: D shot of him falling toward the camera, plunging down
Speaker 3: the hole, and the hole is like a tunnel in
Speaker 3: a spaceship full of the all these differently colored lights.
Speaker 3: It doesn't look like it matches the setting at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like some sort of contraption that a
Speaker 2: sixties Batman villain would have busted out on the Cape Crusader.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But finally he gets to the treasure room, where
Speaker 3: there are a bunch of skeletons and creepy suits of armor,
Speaker 3: and every time he turns his back, they're kind of
Speaker 3: like creeping around, like pointing swords at him, and I
Speaker 3: think it's sort of played for comedy, like he'll turn
Speaker 3: and look and then they stop moving. He eventually lays
Speaker 3: down some explosives and blows up a coffin to get inside,
Speaker 3: and then there's this majestic music from the more Coney
Speaker 3: score as a withered corpse king is revealed.
Speaker 2: And the corpse king looks pretty good. There's this kind
Speaker 2: of what color is this like a.
Speaker 3: Powder blue fog behind him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's cool. It's prominently featured in
Speaker 2: some of the promotional images for the picture, and I
Speaker 2: think is in the trailer as well.
Speaker 3: Then he gets some artifact off of the king. He
Speaker 3: pulls like a scepter with a mechanism that somehow releases
Speaker 3: a key, and so he's got this key. I think
Speaker 3: that's what he's there for. But then ensues an excruciatingly
Speaker 3: long battle with floating crossbows and ghost weapons, spiritual axes
Speaker 3: that fly around, rolling spike wheel traps, and it just
Speaker 3: goes on and on and on.
Speaker 2: It does manage to reach that point where, like we've
Speaker 2: discussed this before, where something is interesting and then it
Speaker 2: becoes on so long it becomes tedious, but then circles
Speaker 2: back around and becomes amazing again because you they're still
Speaker 2: doing it, like Tony Anthony is still dodging spears and
Speaker 2: arrows sometimes matrix style.
Speaker 3: It's yes, it's like the melting at the end of
Speaker 3: The Devil's Rain. It goes on so long that it
Speaker 3: becomes kind of awe inspiring. And this is the scene
Speaker 3: that infamously, for people who were accusing this movie of
Speaker 3: ripping offeraidors, the thing they pointed out most often is
Speaker 3: that the hero has to run from a boulder, just
Speaker 3: like Indiana Jones, except they up the ante. They make
Speaker 3: him flee a flaming boulder.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and all of this is played again. It's played
Speaker 2: very seriously and played very very cool, and that's one
Speaker 2: of the reasons that these sequences are so delightful.
Speaker 3: Agreed. But eventually Tony Tony escapes. He runs away from
Speaker 3: the castle as the castle explodes behind him.
Speaker 2: Strong vibes of tim they enchanter from Monty Python and
Speaker 2: the Holy Grail with these explosions exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these little like point sources of explosions set against
Speaker 3: the castle to try to make it look like the
Speaker 3: whole thing's blowing up. But really it's just these like
Speaker 3: I don't know, fireballs coming off of the stones.
Speaker 2: I should have looked up to see who their pyro
Speaker 2: guy on this film was, because whoever it was, assuming
Speaker 2: nobody was injured, and I don't think I didn't read
Speaker 2: anything about anybody being injured. There's a lot of fire
Speaker 2: in this movie. They really bring the fire.
Speaker 3: Okay, So he's got the key and now we're going
Speaker 3: to go back to civilization. So back in the city,
Speaker 3: we see Tony Tony walking around. He walks past like
Speaker 3: a big fountain, and you know, it feels like we're
Speaker 3: in for some exposition, and what do you know, my
Speaker 3: instincts were right.
Speaker 2: I also love how in this sequence, and there's one
Speaker 2: you included us still for this in our notes where
Speaker 2: he's walking underneath this fountain and this pretty cool little
Speaker 2: shot here that I don't even think has any three
Speaker 2: D in it, at least until he throws his cigarette
Speaker 2: at the camera, and then that's the three D gag
Speaker 2: that they couldn't go, you know, two minutes without having.
Speaker 2: But in this sequence he's all coolness and jacket and smoking,
Speaker 2: and it's almost you almost want to call him on
Speaker 2: his bs and be like, we just saw you freaking
Speaker 2: out for like twenty straight dialogue free minutes and pulling
Speaker 2: all sorts of kooky faces. So don't pull this swab
Speaker 2: hero stuff now, buddy.
Speaker 3: That's right, you are not too cool for school. You
Speaker 3: barf when you see a snake. So Tony eventually meets
Speaker 3: up with his people and he gets into a car
Speaker 3: with his handler Edmund Here or Ed. This was apparently
Speaker 3: the guy who sent him on the mission to the castle.
Speaker 3: Here is where we learned that Tony Tony's name is JT. Striker.
Speaker 3: JT is unhappy because Ed apparently did not warn him
Speaker 3: that the castle was going to be full of dogs
Speaker 3: and killer birds and pterodactyls and snakes and spikes and
Speaker 3: ghost weapons and flaming boulders. Oh, and I will say
Speaker 3: screenshot here earlier I think I said Ed Ed was
Speaker 3: bald on top. He's not. I just remembered that wrong.
Speaker 3: Here we go, we get to see it. His hair
Speaker 3: is longer in back than it is on top.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, otherwise, yeah, we have to withdraw that statement.
Speaker 2: Full head of glorious hair on Edmund So Tony.
Speaker 3: Tony says, you almost got me killed, and Ed says, hey,
Speaker 3: I told you. I told you there was a legend
Speaker 3: surrounding the existence of the key. But no, no, you
Speaker 3: didn't want to listen. You said you didn't believe in
Speaker 3: ghosts and that legends were cow excrement. So we got
Speaker 3: a hero who thinks legends are cow excrement. But JT.
Speaker 3: Striker is over it. He just wants his money so
Speaker 3: he can say goodbye to these guys and be on
Speaker 3: his way. But Ed takes JT to meet his boss,
Speaker 3: the Professor, who is hanging out in what looks like
Speaker 3: like a big government building where it's full of suits
Speaker 3: of armor. And Striker gives the professor the key, and
Speaker 3: we are taken to this box on a table where
Speaker 3: I guess he owes. The professor opens up the box
Speaker 3: and then a crown like a gold jewel, encrusted crown
Speaker 3: with a golden ball on top, extends toward the camera slowly,
Speaker 3: so it's coming into our facial region, and the professor narrates.
Speaker 3: He says, this is one of the four golden crowns
Speaker 3: created by the Visigoths in the sixth century, sometime after
Speaker 3: the conquest of Spain. Legend dictates the gold balls on
Speaker 3: top of three of the four crowns contained secrets to
Speaker 3: unleashing incredible powers of good and evil. After centuries, they
Speaker 3: passed into the fabric of myth and legend when an
Speaker 3: archaeologist discovered them in the mountains outside Toledo. But when
Speaker 3: the Arabs invaded Spain, three of the four crowns disappeared.
Speaker 3: I'm already confused on the timeline here.
Speaker 2: It seems to be.
Speaker 3: Going backward and forward in the past in a way
Speaker 3: that doesn't make any sense, but anyway, to continue, he says,
Speaker 3: the fourth fell into the Arab's hands attempting to unlock
Speaker 3: its secrets without using the key. I think this is
Speaker 3: the key Striker just brought. They destroyed the Golden Ball
Speaker 3: three years ago I learned the location of the key,
Speaker 3: there was no sense in recovering it because the crowns
Speaker 3: were still missing until this crown, purportedly the one containing
Speaker 3: the scroll, surfaced. I discovered it in the possession of
Speaker 3: a Sherpa mountain climber in Nepal and convinced him to
Speaker 3: sell it to me. But now we shall see.
Speaker 2: Wow, there's so much, so much in all of that,
Speaker 2: and some just total dead ends too, like why is
Speaker 2: it just not the legend of the three crowns? Then
Speaker 2: if the fourth crown, I guess they had to establish
Speaker 2: that you cannot even attempt to open one of these
Speaker 2: without the special key, otherwise you destroyed the content. That's right.
Speaker 3: I thought the same thing. According to this exposition, by
Speaker 3: the time the film begins, Treasure of the Four Crowns
Speaker 3: is about three crowns that remain in existence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you almost wonder if maybe there was
Speaker 2: a supposed to be a whole additional sequence or something
Speaker 2: and they just didn't film it or it had to
Speaker 2: be cut. I don't know, but yeah, it's very confusing
Speaker 2: all of this. But what we're looking then at three crowns.
Speaker 2: This is one of them, and they have a key
Speaker 2: to unlock the ball on the crown.
Speaker 3: The ball on the crown, which this one contains a scroll,
Speaker 3: But I think the other two contain the secrets of
Speaker 3: unimaginable power.
Speaker 2: So how they end up with the least interesting crown then.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Very good question. Oh, by the way,
Speaker 3: during this whole exposition, just like tweezers and magnifying glasses
Speaker 3: and other objects are being inserted into our facial space. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but anyway, Professor, he gets the scroll out, you know,
Speaker 3: he unlocks the box, gets the scroll out, and he
Speaker 3: is ecstatic. He says, the very existence of this scroll
Speaker 3: supports the legend.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, fair enough.
Speaker 3: I don't remember do they ever read what the scroll says?
Speaker 3: Maybe if they do, I don't recall that part.
Speaker 2: I don't recall it either. I think I was very
Speaker 2: distracted by this part because I was kept thinking, like,
Speaker 2: didn't well, couldn't they have done an X ray and
Speaker 2: just figured out what was in there? Like it wasn't
Speaker 2: there some sort of technique they could have used, or
Speaker 2: maybe even just taken a crowbar to the thing. But
Speaker 2: I guess not.
Speaker 3: No, you need the key. Well you learn that because
Speaker 3: they tried to open the key open it without the
Speaker 3: key before and it led to untold destruction. That's right, okay,
Speaker 3: But anyway, so JT. Striker, I don't know, maybe he's
Speaker 3: sort of interested. He says, where are the other crowns?
Speaker 3: And ed the professor's assistant, remember, he says, we know.
Speaker 3: And then for some reason, they have a slide show
Speaker 3: introduction prepared and waiting to teach us about the villain
Speaker 3: of today's film. So, almost as if by magic, like
Speaker 3: all these things start automatically happening, like the lights go down,
Speaker 3: and these curtains on the wall drawback, revealing a projector screen,
Speaker 3: and the slide projector clicks on and somehow quite hilariously,
Speaker 3: audio starts playing. So it shows a picture of this
Speaker 3: guy in a like a hooded robe, like a red
Speaker 3: robe with a cloak, and all these bells attached to him,
Speaker 3: and we hear I want you to taste what I taste.
Speaker 3: I want you to hear what I hear. I want
Speaker 3: you to see what I see. Do you get the theme?
Speaker 3: I want you to feel what I feel. I want
Speaker 3: you to be what I am and if you won't,
Speaker 3: then go to hell. And then a crowd starts chanting Jonas, Jonas, Jonas,
Speaker 3: and we get various shots. They're like portraits of Jonas here,
Speaker 3: just looking menacing and quite crazed, with his arms outstretched,
Speaker 3: making angry faces, anguished faces, clutching at his bells. He
Speaker 3: seems like a guy who's maybe up to no good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again already it's very difficult to see what
Speaker 2: his apparently thousands upon thousands of international followers see in him.
Speaker 2: What they're taking away from this message, How this message
Speaker 2: gives them some level of hope or improves their perceived
Speaker 2: status in the world. We don't know. They just like
Speaker 2: what's he's dishing out?
Speaker 3: Oh, I meant to look up what is the relationship
Speaker 3: of this film to the legend of Zelda the very
Speaker 3: first game? Because he's got a tri force painted on
Speaker 3: his forehead.
Speaker 2: No, I don't know.
Speaker 3: This is before the first tri force in Zelda. Maybe
Speaker 3: that's I've never researched the.
Speaker 2: Symbol to see how far back it goes the inverse
Speaker 2: triangle within a larger triangle.
Speaker 3: Just glancing at Wikipedia quickly it looks like it's saying
Speaker 3: that maybe this was used as a symbol in like
Speaker 3: some Japanese publishing before, before the legend of Zelda. But
Speaker 3: definitely the first video game didn't come until eighty six.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is not Jonas Dorf or Gannon Jonas
Speaker 2: or anything.
Speaker 3: No, but so evil brother Zelda. Here we learn about him.
Speaker 3: Ed narrates the slideshow. Ed says Neil Green born in Brooklyn,
Speaker 3: New York, served seven years a sing sing for armed robbery,
Speaker 3: where he claims to have experienced a religious vision. When
Speaker 3: he got out, he borrowed a hundred bucks and became
Speaker 3: one of those male order ministers. Huh what was that?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I guess it's like nowadays it would
Speaker 2: be like you went to a website and became an
Speaker 2: ordained minister.
Speaker 3: I guess. So then he ordained himself, brother Jonas. When
Speaker 3: his small storefront cult following began to grow, he complained
Speaker 3: of political harassment, the government, claimed tax fraud. He's got
Speaker 3: the crowns, and then ed Ed starts to kind of
Speaker 3: so that's the main speech, and then he starts to editorialize,
Speaker 3: this guy's an animal. He's got to be stopped. He's
Speaker 3: not just some nut. He wants power.
Speaker 2: And he's got the crowns. I love how they did,
Speaker 2: like in describing this guy's origin story really skipped a
Speaker 2: lot into how he has essentially, you know, acquires the
Speaker 2: power on the level of the Ark of the Covenant.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, so they do explain he's got a fortress.
Speaker 3: He's got a fortress where he attracts. He has his
Speaker 3: followers go out and round up the sick, the desperate,
Speaker 3: and the lonely and bring them to his private mountain
Speaker 3: fortress for the ninety day indoctrination period.
Speaker 2: We later get to see some of these folks and
Speaker 2: they just look they look like tourists. They look, yeah,
Speaker 2: like people going to a theater. They don't look particularly
Speaker 2: sick or desperate or lonely. But I don't know.
Speaker 3: They're just sitting there while he yells at them to
Speaker 3: believe in him. And there's another you know, there are
Speaker 3: all these slides in the slideshow of the bad Guy's lair,
Speaker 3: so it's another castle on a hilltop for all I know,
Speaker 3: the same one that blew up at the beginning, and
Speaker 3: then armed guards, German shepherds. They say there are cells
Speaker 3: for cult members who try to escape or who disobey
Speaker 3: Brother Jonas, and then some audio of Brother Jonas plays again.
Speaker 3: He says, welcome my children to the City of Love
Speaker 3: and Unity. I have prayed for the day when I
Speaker 3: would see your face before me. And then Ed he
Speaker 3: goes on to say, you know, he fills them up
Speaker 3: with all this. Here you are loved, here, you are needed.
Speaker 3: Bull this is his indoctrination squad. And they show these
Speaker 3: guys who are also dressed in red robes but wearing
Speaker 3: pig masks. Okay, that's starting to be kind of creepy.
Speaker 3: But then as funny as the second time, Ed brings
Speaker 3: up the issue of taxes. He says, Brother Jonas has
Speaker 3: thousands of disciples and hundreds of millions of dollars quote
Speaker 3: tax free.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I mean, it is a new religious movement.
Speaker 2: Shouldn't it be up for some sort of tax exemption?
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: So the professor says, you know, he must be stopped,
Speaker 3: mister Striker. For Brother Jonas, those crowns are weapons of
Speaker 3: power and fear. But I want to preserve that power
Speaker 3: for the future of mankind. It's an incredible legacy. I
Speaker 3: must have them, and for some reason, Strikers response to
Speaker 3: this is to ask why do all those people have
Speaker 3: Halloween masks on? And Ed explains that everybody in the
Speaker 3: cult has to wear a mask because the individual's identity
Speaker 3: doesn't matter. Only Brother Jonas is important.
Speaker 2: Okay, so they're like the band Ghost, Oh do they
Speaker 2: have a Brother Jonas or well, there's the lead singer
Speaker 2: of Ghost and then everyone else is just a nameless
Speaker 2: ghoul that wears a mask.
Speaker 3: Nice, Okay, it's the Brother Jonas principle. Okay, yeah, anyway,
Speaker 3: Striker wants out. You know, you can tell this guy
Speaker 3: he's just a workaday soldier of fortune. He's not interested
Speaker 3: in getting involved in Brother Jonas Shenanigan, so he just
Speaker 3: wants to get his money and be on his way.
Speaker 3: But then Ed implores him. He says, do something good
Speaker 3: for once in your life. Help us get the crowns,
Speaker 3: and Striker gives him a very just unimpressed face and
Speaker 3: he tries to walk out. He says, you guys sitting
Speaker 3: in this big room, you're just believing in fair fairy tales,
Speaker 3: and Ed says, we've got plans, equipment, diagrams. All we
Speaker 3: need is a few good people, and then there's a
Speaker 3: transition I didn't get it all. Maybe you caught something
Speaker 3: I didn't. The Striker walks out and it looks like
Speaker 3: he's fully refusing the call and we're gonna have to
Speaker 3: go to another scene where he's becomes convinced somehow to participate.
Speaker 3: But instead, in the next scene, Ed and Striker are
Speaker 3: just suddenly together on a snowy mountaintop, proceeding with the mission.
Speaker 3: So what happened? Why did he come back and do it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I feel like we needed some sort of scene
Speaker 2: or in there where he observes something or has some
Speaker 2: sort of breakthrough where he realizes, no, I really should
Speaker 2: help steal these crowns from this cult leader. But now
Speaker 2: it's just like, oh, yeah, I'm doing it. I know
Speaker 2: I said I wasn't doing it, but I'm actually doing it.
Speaker 3: So the middle portion of the movie is the getting
Speaker 3: the team together montage that well, not quite a montage.
Speaker 3: It's a series of scenes.
Speaker 2: Yes, recruiting the least convincing heist crew imaginable to carry
Speaker 2: out this heist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the team, I guess in order is JT. Striker.
Speaker 3: We know his deal. Then there's Ed Actually, as we said,
Speaker 3: he turns out to be a member of the team.
Speaker 3: You might be wondering what does he actually bring to
Speaker 3: the table in terms of being like on the ground
Speaker 3: for a heist. Seems like he's a tech guy. He
Speaker 3: unlocks electronic doors and disarms bombs and traps and stuff.
Speaker 2: All Right, I mean, if this is an Unders and
Speaker 2: Dragons crew, then this is your rogue. This is the
Speaker 2: guy that's gonna pick those locks and disarm those traps.
Speaker 2: Fair enough, He's not very rogueish, He's not. He does
Speaker 2: not have any stealth attacks up his sleeve, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: Also, I would say he has the most unroguelike alignment
Speaker 3: because I would say ed is lawful neutral.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But okay, so those two are on the mission. The
Speaker 3: first guy they're going to recruit is Rick. This is
Speaker 3: I think he's supposed to be a mountain climber. They
Speaker 3: find him at a secluded mountain cabin on a snowy
Speaker 3: peak where where he reveals that he has a drinking problem.
Speaker 3: I think what they meet like a lady at a
Speaker 3: bar and they were like, where's Rick, And they're like, Oh,
Speaker 3: he's staggered off to his cabin and ed just keeps
Speaker 3: going staggered. You want to get a guy who staggers?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this character has one of those cinematic drinking problems
Speaker 2: where it's at once it's played with a wink, but
Speaker 2: it's also firmly established as being completely debilitated and life wrecking.
Speaker 2: You know, like this is a guy who whose life
Speaker 2: is all but destroyed by his drinking. But he ends
Speaker 2: up saying, Okay, I'll come along, I'll stop drinking for
Speaker 2: the highst but then he's actually drinking from a flask
Speaker 2: on the heist Antony. Anthony just kind of laughs it off,
Speaker 2: like it's kind of like, oh Rick.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh haha, that yeah, that's silly guy. Yeah. There's
Speaker 3: so in the scene where he's trying to recruit him,
Speaker 3: he's like, you know, I got a mission for you.
Speaker 3: I just need you to sober up for three weeks
Speaker 3: and we can do it. And Rick says, do I
Speaker 3: have to spell it out for you? If it doesn't
Speaker 3: come in a bottle, I'm not interested. But I think
Speaker 3: Rick becomes convinced because of a bizarre battle with a
Speaker 3: flying magic key in his cabin.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they do some trump. He does magic things
Speaker 2: in his cabin. For a little bit, and he's like,
Speaker 2: all right, I need to sober up a little bit. Clearly,
Speaker 2: I'm on board.
Speaker 3: Do you remember why does the key start doing magic
Speaker 3: things here? I guess Striker gets it out. He's like,
Speaker 3: here's a key. We need to I don't know, get
Speaker 3: some crowns from brother Jonas because he shouldn't have them.
Speaker 3: And then the key floats up in the air and
Speaker 3: starts flying around, and then there's just like like bananas
Speaker 3: poltergeist activity for several minutes while they're chasing the key
Speaker 3: around trying to catch it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's like he's trying to sort of channel
Speaker 2: the energy of the key but failing, and it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's it's a mess, and you think it's going to
Speaker 2: be more important later on, and to a certain agree
Speaker 2: it is. But it's also not as much of a
Speaker 2: plot point as I thought it would be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, so Rick's on board. Next, we got
Speaker 3: to recruit our strong man, who we meet in the
Speaker 3: form of a blue hulk. This is Socrates.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's doing some sort of a circus show with
Speaker 2: his skin painted blue, and it's very alarming. But I
Speaker 2: did like the scene where he comes backstage and there's
Speaker 2: this skinny clown, a guy in clown makeup standing in
Speaker 2: the background, and then Socrates is wiping his blue paint
Speaker 2: off and Tony Anthony's like a striker's like, hey, how
Speaker 2: you doing. He's like, how does it look like I'm doing?
Speaker 2: And I thought that was pretty good?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, he's your strong man for the heightst
Speaker 2: is going to be this old guy with heart problems,
Speaker 2: but it's also still somehow a legit strong man who
Speaker 2: can and should be going on dangerous missions into enemy
Speaker 2: cult territory.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a little bit confusing there, but also okay,
Speaker 3: so what is the relationship between him and the trapeze artist?
Speaker 3: Liz was his daughter? Is that right?
Speaker 2: Unknown daughter lover coworker. I mean, it's so underdeveloped, it
Speaker 2: could be anything I could.
Speaker 3: They may have said, but I didn't catch it. For
Speaker 3: some reason. He was like, I'll do it for Liz.
Speaker 3: You know, It's like he would go on this mission
Speaker 3: because I think if.
Speaker 2: The bluestone man Socrates, Yes, sorry what I thought you meant?
Speaker 2: What's his relationship to too? What's what's Liz's relationship to
Speaker 2: Tony Anthony? But you know what Liz's relationship to Socrates
Speaker 2: is Socrates? Is she his daughter? No idea, I think
Speaker 2: she will, so.
Speaker 3: Like she he goes on the mission because he's like, uh,
Speaker 3: if I get the money from this mission, even if
Speaker 3: I die, Liz will get the money. And I'm doing
Speaker 3: it all for Liz. And then we meet Liz and
Speaker 3: she's doing a trapeze act in three D. And then
Speaker 3: they're standing there together and it's like, okay, we're in
Speaker 3: I think she's his daughter. Okay, that's all, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fair enough. There's a once they get the crew together,
Speaker 2: there is that great scene where they go through the
Speaker 2: planning and they have an epic model prepared of the
Speaker 2: castle and the inside of the castle and the room.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you want to get into that yet,
Speaker 2: but that's a pretty amazing sequence it is.
Speaker 3: It's a long scene explaining the plant, like Ed and
Speaker 3: the Professor explained the heist plan. Basically, we learned that
Speaker 3: the room in which brother Jonah stores the crowns is
Speaker 3: Scrooge McDuck's vault, complete with like nine different kinds of
Speaker 3: security systems. They got lasers, they got touched sensitive floor.
Speaker 3: It's very much the from De Palma's mission Impossible movie,
Speaker 3: The First Mission Impossible movie with Tom Cruise. You remember
Speaker 3: the scene with the air gap CIA terminal where they
Speaker 3: have to go in on the wires. So they're doing
Speaker 3: something like that here. But somehow in this scene while
Speaker 3: they're doing the plan it devolves into psychedelic visions from
Speaker 3: the key, like the keys flying around again, and there's
Speaker 3: wind and fire and lightning, and everybody's like seeing mods
Speaker 3: and like goat heads with snakes and stuff and uh.
Speaker 3: And then Liz after it's all over, goes what happened?
Speaker 3: And JT. Striker says it was nothing unless you believe
Speaker 3: in ghosts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, says the man who began the picture being tormented
Speaker 2: by ghosts and wild animals for like twenty minutes.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There's also a scene in the planning sequence where they're like,
Speaker 2: how are we going to get in with the you know,
Speaker 2: the electric gate and the floor and so forth, And
Speaker 2: then Tony Anthony strolls up and he like throws some
Speaker 2: sort of toys been messing around with on the table
Speaker 2: and he says we'll fly in, And I was thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: maybe he means they're going to use that weird key
Speaker 2: that was making stuff fly over all over the place
Speaker 2: and they're going to use that. No, he's just talking
Speaker 2: about using trapeze equipment.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, uh so. Oh man, So let's get
Speaker 3: into the heist. They sneak into the castle. The action
Speaker 3: part of the heist is after some general sneaking and
Speaker 3: like a lock disarming and stuff, the action part of
Speaker 3: the heist is I thought interminable, just infinite rope dangling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they start setting this up and they spare you
Speaker 2: none of it. You want to see each character get
Speaker 2: into their harness, you know, and secure their harness around
Speaker 2: their crotch. Then that's exactly what we're gonna watch. We
Speaker 2: get to what we watch so much of that, and
Speaker 2: then we start hoisting everyone up one by one to
Speaker 2: the ceiling of this large you know, sort of basketball
Speaker 2: arena size or you know, cathedral size space, and start
Speaker 2: hoisting everyone across the ceiling. And there are lots They
Speaker 2: managed to fit in some three D shots there as well.
Speaker 2: There are people that, you know, the rope slips and
Speaker 2: they plummet a little bit towards the camera, or they're
Speaker 2: just repelling their crotch towards the camera a bit. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of that during the sequence. It feels like
Speaker 2: the the longest climbing sequence ever committed to cinema, even
Speaker 2: though it's only a portion of the film and not
Speaker 2: like it's not a mountain climbing movie.
Speaker 3: And there's there's comedy moments where Ed is supposed to
Speaker 3: like zip down a rope line and he's like, no,
Speaker 3: but I'm a nerd, and you know, he gets to
Speaker 3: the end and he's.
Speaker 2: Like, oh wow, yeah, he winds up upside down.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Meanwhile, oh, brother Jonas is doing a whole ritual,
Speaker 3: like he's invited all these people to the fortress for
Speaker 3: the ninety days indoctrination. I guess they just wanted to
Speaker 3: try it out, try it out for ninety days free
Speaker 3: of indoctrination. And so, you know, he's doing these weird
Speaker 3: things where he has all his cultists in their red
Speaker 3: robes walking around in this cathedral room while people in
Speaker 3: regular clothes are seated on the floor in the middle
Speaker 3: and he's preaching at them. And then at one point
Speaker 3: he has all his goons cut locks of hair from
Speaker 3: the women who are visiting there, and then he places
Speaker 3: all the hair in like a baptismal font and then
Speaker 3: lights the hair on fire and the hair explodes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, solid at least it's involving everybody, Okay.
Speaker 3: Uh huh. And he at one point he does staged healing.
Speaker 3: There's a woman who's we learned, pretending to be diseased,
Speaker 3: and he leans over her, holds a gleaming, heated knife
Speaker 3: to her face, and all the cultists are like rattling
Speaker 3: these strange objects. I don't know exactly what they're, like
Speaker 3: tubes with sticks in them or something, and they're rattling them.
Speaker 3: And brother Jonas places the hot knife on the sick
Speaker 3: woman's forehead and it leaves an X and he says,
Speaker 3: heal this girl, take away her pain. Meanwhile, aggressive tambourine
Speaker 3: men charge into the congregation, like jabbing bells and jingle
Speaker 3: jangles in everybody's faces.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then the sequence goes nowhere because we get
Speaker 2: the wink and the nod that it's a fake exorcism
Speaker 2: or a fake healing whatever at the end, which seems
Speaker 2: like a missed opportunity because isn't again, the whole situation
Speaker 2: supposed to be that this cult leader has access to
Speaker 2: super powerful artifacts that make him a danger to the world,
Speaker 2: Like shouldn't he be doing something a little more elaborate
Speaker 2: to pull in the believers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you would think so. You would think that the
Speaker 3: crowns would be giving him real magic power and he
Speaker 3: would be using that. Yeah, okay, But meanwhile, back in
Speaker 3: the crown room, so that the getting across the room
Speaker 3: on the ropes takes forever. But when you finally get
Speaker 3: to the end where they're getting up to the statue
Speaker 3: that's holding the crown, so like the crowns are settled
Speaker 3: on top of this large statue at the at the
Speaker 3: end of the hall. I would describe it as a
Speaker 3: seated crusader goro with two heads. One of the goro
Speaker 3: because it's got four arms, it's wearing kind of I
Speaker 3: don't know, medieval clothes. One of the heads is a
Speaker 3: hornet goat and the other is also a horned goat,
Speaker 3: and snakes shoot out from behind the goatthead. Goro thrown
Speaker 3: in the shape of a star, and each goat head
Speaker 3: has one of the crowns.
Speaker 2: I love this two headed, four armed goat idol. I
Speaker 2: think it's probably my favorite actor in the film. I
Speaker 2: think this basic design would look great on any heavy
Speaker 2: metal metal album cover or T shirt out there.
Speaker 3: I agree it looks cool, but there's still just a
Speaker 3: lot of hanging from straps and doodling around while they're
Speaker 3: getting up to it. Eventually they do approach the crowns.
Speaker 3: JT lands on the statue pedestal. This trigger This is
Speaker 3: where things go go really wrong. This triggers a spike
Speaker 3: trap that shoots spikes out of the floor. One of
Speaker 3: them hits Rick and kills Rick. Then JT gets shot
Speaker 3: in the face by steam and then the alarm goes
Speaker 3: off and Brother Jonas in the middle of the indoctrination ceremony,
Speaker 3: he cries out the crowns. The crowns and all occultists
Speaker 3: rushed to the room.
Speaker 2: Now, did Socrates dive a heart attack? Yet? That also happens?
Speaker 3: Oh, that does have I don't know if that happened
Speaker 3: before this or after. Maybe before Yeah, I think he
Speaker 3: falls down. He's like dangling from a rope and then
Speaker 3: he's like ah, and Liz is very sad.
Speaker 2: So we're down to just Striker and Liz. Really at
Speaker 2: this point, I know there's still Ed oh, Ed still
Speaker 2: on the game, that's right. But then Ed goes down
Speaker 2: to the statue I think to help Striker maybe, but
Speaker 2: he gets killed by a deadly snake hug Like the
Speaker 2: snake things jutting out from behind the statue curl around
Speaker 2: and grab him, and then one of them bites him.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, this this thing is loaded with all
Speaker 2: sorts of crazy illogical traps and triggers that of course
Speaker 2: are gonna cause sharp things and poiny things and tooth
Speaker 2: things to come flying at the camera.
Speaker 3: But here's where things start going really unbelievably weird. So
Speaker 3: Striker gets back up to he like opens up the
Speaker 3: two crowns and the gyms are exposed from the golden balls,
Speaker 3: and he grabs the two gems at the same time,
Speaker 3: and at first it looks like he's gonna barf, but
Speaker 3: instead his head starts spinning fully, spinning around about fifty times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a bad Exorcist ripoff gag, but done just yeah,
Speaker 2: multiple times. We don't just see it once, we get
Speaker 2: to watch it. Oh we're over again. Just take it
Speaker 2: all in.
Speaker 3: And he turns around. So the cultists are like running
Speaker 3: into the room. They're there to, I guess, kill him
Speaker 3: and Liz for invading their compound. And then JT turns
Speaker 3: around and he's two face now, like half of his
Speaker 3: face is monsterfied.
Speaker 2: I guess the idea is that he's supposed to be
Speaker 2: half good and half evil. Now, so one side his
Speaker 2: monster one side's not. Reminds me a little bit of
Speaker 2: the half female, half male asymmetry in the Bathomet statue.
Speaker 2: You know, the goat creature that we've talked about on
Speaker 2: the show before.
Speaker 3: Hmm, okay, well, whatever it is. He's growning like igor
Speaker 3: in the monster mash, and then he gets flamethrower hands.
Speaker 3: Apparently that's what the Gems do, is they give you
Speaker 3: flamethrower hands, and he's just like squirting jets of flame
Speaker 3: at the cultists and Brother Jonas. All of their guns explode,
Speaker 3: flaming boulders fly out of nowhere, and Brother Jonas is
Speaker 3: he melting? Yes, that's right, he is melting.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's definitely one of those moments where you really
Speaker 2: respect the melting scenes and Raiders and Devil's Rain because
Speaker 2: they make it look easy. This film really shows you
Speaker 2: how hard it is to make it at all believable,
Speaker 2: because yeah, it's this obvious Brother Jonas sculpture that's like
Speaker 2: not even fully melting. We just kind of like slowly crumbling,
Speaker 2: and you get the feeling there might be somebody jabbing
Speaker 2: a stick up in there to make things fall apart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are chunks falling out of him, the paint's
Speaker 3: peeling a little bit, and he's got lasers coming out
Speaker 3: of his face or maybe going into his face. That
Speaker 3: wasn't clear to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like they couldn't decide on what method of destruction
Speaker 2: made sense, so they just went with all of them.
Speaker 3: But so I think the cultists are defeated, and then
Speaker 3: there's fire everywhere and triumphant music. But then there's like, uh, oh,
Speaker 3: so Liz is still there, hanging from the ropes, and
Speaker 3: it's like, is JT. Striker now going to turn his
Speaker 3: flamethrower hands on Liz? And it looks for a second
Speaker 3: like he is, But no he, I guess, like the
Speaker 3: good part of him wins and he resists and he
Speaker 3: grabs the two balls from the crowns and collapses screaming.
Speaker 2: I couldn't help but think a lot about Raiders again,
Speaker 2: and all of this because, of course, in the climax
Speaker 2: of Raiders of the Lost Dark, Indiana Jones and Oh
Speaker 2: what'sh what's your name? Marion are are captive. They're held
Speaker 2: captive by the Nazis. The Nazis then make a big
Speaker 2: show of opening up the Arc on this island, and
Speaker 2: then the Wrath of God destroys all of the Nazis.
Speaker 2: This film is kind of like they're like, well, what
Speaker 2: if Indiana Jones had opened had beat the Nazis to
Speaker 2: it and opened the arc and then like the power
Speaker 2: of the Arc turned Indiana Jones into a flamethrower monster
Speaker 2: that then destroyed all the Nazis.
Speaker 3: What if he becomes the flamethrower Angel of Death?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which would have been a terrible choice, don't
Speaker 2: I don't even think Spielberg and Lucas could have made
Speaker 2: that work. They made the absolute perfect choice in Raiders
Speaker 2: of the Lost Ark. They go in a different direction
Speaker 2: in this film.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, but he's not, like, so he's not
Speaker 3: flamethrower hands forever. He stops doing that, and he like
Speaker 3: wakes up and he is now d two faced. He's
Speaker 3: back to normal, and Striker and Liz hug and they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: we made it, We're all right. Of course, Liz mourns
Speaker 3: the Socrates, I guess her father. She mourns him, and
Speaker 3: then they ate the radio's beeping and they call the chopper,
Speaker 3: they're ready for extraction. And then this genuinely made me
Speaker 3: laugh out loud, this gentle kind of music that lets
Speaker 3: you know the conflict is over the kind that we
Speaker 3: be playing, and you know, as the heroes like right
Speaker 3: off into the sunset and in slow motion instead it's
Speaker 3: over a three D shot that's a close up of
Speaker 3: like the gun barrel for a grappling line. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: they go up to the roof and it's like, did
Speaker 3: you get the crowns? And can you imagine the magic,
Speaker 3: the power, the potential benefit to mankind. But then I
Speaker 3: think Striker, like what does he to see? Like throw
Speaker 3: the gems and back in the fire.
Speaker 2: It's like there's the flaming bones of Brother Jonas and
Speaker 2: he just kind of like throws them next to the fire,
Speaker 2: Like he kind of throws them into the fire, but
Speaker 2: not in a very convincing way like like oh like
Speaker 2: not in like we must destroy these so nobody can
Speaker 2: use their power. He's just kind of like, so I
Speaker 2: don't want these, and then yeah, tosses them over there.
Speaker 3: So they get to the choppa. But then we zoom
Speaker 3: in on the Brother Jonah's skeleton and it's still smoking
Speaker 3: and then we hear a heartbeat and then there is
Speaker 3: the most out of nowhere stinger. Could you make sense
Speaker 3: of this ending to me? So there's like we're somewhere
Speaker 3: else now there's this throbbing wad coming up out of
Speaker 3: the water in a swamp, and then it's got pharyngeal
Speaker 3: jaws that jab out at the camera and then that's
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like as best I could piece it together,
Speaker 2: like suddenly in a swamp somewhere else, brother Jonas is
Speaker 2: resurrected as some sort of like a rotten dea or
Speaker 2: a swamp thing due to the I guess, to the treasures.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's like they're setting up I love
Speaker 2: it when they set up a sequel that never comes
Speaker 2: to fruition with just kind of a you know, a
Speaker 2: wacky tease like this, but I'm not even quite sure
Speaker 2: what to make of it all. It gives us one
Speaker 2: last zoom at the camera three D jump scare, I.
Speaker 3: Guess meanwhile in klid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's a great note to end this film
Speaker 2: on because you get this insane ending anyway, and then
Speaker 2: just this extra little scoop of the of the weird
Speaker 2: right on the end, just to leave you, send you
Speaker 2: out into the world, out into the daylight, with just
Speaker 2: one more thing to try and figure out about the plot.
Speaker 3: Do you think they were trying to set up a sequel?
Speaker 2: Sort of maybe, But also I think as simple as
Speaker 2: just like we need one more thing, isn't there something
Speaker 2: else we could do to jab the audience in the
Speaker 2: eye one more time to send them home happy?
Speaker 3: What if we showed a pot of popcorn popping and
Speaker 3: the popcorn was popping up into the camera lens. Oh,
Speaker 3: that reminds me one last thing. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you noticed the same thing I did. I have never
Speaker 3: seen a movie where there was so much crud stuck
Speaker 3: to the camera lens. While yeah, nearly every scene, there
Speaker 3: is something that is consistent across shots, like stuck. You
Speaker 3: can telt stuck to the lens, And I think, I
Speaker 3: don't know, this must have been because they were constantly
Speaker 3: throwing stuff at the camera for these three D shots.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I will drive home again that we did not have
Speaker 2: access to the Blu Ray, so I don't know if
Speaker 2: this is the case on that new Blu Ray edition
Speaker 2: that's out there. But I don't know. I mean I
Speaker 2: like a little bit of grime on the camera, camera lens,
Speaker 2: or some you know, some decay on the footage and
Speaker 2: so forth sometimes, So it didn't really bother me, but
Speaker 2: it was noticeable.
Speaker 3: This movie belongs in a museum.
Speaker 2: Or put into a crate and sent into a big
Speaker 2: giant space with a bunch of other big warehouse. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: one of the two. But it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Like like I said, this film is a real head scratcher.
Speaker 2: So if you're if you're into the B cinema and uh,
Speaker 2: you know, quote unquote so bad it's good films or
Speaker 2: just sort of cannon excess, then I think the Treasure
Speaker 2: of the Four Crowns is up your alley.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fortune and glory.
Speaker 2: All right. So that's the the first of three three
Speaker 2: D pictures we're gonna be doing. What are we What
Speaker 2: are we going to do next time? Will it? Will
Speaker 2: it be Prometheus? Will it be Emmanuel four? I don't know.
Speaker 2: You're just gonna have to have to wait around and
Speaker 2: find out or or you know, we'll probably make up
Speaker 2: our mind and have a hint about it on our
Speaker 2: profile on our list at letterboxed. Uh, let's U L E. T.
Speaker 2: T E R B O x D dot com. We
Speaker 2: have a profile there. We have a list of all
Speaker 2: the films that we've covered on Weird House Cinema, and
Speaker 2: sometimes we'll have a peak ahead what we're going to
Speaker 2: cover next. I also block about these movies at simmutomusic
Speaker 2: dot com. Reminder that we're primarily a science podcast, with
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays core episodes, but on Fridays
Speaker 2: we set aside most serious concerns and just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird film here on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our audio producer Jjposway. If you would
Speaker 3: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 3: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 3: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 3: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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