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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And for today's Halloween season

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Speaker 3: Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking about a bizarre, meandering,

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Speaker 3: I think fascinating horror film called Messiah of Evil from

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Speaker 3: the filmmaking duo Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, shot in

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Speaker 3: 1971 and released in 73. Also known under different titles

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Speaker 3: at various points, it was at one point promoted under

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Speaker 3: the legal action-inducing title Return of the Living Dead. But

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Speaker 3: also its most charming alternate title, I think, is Dead People.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, when I looked this film up in the Psychotronic

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Speaker 2: Film Guide, I looked up Messiah of Evil under M's,

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Speaker 2: and then there's Messiah of Evil, and it just says,

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Speaker 2: see dead people. And then you have to go to

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Speaker 2: the listing for dead people, but I love that, see

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Speaker 2: dead people.

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Speaker 3: Really good.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so many titles for this film, and it was,

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Speaker 2: I think by most accounts, not a hit, but it

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Speaker 2: has certainly acquired a well-earned cult following over the decades.

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Speaker 2: with many now championing it as a true gem of

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Speaker 2: weird 70s filmmaking. I had not seen it before. I

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Speaker 2: just sort of heard of it by reputation, and I'm

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Speaker 2: glad I finally got a chance.

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Speaker 3: To watch it. Yeah, that's my impression as well. When

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Speaker 3: it was first released, I think it was not seen

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Speaker 3: by a whole lot of people, and I think reviews

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Speaker 3: were mixed. But now, yeah, it seems like it's become

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Speaker 3: a retrospective darling, and I can see why. So I

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Speaker 3: thought I might start with a quick summary of the

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Speaker 3: plot to a large extent there isn't a plot what

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Speaker 3: plot is there is just some loose connective tissue to

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Speaker 3: kind of get us from one weird scene to the

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Speaker 3: next but the premise is this there is a young

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Speaker 3: woman named Arletty Arletty Lang who drives out to a

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Speaker 3: small coastal town in California called Point Dune and I

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Speaker 3: think it is Point Dune even though in some sources

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Speaker 3: they call it Point Doom and.

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Speaker 2: It sounds like doom in the movie at times.

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Speaker 3: Yes. And there is a real point doom in California.

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Speaker 3: So I think that this might actually just be a

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Speaker 3: play on the fact that there was a point doom.

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Speaker 3: So they called it point doom to, you know, and

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Speaker 3: it sounds so close, it actually gets confused. But anyway,

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Speaker 3: she goes to point doom to visit her father, a

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Speaker 3: well-known painter and visual artist named Joseph Lang, from whom

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Speaker 3: she has been estranged for some time. And when she

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Speaker 3: gets into town, she finds his house empty, and not

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Speaker 3: like he moved out. It's like he just got up

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Speaker 3: and left in the middle of the night, all his

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Speaker 3: stuff strewn out everywhere. And she finds his diary full

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Speaker 3: of entries describing nightmares about a blood moon and the

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Speaker 3: end of the world, about a dark presence that approaches

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Speaker 3: from the sea, and ominous gatherings of people on the

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Speaker 3: beaches at night, people who seem to be waiting in

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Speaker 3: the sand and watching for something.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, people becoming animals, dark shadows, that.

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Speaker 3: Sort of thing. Yeah. So searching for answers, Arletty asks

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Speaker 3: around town, and she has a sequence of weird encounters

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Speaker 3: with locals and other visitors alike, eventually becoming acquainted with

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Speaker 3: a trio of bohemian libertine travelers named Laura, Tom, and Tony.

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Speaker 3: They end up moving into her father's house with her.

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Speaker 3: I don't know if it's even really with her permission.

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Speaker 3: They're just kind of there at some point. And then

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Speaker 3: we follow these characters as events in Point Dune become

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Speaker 3: increasingly disturbing and unreal. And the out-of-towners start one by

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Speaker 3: one having run-ins with mobs of people who appear to

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Speaker 3: be kind of stuck between life and death. These people

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Speaker 3: who weep blood and hunger for meat and including not

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Speaker 3: just animal meat. There's some cannibalism involved.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes this film is described very loosely as a

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Speaker 2: zombie movie, and these people are described as zombies. But

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Speaker 2: I would hesitate to firmly call it such. We're in

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Speaker 2: some other type of weird, ambiguous zone here with these guys.

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Speaker 3: I was actually going to bring this question up in

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Speaker 3: a bit, but we can address it now. So, yeah,

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Speaker 3: what are the flesh-eating townspeople of the movie? I've seen

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Speaker 3: critics debate the point of whether they're zombies or not.

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Speaker 3: To look at the pros and cons, they do eat

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Speaker 3: human flesh. Mm-hmm. They do mob people like zombies. It's very,

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Speaker 3: you know, like you would see in later movies like

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Speaker 3: Day of the Dead, or I guess earlier movies like

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Speaker 3: Night of the Living Dead.

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Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.

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Speaker 3: Um, they do not seem to be re animated corpses.

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Speaker 3: It's not like in night of the living dead where

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Speaker 3: people get up out of their graves and come walk

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Speaker 3: the earth looking for flesh, but they do seem. Half dead.

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Speaker 3: They've got discolored flesh. Like there's blue makeup on them usually. Uh,

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Speaker 3: and they've got blood running out of their eyes. They

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Speaker 3: sometimes shamble, but other times they run and they seem

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Speaker 3: fully alive and even athletic, like hot blooded humans. However,

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Speaker 3: there are lines, just general lines about the dead rising.

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Speaker 3: For example, there's that scene with Elisha Cook Jr. where

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Speaker 3: he tells Arletty not to bury her father, but to

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Speaker 3: burn his body because the suggestion is if she buries him,

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Speaker 3: he's just going to come right back.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So, again, we have to sort of go

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Speaker 2: back to the fact that this film is going to

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Speaker 2: be a little light on the connective tissue. But, yeah,

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Speaker 2: I kind of thought of them less as, yeah, not

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Speaker 2: the reanimated dead, but more people to whom a catastrophic

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Speaker 2: revelation has been revealed. And that revelation makes you just

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Speaker 2: sort of cast aside all of these illusions that you

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Speaker 2: had in life and now realize, you know, it's just

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Speaker 2: all about eating meat, whatever kind of meat you can

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Speaker 2: get your hands on and, and following the dark master.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well I get in that regard, it's

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Speaker 3: kind of like in the mouth of madness when people

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Speaker 3: read the book and then start crying blood.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: This film, there are a lot of comparisons to be

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Speaker 2: made between it and in the mouth of madness. Um,

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Speaker 2: just by virtue of maybe some of the things that

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Speaker 2: inspired both films, um, And then some of the set

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Speaker 2: pieces that are involved. So basically, I'm just saying, if

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Speaker 2: you like one, check out the other.

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Speaker 3: So a bunch of characters in this movie get eaten.

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Speaker 3: And then Arletty, our heroine, clearly feels that she is

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Speaker 3: hurtling ever closer to some terrible revelation about her father.

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Speaker 3: Like there's one part where She's confronted with a body

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Speaker 3: by the police that is alleged to be the body

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Speaker 3: of her father, but then she later says she doesn't

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Speaker 3: think it was really him. So there's a question of

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Speaker 3: how the story with her father will resolve. There is

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Speaker 3: this issue of the watchers on the beach. What are

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Speaker 3: they waiting for? What's going to come to them about

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Speaker 3: the thing that's going to return from the ocean? And

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Speaker 3: eventually it ends in a big climax that I doesn't

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Speaker 3: answer most of these questions, but, uh, we'll at least

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Speaker 3: give you some pretty weird stuff to watch. Uh, so

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Speaker 3: like I said, the movie is not really about the plot. Uh,

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Speaker 3: instead the audience is being asked to rub the fur.

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Speaker 3: This is a rub the fur movie. It is a

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Speaker 3: parade of pleasingly weird, frightening, funny, bizarre images and situations.

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Speaker 3: And I think the goal of the filmmakers was to

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Speaker 3: conjure a sense of dread through place and atmosphere. And

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Speaker 3: that's very much what they do. So it's a unique

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Speaker 3: film in many ways, but if, uh, if I had

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Speaker 3: to compare it to other movies in the same zone,

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Speaker 3: I'd say, uh, Fulci gates of hell trilogy, definitely, especially

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Speaker 3: like city of the living dead. Uh, though of course

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Speaker 3: those come later. So they're definitely not an influence on this.

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Speaker 3: If anything, this might be an influence on them though.

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Speaker 3: This was pretty obscure. So I don't know if Fulci

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Speaker 3: ever saw it, but, uh, certainly, uh, the, the gates

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Speaker 3: of hell movies, uh, night of the living dead also, uh,

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Speaker 3: John Carpenter's The Fog. There's a little bit of that

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Speaker 3: in here. And then a dash of Manos' The Hands

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Speaker 3: of Fate. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think all of those are solid references for sure.

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Speaker 2: It was very much reminded of Fulci for sure, as

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Speaker 2: well as early and sometimes later works of John Carpenter.

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Speaker 2: Messiah of Evil is just an intense, disturbing dream that

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Speaker 2: doesn't seem to end. And I mean that in a

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Speaker 2: good way. The film doesn't feel overlong. But there's this

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Speaker 2: great drawn-out, qualudic energy to the scenes combined with the

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Speaker 2: surrealist elements and the weird choices and pacing and plotting.

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Speaker 2: It makes it feel like a dream you're on the

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Speaker 2: cusp of waking from in the early morning, but you

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Speaker 2: can't quite shake. It keeps kind of drifting, you know,

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Speaker 2: how sometimes the dream will keep coming back to it.

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Speaker 2: And you never completely return to a real solid plot line.

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Speaker 2: You end up with all this meandering stuff, but it's

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Speaker 2: still kind of the same dream. That's sort of the

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Speaker 2: way this felt for me.

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Speaker 3: I was going to say the exact same thing about

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Speaker 3: the dreaminess of it. It has that wandering, meandering quality

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Speaker 3: of dreams, the way you just kind of end up

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Speaker 3: going from one thing to another in a way that

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Speaker 3: doesn't fully make sense. Things seem to arise for their

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Speaker 3: imagistic significance instead of being like causally following from the

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Speaker 3: thing before. Mm-hmm. I did. So the reason I compared

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Speaker 3: it to Carpenters, the fog is, of course, the atmosphere

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Speaker 3: of the coastal town in California where there's this sinister

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Speaker 3: force taking over from the water. So it feels very

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Speaker 3: much like the fog and that way I'm pretty sure

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Speaker 3: the fog comes later also. Yeah, certainly the fog comes later.

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Speaker 3: Night of the Living Dead was earlier than this, of course.

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Speaker 3: So in that comparison, it's because of the kind of wet,

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Speaker 3: visceral revision of what movie horror meant with Night of

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Speaker 3: the Living Dead. So, you know, night is often credited

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Speaker 3: with moving things away from the Gothic and the ethereal

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Speaker 3: and horror into the physical and the modern. And then finally,

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Speaker 3: I say Manos, the hands of fate, because it has

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Speaker 3: a bit of that, that grungy last known photograph cinema

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Speaker 3: of no cinema quality. I do not compare it to

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Speaker 3: Manos in the sense that it's poorly or incompetently made,

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Speaker 3: which it is not at all. It's like full of

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Speaker 3: creativity and experimental energy and, Some people might even say

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Speaker 3: student film energy, though sometimes that comes with negative connotations,

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Speaker 3: and I don't mean any negative connotations here. But it is,

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Speaker 3: I think, fair to say student film in a lot

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Speaker 3: of ways, because at the time this was made, the filmmakers,

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Speaker 3: Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, they were both only a

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Speaker 3: few years out of film school, though I think Huyck

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Speaker 3: At least Huyck didn't graduate. He went to USC film

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Speaker 3: school and dropped out. And Katz, I believe, went to

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Speaker 3: UCLA film school. I don't know if she graduated or not.

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Speaker 3: But they'd both recently been film students.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, very much part of that scene.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. And were friends with George Lucas and worked together

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Speaker 3: with George Lucas, as we'll talk about later. So, yeah,

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Speaker 3: that late 60s, early 70s, new Hollywood LA film school scene.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And we'll get into some of the folks

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Speaker 2: that these guys were peers with. But I love the

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Speaker 2: sense of an early 70s apocalypse to this film. I

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Speaker 2: was a child of the 80s. I was a teen

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Speaker 2: of the 90s. But I was born in the 1970s.

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Speaker 2: And this probably says a lot about the media that

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Speaker 2: I tend to gravitate to, especially on Weird House Cinema. Obviously,

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Speaker 2: we're going to be nostalgic for the films and the

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Speaker 2: music that shaped us in our formative years. But there's

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Speaker 2: always something intriguing about the decade that spawned us, especially

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Speaker 2: if you're someone like me, who, since I was born

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Speaker 2: in 78, I don't have any memories of the 70s,

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Speaker 2: but I know that I came out of the 70s.

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Speaker 2: All of my earliest memories are going to be, you know,

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Speaker 2: vaguely from the early 80s. And so the music and

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Speaker 2: films of the 70s often feel like some sort of

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Speaker 2: dark fantasy realm from which I emerged and maybe to

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Speaker 2: which I'm somehow destined to return. You know, its horrors

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Speaker 2: are the horrors that I was shielded from. Its sexuality

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Speaker 2: is the sexuality that spawned me. Its anxieties inform my

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Speaker 2: own anxieties. And I'm I'm quick to see its reflection

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Speaker 2: in our contemporary times. And Messiah of Evil, I think just,

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Speaker 2: it does a fabulous job of, I mean, obviously of

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Speaker 2: presenting the early 70s. It is very much a product

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Speaker 2: of the early 70s. And, you know, almost like a

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Speaker 2: time capsule in some ways of certain particular details, especially

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Speaker 2: of 1971 California.

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Speaker 3: I'm glad you said that last part. I want to

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Speaker 3: come back to that in just a minute.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. And I'll have a lot more to say about

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Speaker 2: some of the Particular especially the locations that we have

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Speaker 2: in this film, but there's several key locations that they

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Speaker 2: feel absolutely early 70s You know again time capsule and everything,

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Speaker 2: but they also feel completely pristine In part like they've

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Speaker 2: been preserved in a time capsule, you know But also

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Speaker 2: it illuminated with the full spectrum of modernity's light, you

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Speaker 2: know it it fires up many of the same circuits

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Speaker 2: this film does that other 70s films do like blue

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Speaker 2: sunshine or even death moon and But really becomes something

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Speaker 2: else for me, at least via this surreal dreamlike Fulci

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Speaker 2: vibe where you have this like weird juxtaposition of gleaming

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Speaker 2: gas station chrome, but also the patina of sweat on

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Speaker 2: youthful 70s flesh. I don't know. It kind of has

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Speaker 2: this strange feel of being like antique, but also very

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Speaker 2: modern and new, which, of course, it was when it

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Speaker 2: was filmed in 1971. But, yeah, it just it kind

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Speaker 2: of seems to have like a foot in two different

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Speaker 2: worlds here. And I love it.

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Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I can see what you're saying there in

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Speaker 3: multiple ways. I mean, in one sense, of course, from

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Speaker 3: our perspective, these things are from a time before we

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Speaker 3: were born. So they seem old to us, but they

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Speaker 3: were new at the time they were shot. So they're

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Speaker 3: still in very good condition. They look very clean, gleaming.

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Speaker 3: But also, I think there are just some things about

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Speaker 3: like the popular color palettes in a lot of consumer

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Speaker 3: goods at the time. It's just were in the, in

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Speaker 3: pairing that with like the quality of the films used

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Speaker 3: at the time, just make everything look old in a

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Speaker 3: certain way. Everything that was photographed then, um, there, I

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Speaker 3: don't know, there's some natural interaction of the colors used

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Speaker 3: in the film used that gives this faded look to

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Speaker 3: the world. Um, despite the fact that, I mean, a

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Speaker 3: lot of the scenes in this movie are just popping

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Speaker 3: with color.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So again, they, they, they at once feel old

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Speaker 2: and new at the same time, you know, especially when

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Speaker 2: we start talking about the gas station.

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Speaker 3: That's a gas station. I love the gas station. So

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Speaker 3: definitely for me, one of the unique lingering impressions of

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Speaker 3: this movie comes from the way it combines two things.

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Speaker 3: You might say these are the two dominant forces fighting

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Speaker 3: to define the aesthetic of the film. One is apocalyptic, unnameable,

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Speaker 3: Lovecraftian dread. And the other is mainstream West Coast consumer

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Speaker 3: geography and architecture. So like there's an encounter at a

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Speaker 3: gas station in this movie and it's not an, it's

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Speaker 3: not a horror movie gas station. It's not an old

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Speaker 3: broken down gas station, you know, with the, you know,

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Speaker 3: tumbleweed blowing by. It's like a new pristine gas station

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Speaker 3: that looks like some, you know, I've actually seen some

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Speaker 3: essays online that compare it to gas stations that were

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Speaker 3: painted in works of pop art from the time by

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Speaker 3: like Ed Ruscha.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a mobile gas station and it feels just like,

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Speaker 2: like a showcase. It doesn't feel like this thing has

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Speaker 2: even been open at all. Like they got it in

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Speaker 2: shot before it was even used.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's, again, gleaming. There's also a scene at

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Speaker 3: a Ralph's that's gleaming in a similar way. And so, yeah,

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Speaker 3: so the scene at the Ralph's, there's this long shot

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Speaker 3: where the character Laura walks down the street of this

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Speaker 3: unfinished housing development. There's a scene at a movie theater

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Speaker 3: where we see the concession stand and all the candies.

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Speaker 3: And so we get all of these modern, familiar, even

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Speaker 3: kitschy consumer locations that rather than locations people normally think

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Speaker 3: of as spooky or dreadful. But what's happening in these

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Speaker 3: locations is so incongruous with our expectations. A big part

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Speaker 3: of the movie's effect is that it takes the moon-worshipping

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Speaker 3: cult of doom out of its natural narrative roost at

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Speaker 3: Stonehenge or an old castle in Europe, the places you

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Speaker 3: would normally think to set a horror movie like this,

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Speaker 3: and it makes them go shopping in the San Fernando Valley.

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Speaker 3: So it's like Nyarlathotep has got to stop and get

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Speaker 3: gas at this pristine new gas station. Or, you know,

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Speaker 3: you're getting the suggestion of Yog-Sothoth at the Ralphs.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. All right. Well, elevator

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Speaker 2: pitches for this one. I had a few that I

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Speaker 2: came up with. When there's no more room in hell,

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Speaker 2: the dead shall walk the 1970s. Look at rational existence

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Speaker 2: on the run in the 1970s. And then the 1970s

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Speaker 2: are not real and cannot hurt you. Uh, I, these

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Speaker 2: are all ones that may not make a lot of, uh,

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Speaker 2: a lot of objective sense, but they feel appropriate for

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Speaker 2: this movie. All right. Well, um, for those of you

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Speaker 2: out there wondering, well, how can I watch Messiah of evil? Uh, well,

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Speaker 2: widely available in a few different ways. Um, mainly you're

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Speaker 2: going to want the remastered version. Uh, I think the

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Speaker 2: remastered version, or at least a remastered version initially came

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Speaker 2: out in 2009 via the now sadly defunct code red remaster. Uh,

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Speaker 2: this is the one I think I'd seen on shelves

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Speaker 2: for a while. And then more recently, there's this 2023

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Speaker 2: radiance films, blu-ray. And this one I think is, is

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Speaker 2: probably the way to pick it up now on physical

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Speaker 2: media and to watch it in great quality.

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Speaker 3: I've got the radiance blu-ray, uh, Really enjoyed it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And it's got some good extras, too, that I'll talk

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Speaker 3: about as we get into talking about the connections. Excellent.

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Speaker 2: And if you're streaming it, I ended up streaming it

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Speaker 2: myself off of the excellent Eternal Family streaming app, which

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Speaker 2: is a great digital source for many of the sorts

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Speaker 2: of films we discuss on Weird House Cinema. That one

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Speaker 2: has certainly become my buddy on flights that I have

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Speaker 2: to take.

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Speaker 3: All right. Should we talk about the connections? I guess

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Speaker 3: we should start talking. We should probably talk about Willard

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Speaker 3: Hike and Gloria Katz together because they usually worked as

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Speaker 3: a team.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, pretty much always work together. So let's start

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Speaker 2: with Huyck. Willard Huyck, director, writer, born 1945, American writer

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Speaker 2: and director, who came up in the 60s as part

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Speaker 2: of this talented group of filmmakers that came out of

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Speaker 2: USC's School of Cinematic Arts. Sometimes I see him looped

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Speaker 2: into this list of dirty dozen, and this includes the

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Speaker 2: likes of George Lucas and Milius and others, with George

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Speaker 2: Lucas being, I think, the big connection here for Hike,

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Speaker 2: as we'll get to. This was Hike's first film, made

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Speaker 2: with his wife, Gloria Katz. He'd previously worked on the

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Speaker 2: screenplay for The Devils 8 and 69, along with Milius. Afterwards,

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Speaker 2: he worked with his wife on 73's American Graffiti, and

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Speaker 2: then 75's Lucky Lady, 79's more American Graffiti, 84's Indiana

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Speaker 2: Jones and the Temple of Doom, and and 94's Radio

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Speaker 2: Land Murders. As a director, he directed three more pictures,

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Speaker 2: 79's French Postcards, a drama, 84's Best Defense, a Dudley Moore,

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Speaker 2: Eddie Murphy comedy that I think famously did not land,

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Speaker 2: did not connect with folks. And then there's 1986's Howard

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Speaker 2: the Duck, a film that I have not seen since

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Speaker 2: my childhood, but one I remember enjoying quite a bit.

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Speaker 2: A Katz and Lucas produced big budget comic book movie,

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Speaker 2: with terrific industrial light and magic effects, including an amazing

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Speaker 2: Phil Tippett stop-motion monster. Yet adults at least famously hated

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Speaker 2: this movie, and I think this one was kind of

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Speaker 2: like the nail in the coffin of Hike's directorial career.

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Speaker 3: Howard the Duck is a notorious film, widely hated, one

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Speaker 3: that I would say... hated in a way that I

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Speaker 3: think it does not deserve. I haven't seen it in

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Speaker 3: a while, but years ago I saw it and I

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Speaker 3: remember I kind of liked it. You know, there's some

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Speaker 3: charming things about it. Like it's weird, but I don't know.

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Speaker 3: Don't we like weird movies now? Are we finally like, yeah. Um,

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Speaker 3: you know, uh, so, so I kind of like Howard

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Speaker 3: the duck. I actually, my, uh, I've got an old friend. My,

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Speaker 3: my friend Chuck really loves Howard the duck. He's like

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Speaker 3: a staunch defender of Howard the duck. Uh, so, so

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Speaker 3: I think this movie gets a lot of unfair hate.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Like I said, I remember liking it as a kid, though,

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Speaker 2: of course, as a kid, I also liked Leonard part six.

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Speaker 2: So I don't know. So I'll put the caveat by,

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Speaker 2: but I've been, I've wanted to re-explore Howard the Duck.

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Speaker 3: It might not hold up in every regard, but I

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Speaker 3: think it is more interesting and more fun than people

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Speaker 3: give it credit for. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: And hey, nothing else. I want to see that monster again.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: All right. Gloria Katz, also director, writer on this. 1942

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Speaker 2: through 2018 um writer and producer who worked extensively with

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Speaker 2: her husband and earned alongside him an oscar nomination for

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Speaker 2: american graffiti she also worked on its sequel she worked

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Speaker 2: on temple of doom best defense and howard the duck

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Speaker 2: and um among the various family connections on this film

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Speaker 2: this is one of those films you know scrappy first

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Speaker 2: film where you'll see the same last names over and

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00:22:20,380 --> 00:22:23,140
Speaker 2: over again because people were just bringing in like every

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Speaker 2: resource and family resource that at their disposal. So among

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Speaker 2: these various family connections, Gloria's brother, Stephen M. Katz, serves

401
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Speaker 2: as cinematographer on this film.

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Speaker 3: And I think ends up being one of the major

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Speaker 3: inputs on the aesthetic of the film.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, so that's Willard and Gloria, and they frequently collaborated.

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Speaker 3: They often worked as a team, even to the point

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Speaker 3: where I was listening to an interview. In fact, I'll

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Speaker 3: just go ahead and introduce it. So on the, uh,

409
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Speaker 3: Blu-ray disc that I have, there is an extra that's

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Speaker 3: an interview with Willard hike. This was after Gloria's death.

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Speaker 3: I think this interview took place in 2019. Uh, but

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Speaker 3: it was conducted by shout out to Mike white of

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Speaker 3: the projection booth podcast. So that's the interviewer here. Uh, but, uh,

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Speaker 3: hike in this interview says a bunch of things, but

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Speaker 3: one of them is that he and Gloria used to

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Speaker 3: work together, uh, writing together on the same computer with

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Speaker 3: two keyboards plugged into it. Oh, wow.

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Speaker 2: Whoa.

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Speaker 3: That sounds like you really got to have a good

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Speaker 3: working relationship with somebody.

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Speaker 2: Not every long-term couple has that kind of working relationship.

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Speaker 3: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Um, but are you ready to talk about a few

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Speaker 3: other interesting things from this interview?

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

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00:23:39,770 --> 00:23:39,950
Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: What do you got?

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Speaker 3: So a few things caught my attention. One is that

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00:23:43,869 --> 00:23:49,180
Speaker 3: hike was high school friends with another well-known filmmaker, the

431
00:23:49,320 --> 00:23:53,399
Speaker 3: late Curtis Hanson who directed LA confidential wonder boys, a

432
00:23:53,420 --> 00:23:56,740
Speaker 3: bunch of other famous movies. Um, and there's an interesting

433
00:23:56,840 --> 00:24:00,760
Speaker 3: thematic connection here, which is that Curtis Hanson was one

434
00:24:00,780 --> 00:24:04,830
Speaker 3: of the writers on the Dunwich horror movie from 1970,

435
00:24:04,830 --> 00:24:06,950
Speaker 3: which is a Lovecraft adaptation.

436
00:24:06,990 --> 00:24:09,090
Speaker 2: This is the one we watched. Yes. Yeah.

437
00:24:09,150 --> 00:24:12,270
Speaker 3: The one with, uh, the guy from, um, guy from

438
00:24:12,310 --> 00:24:13,649
Speaker 3: quantum leap was in it. Wasn't he?

439
00:24:14,350 --> 00:24:15,050
Speaker 2: Dean Stockwell.

440
00:24:15,390 --> 00:24:18,750
Speaker 3: Yes, that's it. So, uh, so, uh, I thought that

441
00:24:18,770 --> 00:24:22,420
Speaker 3: was interesting, of course, because of the overwhelming Lovecraftian vibes

442
00:24:22,600 --> 00:24:25,500
Speaker 3: of Messiah of Evil. And then this high school friend

443
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:29,020
Speaker 3: of Hikes, Curtis Hanson, also kicked his career off with

444
00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:33,159
Speaker 3: a Lovecraft adaptation, this time an explicit one, taking a

445
00:24:33,220 --> 00:24:36,870
Speaker 3: story and turning it into a movie. So Hikes says

446
00:24:36,930 --> 00:24:40,710
Speaker 3: that he and Hanson together made a 50-minute movie when

447
00:24:40,730 --> 00:24:43,290
Speaker 3: they were still in high school with an 8mm camera

448
00:24:43,310 --> 00:24:47,780
Speaker 3: that belonged to the father of a friend of theirs. Um, but, uh,

449
00:24:47,869 --> 00:24:51,080
Speaker 3: he explained, so hike explains that he got to know, uh,

450
00:24:51,740 --> 00:24:54,480
Speaker 3: George Lucas and Gloria Katz in his college years when

451
00:24:54,500 --> 00:24:56,440
Speaker 3: he was in California. So I think he was going

452
00:24:56,480 --> 00:25:00,200
Speaker 3: to USC and Gloria Katz was at the film department

453
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:03,930
Speaker 3: at UCLA. He says he met her. Here's another fun connection.

454
00:25:04,310 --> 00:25:07,109
Speaker 3: He met her one night when he and a friend

455
00:25:07,170 --> 00:25:10,950
Speaker 3: went over to UCLA to see a screening of Roger

456
00:25:10,970 --> 00:25:14,699
Speaker 3: Corman's the wild angels. And he says, quote, Corman was

457
00:25:14,720 --> 00:25:18,640
Speaker 3: sort of a god to us in those days. But

458
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 3: Gloria Katz was there and they met. So Huyck, soon

459
00:25:23,140 --> 00:25:26,140
Speaker 3: after this, quit film school to go straight to work

460
00:25:26,460 --> 00:25:30,740
Speaker 3: at AIP, American International Pictures, around 1968. So he gets

461
00:25:30,780 --> 00:25:33,960
Speaker 3: sucked into the Corman vortex. He says he was making

462
00:25:34,140 --> 00:25:38,590
Speaker 3: motorcycle movies and things like that. Really, he was working

463
00:25:38,650 --> 00:25:41,669
Speaker 3: as a reader at AIP at that time. So This

464
00:25:41,690 --> 00:25:45,240
Speaker 3: would be working in the story department under Lawrence Gordon, uh,

465
00:25:45,700 --> 00:25:49,580
Speaker 3: reading scripts and books for potential adaptation. This was a

466
00:25:49,600 --> 00:25:51,880
Speaker 3: job held by multiple up and comers at the time.

467
00:25:51,920 --> 00:25:54,740
Speaker 3: John Milius also worked in the story department of AIP

468
00:25:54,900 --> 00:25:58,010
Speaker 3: at the same time. Uh, and apparently hike worked, uh,

469
00:25:58,090 --> 00:26:01,179
Speaker 3: I think in the story department for witch finder general, uh,

470
00:26:01,210 --> 00:26:04,850
Speaker 3: if I remember correctly. Uh, but hike and cats got

471
00:26:04,869 --> 00:26:10,220
Speaker 3: married in 1969 and they became creative partners as well. Um, So,

472
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:13,879
Speaker 3: you know, they, they would write together and he talks

473
00:26:13,980 --> 00:26:18,100
Speaker 3: about the process of collaborating on screenplays. It it's something

474
00:26:18,119 --> 00:26:18,700
Speaker 3: I would think.

475
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:20,619
Speaker 2: I don't know.

476
00:26:20,640 --> 00:26:22,510
Speaker 3: He, he just talks about it. Like it wasn't, it

477
00:26:22,550 --> 00:26:24,850
Speaker 3: wasn't a problem. I would expect to hear more about

478
00:26:24,910 --> 00:26:28,510
Speaker 3: the challenges of working together and collaborating, but he's like, no, yeah,

479
00:26:28,530 --> 00:26:30,609
Speaker 3: your screenwriting is a good thing to do together. Uh,

480
00:26:31,470 --> 00:26:34,810
Speaker 3: he says that it, it, it lends itself to collaboration

481
00:26:34,930 --> 00:26:38,290
Speaker 3: more naturally than say, writing a novel or a piece

482
00:26:38,330 --> 00:26:41,280
Speaker 3: of fiction meant for the page. because he says, apart

483
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:45,540
Speaker 3: from the dialogue, quote, the words themselves aren't as important.

484
00:26:45,940 --> 00:26:48,639
Speaker 3: It's kind of more of a process of problem solving,

485
00:26:48,700 --> 00:26:51,379
Speaker 3: of the logic of figuring out what would be cool here,

486
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:54,859
Speaker 3: what happens next. And so he kind of describes it

487
00:26:54,940 --> 00:26:58,120
Speaker 3: as just not that difficult to approach screenwriting as a collaboration,

488
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:01,169
Speaker 3: at least in his experience with Gloria. And that was

489
00:27:01,190 --> 00:27:01,609
Speaker 3: cool to me.

490
00:27:01,850 --> 00:27:04,870
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, yeah. I can imagine that you're thinking about

491
00:27:04,890 --> 00:27:07,909
Speaker 2: like the structural nature of building out a screenplay and

492
00:27:08,660 --> 00:27:09,480
Speaker 2: In the different beats.

493
00:27:09,619 --> 00:27:14,100
Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay. So how did Messiah of Evil happen? He

494
00:27:14,140 --> 00:27:17,439
Speaker 3: tells the story that he and Gloria were approached by

495
00:27:17,960 --> 00:27:19,980
Speaker 3: an agent, or I think maybe it was their agent

496
00:27:20,180 --> 00:27:25,240
Speaker 3: at the time. Somebody approached them with a proposal that

497
00:27:25,350 --> 00:27:28,609
Speaker 3: there was some money going around looking for talent among

498
00:27:28,930 --> 00:27:33,619
Speaker 3: UCLA film students, young talent at the time. And the

499
00:27:33,720 --> 00:27:37,230
Speaker 3: idea was that they could get financing to make a movie,

500
00:27:37,530 --> 00:27:41,090
Speaker 3: make a low-budget movie around, I think, $ 90, 000 or $ 100, 000.

501
00:27:40,770 --> 00:27:44,369
Speaker 3: And the only condition was it had to be a

502
00:27:44,590 --> 00:27:49,870
Speaker 3: horror film. Now, they weren't naturally horror people, they say. Like,

503
00:27:49,970 --> 00:27:52,389
Speaker 3: that wasn't, you know, they weren't out there looking to

504
00:27:52,430 --> 00:27:55,149
Speaker 3: make a horror movie. But if money to make a

505
00:27:55,190 --> 00:27:57,359
Speaker 3: movie came attached to the condition that it had to

506
00:27:57,390 --> 00:27:59,919
Speaker 3: be horror, they were like, sure, yeah, sounds good. Yeah.

507
00:28:01,170 --> 00:28:04,350
Speaker 3: So they wrote a screenplay very quickly. They quickly put

508
00:28:04,390 --> 00:28:07,810
Speaker 3: together a crew. Again, they got Gloria's brother, Stephen Katz,

509
00:28:07,869 --> 00:28:12,990
Speaker 3: to shoot it. Hike shouts out several people who were

510
00:28:13,030 --> 00:28:16,430
Speaker 3: important here. He mentions the art directors and I think

511
00:28:16,490 --> 00:28:19,419
Speaker 3: production designer and art director who he says went on

512
00:28:19,480 --> 00:28:23,020
Speaker 3: to work on a bunch of Terrence Malick films. He

513
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:27,020
Speaker 3: also mentions that the film had two different editors. He

514
00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:32,520
Speaker 3: says that usually the way they're filmmaking collaboration broke down

515
00:28:32,580 --> 00:28:36,400
Speaker 3: was that they would you know totally work together when

516
00:28:36,460 --> 00:28:39,100
Speaker 3: writing and then he would do the bulk of the

517
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:43,660
Speaker 3: directing on set and gloria would be the producer though

518
00:28:43,790 --> 00:28:46,310
Speaker 3: there are some stories from the messiah of evil set

519
00:28:46,350 --> 00:28:49,070
Speaker 3: where it does sound like hike did most of the

520
00:28:49,210 --> 00:28:54,050
Speaker 3: onset directing though sometimes uh cats would in some scenes

521
00:28:54,110 --> 00:28:56,940
Speaker 3: kind of step in and do some directing work she

522
00:28:56,980 --> 00:29:00,140
Speaker 3: describes how just the work of producing the film was

523
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:03,280
Speaker 3: something that nearly drove her to a nervous breakdown because

524
00:29:03,300 --> 00:29:05,970
Speaker 3: they were trying to make it on such a tight budget.

525
00:29:06,270 --> 00:29:11,390
Speaker 3: Obviously that can be stressful. Ike says that the version

526
00:29:11,610 --> 00:29:15,430
Speaker 3: of Messiah of evil that is out today is pretty

527
00:29:15,570 --> 00:29:18,690
Speaker 3: close to what they had in mind, except for the

528
00:29:18,730 --> 00:29:21,219
Speaker 3: fact that there were scenes that were supposed to be

529
00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:23,440
Speaker 3: in the movie, but they never shot because they ran

530
00:29:23,500 --> 00:29:25,670
Speaker 3: out of money. And I think that's funny that he

531
00:29:25,690 --> 00:29:32,560
Speaker 3: would consider that close enough. But it was technically unfinished.

532
00:29:32,660 --> 00:29:35,690
Speaker 3: So the movie we have is not the full movie.

533
00:29:35,830 --> 00:29:39,310
Speaker 3: It is what we have is like something that they

534
00:29:39,330 --> 00:29:41,450
Speaker 3: shot most of it. They were unable to, I think,

535
00:29:41,490 --> 00:29:44,780
Speaker 3: shoot the original ending they intended. They couldn't get the

536
00:29:44,950 --> 00:29:49,200
Speaker 3: more money they wanted to complete it. And basically they

537
00:29:49,420 --> 00:29:52,600
Speaker 3: handed off the work print to their investors and then,

538
00:29:53,260 --> 00:29:56,470
Speaker 3: you know, they walked away from it. somehow their investors

539
00:29:56,550 --> 00:30:00,150
Speaker 3: managed to paper over the gaps with editing tricks and

540
00:30:00,190 --> 00:30:03,330
Speaker 3: some voiceover and that left us with the movie we have.

541
00:30:04,080 --> 00:30:06,300
Speaker 2: Yeah and i mean i find what we have pretty

542
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:09,280
Speaker 2: effective like for the most part there are no points

543
00:30:09,340 --> 00:30:10,680
Speaker 2: in it where i'm like well i wanted to see

544
00:30:10,740 --> 00:30:13,340
Speaker 2: this but we didn't see it or feeling like we

545
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:16,020
Speaker 2: needed more of the movie like i feel like i

546
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:18,100
Speaker 2: feel like we got a pretty solid package.

547
00:30:17,820 --> 00:30:19,840
Speaker 3: Here yeah i agree i would kind of say the

548
00:30:20,220 --> 00:30:24,960
Speaker 3: strengths of this movie are such that it can be

549
00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:27,560
Speaker 3: sort of unfinished and still be a pretty good movie,

550
00:30:27,580 --> 00:30:32,710
Speaker 3: if that makes any sense. It's not highly mechanical in

551
00:30:32,750 --> 00:30:35,209
Speaker 3: a plot sense, so it doesn't really rely on having

552
00:30:35,950 --> 00:30:38,790
Speaker 3: that crucial ending scene that would make sense of everything.

553
00:30:38,890 --> 00:30:41,410
Speaker 3: Some mysteries remain at the ending of the movie, and

554
00:30:41,430 --> 00:30:44,710
Speaker 3: that's okay. That kind of feels like it would make

555
00:30:44,760 --> 00:30:46,060
Speaker 3: sense for it to end that way.

556
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:50,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of immune from plot holes because of

557
00:30:50,840 --> 00:30:53,660
Speaker 2: the dreamlike nature, the apocalyptic vision, and so forth.

558
00:30:55,010 --> 00:30:57,830
Speaker 3: Haik tells one story in this interview about how he

559
00:30:57,870 --> 00:31:02,630
Speaker 3: got sued by George Romero. So Romero, the creator of

560
00:31:02,780 --> 00:31:04,980
Speaker 3: Night of the Living Dead, at one point tried to

561
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:10,080
Speaker 3: sue him because one of the titles used in the

562
00:31:10,140 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 3: distribution of Messiah of Evil was too close to Night

563
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:17,219
Speaker 3: of the Living Dead. Haik, in the interview, says that

564
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:19,620
Speaker 3: it was the title Dead People, but I kind of

565
00:31:19,660 --> 00:31:22,770
Speaker 3: suspect it was that alternate title, Return of the Living Dead,

566
00:31:22,850 --> 00:31:24,190
Speaker 3: which is a lot closer to that.

567
00:31:24,510 --> 00:31:26,790
Speaker 2: I think I read something about one of the tagline

568
00:31:27,230 --> 00:31:29,350
Speaker 2: using a tagline that was too close or identical to

569
00:31:29,390 --> 00:31:31,670
Speaker 2: something that had been used on Return of the Living Dead.

570
00:31:31,730 --> 00:31:34,090
Speaker 2: And in any case, like I think we're talking about

571
00:31:34,150 --> 00:31:35,969
Speaker 2: things that are probably out of his hand.

572
00:31:36,050 --> 00:31:37,330
Speaker 3: Right. Totally out of his hands.

573
00:31:37,370 --> 00:31:37,510
Speaker 2: Yeah.

574
00:31:37,550 --> 00:31:40,410
Speaker 3: He says he had to explain to Romero's people. He's like, look,

575
00:31:40,650 --> 00:31:42,510
Speaker 3: I don't own the movie. I didn't pick the title.

576
00:31:42,580 --> 00:31:45,700
Speaker 3: It's not my business at this point. but I can

577
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:48,660
Speaker 3: imagine that would be stressful having somebody trying to like

578
00:31:48,840 --> 00:31:51,280
Speaker 3: coming at you with legal action over something that you

579
00:31:51,320 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 3: have nothing to do with.

580
00:31:52,560 --> 00:31:52,760
Speaker 1: Yeah.

581
00:31:52,780 --> 00:31:55,540
Speaker 2: I mean, especially with somebody like more established in, in

582
00:31:55,560 --> 00:31:57,650
Speaker 2: the field and somebody you kind of look up to

583
00:31:57,750 --> 00:32:00,450
Speaker 2: on some level, I'm sure. And then suddenly that person

584
00:32:00,510 --> 00:32:03,690
Speaker 2: is threatening legal action like that. That could be rather demoralizing.

585
00:32:03,730 --> 00:32:07,180
Speaker 3: I imagine. Um, let's see. Uh, A few more notes

586
00:32:07,260 --> 00:32:10,600
Speaker 3: from this. So like, what were the scenes that were

587
00:32:10,620 --> 00:32:12,620
Speaker 3: supposed to be in there that they didn't have money

588
00:32:12,660 --> 00:32:15,380
Speaker 3: to shoot and ended up being cut? I think one

589
00:32:15,420 --> 00:32:17,680
Speaker 3: was going to be a big crowd scene at the

590
00:32:17,740 --> 00:32:19,710
Speaker 3: beach that would have had a lot of people in it.

591
00:32:19,790 --> 00:32:22,510
Speaker 3: That seems like it would make sense with the arc

592
00:32:22,550 --> 00:32:25,030
Speaker 3: of the movie, like these, you know, these watchers on

593
00:32:25,070 --> 00:32:27,450
Speaker 3: the beach, the weird people staring at the moon out

594
00:32:27,490 --> 00:32:29,890
Speaker 3: on the sand. Maybe at the end of the movie,

595
00:32:29,930 --> 00:32:32,510
Speaker 3: there would have been a big gathering of those people

596
00:32:32,570 --> 00:32:34,790
Speaker 3: that would come to some kind of violent climax. I

597
00:32:34,810 --> 00:32:39,580
Speaker 3: can imagine that. And then also Hike says he thinks

598
00:32:39,680 --> 00:32:43,010
Speaker 3: that there were supposed to be more scenes after Arletty

599
00:32:43,050 --> 00:32:45,710
Speaker 3: goes to a mental institution at the end of the film.

600
00:32:46,130 --> 00:32:47,670
Speaker 3: We don't really get much there. Yeah.

601
00:32:47,790 --> 00:32:50,010
Speaker 2: In both cases, these are not things that I felt

602
00:32:50,470 --> 00:32:52,490
Speaker 2: like I really wanted or needed more of in the

603
00:32:52,590 --> 00:32:53,110
Speaker 2: actual film.

604
00:32:53,690 --> 00:32:59,300
Speaker 3: Yeah. So let's see. What were the main influences on

605
00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:04,990
Speaker 3: the story? Well, Hike, number one, explicitly acknowledges H.P. Lovecraft.

606
00:33:05,050 --> 00:33:09,970
Speaker 3: He says that, yeah, I loved H.P. Lovecraft. And they

607
00:33:09,990 --> 00:33:13,390
Speaker 3: started thinking, what if there were an H.P. Lovecraft story

608
00:33:13,470 --> 00:33:17,190
Speaker 3: set in the modern day? That sort of thing. And

609
00:33:17,410 --> 00:33:19,390
Speaker 3: what does the modern day mean to them? Well, that's

610
00:33:19,410 --> 00:33:24,630
Speaker 3: the other major element. It's Lovecraft, but it's also very location-based.

611
00:33:24,690 --> 00:33:27,570
Speaker 3: He says that they wanted to make a movie, and

612
00:33:27,590 --> 00:33:30,540
Speaker 3: I've actually seen interviews where Gloria Katz says the same thing,

613
00:33:30,970 --> 00:33:34,520
Speaker 3: They very much wanted to make a movie about Los Angeles.

614
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:37,120
Speaker 3: They wanted to make a movie about the places that

615
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:40,680
Speaker 3: they knew, like in the San Fernando Valley. So it's

616
00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:45,120
Speaker 3: a very place-based movie. Looking at my notes here, you

617
00:33:45,220 --> 00:33:49,370
Speaker 3: mentioned that, of course, some family members were brought in.

618
00:33:49,410 --> 00:33:52,310
Speaker 3: You see the names repeating in the credits. I made

619
00:33:52,330 --> 00:33:55,330
Speaker 3: a few more notes of the things that Hike mentions

620
00:33:55,390 --> 00:33:58,090
Speaker 3: in this interview. He says, remember that girl in the

621
00:33:58,190 --> 00:34:01,230
Speaker 3: opening scene who slashes Walter Hill's throat? We'll talk about

622
00:34:01,250 --> 00:34:07,230
Speaker 3: that later. Yeah. She was the editor's niece. Hike says

623
00:34:07,290 --> 00:34:13,160
Speaker 3: his own parents and grandmother are in it. In this movie. Yeah.

624
00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:15,260
Speaker 2: And, of course, they both show up at different times

625
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:15,740
Speaker 2: as well.

626
00:34:16,380 --> 00:34:16,500
Speaker 1: Yeah.

627
00:34:16,580 --> 00:34:18,960
Speaker 2: Different cameos. I think he plays a zombie and she

628
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:21,160
Speaker 2: plays the ticket person.

629
00:34:21,180 --> 00:34:22,000
Speaker 3: Willard and Gloria.

630
00:34:22,140 --> 00:34:22,620
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.

631
00:34:22,660 --> 00:34:23,879
Speaker 3: They show up in it as well.

632
00:34:23,900 --> 00:34:24,080
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

633
00:34:24,820 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 3: That's great. Oh, she, you said she plays the ticket

634
00:34:27,060 --> 00:34:31,560
Speaker 3: taker at the, at the, uh, at the movie theater. Yeah. Oh, awesome. Yeah.

635
00:34:31,640 --> 00:34:34,940
Speaker 3: That's cool. She's a cool presence on camera too. Uh,

636
00:34:35,100 --> 00:34:36,900
Speaker 3: and then one more thing he says, I thought this

637
00:34:36,940 --> 00:34:38,719
Speaker 3: was funny. He says there had been a bunch of

638
00:34:39,160 --> 00:34:42,910
Speaker 3: aerospace layoffs around the time the movie was made. So

639
00:34:42,950 --> 00:34:46,070
Speaker 3: he says there were out of work aerospace engineers playing

640
00:34:46,110 --> 00:34:46,670
Speaker 3: the ghouls.

641
00:34:48,050 --> 00:34:48,930
Speaker 2: I read that as well.

642
00:34:48,969 --> 00:34:49,850
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

643
00:34:50,950 --> 00:34:51,330
Speaker 2: So, yeah.

644
00:34:51,469 --> 00:34:53,630
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, one thing, did we mention this a

645
00:34:53,650 --> 00:34:58,819
Speaker 3: minute ago that Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz did, famously

646
00:34:58,900 --> 00:35:02,540
Speaker 3: did an uncredited script doctor pass on the script for

647
00:35:02,580 --> 00:35:03,140
Speaker 3: Star Wars?

648
00:35:03,320 --> 00:35:06,740
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. That's another, that's part of the whole Lucas connection. Yeah. Yeah.

649
00:35:07,260 --> 00:35:09,700
Speaker 3: So, of course, they, you know, there were the co-writers

650
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:12,670
Speaker 3: with George Lucas of American Graffiti. So, they knew Lucas.

651
00:35:12,690 --> 00:35:15,989
Speaker 3: They'd worked with him before. And Huyck talks about this

652
00:35:16,050 --> 00:35:18,109
Speaker 3: in the interview. He says that, you know, we all

653
00:35:18,610 --> 00:35:21,770
Speaker 3: were friends with George. We knew that He was working

654
00:35:21,830 --> 00:35:24,170
Speaker 3: on Star Wars. He kept telling everybody about Star Wars.

655
00:35:24,210 --> 00:35:26,290
Speaker 3: And he says, quote, we were all worried.

656
00:35:27,950 --> 00:35:30,450
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, you go back and you watch documentaries

657
00:35:30,489 --> 00:35:32,570
Speaker 2: about the making of the original Star Wars. And there

658
00:35:32,610 --> 00:35:36,759
Speaker 2: were a lot of reasons to think that this might fail. And,

659
00:35:37,480 --> 00:35:38,939
Speaker 2: you know, fortunately, that was not the case.

660
00:35:39,520 --> 00:35:42,319
Speaker 3: Yeah. So he says that I think they were about

661
00:35:42,340 --> 00:35:44,299
Speaker 3: to start shooting the movie. Like it was down to

662
00:35:44,340 --> 00:35:48,250
Speaker 3: the wire. And Lucas called Willard and Gloria. And told

663
00:35:48,310 --> 00:35:50,930
Speaker 3: them he thought he needed a little work revising the

664
00:35:50,969 --> 00:35:53,500
Speaker 3: dialogue for the film, but he didn't want to tell

665
00:35:53,560 --> 00:35:56,219
Speaker 3: the studio because they were already getting nervous about the

666
00:35:56,239 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 3: movie and he didn't want to spook them. So he

667
00:35:59,340 --> 00:36:02,990
Speaker 3: asked them to do a secret polishing draft of the script.

668
00:36:03,830 --> 00:36:06,489
Speaker 3: I think literally like as they were shooting, they were

669
00:36:06,530 --> 00:36:11,089
Speaker 3: telexing him revised pages with new dialogue. He says most

670
00:36:11,130 --> 00:36:14,860
Speaker 3: of their changes were to dialogue, and I've read it

671
00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:18,360
Speaker 3: said online that some very iconic lines are sort of

672
00:36:18,440 --> 00:36:21,180
Speaker 3: due to their influence. The people who made Messiah of

673
00:36:21,280 --> 00:36:24,520
Speaker 3: Evil are a major part of the flavor of Star Wars.

674
00:36:25,360 --> 00:36:29,830
Speaker 3: There's also some discussion of to what extent the final

675
00:36:30,570 --> 00:36:34,710
Speaker 3: beloved spunky characterization of Leia is a result of Gloria

676
00:36:34,750 --> 00:36:35,710
Speaker 3: Katz's influence.

677
00:36:35,750 --> 00:36:38,090
Speaker 2: That's cool, too. I've also read, I don't know if

678
00:36:38,110 --> 00:36:40,270
Speaker 2: there's any truth to this because there's probably a lot

679
00:36:40,290 --> 00:36:41,750
Speaker 2: of myth making and all of this, but I've also

680
00:36:41,790 --> 00:36:45,049
Speaker 2: seen it said that Willard is the one who's like, hey,

681
00:36:45,090 --> 00:36:48,980
Speaker 2: what if Darth Vader was Luke's father? I don't know

682
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:51,180
Speaker 2: if that's true or not, but at any rate.

683
00:36:52,140 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 3: He doesn't claim that in the interview.

684
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:54,000
Speaker 2: I don't know.

685
00:36:54,540 --> 00:36:57,040
Speaker 3: But there's a lot that he didn't get into specifics

686
00:36:57,100 --> 00:37:00,740
Speaker 3: about that. So that's all from this interview with Willard

687
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:03,700
Speaker 3: Huyck after Gloria had passed away. But I was looking

688
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:07,299
Speaker 3: around for some interviews with Gloria Katz regarding Messiah of Evil.

689
00:37:07,700 --> 00:37:10,219
Speaker 3: I saw one interview cited in a book called I

690
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:14,730
Speaker 3: Spit on Your Celluloid by Heidi Honeycutt. This book, it's

691
00:37:14,770 --> 00:37:19,989
Speaker 3: actually citing interviews that Gloria Katz did with Fangoria magazine.

692
00:37:20,650 --> 00:37:22,549
Speaker 3: But one of the things she says, again, coming back

693
00:37:22,590 --> 00:37:25,379
Speaker 3: to this idea of how place grounded the movie is,

694
00:37:26,460 --> 00:37:28,930
Speaker 3: is that she said, quote, We knew we wanted to

695
00:37:28,989 --> 00:37:31,509
Speaker 3: make something about Los Angeles, and we thought it would

696
00:37:31,530 --> 00:37:34,450
Speaker 3: be interesting to use the San Fernando Valley as a

697
00:37:34,489 --> 00:37:39,150
Speaker 3: setting for a horror film because it's very mundane. So

698
00:37:39,190 --> 00:37:41,210
Speaker 3: that's the one thing. But then the other part of

699
00:37:41,270 --> 00:37:47,239
Speaker 3: the equation is Katz said, quote, the only influence was H.P. Lovecraft.

700
00:37:47,380 --> 00:37:50,359
Speaker 3: I had always loved his writing. So there you go.

701
00:37:50,460 --> 00:37:55,270
Speaker 3: It's it's. LA San Fernando Valley plus HP Lovecraft equals

702
00:37:55,430 --> 00:37:57,989
Speaker 3: Messiah of Evil, at least according to the creators.

703
00:37:58,170 --> 00:38:00,009
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I believe it. And we'll get into some

704
00:38:00,110 --> 00:38:02,710
Speaker 2: specific examples, I think, of where it lines up with

705
00:38:02,770 --> 00:38:03,510
Speaker 2: Lovecraft's writing.

706
00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:17,219
Speaker 3: So given the importance of the sets, the locations and

707
00:38:17,239 --> 00:38:19,620
Speaker 3: the atmosphere in the movie, I think we really should

708
00:38:20,100 --> 00:38:23,040
Speaker 3: mention by name the production designers, of course, who are

709
00:38:23,100 --> 00:38:26,720
Speaker 3: always very important in movies. But, you know, we probably

710
00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:29,750
Speaker 3: don't acknowledge them enough on the show. But in this case,

711
00:38:29,790 --> 00:38:31,469
Speaker 3: this is one where we really do need to talk

712
00:38:31,530 --> 00:38:33,010
Speaker 3: about them. Yeah.

713
00:38:33,070 --> 00:38:38,670
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the art director is credited as Joan Mocine. Dates,

714
00:38:38,770 --> 00:38:43,089
Speaker 2: not public record. Joan was apparently Katz's roommate at UCLA

715
00:38:43,530 --> 00:38:46,090
Speaker 2: and is responsible for all of the strange, or at

716
00:38:46,110 --> 00:38:48,850
Speaker 2: least within the context of the film, their strange works

717
00:38:48,910 --> 00:38:51,029
Speaker 2: of art that we see in the film, like all

718
00:38:51,070 --> 00:38:56,100
Speaker 2: these big murals of people in suits and escalators. And

719
00:38:56,440 --> 00:38:59,900
Speaker 2: it's just often perplexing some of these, these artworks that

720
00:38:59,920 --> 00:39:02,759
Speaker 2: are supposed to be her father's work. You know, he's,

721
00:39:03,120 --> 00:39:06,540
Speaker 2: she goes to the home of a working artist and

722
00:39:06,660 --> 00:39:08,890
Speaker 2: this is the, this is the imagery that's everywhere.

723
00:39:10,070 --> 00:39:15,220
Speaker 3: The like perspective murals on his walls are very disorienting

724
00:39:15,239 --> 00:39:18,920
Speaker 3: because he's got like a giant wall that's like a

725
00:39:19,100 --> 00:39:23,569
Speaker 3: realistic looking painting of a boardwalk going into the distance.

726
00:39:23,630 --> 00:39:25,430
Speaker 2: And we're like, are we at a boardwalk now? Is

727
00:39:25,450 --> 00:39:27,529
Speaker 2: this like a map painting situation? No, it's the art

728
00:39:27,550 --> 00:39:29,969
Speaker 2: on the wall and it's a very dreamlike distortion.

729
00:39:30,700 --> 00:39:34,600
Speaker 3: Effect there also escalators they were painting big walls with

730
00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:37,600
Speaker 3: paintings of escalators coming down and i kept expecting people

731
00:39:37,640 --> 00:39:39,560
Speaker 3: to walk up them and be like oh no wait

732
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:40,859
Speaker 3: no that's a painting.

733
00:39:40,719 --> 00:39:43,759
Speaker 2: Yeah almost an escher feeling to those sequences for sure

734
00:39:43,780 --> 00:39:47,529
Speaker 2: yeah Uh, so yeah, Joan Moseen, um, also has an

735
00:39:47,630 --> 00:39:52,319
Speaker 2: artwork credit on Terrence Malick's 1973 film Badlands, uh, terrific

736
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:53,980
Speaker 2: film that I had the pleasure of seeing on the

737
00:39:54,020 --> 00:39:57,459
Speaker 2: big screen when I was in college. Uh, really good worth, worth,

738
00:39:57,680 --> 00:39:58,680
Speaker 2: worth seeking that one out.

739
00:39:59,540 --> 00:40:02,600
Speaker 3: So she's the art director, but then the production designer

740
00:40:02,700 --> 00:40:04,900
Speaker 3: is a guy named Jack fisk who has done a

741
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:07,970
Speaker 3: lot of work in hollywood including with like pt anderson

742
00:40:08,010 --> 00:40:09,049
Speaker 3: and david lynch.

743
00:40:08,969 --> 00:40:13,549
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah born 1945 still active american production designer art

744
00:40:13,570 --> 00:40:17,010
Speaker 2: director and also director uh you know still active today

745
00:40:17,050 --> 00:40:19,450
Speaker 2: with just top level directors like the ones you named

746
00:40:19,910 --> 00:40:22,969
Speaker 2: this was filmed in 71 so it's really one of

747
00:40:23,030 --> 00:40:26,509
Speaker 2: his earliest credited projects prior to messiah's 74 release um.

748
00:40:29,370 --> 00:40:29,790
Speaker 3: Let's see.

749
00:40:29,830 --> 00:40:33,750
Speaker 2: He'd worked on 71's Angels Hard As They Come, biker film.

750
00:40:33,770 --> 00:40:38,489
Speaker 2: 72's Cool Breeze. This was a blaxploitation film starring Thalmus

751
00:40:39,150 --> 00:40:43,810
Speaker 2: Rasoolala of Blackula. 73's Terminal Island, which is like an

752
00:40:44,370 --> 00:40:48,110
Speaker 2: island prison movie. 73's The Slams, which was a Jim

753
00:40:48,150 --> 00:40:52,629
Speaker 2: Brown crime drama. And then 1973's Badlands as well.

754
00:40:53,890 --> 00:40:55,089
Speaker 3: Oh, also the Terrence Mallory.

755
00:40:55,130 --> 00:40:57,640
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So all of these as art director, but

756
00:40:57,700 --> 00:41:01,440
Speaker 2: his first production designer credit was on 74's Phantom of

757
00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:06,819
Speaker 2: the Paradise. And his five directorial credits, films that he

758
00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:11,890
Speaker 2: himself directed, include 1981's Raggedy Man and 86's Violets Are Blue,

759
00:41:12,410 --> 00:41:16,129
Speaker 2: both starring Sissy Spacek, who Fisk has been married to

760
00:41:16,190 --> 00:41:16,489
Speaker 2: since 1974.

761
00:41:16,489 --> 00:41:19,530
Speaker 3: Oh, okay. I didn't realize that.

762
00:41:20,350 --> 00:41:22,500
Speaker 2: All right, let's jump into the cast here. And we're

763
00:41:22,700 --> 00:41:25,610
Speaker 2: going to start not with top build, but our main character.

764
00:41:25,690 --> 00:41:27,969
Speaker 2: And that's Arletty, who we've already talked and spoken about.

765
00:41:27,989 --> 00:41:30,549
Speaker 2: This is our main character, a woman making her way

766
00:41:30,610 --> 00:41:34,250
Speaker 2: across an apocalyptic dream of Southern California in search of

767
00:41:34,290 --> 00:41:38,610
Speaker 2: her estranged artist father. And she is played by Mariana Hill,

768
00:41:38,890 --> 00:41:45,220
Speaker 2: born 1942. Um, no, no relation, I believe, to Walter Hill.

769
00:41:45,520 --> 00:41:47,200
Speaker 2: They just happen to have the same last name. I

770
00:41:47,260 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 2: didn't see any indication that they were related, but, uh,

771
00:41:50,200 --> 00:41:51,500
Speaker 2: because a lot of the other people with the same

772
00:41:51,540 --> 00:41:52,900
Speaker 2: last name in this film are related.

773
00:41:52,920 --> 00:41:53,580
Speaker 3: Uh-huh.

774
00:41:53,900 --> 00:41:56,969
Speaker 2: Yeah, so here, Marianna Hill, actress best known for her

775
00:41:57,010 --> 00:42:00,210
Speaker 2: work in the 60s and 70s, especially her roles in

776
00:42:00,230 --> 00:42:04,910
Speaker 2: 73's High Plains Drifter and 74's The Godfather Part II,

777
00:42:05,030 --> 00:42:08,450
Speaker 2: in which she plays Deanna Corleone. This is Fredo's wife.

778
00:42:09,469 --> 00:42:12,399
Speaker 2: Her TV credits go back to 1960, include the likes

779
00:42:12,440 --> 00:42:17,259
Speaker 2: of Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Outer Limits, Batman, and

780
00:42:17,280 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 2: the original Star Trek. I think she's one of the many,

781
00:42:20,000 --> 00:42:23,600
Speaker 2: at least temporary, love interests of Captain Kirk. She makes

782
00:42:23,660 --> 00:42:27,239
Speaker 2: the move into film with 69's Medium Cool, followed by

783
00:42:27,260 --> 00:42:33,410
Speaker 2: El Condor and The Traveling Executioner in 1970. I'll also

784
00:42:33,530 --> 00:42:36,670
Speaker 2: note that she, this is a weird coincidence, she is

785
00:42:36,710 --> 00:42:40,130
Speaker 2: in the very episode of TV's The Magician that we

786
00:42:40,170 --> 00:42:43,609
Speaker 2: discussed in our episode on Mercury. We were talking about like,

787
00:42:43,950 --> 00:42:46,320
Speaker 2: what if there was a sculpture made out of mercury

788
00:42:46,780 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 2: and you used it as part of some sort of

789
00:42:50,520 --> 00:42:53,690
Speaker 2: an art theft uh sort of plot line this is

790
00:42:53,730 --> 00:42:55,930
Speaker 2: that episode so she just happens to be in something

791
00:42:55,969 --> 00:42:58,279
Speaker 2: with some this obscure thing that we've talked about on

792
00:42:58,300 --> 00:42:59,140
Speaker 2: stuff to blow your mind.

793
00:42:59,020 --> 00:43:02,820
Speaker 3: Before wow what are the chances yeah her.

794
00:43:02,719 --> 00:43:07,200
Speaker 2: Later film roles include 1980s schizoid and blood beach which

795
00:43:07,360 --> 00:43:08,680
Speaker 2: i just happened to be looking at the other day

796
00:43:08,700 --> 00:43:11,460
Speaker 2: it's like some sort of like a pre-trimmer sand monster

797
00:43:11,500 --> 00:43:15,890
Speaker 2: movie cool but at any rate uh i think she's

798
00:43:15,930 --> 00:43:17,850
Speaker 2: everything you want in a role like this i mean

799
00:43:17,870 --> 00:43:21,920
Speaker 2: she's strong, beautiful, able to invoke a mad scream queen

800
00:43:22,020 --> 00:43:25,160
Speaker 2: energy on top of everything, uh, but not just the

801
00:43:25,219 --> 00:43:29,120
Speaker 2: scream queen, uh, energy. And, and also the scream queen

802
00:43:29,140 --> 00:43:31,940
Speaker 2: stuff is just certain key moments, especially at the beginning

803
00:43:31,980 --> 00:43:35,319
Speaker 2: and the end. Um, most, most of this is not

804
00:43:35,390 --> 00:43:38,430
Speaker 2: like screaming, running from the slasher sort of stuff. Um,

805
00:43:38,810 --> 00:43:39,890
Speaker 2: there's a, no, it's.

806
00:43:39,790 --> 00:43:42,770
Speaker 3: More like screaming, stabbing a blue faced man with scissors.

807
00:43:42,810 --> 00:43:43,270
Speaker 2: Well, yeah.

808
00:43:43,730 --> 00:43:44,090
Speaker 3: Yeah.

809
00:43:44,410 --> 00:43:48,759
Speaker 2: We'll get back to the blue face, man. Um, But yeah,

810
00:43:48,780 --> 00:43:52,140
Speaker 2: I think she's great. Fabulous lead here.

811
00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:57,060
Speaker 3: I've seen people describe her energy on the set as spacey.

812
00:43:57,820 --> 00:44:01,410
Speaker 3: And I can see that element too. But yeah, I

813
00:44:01,450 --> 00:44:02,029
Speaker 3: think she's great.

814
00:44:02,310 --> 00:44:05,089
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, spacey certainly fits the vibe, you know,

815
00:44:05,450 --> 00:44:07,770
Speaker 2: because it is, again, the viewer feels like they are

816
00:44:07,790 --> 00:44:10,069
Speaker 2: in a dream. This is the character through which we

817
00:44:10,130 --> 00:44:12,870
Speaker 2: experience that dream. And it makes sense that she should

818
00:44:12,910 --> 00:44:15,620
Speaker 2: feel a bit confused by what's going on, especially in

819
00:44:15,660 --> 00:44:19,029
Speaker 2: these confusing scenes. Like the gas station sequence we'll get

820
00:44:19,050 --> 00:44:19,610
Speaker 2: to shortly.

821
00:44:20,230 --> 00:44:22,700
Speaker 3: Speaking of confusing, let's talk about Michael Greer.

822
00:44:22,989 --> 00:44:27,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, playing Tom. He's kind of like a 70s playboy

823
00:44:28,739 --> 00:44:32,040
Speaker 2: that just kind of emerges with his own little band

824
00:44:32,160 --> 00:44:39,319
Speaker 2: of hedonistic counterculture figures. Yeah, he just kind of pops in.

825
00:44:39,540 --> 00:44:41,500
Speaker 2: And very interesting character.

826
00:44:42,300 --> 00:44:44,790
Speaker 3: I feel like this casting is kind of, it plays

827
00:44:44,910 --> 00:44:47,650
Speaker 3: against the way the character is written, but in a

828
00:44:47,690 --> 00:44:50,710
Speaker 3: way that works to the movie's benefit. Uh, and what

829
00:44:50,750 --> 00:44:53,089
Speaker 3: I mean by that is the character seems to me

830
00:44:53,410 --> 00:44:59,089
Speaker 3: obviously written as a highly magnetic, charismatic character. And this

831
00:44:59,180 --> 00:45:03,160
Speaker 3: guy shows up with like anti charisma in my opinion.

832
00:45:03,520 --> 00:45:06,279
Speaker 3: And I don't mean an insult to Michael Greer, uh,

833
00:45:06,960 --> 00:45:13,930
Speaker 3: but he has this weird kind of, stilted looming awkwardness

834
00:45:14,010 --> 00:45:16,200
Speaker 3: in these scenes where he is supposed to be a

835
00:45:16,340 --> 00:45:20,400
Speaker 3: suave playboy, but it actually becomes this third other thing

836
00:45:20,520 --> 00:45:24,580
Speaker 3: that is a very interesting and works. I don't know.

837
00:45:24,620 --> 00:45:26,340
Speaker 3: It makes for a lot of interesting scenes.

838
00:45:26,420 --> 00:45:29,950
Speaker 2: Yeah. His character, Tom has, it has the, like it's

839
00:45:29,989 --> 00:45:31,950
Speaker 2: feel everything with him. It feels like a weird hang

840
00:45:32,610 --> 00:45:35,310
Speaker 2: and you get, he has the vibe of someone who

841
00:45:35,590 --> 00:45:40,350
Speaker 2: is hanging out with noteworthy or interesting people and but

842
00:45:40,410 --> 00:45:44,250
Speaker 2: mainly because perhaps there is some sort of vital, uh,

843
00:45:44,320 --> 00:45:47,860
Speaker 2: connection he has, be it money or drugs or something

844
00:45:47,900 --> 00:45:50,640
Speaker 2: like that. Like he's, he's kind of like the, the

845
00:45:50,700 --> 00:45:54,200
Speaker 2: dealer who just, who is hanging out. Um, and, um,

846
00:45:54,540 --> 00:45:55,779
Speaker 2: and everyone's like, who's this guy?

847
00:45:55,880 --> 00:45:56,180
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.

848
00:45:56,239 --> 00:45:57,680
Speaker 2: He's the guy who brought the pot.

849
00:45:58,580 --> 00:45:59,540
Speaker 3: Um, yeah, yeah.

850
00:46:00,060 --> 00:46:02,600
Speaker 2: But, uh, but yeah, it's, it's still a cool and

851
00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:04,319
Speaker 2: in its own way, it's, it's a kind of, it's

852
00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:08,350
Speaker 2: a charismatic performance, but, um, But yeah, not in the

853
00:46:08,390 --> 00:46:10,109
Speaker 2: way that it appears to be written, like you said.

854
00:46:10,350 --> 00:46:14,910
Speaker 3: I agree. It's charismatic, but not in the James Bond sense.

855
00:46:14,989 --> 00:46:17,450
Speaker 3: It's a kind of monster charisma. Yeah, yeah.

856
00:46:18,210 --> 00:46:20,450
Speaker 2: And so, yeah, Michael Greer, I think, is great in

857
00:46:20,489 --> 00:46:21,010
Speaker 2: this role.

858
00:46:21,330 --> 00:46:21,940
Speaker 3: Otherwise, 1943 through 2002.

859
00:46:21,910 --> 00:46:23,339
Speaker 2: His acting credits go back to 1969's The Gay Deceivers

860
00:46:23,380 --> 00:46:34,460
Speaker 2: and The Curious Female. His other credits include 79's The Rose. American,

861
00:46:34,620 --> 00:46:38,180
Speaker 2: openly gay actor of stage, screen, and TV, also a comedian,

862
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:42,010
Speaker 2: sort of like stand-up, but also perhaps more in the

863
00:46:42,340 --> 00:46:46,570
Speaker 2: domain of cabaret, because he often used elements of drag

864
00:46:46,590 --> 00:46:51,490
Speaker 2: and camp in his performances. And he notably rewrote aspects

865
00:46:51,550 --> 00:46:53,750
Speaker 2: of his character in The Gay Deceivers, in which he

866
00:46:53,790 --> 00:46:57,819
Speaker 2: plays a flamboyant gay landlord, in order apparently to make

867
00:46:57,880 --> 00:47:01,009
Speaker 2: it more realistic and less homophobic. I checked out a

868
00:47:01,070 --> 00:47:03,710
Speaker 2: clip of this performance and I think the performance and

869
00:47:03,730 --> 00:47:06,529
Speaker 2: the character here is still certainly over the top and

870
00:47:06,690 --> 00:47:09,290
Speaker 2: certainly in the domain of camp. But I guess we

871
00:47:09,310 --> 00:47:10,980
Speaker 2: have to remind ourselves that this was the late 1960s.

872
00:47:11,030 --> 00:47:14,350
Speaker 2: And so what we think of is like toned down

873
00:47:14,390 --> 00:47:18,630
Speaker 2: and made more, you know, less homophobic or more, you know, acceptable.

874
00:47:18,650 --> 00:47:22,280
Speaker 2: It's going to be a different measuring stick today. But

875
00:47:22,380 --> 00:47:25,640
Speaker 2: still considered, you know, he's still considered something of a trailblazer,

876
00:47:25,680 --> 00:47:29,080
Speaker 2: especially again for being like an openly conservative. gay actor

877
00:47:29,219 --> 00:47:32,279
Speaker 2: who was working at times in mainstream Hollywood pictures at

878
00:47:32,320 --> 00:47:36,300
Speaker 2: the time. But despite that, he found it increasingly difficult

879
00:47:36,320 --> 00:47:39,900
Speaker 2: to get much mainstream work after the early 1970s, and

880
00:47:39,940 --> 00:47:43,780
Speaker 2: then mostly worked as a cabaret performer after that. He's

881
00:47:43,940 --> 00:47:46,840
Speaker 2: also known for an important role in the 1971 prison

882
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:51,390
Speaker 2: drama Fortune in Men's Eyes, based on a 1967 play.

883
00:47:52,030 --> 00:47:54,330
Speaker 2: Both of these were written by John Herbert, a Canadian

884
00:47:54,390 --> 00:47:59,410
Speaker 2: playwright and drag queen. as well as the 1970 counterculture film, um,

885
00:47:59,850 --> 00:48:03,350
Speaker 2: the magic garden of Stanley sweetheart, uh, in which he

886
00:48:03,410 --> 00:48:06,790
Speaker 2: co-starred alongside Don Johnson. I didn't really know any of

887
00:48:06,830 --> 00:48:08,969
Speaker 2: this about him when I first watched the film. My

888
00:48:09,050 --> 00:48:11,719
Speaker 2: main note going into it was thinking this guy kind

889
00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:14,500
Speaker 2: of looks like Peter Fonda and it's, so it's kind

890
00:48:14,540 --> 00:48:17,239
Speaker 2: of like they like, let's, let's find somebody that looks,

891
00:48:17,300 --> 00:48:19,680
Speaker 2: let's go. I want to cast Peter Fonda, but cheaper.

892
00:48:20,239 --> 00:48:22,990
Speaker 2: And maybe they end up, um, with uh with michael

893
00:48:23,030 --> 00:48:25,830
Speaker 2: greer who ends up bringing his own wonderful energy to

894
00:48:25,850 --> 00:48:28,350
Speaker 2: the role and it becomes this i can imagine peter

895
00:48:28,390 --> 00:48:30,210
Speaker 2: fonda would have been more in line with the way

896
00:48:30,230 --> 00:48:32,460
Speaker 2: we're talking about the film having been written.

897
00:48:32,880 --> 00:48:36,000
Speaker 3: Yeah i think that's right though then again now i'm

898
00:48:36,020 --> 00:48:37,660
Speaker 3: starting to kind of doubt what i said a minute

899
00:48:37,680 --> 00:48:40,319
Speaker 3: ago about it being played about it playing against the

900
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:43,050
Speaker 3: way the character is written just because you know it

901
00:48:43,110 --> 00:48:45,410
Speaker 3: wasn't it wasn't like it was written by somebody else

902
00:48:45,570 --> 00:48:49,340
Speaker 3: like the the people who wrote the script also directed

903
00:48:49,380 --> 00:48:52,450
Speaker 3: the movie and thus they made final casting decisions and

904
00:48:52,489 --> 00:48:54,450
Speaker 3: they told the actors what to do in the scenes.

905
00:48:54,530 --> 00:48:58,149
Speaker 3: So I don't know, that makes me think, well, maybe the, uh,

906
00:48:58,270 --> 00:49:01,069
Speaker 3: the performance we're getting on screen is exactly what was

907
00:49:01,150 --> 00:49:02,690
Speaker 3: intended when they were writing it.

908
00:49:02,770 --> 00:49:04,870
Speaker 2: Or certainly it could have been in the, in the, um,

909
00:49:05,010 --> 00:49:08,870
Speaker 2: the nature of collaboration that they certainly were familiar with

910
00:49:08,930 --> 00:49:11,750
Speaker 2: working together to make the film that, uh, that Greer

911
00:49:11,790 --> 00:49:15,180
Speaker 2: was familiar with certainly in adapting some of the parts

912
00:49:15,219 --> 00:49:17,200
Speaker 2: that he was given. So I can imagine it being,

913
00:49:17,219 --> 00:49:19,009
Speaker 2: you know, they wrote it one way, they have an

914
00:49:19,110 --> 00:49:20,989
Speaker 2: actor that brings a certain energy to it and makes

915
00:49:21,050 --> 00:49:23,090
Speaker 2: it a slightly different way. And at the end of

916
00:49:23,130 --> 00:49:26,009
Speaker 2: the day, they're like, yeah, that worked. Let's keep it.

917
00:49:26,010 --> 00:49:26,750
Speaker 2: That's the movie now.

918
00:49:28,180 --> 00:49:33,500
Speaker 3: Another note on Michael Greer's character. Was that him playing

919
00:49:33,620 --> 00:49:35,440
Speaker 3: the dark stranger?

920
00:49:35,820 --> 00:49:36,560
Speaker 2: It was, yes.

921
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:38,460
Speaker 3: You think so? Okay.

922
00:49:38,520 --> 00:49:39,759
Speaker 2: I've read people claim that it is.

923
00:49:40,730 --> 00:49:42,129
Speaker 3: It certainly looks like him.

924
00:49:42,150 --> 00:49:45,350
Speaker 2: Yeah, we never see his face, but I believe he

925
00:49:45,390 --> 00:49:46,649
Speaker 2: plays the Dark Stranger as well.

926
00:49:47,190 --> 00:49:50,989
Speaker 3: The titular Messiah of Evil. There is this kind of

927
00:49:51,070 --> 00:49:54,739
Speaker 3: religious apocalyptic figure, kind of the presence that seems to

928
00:49:54,780 --> 00:49:58,340
Speaker 3: be coming back. The thing that the characters are worried

929
00:49:58,420 --> 00:50:02,299
Speaker 3: is returning is this figure we learn about later, you know,

930
00:50:02,340 --> 00:50:05,100
Speaker 3: dressed in black. His face is always hidden in shadow.

931
00:50:05,590 --> 00:50:09,170
Speaker 3: But just in profile, like in his body proportions and

932
00:50:09,210 --> 00:50:11,730
Speaker 3: some things about his face, even when hidden in shadow,

933
00:50:11,750 --> 00:50:15,609
Speaker 3: it looks a lot like Michael Greer. And so it's

934
00:50:15,650 --> 00:50:17,970
Speaker 3: kind of weird, though, because when you watch the movie,

935
00:50:18,050 --> 00:50:22,900
Speaker 3: Michael Greer's character, Tom, the character doesn't feel like somebody

936
00:50:22,940 --> 00:50:27,399
Speaker 3: who's going to later reveal, like, ha-ha, I was the devil. Right, right.

937
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:30,620
Speaker 2: And I don't think we're left to... to make that connection, exactly.

938
00:50:30,719 --> 00:50:34,469
Speaker 2: But anyway, we'll have more to say about The Dark

939
00:50:34,510 --> 00:50:37,810
Speaker 2: Stranger as we continue. But first, let's talk about Tom's ladies.

940
00:50:37,890 --> 00:50:40,910
Speaker 2: He has two different lady friends that he's traveling with

941
00:50:40,950 --> 00:50:44,739
Speaker 2: when we first encounter him. The first is Tony. And

942
00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:48,920
Speaker 2: Tony is played by Joy Bang, born 1945. And I

943
00:50:49,820 --> 00:50:54,180
Speaker 2: have to stress here, Joy Bang totally sounds like a

944
00:50:54,239 --> 00:50:57,210
Speaker 2: show name, but Bang was her married name. She married

945
00:50:57,230 --> 00:51:01,030
Speaker 2: somebody with the last name Bang. but early 70s, former

946
00:51:01,090 --> 00:51:04,830
Speaker 2: go-go dancer turned brief counterculture figure, very much a part

947
00:51:04,850 --> 00:51:08,529
Speaker 2: of the Californian bohemian scene at the time. I was

948
00:51:08,550 --> 00:51:10,969
Speaker 2: looking around for images of her, and here's one of

949
00:51:11,010 --> 00:51:13,319
Speaker 2: her just riding around in a convertible with Jimi Hendrix,

950
00:51:14,510 --> 00:51:18,160
Speaker 2: who she was hanging out with for a while there. So, yeah,

951
00:51:18,200 --> 00:51:21,319
Speaker 2: very much a part of this scene. Her film credits

952
00:51:21,340 --> 00:51:23,540
Speaker 2: go back to 67, and she pops up in various

953
00:51:23,620 --> 00:51:28,350
Speaker 2: underground films in the late 60s and early 70s notably

954
00:51:28,370 --> 00:51:31,029
Speaker 2: appears in 71's Pretty Maids all in a row and

955
00:51:31,050 --> 00:51:34,250
Speaker 2: 72's Play It Again Sam and Night of the Cobra

956
00:51:34,270 --> 00:51:37,239
Speaker 2: Woman from the same year but by the time Messiah

957
00:51:37,380 --> 00:51:40,819
Speaker 2: comes out in 70 what 73 she's already left acting

958
00:51:41,640 --> 00:51:46,180
Speaker 2: so um you know brief but notable career and I

959
00:51:46,219 --> 00:51:48,120
Speaker 2: think she's tremendous in this um.

960
00:51:48,580 --> 00:51:52,489
Speaker 3: Yeah She plays a character whose main personality trait is

961
00:51:52,570 --> 00:51:57,330
Speaker 3: that she's immature and cusses about things. She's always mad

962
00:51:57,410 --> 00:51:58,090
Speaker 3: and cussing.

963
00:51:58,410 --> 00:52:02,890
Speaker 2: But also, yeah, is naive, but also, I don't know,

964
00:52:03,469 --> 00:52:08,990
Speaker 2: fun-loving and just kind of open for experience. I was

965
00:52:09,180 --> 00:52:11,120
Speaker 2: looking up stuff about her. I found that Roger Ebert

966
00:52:11,219 --> 00:52:15,860
Speaker 2: interviewed her when she was 22. And this interview is

967
00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:17,880
Speaker 2: hosted on the Roger Ebert website. You can look it up.

968
00:52:17,940 --> 00:52:22,930
Speaker 2: But He describes her, quote, as expressive as anyone I've interviewed.

969
00:52:23,670 --> 00:52:26,210
Speaker 2: So I just thought, you know, she's just a real flower,

970
00:52:26,250 --> 00:52:29,390
Speaker 2: this one. So that's one of the two ladies. The

971
00:52:29,410 --> 00:52:32,470
Speaker 2: other one is Laura, and she's played by Anitra Ford,

972
00:52:32,530 --> 00:52:35,860
Speaker 2: born 1942. Model and actress. In fact, she was one

973
00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:39,069
Speaker 2: of the original models on The Price is Right back

974
00:52:39,280 --> 00:52:42,279
Speaker 2: in 72, I believe. Best known for, let's see, she

975
00:52:42,300 --> 00:52:44,940
Speaker 2: was in 74's The Longest Yard with Burt Reynolds. I

976
00:52:44,980 --> 00:52:48,540
Speaker 2: think he plays... burt reynolds character's girlfriend or wife or

977
00:52:48,580 --> 00:52:51,640
Speaker 2: something i haven't actually seen it um but you know

978
00:52:51,700 --> 00:52:54,540
Speaker 2: notable football movie and then she also is in the

979
00:52:54,620 --> 00:52:58,890
Speaker 2: women's prison exploitation film the big bird cage from 72

980
00:52:58,890 --> 00:53:05,590
Speaker 2: and she's also in invasion of the b girls from 73.

981
00:53:03,610 --> 00:53:07,339
Speaker 3: I'll note that she's great on screen in this and

982
00:53:07,360 --> 00:53:11,000
Speaker 3: a lot of the stills I'd seen of the movie

983
00:53:11,080 --> 00:53:14,120
Speaker 3: that made me interested in watching it were actually not

984
00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:18,180
Speaker 3: featuring our main character, but were Laura here, Anitra Ford.

985
00:53:19,030 --> 00:53:22,350
Speaker 3: The scene where she goes to the Ralphs is sort

986
00:53:22,370 --> 00:53:22,990
Speaker 3: of a highlight.

987
00:53:23,110 --> 00:53:28,690
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, yeah. So, Bang and Ford here, both of

988
00:53:28,790 --> 00:53:33,600
Speaker 2: Tom's gals, both fun characters, both ultimately great scream queen

989
00:53:33,620 --> 00:53:37,020
Speaker 2: type characters, as we'll explore. They're both a little bit doomed.

990
00:53:37,640 --> 00:53:39,870
Speaker 2: But they get some great sequences to go out on.

991
00:53:40,380 --> 00:53:41,580
Speaker 3: Both get eaten by a mob.

992
00:53:42,860 --> 00:53:46,460
Speaker 2: All right. We have a character searching for her father.

993
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:50,920
Speaker 2: The father is Joseph Lang, the artist, played by Royal Dano,

994
00:53:51,040 --> 00:53:56,880
Speaker 2: who lived 1922 through 1994. And this is mostly experienced

995
00:53:56,900 --> 00:53:59,160
Speaker 2: in the film as a voiceover. We keep hearing his

996
00:53:59,239 --> 00:54:03,080
Speaker 2: voice talking about these things he's learning about the darkness

997
00:54:03,120 --> 00:54:03,680
Speaker 2: that's coming.

998
00:54:04,390 --> 00:54:07,370
Speaker 3: And so I'm sorry, I kept thinking the voiceover was

999
00:54:07,410 --> 00:54:08,730
Speaker 3: done by Walter Matthau.

1000
00:54:09,670 --> 00:54:13,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he sounds very different compared to how

1001
00:54:13,480 --> 00:54:15,939
Speaker 2: he sounded in the last Royal Dano film we talked about.

1002
00:54:16,340 --> 00:54:19,500
Speaker 2: We talked about him last October because he's in 1988's

1003
00:54:19,540 --> 00:54:22,700
Speaker 2: Killer Clowns from Outer Space. He's the old man with

1004
00:54:22,739 --> 00:54:26,110
Speaker 2: the dog who discovers the clown tent at the beginning.

1005
00:54:27,170 --> 00:54:27,430
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1006
00:54:28,030 --> 00:54:31,190
Speaker 2: But yeah, as we discussed last time, quirky American character

1007
00:54:31,250 --> 00:54:34,860
Speaker 2: actor with credits going back to 43. Those credits include

1008
00:54:35,719 --> 00:54:39,940
Speaker 2: 56's Moby Dick, the 72 TV movie Moon of the Wolf.

1009
00:54:40,420 --> 00:54:43,540
Speaker 2: This is the New Orleans werewolf movie we keep talking

1010
00:54:43,580 --> 00:54:47,569
Speaker 2: about in passing. He's in The Outlaw Josie Wales from 76,

1011
00:54:47,570 --> 00:54:50,570
Speaker 2: Something Wicked This Way Comes from 83, The Right Stuff

1012
00:54:50,610 --> 00:54:55,170
Speaker 2: from 83, 87's House 2, 87's Ghoulies 2, and 93's

1013
00:54:55,230 --> 00:54:58,310
Speaker 2: The Dark Half. A slew of TV credits on top

1014
00:54:58,350 --> 00:54:58,509
Speaker 2: of that.

1015
00:54:59,340 --> 00:55:01,660
Speaker 3: Oh, this is the guy who was in spaced invaders.

1016
00:55:01,940 --> 00:55:04,100
Speaker 3: He's the old farmer in that. Yeah. Yeah.

1017
00:55:06,060 --> 00:55:06,819
Speaker 2: All right. Yeah.

1018
00:55:07,200 --> 00:55:09,299
Speaker 3: And, uh, and so wait, moon of the wolf. Is

1019
00:55:09,320 --> 00:55:11,380
Speaker 3: that the one that you were told that a future

1020
00:55:11,420 --> 00:55:13,219
Speaker 3: shock video is not actually that great?

1021
00:55:13,570 --> 00:55:15,490
Speaker 2: Uh, that's what I've heard. So I, you know, I,

1022
00:55:15,510 --> 00:55:17,089
Speaker 2: I'm not opposed to checking it out, but I've, I've

1023
00:55:17,130 --> 00:55:19,569
Speaker 2: heard mixed things, but I love the cover art. The

1024
00:55:19,590 --> 00:55:22,730
Speaker 2: cover art looks great. Uh, and I'll watch a bad

1025
00:55:22,770 --> 00:55:24,310
Speaker 2: werewolf movie. Y'all know that.

1026
00:55:24,950 --> 00:55:25,129
Speaker 1: Sure.

1027
00:55:25,330 --> 00:55:28,130
Speaker 2: Um, let's see who else we have. Oh, we have, um,

1028
00:55:29,680 --> 00:55:34,800
Speaker 2: Elijah Cooke Jr., playing the character Charlie. Cooke lived 1903

1029
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:39,880
Speaker 2: through 1995. And he plays a vital role here, a

1030
00:55:39,940 --> 00:55:42,770
Speaker 2: role that we find in other horror movies, and we

1031
00:55:42,810 --> 00:55:48,910
Speaker 2: also find very concretely in the work of H.P. Lovecraft,

1032
00:55:48,930 --> 00:55:53,030
Speaker 2: particularly in The Shadow Over Innsmouth. He is a drunk

1033
00:55:53,190 --> 00:55:57,919
Speaker 2: revelator who lets us know about dark secrets and that

1034
00:55:58,060 --> 00:56:00,049
Speaker 2: are going to be played out throughout the rest of

1035
00:56:00,070 --> 00:56:00,570
Speaker 2: the narrative.

1036
00:56:01,270 --> 00:56:04,430
Speaker 3: Yeah, we get a role like this in the Shadow

1037
00:56:04,489 --> 00:56:09,290
Speaker 3: Over Innsmouth, mostly movie adaptation that is actually called Dagon,

1038
00:56:10,050 --> 00:56:11,850
Speaker 3: where there's a guy who does this also.

1039
00:56:11,870 --> 00:56:15,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, they bring him to life in that. Zadok Allen,

1040
00:56:15,440 --> 00:56:16,700
Speaker 2: I believe is the name of the character in the

1041
00:56:16,719 --> 00:56:21,660
Speaker 2: original Lovecraft story. But here, played by Elijah Cooke Jr.,

1042
00:56:22,760 --> 00:56:27,080
Speaker 2: Very recognizable American character actor whose credits included 1941's The

1043
00:56:27,239 --> 00:56:31,770
Speaker 2: Maltese Falcon, 46's The Big Sleep, 59's House on Haunted Hill,

1044
00:56:31,830 --> 00:56:35,830
Speaker 2: and 68's Rosemary's Baby. Very prolific on TV and screen.

1045
00:56:35,870 --> 00:56:39,009
Speaker 2: He also appears in 79's Salem's Lot, and he was

1046
00:56:39,050 --> 00:56:40,270
Speaker 2: in 72's Blackula.

1047
00:56:40,710 --> 00:56:42,610
Speaker 3: I think in these crime movies he did in the

1048
00:56:42,950 --> 00:56:46,340
Speaker 3: 40s and 50s, he played a lot of doomed men

1049
00:56:46,400 --> 00:56:48,960
Speaker 3: who were getting driven out to the woods while sweating

1050
00:56:49,100 --> 00:56:52,120
Speaker 3: or like, you know, squealers, squealers who were about to

1051
00:56:52,350 --> 00:56:53,330
Speaker 3: rat their boss out.

1052
00:56:53,350 --> 00:56:55,950
Speaker 2: It makes sense. He, he had a, he had a

1053
00:56:55,969 --> 00:56:57,390
Speaker 2: good face for it and a good voice. He has

1054
00:56:57,410 --> 00:57:00,989
Speaker 2: kind of like a, I, especially in this film, I

1055
00:57:01,010 --> 00:57:03,649
Speaker 2: would describe it as kind of a squirrely voice, you know?

1056
00:57:04,180 --> 00:57:04,430
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1057
00:57:04,489 --> 00:57:08,380
Speaker 2: Yeah. But yeah, solid character actor, very long career, uh,

1058
00:57:08,440 --> 00:57:10,440
Speaker 2: pops up on a lot of TV shows, including Alf.

1059
00:57:11,550 --> 00:57:17,270
Speaker 3: Hey, did you catch that the guy who's frantically shooting

1060
00:57:17,330 --> 00:57:19,930
Speaker 3: into the darkness at the gas station and then comes

1061
00:57:20,030 --> 00:57:23,420
Speaker 3: over and offers to fill her up is Doyle, the

1062
00:57:23,460 --> 00:57:24,700
Speaker 3: henchman from The Sting?

1063
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. This guy's got a pretty memorable face. Charles Deercock,

1064
00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:29,960
Speaker 2: who lived 1936 through 2024.

1065
00:57:29,940 --> 00:57:30,180
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.

1066
00:57:34,530 --> 00:57:36,990
Speaker 2: Very signature look like he's one of these guys apparently

1067
00:57:37,030 --> 00:57:39,390
Speaker 2: had his nose broken several times when I was younger

1068
00:57:39,430 --> 00:57:42,780
Speaker 2: So it's kind of this, you know boxers. Yeah, but

1069
00:57:42,840 --> 00:57:45,120
Speaker 2: even that even if that were not the case I

1070
00:57:45,160 --> 00:57:47,280
Speaker 2: think he has like very piercing eyes and a very

1071
00:57:47,360 --> 00:57:50,700
Speaker 2: stern look so, you know on top of his acting

1072
00:57:50,740 --> 00:57:54,410
Speaker 2: ability made him like a great casting choice for various

1073
00:57:54,490 --> 00:58:00,350
Speaker 2: heavies or maniacs or generally disturbed disturbed characters and So, yeah,

1074
00:58:00,370 --> 00:58:04,130
Speaker 2: he's best known for 61's The Hustler, 69's Butch Cassidy

1075
00:58:04,150 --> 00:58:08,790
Speaker 2: and the Sundance Kid, and 73's The Sting. He also

1076
00:58:08,850 --> 00:58:12,430
Speaker 2: played an outlaw biker in 71's Angels Hard As They Come.

1077
00:58:13,110 --> 00:58:15,650
Speaker 2: And he's also in Night of the Cobra Woman. He

1078
00:58:15,790 --> 00:58:19,550
Speaker 2: also played the killer Santa Claus in 1984's Silent Night,

1079
00:58:19,610 --> 00:58:20,209
Speaker 2: Deadly Night.

1080
00:58:21,070 --> 00:58:22,530
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't think I realized that.

1081
00:58:22,650 --> 00:58:25,390
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So we have a Santa actor in our

1082
00:58:25,450 --> 00:58:33,610
Speaker 2: midst here. Here he's scary. and troubling, but also kind

1083
00:58:33,650 --> 00:58:35,850
Speaker 2: of a normie. He's kind of playing a normal character,

1084
00:58:35,870 --> 00:58:38,770
Speaker 2: but he's playing a normal character in a nightmare. So,

1085
00:58:39,890 --> 00:58:41,689
Speaker 2: you know, take that for what it's worth.

1086
00:58:41,950 --> 00:58:44,730
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's funny. So Arletty arrives at the gas station.

1087
00:58:44,790 --> 00:58:47,800
Speaker 3: This guy is just shooting into the dark with a

1088
00:58:47,880 --> 00:58:50,500
Speaker 3: gun and And then walks up to the car and

1089
00:58:50,520 --> 00:58:57,440
Speaker 3: he's like, fill her up. Yeah. And so you think like, yeah,

1090
00:58:57,480 --> 00:59:00,780
Speaker 3: this guy's the creep who is going to, what is

1091
00:59:00,820 --> 00:59:02,650
Speaker 3: this interaction with him going to turn out to be?

1092
00:59:02,690 --> 00:59:05,570
Speaker 3: But then somebody else arrives at the gas station and

1093
00:59:05,650 --> 00:59:07,169
Speaker 3: they're the weird one. That's right.

1094
00:59:07,330 --> 00:59:09,210
Speaker 2: And that weird one is going to be a character

1095
00:59:09,250 --> 00:59:11,380
Speaker 2: that's only... I think his only name is just the

1096
00:59:11,460 --> 00:59:17,400
Speaker 2: albino trucker. And this character is played by Benny Robinson.

1097
00:59:18,900 --> 00:59:22,090
Speaker 2: Date's not public record. This is his only film role.

1098
00:59:22,700 --> 00:59:24,390
Speaker 2: And I have to say, he's pretty great in this.

1099
00:59:24,890 --> 00:59:29,150
Speaker 2: He plays this creepy dude who shows up saying creepy things.

1100
00:59:30,220 --> 00:59:34,419
Speaker 2: And his unique appearance, and I think non-actor delivery, helps

1101
00:59:34,460 --> 00:59:39,300
Speaker 2: give him this distinct otherness, which does play into certain

1102
00:59:39,380 --> 00:59:44,880
Speaker 2: Lovecraftian elements. As Lovecraft's actual fiction often zooms in on

1103
00:59:44,960 --> 00:59:49,100
Speaker 2: racial otherness or racial ambiguity, this, of course, is a

1104
00:59:49,120 --> 00:59:53,290
Speaker 2: known factor in Lovecraft's writing today, certainly. But I think

1105
00:59:53,330 --> 00:59:55,570
Speaker 2: you can sort of identify some of it, some of

1106
00:59:55,610 --> 00:59:59,230
Speaker 2: that influence on on this film in the way that

1107
00:59:59,270 --> 01:00:00,410
Speaker 2: this character is utilized.

1108
01:00:00,430 --> 01:00:06,160
Speaker 3: Hmm. I mean, Robinson brings a lot of just unique

1109
01:00:06,240 --> 01:00:08,620
Speaker 3: little notes to the role. I mean, the way that

1110
01:00:08,680 --> 01:00:11,160
Speaker 3: he does this thing where he like moves his eyes

1111
01:00:11,280 --> 01:00:15,660
Speaker 3: really fast. Yeah. And it's not quite clear what he's doing,

1112
01:00:15,720 --> 01:00:18,840
Speaker 3: but it's almost like he's like a computer downloading something.

1113
01:00:18,860 --> 01:00:23,950
Speaker 3: And then there's the scene where he offers Anitra Ford

1114
01:00:24,030 --> 01:00:26,370
Speaker 3: a ride in the car and asks her about whether

1115
01:00:26,410 --> 01:00:29,730
Speaker 3: she likes Wagner. He's talking about Wagner, the composer. And

1116
01:00:30,850 --> 01:00:32,350
Speaker 3: he then just eats a rat.

1117
01:00:32,810 --> 01:00:33,270
Speaker 2: Oh, God.

1118
01:00:33,290 --> 01:00:33,370
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1119
01:00:33,530 --> 01:00:35,470
Speaker 2: And it's a whole bunch of maniacal stuff.

1120
01:00:36,530 --> 01:00:37,330
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.

1121
01:00:37,470 --> 01:00:39,510
Speaker 2: He's tremendous in this. It's really, it's one of these

1122
01:00:39,630 --> 01:00:41,630
Speaker 2: performances where you're like, I wanted to see this guy

1123
01:00:41,650 --> 01:00:44,630
Speaker 2: in more horror films and playing this exact same role

1124
01:00:44,690 --> 01:00:45,669
Speaker 2: because he does it so well.

1125
01:00:46,030 --> 01:00:49,080
Speaker 3: Haik mentions in the interview that he, that everybody liked

1126
01:00:49,140 --> 01:00:51,560
Speaker 3: this guy. Like, he was super sweet and cool on set.

1127
01:00:51,720 --> 01:00:51,980
Speaker 2: Oh, wow.

1128
01:00:52,100 --> 01:00:52,280
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1129
01:00:52,320 --> 01:00:54,320
Speaker 2: I mean, he's great here. But in a way, you

1130
01:00:54,680 --> 01:00:56,520
Speaker 2: almost don't want him to have been in anything else

1131
01:00:56,600 --> 01:00:59,300
Speaker 2: because it makes it seem more real. Like, this is

1132
01:00:59,340 --> 01:01:03,020
Speaker 2: just a real, real, like, cult member in this film

1133
01:01:03,060 --> 01:01:03,480
Speaker 2: or something.

1134
01:01:03,500 --> 01:01:03,580
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1135
01:01:05,760 --> 01:01:08,240
Speaker 2: All right. Well, let's turn to the music real quick

1136
01:01:08,380 --> 01:01:13,260
Speaker 2: because the music in this film is amazing. It's outside

1137
01:01:13,300 --> 01:01:18,050
Speaker 2: of the Wagner or Wagner needle drop that we get

1138
01:01:18,090 --> 01:01:21,669
Speaker 2: in this and some other bits of music. It's pretty

1139
01:01:21,710 --> 01:01:27,200
Speaker 2: much an all synth score. Very mogey. I've seen it

1140
01:01:27,240 --> 01:01:30,960
Speaker 2: described as one of the earliest fully electronic feature film scores.

1141
01:01:31,500 --> 01:01:34,240
Speaker 2: The earliest, of course, would be Forbidden Planet in 56,

1142
01:01:34,240 --> 01:01:37,700
Speaker 2: which we've talked about. But, you know, whatever the case,

1143
01:01:38,280 --> 01:01:43,000
Speaker 2: tremendous scent here. Just amazing. I think it was finally

1144
01:01:43,040 --> 01:01:47,090
Speaker 2: released on vinyl in 2018, and it's now a collector's item.

1145
01:01:47,250 --> 01:01:49,189
Speaker 2: The individual behind it, I don't think I've even mentioned

1146
01:01:49,210 --> 01:01:54,150
Speaker 2: his name, it's Philan Bishop, who lived 1948 through 1991.

1147
01:01:54,150 --> 01:01:56,890
Speaker 2: One of only three film scores that he did, the

1148
01:01:56,910 --> 01:02:00,780
Speaker 2: other two being 73's The Severed Arm, 75's Kiss of

1149
01:02:00,800 --> 01:02:04,260
Speaker 2: the Tarantula. I don't think either of these have huge

1150
01:02:04,300 --> 01:02:07,700
Speaker 2: cult followings, but Even if they're terrible and boring, I

1151
01:02:07,740 --> 01:02:09,070
Speaker 2: kind of want to see them now just because I

1152
01:02:09,090 --> 01:02:11,280
Speaker 2: want to hear what this guy laid on top of

1153
01:02:11,320 --> 01:02:14,300
Speaker 2: them because it's so good. And I couldn't find out

1154
01:02:14,360 --> 01:02:17,380
Speaker 2: much about him. Sometimes you look up guys like this

1155
01:02:17,460 --> 01:02:19,500
Speaker 2: on Discogs and you'll realize, oh, well, they're in the

1156
01:02:19,540 --> 01:02:21,240
Speaker 2: liner notes on this, or at least they were like

1157
01:02:21,280 --> 01:02:25,160
Speaker 2: a synth technician on this album or this album. But really,

1158
01:02:25,260 --> 01:02:28,400
Speaker 2: outside of these three scores, I couldn't find much. So

1159
01:02:28,420 --> 01:02:30,900
Speaker 2: I don't know if there's anything that turned up in

1160
01:02:31,260 --> 01:02:32,680
Speaker 2: the extras on your disc or not.

1161
01:02:33,760 --> 01:02:35,980
Speaker 3: No, I don't know anything about him.

1162
01:02:36,760 --> 01:02:38,959
Speaker 2: Maybe he's not real. It just beamed directly from outer

1163
01:02:39,000 --> 01:02:42,620
Speaker 2: space into this film. But terrific, terrific stuff. It's kind

1164
01:02:42,660 --> 01:02:46,120
Speaker 2: of like an unhinged synth feeling. You can imagine if

1165
01:02:46,160 --> 01:02:49,340
Speaker 2: this were in another production, they might have reined him

1166
01:02:49,380 --> 01:02:53,070
Speaker 2: in a little bit, but it's great. No notes from

1167
01:02:53,090 --> 01:03:03,040
Speaker 2: me other than it's just tremendous. All right.

1168
01:03:03,420 --> 01:03:05,980
Speaker 3: So here's the part where we would usually talk about

1169
01:03:06,020 --> 01:03:08,640
Speaker 3: the plot. As we said earlier, there's not a lot

1170
01:03:08,660 --> 01:03:10,860
Speaker 3: of plot. So we're not going to like walk through

1171
01:03:10,900 --> 01:03:13,700
Speaker 3: the narrative chronologically. Instead, I think we're just going to

1172
01:03:13,740 --> 01:03:18,220
Speaker 3: like focus on some scenes that we like. One that

1173
01:03:18,400 --> 01:03:21,060
Speaker 3: is interesting. We already mentioned that Walter Hill dies in

1174
01:03:21,080 --> 01:03:24,800
Speaker 3: this movie. The director, Walter Hill. He is an actor.

1175
01:03:25,430 --> 01:03:28,310
Speaker 2: Also one of the writers on Alien.

1176
01:03:28,350 --> 01:03:29,150
Speaker 3: Streets of Fire.

1177
01:03:29,230 --> 01:03:32,230
Speaker 2: Producer. Like his name's on all of the Alien franchise stuff.

1178
01:03:32,270 --> 01:03:37,440
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Walter Hill, uh, was, uh, yeah, he's, he's

1179
01:03:37,480 --> 01:03:39,920
Speaker 3: just an actor in this movie. The film opens with

1180
01:03:39,960 --> 01:03:43,020
Speaker 3: us on a sidewalk. We're looking at a neighborhood sidewalk

1181
01:03:43,060 --> 01:03:45,380
Speaker 3: with a strip of grass next to it. Some trees

1182
01:03:45,460 --> 01:03:48,460
Speaker 3: planted along looks like, I don't know, crepe myrtles or something.

1183
01:03:49,040 --> 01:03:52,440
Speaker 3: And then there's this block wall, uh, like cinder block wall.

1184
01:03:52,960 --> 01:03:56,480
Speaker 3: Walter Hill comes running down the sidewalk. He collapses on

1185
01:03:56,540 --> 01:04:00,610
Speaker 3: the sidewalk, a gate opens nearby. He goes inside the

1186
01:04:00,650 --> 01:04:02,740
Speaker 3: gate and then he's in somebody's yard. I think he's

1187
01:04:02,780 --> 01:04:05,580
Speaker 3: next to a pool. He sees a girl come around

1188
01:04:05,620 --> 01:04:08,180
Speaker 3: the corner. Oh, who's this girl? And then the girl

1189
01:04:08,240 --> 01:04:10,440
Speaker 3: comes up to him and cuts his throat with a razor.

1190
01:04:10,500 --> 01:04:10,580
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1191
01:04:10,660 --> 01:04:13,060
Speaker 3: Okay.

1192
01:04:13,140 --> 01:04:15,430
Speaker 2: And I was trying to make sense of all this

1193
01:04:15,450 --> 01:04:17,390
Speaker 2: because I didn't know what kind of movie this truly

1194
01:04:17,430 --> 01:04:20,130
Speaker 2: was yet. And I was like thinking, okay, who is

1195
01:04:20,170 --> 01:04:23,710
Speaker 2: this guy? Does he know this girl? Do they like,

1196
01:04:23,850 --> 01:04:26,780
Speaker 2: is this like a father and daughter or are they

1197
01:04:26,820 --> 01:04:27,280
Speaker 2: just neighbors?

1198
01:04:27,300 --> 01:04:27,700
Speaker 3: I don't think so.

1199
01:04:28,130 --> 01:04:29,950
Speaker 2: Why? And then why is she stabbing him?

1200
01:04:30,010 --> 01:04:30,290
Speaker 3: I guess.

1201
01:04:30,310 --> 01:04:32,450
Speaker 2: And then I realized, oh, she's stabbing him because, you know,

1202
01:04:33,310 --> 01:04:36,470
Speaker 2: madness or coldness or some sort of supernatural thing that

1203
01:04:36,490 --> 01:04:38,730
Speaker 2: we'll find out more about later. But I was just

1204
01:04:38,770 --> 01:04:39,350
Speaker 2: very confused.

1205
01:04:40,530 --> 01:04:42,660
Speaker 3: You know, this is a dream I've had one time

1206
01:04:42,680 --> 01:04:44,860
Speaker 3: in Southern California. Yeah.

1207
01:04:45,600 --> 01:04:45,800
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1208
01:04:45,840 --> 01:04:47,880
Speaker 3: So should we talk about that gas station scene? I

1209
01:04:47,920 --> 01:04:50,640
Speaker 3: think that one is really important because that is the

1210
01:04:50,820 --> 01:04:53,740
Speaker 3: scene where I was watching this with Rachel. And I

1211
01:04:53,780 --> 01:04:55,440
Speaker 3: feel like that is the scene where both of us

1212
01:04:55,600 --> 01:04:58,570
Speaker 3: realized this was going to be really good. Yeah.

1213
01:04:58,850 --> 01:05:02,530
Speaker 2: Again, this mobile station is immaculate. It feels like it

1214
01:05:02,570 --> 01:05:05,600
Speaker 2: has never been used. Not only that, it feels like

1215
01:05:06,440 --> 01:05:09,500
Speaker 2: it is a spaceship that has landed on the planet,

1216
01:05:09,680 --> 01:05:12,440
Speaker 2: or it feels like it is the first thing that

1217
01:05:12,500 --> 01:05:18,600
Speaker 2: a creator god has made and installed upon the void.

1218
01:05:18,620 --> 01:05:22,260
Speaker 2: There's a strong sense of that, especially towards the end

1219
01:05:22,300 --> 01:05:25,470
Speaker 2: of the sequence where the lights gradually go out at

1220
01:05:25,510 --> 01:05:28,620
Speaker 2: the gas station and leave us in complete darkness. Almost

1221
01:05:28,660 --> 01:05:30,350
Speaker 2: as if this was the only thing that had ever

1222
01:05:30,390 --> 01:05:30,850
Speaker 2: been made.

1223
01:05:31,490 --> 01:05:35,410
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's surrounded completely by darkness on all sides,

1224
01:05:35,530 --> 01:05:39,250
Speaker 3: but it is brightly illuminated itself. Similar quality to the

1225
01:05:39,310 --> 01:05:40,650
Speaker 3: Ralph Slater, actually.

1226
01:05:40,910 --> 01:05:43,830
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to say, like, I really love a

1227
01:05:43,870 --> 01:05:48,979
Speaker 2: good gas station scene, especially in horror. The TV series

1228
01:05:49,120 --> 01:05:51,360
Speaker 2: Widow's Bay had a really great one recently. It had

1229
01:05:51,380 --> 01:05:52,980
Speaker 2: a couple of really great ones. And I think one

1230
01:05:53,000 --> 01:05:55,640
Speaker 2: of the reasons is that a gas station is very much,

1231
01:05:55,660 --> 01:05:59,740
Speaker 2: you know, it's a waypoint. It's this... this little pocket

1232
01:05:59,780 --> 01:06:04,020
Speaker 2: of civilization and at least some level of authority. Like

1233
01:06:04,080 --> 01:06:06,980
Speaker 2: there's a person who works there. They have access to

1234
01:06:07,040 --> 01:06:10,610
Speaker 2: communication systems of some sort. They're almost like they're some

1235
01:06:10,650 --> 01:06:13,870
Speaker 2: sort of a minor sheriff. So the gas station is

1236
01:06:13,890 --> 01:06:16,770
Speaker 2: always positioned as a place where you can go into

1237
01:06:16,790 --> 01:06:19,640
Speaker 2: the light, away from the darkness of the surrounding wilderness,

1238
01:06:20,180 --> 01:06:22,000
Speaker 2: and you can get some level of help.

1239
01:06:22,590 --> 01:06:25,410
Speaker 3: So it's like the trading post in the woods.

1240
01:06:25,430 --> 01:06:28,470
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. It's exactly a trading post. And so I'm

1241
01:06:28,510 --> 01:06:30,560
Speaker 2: always game for a great horror movie sequence with a

1242
01:06:30,560 --> 01:06:34,920
Speaker 2: gas station, even outside of our sequence. It has thematic

1243
01:06:34,980 --> 01:06:36,840
Speaker 2: importance and it's so well utilized here.

1244
01:06:38,160 --> 01:06:41,360
Speaker 3: But I think clearly to the filmmakers had a lot

1245
01:06:41,440 --> 01:06:45,050
Speaker 3: to do with the texture of L.A. and Southern California

1246
01:06:45,070 --> 01:06:47,550
Speaker 3: at the time. You know, there are there are thoughts

1247
01:06:47,610 --> 01:06:51,590
Speaker 3: about like, what is the defining architecture of Los Angeles?

1248
01:06:51,610 --> 01:06:54,650
Speaker 3: You know, unlike many other big American cities where you

1249
01:06:54,690 --> 01:06:57,370
Speaker 3: can think about the big like buildings or landmarks or

1250
01:06:57,410 --> 01:07:01,510
Speaker 3: something in LA, it's very much like open space and

1251
01:07:01,610 --> 01:07:05,630
Speaker 3: highways and cars and the sprawl and gas stations, gas

1252
01:07:05,670 --> 01:07:07,070
Speaker 3: stations that power it all.

1253
01:07:07,830 --> 01:07:08,050
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1254
01:07:09,360 --> 01:07:12,400
Speaker 3: Anyway, so yeah, she pulls up to this gas station.

1255
01:07:12,480 --> 01:07:15,600
Speaker 3: As we mentioned earlier, the guy who works there is

1256
01:07:15,700 --> 01:07:18,840
Speaker 3: just like shooting into the darkness. I loved that moment.

1257
01:07:18,910 --> 01:07:20,740
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's like, what are you doing? He's like, oh,

1258
01:07:20,800 --> 01:07:22,970
Speaker 2: I'm shooting at dogs. Like, what else could it be?

1259
01:07:23,210 --> 01:07:27,370
Speaker 2: What else could it be? And it's this great mad energy,

1260
01:07:27,430 --> 01:07:29,690
Speaker 2: which also reminded me of some of the comedy in

1261
01:07:29,750 --> 01:07:34,830
Speaker 2: Widow's Bay. Some strong Widow's Bay vibes there. But then,

1262
01:07:35,090 --> 01:07:36,670
Speaker 2: like you said, he just goes back to, all right,

1263
01:07:36,770 --> 01:07:38,620
Speaker 2: let's go back to work here. Let's fill your car up.

1264
01:07:39,210 --> 01:07:41,870
Speaker 2: And then we get the albino trucker showing up with

1265
01:07:41,890 --> 01:07:44,350
Speaker 2: all of the cryptic dread that he brings with him.

1266
01:07:44,410 --> 01:07:46,700
Speaker 2: And we see what he has in the back of

1267
01:07:46,800 --> 01:07:50,520
Speaker 2: his truck. Things just get crazier and crazier.

1268
01:07:51,120 --> 01:07:51,260
Speaker 1: Right.

1269
01:07:51,300 --> 01:07:53,220
Speaker 3: So he's got dead bodies in his truck.

1270
01:07:53,240 --> 01:07:56,810
Speaker 2: Seemingly, yes. With like, yeah, their eyes are missing and stuff. Yeah.

1271
01:07:57,930 --> 01:08:01,850
Speaker 3: And, uh, then later somehow this scene ends with the, uh,

1272
01:08:01,970 --> 01:08:04,690
Speaker 3: the gas station attendant is like back in the service

1273
01:08:04,710 --> 01:08:08,010
Speaker 3: station part and he's working under a car and I'm like, Oh,

1274
01:08:08,070 --> 01:08:10,320
Speaker 3: I know where this is going. But then the car

1275
01:08:10,360 --> 01:08:12,700
Speaker 3: starts descending and he gets out of the way. So

1276
01:08:12,720 --> 01:08:16,300
Speaker 3: he doesn't get crushed, uh, which, you know, it's enough,

1277
01:08:16,340 --> 01:08:19,320
Speaker 3: just the suggestion of the lift coming down on you

1278
01:08:19,360 --> 01:08:22,400
Speaker 3: and crushing you. But, uh, he still does. I think he, wait,

1279
01:08:22,439 --> 01:08:24,620
Speaker 3: now I've forgotten how this ends. He meets a violent end,

1280
01:08:24,700 --> 01:08:25,040
Speaker 3: I believe.

1281
01:08:25,060 --> 01:08:29,509
Speaker 2: Yes. A four. we will call it a zombie jumps

1282
01:08:29,590 --> 01:08:31,610
Speaker 2: out of the car that was up on the left

1283
01:08:32,189 --> 01:08:35,930
Speaker 2: and presumably kills him. Um, at some point earlier, when

1284
01:08:35,970 --> 01:08:38,809
Speaker 2: he's talking to our main character, he talks about somebody

1285
01:08:38,880 --> 01:08:41,260
Speaker 2: or something being quote dead or in hell. And I

1286
01:08:41,300 --> 01:08:43,820
Speaker 2: was thinking of all the, the titles that were given

1287
01:08:43,860 --> 01:08:45,939
Speaker 2: to this movie, why not dead or in hell? That's,

1288
01:08:46,000 --> 01:08:48,689
Speaker 2: that's a pretty good title. That would be a good one,

1289
01:08:49,140 --> 01:08:50,900
Speaker 2: but it was, it was not meant to be, but

1290
01:08:51,580 --> 01:08:54,340
Speaker 2: also just other than the characters we've mentioned, nobody else's

1291
01:08:54,380 --> 01:08:57,620
Speaker 2: at this gas station. And so, the way that it's lit,

1292
01:08:57,700 --> 01:09:00,080
Speaker 2: the way that it's depopulated, you know, made into this

1293
01:09:00,180 --> 01:09:03,520
Speaker 2: liminal space it just adds to this unnatural feeling of

1294
01:09:03,580 --> 01:09:04,639
Speaker 2: dread that we have.

1295
01:09:04,460 --> 01:09:10,380
Speaker 3: Here totally i think we should talk about arletti's father's house.

1296
01:09:10,360 --> 01:09:14,019
Speaker 2: Oh god this place is amazing yes What.

1297
01:09:13,920 --> 01:09:16,860
Speaker 3: A bachelor pad. It is so cool. So we already

1298
01:09:16,900 --> 01:09:20,210
Speaker 3: mentioned the walls. He's painted the walls with these landscape

1299
01:09:20,310 --> 01:09:26,490
Speaker 3: murals that are, have finally realized, uh, uh, perspectives in them.

1300
01:09:26,550 --> 01:09:28,720
Speaker 3: So that, you know, things seem to move away to

1301
01:09:28,760 --> 01:09:31,420
Speaker 3: vanishing points. And so they look very real. You have

1302
01:09:31,439 --> 01:09:34,360
Speaker 3: these boardwalks that look like they might be real space,

1303
01:09:34,840 --> 01:09:38,040
Speaker 3: but also. All the walls have all these creeps painted

1304
01:09:38,140 --> 01:09:41,140
Speaker 3: on them. They're dudes standing around in dark suits with

1305
01:09:41,220 --> 01:09:44,000
Speaker 3: ties just in the corner kind of gazing at you.

1306
01:09:44,340 --> 01:09:46,780
Speaker 3: And you keep thinking they're real people in the shot.

1307
01:09:46,880 --> 01:09:48,640
Speaker 3: And then you're like, oh, no, wait, that's just the

1308
01:09:48,680 --> 01:09:49,260
Speaker 3: wall again.

1309
01:09:49,420 --> 01:09:52,020
Speaker 2: It's weird because there's so many details about this house

1310
01:09:52,200 --> 01:09:54,710
Speaker 2: that makes it feel like this is a late 60s,

1311
01:09:54,750 --> 01:09:57,470
Speaker 2: early 70s house that's just designed to do drugs in.

1312
01:09:57,530 --> 01:10:00,349
Speaker 2: You know, it's like this is a hippie hangout. This is,

1313
01:10:00,910 --> 01:10:03,349
Speaker 2: you know, a place to trip and wander around in.

1314
01:10:03,650 --> 01:10:07,130
Speaker 2: But then why are there like literal... murals of the

1315
01:10:07,189 --> 01:10:10,330
Speaker 2: man on the wall staring at you. It just seems

1316
01:10:10,370 --> 01:10:12,350
Speaker 2: like this is a bad idea.

1317
01:10:13,210 --> 01:10:16,929
Speaker 3: This painter, he just wanted nothing more than to imagine

1318
01:10:16,970 --> 01:10:19,670
Speaker 3: all of his walls were boardwalks going out into the

1319
01:10:19,770 --> 01:10:22,730
Speaker 3: ocean and then think that there were G-men standing in

1320
01:10:22,790 --> 01:10:23,430
Speaker 3: every corner.

1321
01:10:25,490 --> 01:10:28,700
Speaker 2: Because otherwise you have things like hanging beds, like beds

1322
01:10:28,820 --> 01:10:31,519
Speaker 2: hanging on chains from the ceiling, but not in a

1323
01:10:31,560 --> 01:10:33,519
Speaker 2: Hellraiser way, but in a cool way.

1324
01:10:35,110 --> 01:10:37,960
Speaker 3: God, I love that bed. And it's not just a bed, actually.

1325
01:10:38,060 --> 01:10:43,160
Speaker 3: It's like a whole rectangular slab that is suspended from

1326
01:10:43,200 --> 01:10:46,400
Speaker 3: the ceiling by four chains, has a bed on it,

1327
01:10:47,020 --> 01:10:49,519
Speaker 3: but the bed is not the whole thing that's suspended.

1328
01:10:49,560 --> 01:10:53,860
Speaker 3: There's like potted plants and stuff on it. Yeah, yeah.

1329
01:10:53,900 --> 01:10:56,860
Speaker 2: So it's lots of 70s lounge zones we're going to

1330
01:10:56,880 --> 01:11:00,759
Speaker 2: see in this household. There's paint, paint, and more paint.

1331
01:11:01,260 --> 01:11:04,429
Speaker 2: And then also it is a house that is positioned...

1332
01:11:04,600 --> 01:11:07,500
Speaker 2: near the beach, it is a house that's literally at

1333
01:11:07,520 --> 01:11:10,280
Speaker 2: the end of the world. It is a boundary line

1334
01:11:10,600 --> 01:11:14,559
Speaker 2: between the sane world of Southern California and the deep,

1335
01:11:14,580 --> 01:11:17,320
Speaker 2: dark ocean, the ocean from which some sort of dark

1336
01:11:17,360 --> 01:11:18,600
Speaker 2: secret is about to emerge.

1337
01:11:19,540 --> 01:11:22,420
Speaker 3: And don't forget the other bedroom in the house that

1338
01:11:22,540 --> 01:11:26,340
Speaker 3: Tom and his two lady friends move into, which has

1339
01:11:26,420 --> 01:11:30,580
Speaker 3: the gigantic round bed with a tree hanging over it inside.

1340
01:11:31,020 --> 01:11:38,410
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is definitely... This is definitely a hangout for sure. Yeah.

1341
01:11:38,490 --> 01:11:41,930
Speaker 3: So, yeah, it's interesting that, like I said, you keep

1342
01:11:42,050 --> 01:11:45,490
Speaker 3: thinking that things painted on the walls are real things,

1343
01:11:45,970 --> 01:11:49,349
Speaker 3: like the figures of men in suits. But another thing

1344
01:11:49,400 --> 01:11:52,320
Speaker 3: I wanted to point out is that you've got this

1345
01:11:52,620 --> 01:11:58,439
Speaker 3: highly colorful interior decor and colors everywhere, but the colors

1346
01:11:58,560 --> 01:12:01,230
Speaker 3: of the men in suits painted on the walls are

1347
01:12:01,660 --> 01:12:04,979
Speaker 3: are mostly muted. They're like black and white and a

1348
01:12:05,000 --> 01:12:07,780
Speaker 3: little bit of blue and gray. And I thought it

1349
01:12:07,820 --> 01:12:11,430
Speaker 3: was interesting that that turns out to be the same

1350
01:12:11,890 --> 01:12:16,050
Speaker 3: color palette of the flesh eating townspeople later. You very

1351
01:12:16,130 --> 01:12:18,270
Speaker 3: often see them. I mean, not all of them. Some

1352
01:12:18,290 --> 01:12:20,370
Speaker 3: of them are dressed a little differently, but most of

1353
01:12:20,410 --> 01:12:24,540
Speaker 3: the time they're, they're dressed overwhelmingly in black and white

1354
01:12:24,600 --> 01:12:28,599
Speaker 3: kind of funeral attire, grayscale coated clothes, sometimes blue.

1355
01:12:29,310 --> 01:12:32,250
Speaker 2: Yeah, it does kind of thematically work. Getting into this

1356
01:12:32,350 --> 01:12:35,990
Speaker 2: idea of some sort of dark force is beginning to

1357
01:12:36,060 --> 01:12:38,540
Speaker 2: manifest in this otherwise colorful world.

1358
01:12:39,920 --> 01:12:43,780
Speaker 3: Yeah. How about that hotel scene? So the first scene

1359
01:12:43,860 --> 01:12:48,140
Speaker 3: where Arletty meets Tom, Laura, and Tony, I don't even

1360
01:12:48,200 --> 01:12:50,540
Speaker 3: remember how she ends up there. She's wandering around and

1361
01:12:50,580 --> 01:12:53,400
Speaker 3: she just kind of goes into a motel room.

1362
01:12:53,430 --> 01:12:54,910
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like we just kind of wander in

1363
01:12:54,950 --> 01:12:55,490
Speaker 2: and we're there.

1364
01:12:56,090 --> 01:13:02,100
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then inside... There are these three people. There's Tom, Laura,

1365
01:13:02,200 --> 01:13:05,600
Speaker 3: and Tony, and they're hanging out on the bed interviewing

1366
01:13:05,760 --> 01:13:11,370
Speaker 3: Elisha Cook Jr., who is a wandering hobo, I think,

1367
01:13:11,430 --> 01:13:14,450
Speaker 3: a guy who's looking for some booze or some money.

1368
01:13:15,030 --> 01:13:18,690
Speaker 3: And they want him to tell them his tale because

1369
01:13:18,790 --> 01:13:20,710
Speaker 3: Tom says he is a collector of tales.

1370
01:13:20,770 --> 01:13:22,850
Speaker 2: Yeah, like they basically give him a bottle of wine

1371
01:13:22,930 --> 01:13:26,420
Speaker 2: to tell them the craziest thing he knows about. which

1372
01:13:26,620 --> 01:13:28,380
Speaker 2: is going to be about some of the dark stuff

1373
01:13:28,400 --> 01:13:30,700
Speaker 2: that's about to go down in this movie. And I

1374
01:13:30,740 --> 01:13:33,660
Speaker 2: love everything about this weird hang. This is, yeah, this,

1375
01:13:34,320 --> 01:13:37,680
Speaker 2: this is kind of shabby hotel room, but, um, all

1376
01:13:37,700 --> 01:13:41,200
Speaker 2: these weird deliberate choices, like Tony is introduced. We hear

1377
01:13:41,240 --> 01:13:45,140
Speaker 2: the toilet flush. Yeah. And then Tony comes out and

1378
01:13:45,680 --> 01:13:49,260
Speaker 2: she's like moisturizing her skin and then keeps moisturizing her skin. Uh,

1379
01:13:50,240 --> 01:13:52,520
Speaker 2: and like I say, all these elements just feel like

1380
01:13:53,020 --> 01:13:56,269
Speaker 2: very weird. weird and i don't know there's something about

1381
01:13:56,310 --> 01:13:58,530
Speaker 2: the moisturizing of the skin i kept coming back to

1382
01:13:58,590 --> 01:14:02,429
Speaker 2: maybe it's like it's in such close proximity to introduction

1383
01:14:02,470 --> 01:14:04,840
Speaker 2: to weird characters and weird plot elements and then it's

1384
01:14:04,860 --> 01:14:07,020
Speaker 2: just such a like an everyday thing i don't know

1385
01:14:07,100 --> 01:14:08,540
Speaker 2: it's it's bizarre.

1386
01:14:08,960 --> 01:14:11,660
Speaker 3: The shot of elisha cook jr when he's telling his

1387
01:14:11,720 --> 01:14:16,099
Speaker 3: story he's the same color as the wall behind him

1388
01:14:16,400 --> 01:14:18,250
Speaker 3: and the tv beside him.

1389
01:14:18,090 --> 01:14:21,830
Speaker 2: He's situated next to a just a black powerless television

1390
01:14:21,890 --> 01:14:24,930
Speaker 2: set i yeah the I love the way it's blocked.

1391
01:14:24,990 --> 01:14:28,099
Speaker 2: I have no idea exactly how to interpret it other than,

1392
01:14:28,260 --> 01:14:31,720
Speaker 2: you know, something rather straightforward. Like they are watching him.

1393
01:14:31,800 --> 01:14:34,240
Speaker 2: Like he's a television set. Like they're doing this for kicks.

1394
01:14:34,720 --> 01:14:37,620
Speaker 2: They're just some, you know, they're just, this is what

1395
01:14:37,640 --> 01:14:40,100
Speaker 2: they're reduced to. They've done all the drugs in Southern California.

1396
01:14:40,200 --> 01:14:42,620
Speaker 2: And now the way that they are entertained is just

1397
01:14:42,640 --> 01:14:45,840
Speaker 2: by finding strange people and getting strange stories out of them.

1398
01:14:46,540 --> 01:14:49,820
Speaker 3: But the monochromaticness of the shot is so interesting. It's

1399
01:14:49,850 --> 01:14:53,970
Speaker 3: like the, the, wood panel television with the tan wall

1400
01:14:54,010 --> 01:14:58,110
Speaker 3: behind and the brown tan jacket and the tan shirt

1401
01:14:58,150 --> 01:14:59,670
Speaker 3: he's wearing. Yeah.

1402
01:14:59,810 --> 01:15:00,090
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1403
01:15:00,490 --> 01:15:04,460
Speaker 3: So interesting. So good. Um, and yeah, he, of course

1404
01:15:04,500 --> 01:15:07,000
Speaker 3: he tells a story about, uh, the blood moon and the,

1405
01:15:07,020 --> 01:15:09,480
Speaker 3: you know, the, I don't even remember what it is. The,

1406
01:15:09,720 --> 01:15:12,660
Speaker 3: I think he tells a story about, uh, uh, a

1407
01:15:12,780 --> 01:15:15,889
Speaker 3: baby that eats something. Uh, I don't know.

1408
01:15:16,610 --> 01:15:19,170
Speaker 2: Basically, we're going to eventually get this, this tale of

1409
01:15:19,229 --> 01:15:23,840
Speaker 2: the dark stranger about a, a mysterious man who survived

1410
01:15:24,320 --> 01:15:28,680
Speaker 2: the Donner Party by embracing some sort of new religion,

1411
01:15:28,780 --> 01:15:33,150
Speaker 2: some dark god, and then came out of the mountains

1412
01:15:33,590 --> 01:15:37,950
Speaker 2: bringing with him some sort of plague of cannibalism and

1413
01:15:38,290 --> 01:15:41,990
Speaker 2: dark revelation. And it is his plague. It is this

1414
01:15:42,110 --> 01:15:45,050
Speaker 2: new way of understanding the universe that he's bringing with

1415
01:15:45,110 --> 01:15:48,550
Speaker 2: him and is apparently coming back. And it's going to

1416
01:15:48,590 --> 01:15:49,460
Speaker 2: bring this into the 1970s.

1417
01:15:51,070 --> 01:15:53,750
Speaker 3: This detail doesn't really matter much for the movie, but

1418
01:15:53,830 --> 01:15:57,330
Speaker 3: I do think it's interesting that it, it later becomes

1419
01:15:57,610 --> 01:16:00,229
Speaker 3: the premise in a much more integrated way of the

1420
01:16:00,270 --> 01:16:01,139
Speaker 3: movie ravenous.

1421
01:16:01,320 --> 01:16:03,980
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. It reminded me of ravenous as well.

1422
01:16:04,060 --> 01:16:04,260
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1423
01:16:04,360 --> 01:16:04,599
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1424
01:16:05,260 --> 01:16:08,420
Speaker 3: That like, I'm bringing the religion of cannibalism out of

1425
01:16:08,479 --> 01:16:12,860
Speaker 3: the mountain pass and that you will now all follow me. And, uh, it's,

1426
01:16:12,930 --> 01:16:14,349
Speaker 3: you know, it's going to change the world.

1427
01:16:14,390 --> 01:16:16,910
Speaker 2: Yeah. And here it does fittingly feel like a, a

1428
01:16:16,990 --> 01:16:21,170
Speaker 2: dark presence in a dream. Um, so I absolutely love

1429
01:16:21,189 --> 01:16:24,590
Speaker 2: the way it's presented and presented like piece by piece

1430
01:16:24,650 --> 01:16:24,930
Speaker 2: to us.

1431
01:16:34,360 --> 01:16:36,240
Speaker 3: We've already talked about this in some ways, but there

1432
01:16:36,300 --> 01:16:40,080
Speaker 3: is the scene where Laura leaves. So eventually Tom, Laura

1433
01:16:40,140 --> 01:16:43,280
Speaker 3: and Tony move into the house with Arletty without asking her,

1434
01:16:43,360 --> 01:16:46,810
Speaker 3: they just show up there. And then at one point,

1435
01:16:46,880 --> 01:16:49,560
Speaker 3: Laura is, I think, trying to leave because, I don't know,

1436
01:16:49,580 --> 01:16:51,660
Speaker 3: she gets bored of the scene and wants to split.

1437
01:16:52,439 --> 01:16:54,840
Speaker 3: And she goes out walking in the night and is

1438
01:16:55,120 --> 01:16:58,780
Speaker 3: walking down this long, empty road that's surrounded on both

1439
01:16:58,840 --> 01:17:03,229
Speaker 3: sides by unfinished construction of houses. Just these bare boards

1440
01:17:03,270 --> 01:17:07,790
Speaker 3: of houses, which are, it's a very cool looking shot.

1441
01:17:08,410 --> 01:17:11,240
Speaker 3: And then a pickup truck comes up behind her. And

1442
01:17:11,280 --> 01:17:14,630
Speaker 3: this is where the character played by Benny Robinson, like,

1443
01:17:14,710 --> 01:17:17,050
Speaker 3: offers her a ride and then eats a rat in

1444
01:17:17,110 --> 01:17:17,510
Speaker 3: front of her.

1445
01:17:17,770 --> 01:17:20,430
Speaker 2: Oh, God. Like, yeah, he pulls up in this vehicle.

1446
01:17:21,189 --> 01:17:23,170
Speaker 2: And I think at this point we know what's in

1447
01:17:23,210 --> 01:17:25,190
Speaker 2: his trunk or in the bed of the truck. We

1448
01:17:25,229 --> 01:17:26,810
Speaker 2: know he's got bodies back there.

1449
01:17:26,840 --> 01:17:28,220
Speaker 3: Well, they're live at this point.

1450
01:17:28,240 --> 01:17:29,060
Speaker 2: They're live at this point.

1451
01:17:29,120 --> 01:17:29,360
Speaker 3: Okay.

1452
01:17:29,380 --> 01:17:33,820
Speaker 2: So even worse, they all look creepy and sus. And

1453
01:17:34,860 --> 01:17:38,510
Speaker 2: he's blaring Wagner. Which, at the time, I was like, oh,

1454
01:17:38,550 --> 01:17:41,510
Speaker 2: this sounds a lot like Entry of the Gods into Valhalla,

1455
01:17:41,570 --> 01:17:44,990
Speaker 2: which I already know to distrust anyone playing that music.

1456
01:17:45,229 --> 01:17:47,150
Speaker 2: It turns out, I think it's from a different Wagner piece,

1457
01:17:47,170 --> 01:17:50,670
Speaker 2: but very much that kind of vibe. And she's like, yeah,

1458
01:17:50,750 --> 01:17:52,830
Speaker 2: I'll get in. This seems perfectly safe.

1459
01:17:53,510 --> 01:17:56,610
Speaker 3: She literally kind of shrugs and says, whatever, and gets

1460
01:17:56,670 --> 01:17:57,130
Speaker 3: in the car.

1461
01:17:57,880 --> 01:18:00,370
Speaker 2: Yeah, close enough. Uh, and of course it just gets

1462
01:18:00,410 --> 01:18:03,170
Speaker 2: creepier and creepier and yeah, it kind of, uh, reaches

1463
01:18:03,229 --> 01:18:05,650
Speaker 2: its crescendo when he bites the head off of a

1464
01:18:05,830 --> 01:18:06,370
Speaker 2: live rat.

1465
01:18:06,450 --> 01:18:09,430
Speaker 3: And, uh, he offers her some, well, he mean he's

1466
01:18:09,450 --> 01:18:13,640
Speaker 3: a good guest. Yeah. You're going to offer that host. Yeah. Yeah. Uh,

1467
01:18:13,700 --> 01:18:15,920
Speaker 3: and then she tries to leave or she does leave

1468
01:18:15,960 --> 01:18:18,740
Speaker 3: the car and then goes to the Ralph's. Uh, she

1469
01:18:18,780 --> 01:18:22,680
Speaker 3: goes inside a grocery store and man, I love the

1470
01:18:22,740 --> 01:18:26,120
Speaker 3: Ralph scene. I love so much about how it looks. Um,

1471
01:18:27,130 --> 01:18:29,130
Speaker 3: It made me think about how the concept of the

1472
01:18:29,370 --> 01:18:34,680
Speaker 3: uncanny is sometimes described as the feeling you get from

1473
01:18:34,900 --> 01:18:39,280
Speaker 3: suddenly seeing the mundane or the familiar as unsettling. It's

1474
01:18:39,320 --> 01:18:44,700
Speaker 3: when the mundane and familiar become scary. And if that's true,

1475
01:18:44,740 --> 01:18:47,939
Speaker 3: if that's what the uncanny is, what is more familiar

1476
01:18:48,000 --> 01:18:51,660
Speaker 3: and mundane than the grocery store? than the Ralph's it's

1477
01:18:51,960 --> 01:18:55,080
Speaker 3: familiar and mundane in many ways at once. Like it's

1478
01:18:55,160 --> 01:18:57,780
Speaker 3: a place we're familiar with because we go there all

1479
01:18:57,840 --> 01:19:03,240
Speaker 3: the time to do very mundane tasks. It's absolutely crammed

1480
01:19:03,360 --> 01:19:07,910
Speaker 3: with familiar and even friendly imagery that in the way

1481
01:19:07,990 --> 01:19:10,810
Speaker 3: of brands that have spent billions of dollars trying to

1482
01:19:10,850 --> 01:19:14,750
Speaker 3: get you to form positive associations with them. There's also

1483
01:19:14,810 --> 01:19:19,170
Speaker 3: something kind of silly and awkward about a grocery store,

1484
01:19:19,229 --> 01:19:22,480
Speaker 3: the way we pick over products and then, oops, excuse me,

1485
01:19:22,500 --> 01:19:25,760
Speaker 3: got to get my cart past you. So it's just

1486
01:19:27,240 --> 01:19:29,820
Speaker 3: the opposite of the kind of place you think of

1487
01:19:29,939 --> 01:19:34,170
Speaker 3: as spooky and haunting. But then when Laura goes in,

1488
01:19:34,229 --> 01:19:36,910
Speaker 3: there are all these other elements. Uh, it's this place

1489
01:19:36,950 --> 01:19:40,020
Speaker 3: of bright lights in the middle of a dark, expansive night,

1490
01:19:40,120 --> 01:19:42,500
Speaker 3: much like with the service station. It's like a, you know,

1491
01:19:42,560 --> 01:19:47,120
Speaker 3: moth to the flame quality there. Uh, and then the

1492
01:19:47,200 --> 01:19:51,230
Speaker 3: way that you see other people across the aisles again

1493
01:19:51,270 --> 01:19:54,090
Speaker 3: and again, this can be one of those goofy, awkward

1494
01:19:54,110 --> 01:19:56,290
Speaker 3: things at the grocery store. Like you bump into somebody

1495
01:19:56,310 --> 01:19:59,349
Speaker 3: there and then you see them again later. And it's like, oh, hi, hi.

1496
01:19:59,410 --> 01:20:02,960
Speaker 3: You know, that's awkward except here. She keeps seeing these

1497
01:20:03,000 --> 01:20:05,550
Speaker 3: same people again across the aisles, but they're kind of

1498
01:20:05,570 --> 01:20:07,670
Speaker 3: freaking her out. Yeah, they're ghoulish.

1499
01:20:08,430 --> 01:20:08,810
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1500
01:20:09,070 --> 01:20:10,950
Speaker 3: And then, of course, it's also a place you go

1501
01:20:10,990 --> 01:20:14,670
Speaker 3: to get food. And maybe that's why the other people

1502
01:20:14,750 --> 01:20:17,020
Speaker 3: are here, too. And maybe the food is her. And

1503
01:20:17,040 --> 01:20:19,580
Speaker 3: it turns out it is because she finds a bunch

1504
01:20:19,620 --> 01:20:22,680
Speaker 3: of the townspeople leaning over the meat case and just

1505
01:20:22,720 --> 01:20:25,810
Speaker 3: cramming raw meat into their mouths. And then they swarm

1506
01:20:26,070 --> 01:20:27,770
Speaker 3: Laura and eat her. Yeah.

1507
01:20:27,900 --> 01:20:31,110
Speaker 2: This is a great sequence. We get that sense of

1508
01:20:31,439 --> 01:20:34,360
Speaker 2: passing through the different rows of the different aisles of

1509
01:20:34,380 --> 01:20:37,620
Speaker 2: the grocery store. And, of course, I couldn't help but

1510
01:20:37,640 --> 01:20:41,820
Speaker 2: be reminded of, I think, my favorite sequence ever shot

1511
01:20:41,860 --> 01:20:44,740
Speaker 2: in a grocery store, that being at least part of

1512
01:20:44,760 --> 01:20:47,420
Speaker 2: the big chase sequence in Raising Arizona.

1513
01:20:47,439 --> 01:20:48,460
Speaker 3: Totally.

1514
01:20:48,500 --> 01:20:51,040
Speaker 2: Which also, in a different way, in a non-horror way,

1515
01:20:51,100 --> 01:20:54,540
Speaker 2: makes great use of the familiar grocery store setting. Mm-hmm.

1516
01:20:55,840 --> 01:20:57,139
Speaker 3: Also, Empire of the Dark.

1517
01:20:57,360 --> 01:21:00,740
Speaker 2: Yes, Empire of the Dark as well. It's another one

1518
01:21:00,760 --> 01:21:03,420
Speaker 2: of those things. It sucks me in a bit any

1519
01:21:03,439 --> 01:21:06,340
Speaker 2: time that we're in any kind of a real grocery,

1520
01:21:06,380 --> 01:21:09,280
Speaker 2: especially if it's a real grocery store. Sometimes I'll watch

1521
01:21:09,320 --> 01:21:11,680
Speaker 2: things and it's like, this feels like they set this up.

1522
01:21:11,880 --> 01:21:13,580
Speaker 2: Like they just got an old Whole Foods and then

1523
01:21:13,620 --> 01:21:15,820
Speaker 2: they just filled it with some stuff and created the

1524
01:21:15,860 --> 01:21:18,120
Speaker 2: bare minimum for the experience, which, you know, it's fine.

1525
01:21:18,140 --> 01:21:19,460
Speaker 2: You've got to make a movie one way or another.

1526
01:21:19,820 --> 01:21:21,540
Speaker 2: But I really like it when it's like, oh yeah,

1527
01:21:21,680 --> 01:21:24,560
Speaker 2: this is just a supermarket at night. They just got

1528
01:21:24,580 --> 01:21:27,520
Speaker 2: in here and they cleared out one meat, part of

1529
01:21:27,540 --> 01:21:30,000
Speaker 2: the frozen meat section so that they could have some

1530
01:21:30,360 --> 01:21:32,439
Speaker 2: ghouls eat some meat out of it. You know, I

1531
01:21:32,620 --> 01:21:33,160
Speaker 2: just love that.

1532
01:21:34,130 --> 01:21:34,290
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1533
01:21:34,670 --> 01:21:34,830
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1534
01:21:35,150 --> 01:21:39,650
Speaker 3: So I really appreciate whatever Ralph's manager it was that

1535
01:21:39,689 --> 01:21:44,429
Speaker 3: agreed to do this. I think it was a good call. Yeah, absolutely. Okay.

1536
01:21:44,710 --> 01:21:47,540
Speaker 2: So that's one of our ladies taken out of action

1537
01:21:47,660 --> 01:21:50,900
Speaker 2: by cannibalism, but there's still Tony. What's Tony up to?

1538
01:21:51,610 --> 01:21:55,300
Speaker 3: Well, Tony goes to the movies. And what a great

1539
01:21:55,350 --> 01:21:58,580
Speaker 3: scene that is. I think Tom is trying to get

1540
01:21:58,660 --> 01:22:00,679
Speaker 3: rid of her. I don't remember why. I think maybe

1541
01:22:01,160 --> 01:22:03,540
Speaker 3: he's trying to get some alone time with Arletty or something.

1542
01:22:04,800 --> 01:22:06,939
Speaker 3: Sends her off to the movies. So she goes to

1543
01:22:06,979 --> 01:22:11,320
Speaker 3: watch a Western that's a big shoot-em-up. And she buys

1544
01:22:11,380 --> 01:22:15,260
Speaker 3: a ticket, I think, from Gloria Katz. You said? She

1545
01:22:15,300 --> 01:22:17,910
Speaker 3: buys a ticket from Gloria Katz, goes in. gets herself

1546
01:22:17,939 --> 01:22:21,300
Speaker 3: some popcorn, an endless bucket of popcorn that we see her,

1547
01:22:21,520 --> 01:22:25,220
Speaker 3: we see her eat a hundred buckets worth of popcorn. Uh,

1548
01:22:25,260 --> 01:22:28,120
Speaker 3: and there's still more popcorn in it. Uh, but as

1549
01:22:28,200 --> 01:22:30,440
Speaker 3: she goes, she goes and sits down in the theater.

1550
01:22:30,880 --> 01:22:35,210
Speaker 3: And as the film goes on, other people slowly trickle in, uh,

1551
01:22:35,710 --> 01:22:38,410
Speaker 3: the townsfolk. And so, and a lot of them don't

1552
01:22:38,490 --> 01:22:40,610
Speaker 3: appear to be dressed the way you would dress to

1553
01:22:40,630 --> 01:22:42,090
Speaker 3: go out and see a movie theater. A lot of

1554
01:22:42,130 --> 01:22:45,210
Speaker 3: them are wearing, you know, funeral attire, uh, but they

1555
01:22:45,250 --> 01:22:49,050
Speaker 3: come and they sit down. And they start crowding in

1556
01:22:49,130 --> 01:22:52,350
Speaker 3: closer and closer, and it's a very slow build because

1557
01:22:52,370 --> 01:22:53,870
Speaker 3: we see them kind of come in one at a

1558
01:22:53,910 --> 01:22:56,080
Speaker 3: time until there are just really a lot of them,

1559
01:22:56,100 --> 01:22:58,620
Speaker 3: and they're getting closer and closer to Tony in the

1560
01:22:58,660 --> 01:23:05,000
Speaker 3: seating arrangements. And it has a big, great payoff. Yes, yeah.

1561
01:23:05,100 --> 01:23:08,000
Speaker 2: At times, the setup for this reminded me a bit

1562
01:23:08,020 --> 01:23:11,870
Speaker 2: of In the Mouth of Madness, just a little bit.

1563
01:23:12,520 --> 01:23:15,540
Speaker 2: And I thought that the choice of footage was strange.

1564
01:23:15,580 --> 01:23:18,520
Speaker 2: So when she first arrives at the theater, the marquee

1565
01:23:18,560 --> 01:23:21,080
Speaker 2: says it's going to be Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, which I

1566
01:23:21,200 --> 01:23:22,440
Speaker 2: had to look this one up. Not a film I'm

1567
01:23:22,550 --> 01:23:25,990
Speaker 2: super familiar with. 1950 noir film. But then she ends

1568
01:23:26,050 --> 01:23:32,290
Speaker 2: up watching this Western, Gone with the West, a 1975 release.

1569
01:23:32,729 --> 01:23:35,650
Speaker 2: This started making me feel crazy because I'm like, OK,

1570
01:23:35,670 --> 01:23:39,510
Speaker 2: this movie shot in 71, comes out in 73. What's

1571
01:23:39,550 --> 01:23:42,400
Speaker 2: this movie they're watching? Oh, it's a 1975 film. With

1572
01:23:42,470 --> 01:23:45,689
Speaker 2: James Caan and Sammy Davis Jr. I had to look

1573
01:23:45,710 --> 01:23:49,570
Speaker 2: this up. Finally, I felt myself return to the world

1574
01:23:49,590 --> 01:23:52,110
Speaker 2: of sanity when I realized, oh, this film was shot

1575
01:23:52,250 --> 01:23:57,420
Speaker 2: in 69. So it was just released later. So I

1576
01:23:57,460 --> 01:23:59,180
Speaker 2: guess the math works out after all.

1577
01:23:59,860 --> 01:24:02,219
Speaker 3: But still, you think that two or three year wait

1578
01:24:02,320 --> 01:24:04,479
Speaker 3: on the release of Messiah of Evil is a long time.

1579
01:24:04,520 --> 01:24:05,939
Speaker 3: This is like seven years later.

1580
01:24:05,979 --> 01:24:08,660
Speaker 2: So you know this is a good movie. I don't know.

1581
01:24:08,680 --> 01:24:09,509
Speaker 3: I haven't seen it.

1582
01:24:09,560 --> 01:24:12,880
Speaker 2: But it's also just weird. Like Western, I don't know.

1583
01:24:12,960 --> 01:24:15,639
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how to really figure out how we're

1584
01:24:15,660 --> 01:24:18,340
Speaker 2: supposed to make use of and make sense of the

1585
01:24:18,420 --> 01:24:21,930
Speaker 2: combination here. But it's unsettling. Again, it's dreamlike. Like why

1586
01:24:21,950 --> 01:24:23,889
Speaker 2: are these two things next to each other on the shelf? Well,

1587
01:24:24,050 --> 01:24:28,210
Speaker 2: it's a dream. Sometimes the choice doesn't make a lot

1588
01:24:28,229 --> 01:24:29,410
Speaker 2: of sense, at least at first.

1589
01:24:30,130 --> 01:24:33,530
Speaker 3: Well, if I could say, what's more... in terms of

1590
01:24:33,610 --> 01:24:37,769
Speaker 3: movie genres, what is more familiar and mundane in America

1591
01:24:37,850 --> 01:24:38,519
Speaker 3: than a Western?

1592
01:24:38,570 --> 01:24:41,500
Speaker 2: Yeah. Especially a mainstream one with someone like Sammy Davis jr.

1593
01:24:41,560 --> 01:24:43,120
Speaker 2: And it, you know, it's like, it was a big name.

1594
01:24:43,140 --> 01:24:47,220
Speaker 3: So great movie to get eaten to, I guess. No,

1595
01:24:47,260 --> 01:24:49,240
Speaker 3: as we talked about, it, uh, builds up to a

1596
01:24:49,280 --> 01:24:52,060
Speaker 3: big finish where Tom and Arletty are chased around by

1597
01:24:52,080 --> 01:24:55,099
Speaker 3: these beings. They eventually break into the house. Uh, there's

1598
01:24:55,140 --> 01:24:57,840
Speaker 3: a great, there are some great scenes out in the

1599
01:24:57,880 --> 01:25:01,150
Speaker 3: city where I think Tom goes out and witnesses things like, uh,

1600
01:25:01,820 --> 01:25:05,150
Speaker 3: this scene where a couple of police officers do battle

1601
01:25:05,229 --> 01:25:07,750
Speaker 3: with uh with a mob of the undead or maybe

1602
01:25:07,770 --> 01:25:10,210
Speaker 3: not the undead whatever you call these things the townsfolk

1603
01:25:10,250 --> 01:25:13,330
Speaker 3: the ghouls and uh that doesn't work out so well

1604
01:25:13,370 --> 01:25:15,910
Speaker 3: for the cops especially since one of them turned seems

1605
01:25:15,970 --> 01:25:17,910
Speaker 3: to turn into a ghoul in the middle of the

1606
01:25:17,950 --> 01:25:22,660
Speaker 3: battle yeah yeah and uh just these other weird encounters

1607
01:25:23,060 --> 01:25:25,900
Speaker 3: uh you know people crying blood and all that and

1608
01:25:25,939 --> 01:25:28,120
Speaker 3: so tom comes back to the house they're attacked in

1609
01:25:28,140 --> 01:25:31,710
Speaker 3: the house with these ghouls busting through the skylight and

1610
01:25:31,770 --> 01:25:34,710
Speaker 3: coming through everything. We've seen them kind of pressing up

1611
01:25:34,770 --> 01:25:36,630
Speaker 3: against the skylight before this, I think.

1612
01:25:36,689 --> 01:25:40,150
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And I love the pressing. And then when

1613
01:25:40,170 --> 01:25:42,259
Speaker 2: they start busting through, I really wasn't expecting it to

1614
01:25:42,300 --> 01:25:46,300
Speaker 2: go to that level. But yeah, I loved this in

1615
01:25:46,360 --> 01:25:48,760
Speaker 2: part because I'm reminded of a time when we were

1616
01:25:48,780 --> 01:25:50,280
Speaker 2: having some work done at the house and we stayed

1617
01:25:50,300 --> 01:25:53,020
Speaker 2: at a nearby Airbnb for like a couple of weeks.

1618
01:25:53,550 --> 01:25:56,550
Speaker 2: And one of the bedrooms in that house has a skylight.

1619
01:25:56,870 --> 01:25:59,140
Speaker 2: Kind of like skylights do. It gets a little grungy

1620
01:25:59,180 --> 01:26:01,420
Speaker 2: and you can't really see through it anymore. But a

1621
01:26:01,500 --> 01:26:04,040
Speaker 2: family of raccoons would walk across it in the wee

1622
01:26:04,220 --> 01:26:06,940
Speaker 2: morning hours. And you couldn't see the raccoons. All you

1623
01:26:06,960 --> 01:26:09,940
Speaker 2: could see would be their little hands and footprints on

1624
01:26:09,960 --> 01:26:10,420
Speaker 2: the glass.

1625
01:26:11,439 --> 01:26:14,430
Speaker 3: Oh, it's like of unknown origin. Rat foot shots.

1626
01:26:14,470 --> 01:26:16,450
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Kind of like that. Luckily, I couldn't see

1627
01:26:16,470 --> 01:26:19,310
Speaker 2: it in that much detail. But this reminded me of

1628
01:26:19,350 --> 01:26:24,910
Speaker 2: that a bit. And thematically, it's like the dead or

1629
01:26:25,030 --> 01:26:28,340
Speaker 2: the enemy, some sort of madness. about to press through

1630
01:26:28,760 --> 01:26:31,780
Speaker 2: and then finally breaking through into, into the house, into

1631
01:26:31,840 --> 01:26:32,300
Speaker 2: our world.

1632
01:26:33,520 --> 01:26:35,700
Speaker 3: And of course, things in the end are pushed out

1633
01:26:35,840 --> 01:26:38,000
Speaker 3: to the beach where it all began, you know, where

1634
01:26:38,040 --> 01:26:41,120
Speaker 3: we've had these, these rumblings, the whole movie, there are

1635
01:26:41,140 --> 01:26:43,380
Speaker 3: people out on the beach staring at the moon in

1636
01:26:43,400 --> 01:26:45,900
Speaker 3: the night, and there's something that may be coming out

1637
01:26:45,939 --> 01:26:48,610
Speaker 3: of the ocean. Uh, and our characters end up trying

1638
01:26:48,630 --> 01:26:51,630
Speaker 3: to swim away from their pursuers, swim out to a

1639
01:26:51,770 --> 01:26:55,830
Speaker 3: boat on the water. Tom is eventually lost in the waves,

1640
01:26:55,890 --> 01:26:59,990
Speaker 3: but Arletty doesn't know where he went, and she swims

1641
01:27:00,050 --> 01:27:02,830
Speaker 3: back to shore. She does make it out of the town,

1642
01:27:02,910 --> 01:27:05,939
Speaker 3: but like many a character in a Lovecraftian story, is

1643
01:27:06,000 --> 01:27:10,019
Speaker 3: driven mad by the experience. She goes insane after her

1644
01:27:10,080 --> 01:27:14,269
Speaker 3: encounter with the things beyond this world, and she is

1645
01:27:14,350 --> 01:27:16,900
Speaker 3: left in the end in a mental hospital. And we

1646
01:27:16,920 --> 01:27:19,240
Speaker 3: get a kind of circular ending that connects to a

1647
01:27:19,300 --> 01:27:22,020
Speaker 3: monologue of Arletta's at the beginning. Yeah. Yeah.

1648
01:27:22,080 --> 01:27:26,059
Speaker 2: Again, very, very Lovecraftian. Um, the, the whole writing her

1649
01:27:26,100 --> 01:27:29,439
Speaker 2: story from an asylum ending reminded me, uh, of, of

1650
01:27:29,460 --> 01:27:32,500
Speaker 2: the ending we get in the 1977 film shock waves,

1651
01:27:32,560 --> 01:27:35,120
Speaker 2: which we previously discussed on weird house. That one also

1652
01:27:35,300 --> 01:27:40,300
Speaker 2: ends with the lead female character, uh, writing or drawing something, um,

1653
01:27:40,640 --> 01:27:43,420
Speaker 2: in some sort of a medical or psychological care facility. Um,

1654
01:27:45,370 --> 01:27:47,270
Speaker 2: I think they're both just drawing on the same sort

1655
01:27:47,290 --> 01:27:49,190
Speaker 2: of trope that you get in a lot of those

1656
01:27:49,250 --> 01:27:53,240
Speaker 2: old mythos, weird fiction type stories where like the person

1657
01:27:53,260 --> 01:27:55,140
Speaker 2: who's been telling you this has been writing to you

1658
01:27:55,200 --> 01:27:59,160
Speaker 2: from the insane asylum, that sort of thing. Oh, we did.

1659
01:27:59,720 --> 01:28:00,799
Speaker 3: They say I'm mad.

1660
01:28:02,960 --> 01:28:05,019
Speaker 2: One thing we forgot to mention in the whole big,

1661
01:28:05,400 --> 01:28:07,950
Speaker 2: all this craziness that goes down in the house, there's

1662
01:28:07,990 --> 01:28:10,590
Speaker 2: also the bit where she ends up having to kill

1663
01:28:10,630 --> 01:28:12,030
Speaker 2: her father. I guess.

1664
01:28:12,110 --> 01:28:15,480
Speaker 3: Oh, we skipped over that. Yeah. Her father shows back up,

1665
01:28:15,540 --> 01:28:21,100
Speaker 3: but he's been changed somehow. He's had a horrible encounter with, uh, with, uh,

1666
01:28:21,240 --> 01:28:25,960
Speaker 3: you know, the mythos with, uh, with whatever this being is. And, uh,

1667
01:28:26,040 --> 01:28:28,019
Speaker 3: she has to battle him in the basement of the

1668
01:28:28,060 --> 01:28:30,850
Speaker 3: house in his art studio, basically. And so there are

1669
01:28:30,870 --> 01:28:34,110
Speaker 3: a lot of interesting images there. Like she ends up

1670
01:28:34,150 --> 01:28:37,070
Speaker 3: throwing blue paint all over his face. And so she's

1671
01:28:37,150 --> 01:28:41,059
Speaker 3: battling her blue father, uh, up, I think having to

1672
01:28:41,120 --> 01:28:42,300
Speaker 3: stab him with scissors.

1673
01:28:42,320 --> 01:28:43,590
Speaker 2: Is that right? I believe so.

1674
01:28:43,650 --> 01:28:47,309
Speaker 3: And then there's some, some fire involved, have a little

1675
01:28:47,350 --> 01:28:48,270
Speaker 3: fire scarecrow.

1676
01:28:49,270 --> 01:28:52,330
Speaker 2: So yeah, the memorable sequence as well. And yeah, the

1677
01:28:52,370 --> 01:28:55,490
Speaker 2: ending of the movie is pretty, you know, pretty apocalyptic.

1678
01:28:55,850 --> 01:28:58,630
Speaker 2: The dark stranger has returned. We're told that he's, He's

1679
01:28:58,650 --> 01:29:01,590
Speaker 2: brought his plague of cannibalism and madness in service of

1680
01:29:02,030 --> 01:29:05,890
Speaker 2: some strange new religion to the coast that he's working

1681
01:29:05,930 --> 01:29:09,540
Speaker 2: down the coast. And soon he and his followers are

1682
01:29:09,560 --> 01:29:12,179
Speaker 2: going to arrive in the big city. And at that point,

1683
01:29:12,740 --> 01:29:15,200
Speaker 2: it's going to pretty much be over. The end has begun.

1684
01:29:15,720 --> 01:29:19,160
Speaker 2: Our time has come. There's nothing else to be done.

1685
01:29:19,240 --> 01:29:24,689
Speaker 2: So very apocalyptic. The world ends in 1971 or 1973,

1686
01:29:24,689 --> 01:29:27,690
Speaker 2: depending on how you want to take production versus release date.

1687
01:29:28,560 --> 01:29:31,680
Speaker 3: I'd say my final verdict on Messiah of Evil is

1688
01:29:32,120 --> 01:29:34,230
Speaker 3: weird hang, good hang. Yeah.

1689
01:29:35,200 --> 01:29:38,210
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree. This one's a lot of fun.

1690
01:29:38,229 --> 01:29:40,670
Speaker 2: I'm going to have to dive back into this one

1691
01:29:40,689 --> 01:29:43,130
Speaker 2: some more. I'm going to have to introduce this one

1692
01:29:43,150 --> 01:29:46,350
Speaker 2: to some people. Again, this one has quite a cult

1693
01:29:46,390 --> 01:29:49,290
Speaker 2: following at this point, and it's well-deserved. More people should

1694
01:29:49,330 --> 01:29:49,570
Speaker 2: see it.

1695
01:29:49,930 --> 01:29:52,150
Speaker 3: Make it part of your Halloween viewing. I think it's

1696
01:29:52,229 --> 01:29:53,150
Speaker 3: great for the season.

1697
01:29:53,189 --> 01:29:56,900
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, let's go ahead and

1698
01:29:56,939 --> 01:29:59,200
Speaker 2: close out this episode of Weird House Cinema. But we'd

1699
01:29:59,220 --> 01:30:02,969
Speaker 2: love to hear from everyone out there. If you have

1700
01:30:03,020 --> 01:30:06,219
Speaker 2: history with Messiah of Evil, if you have thoughts about it,

1701
01:30:06,650 --> 01:30:10,150
Speaker 2: or California people, write in about some of these locations

1702
01:30:10,210 --> 01:30:13,320
Speaker 2: and types of locations we've been discussing. I always love

1703
01:30:13,360 --> 01:30:15,620
Speaker 2: to hear from folks who have field reports to share

1704
01:30:15,660 --> 01:30:19,050
Speaker 2: with us. On top of that, just remind you that

1705
01:30:19,090 --> 01:30:20,890
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and

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01:30:20,910 --> 01:30:24,120
Speaker 2: culture podcast. But on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns.

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01:30:24,140 --> 01:30:26,360
Speaker 2: We just talk about a weird movie here on Weird

1708
01:30:26,400 --> 01:30:28,960
Speaker 2: House Cinema. We've been doing this for years at this point.

1709
01:30:29,479 --> 01:30:31,660
Speaker 2: We've looked at hundreds of movies. If you want to

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01:30:31,680 --> 01:30:35,060
Speaker 2: see a list of those hundreds of movies, go to Letterboxd.com.

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01:30:35,200 --> 01:30:37,140
Speaker 2: Look us up. Our username is Weird House. We have

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01:30:37,180 --> 01:30:39,860
Speaker 2: a nice list of all the movies we've covered thus

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01:30:39,939 --> 01:30:42,430
Speaker 2: far and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next.

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Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.

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01:30:47,510 --> 01:30:48,809
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

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01:30:48,850 --> 01:30:51,259
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1717
01:30:51,310 --> 01:30:53,580
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

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01:30:53,660 --> 01:30:57,300
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

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01:31:04,290 --> 01:31:06,750
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.

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01:31:07,090 --> 01:31:10,429
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple

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01:31:10,450 --> 01:31:12,790
Speaker 1: Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.