Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and today we're doing Mad Love.
Speaker 2: That's right. This is a film that I've been excited
Speaker 2: to do on Weird House Cinema even before we really
Speaker 2: formalize what this would be. Now, before we get into
Speaker 2: the movie, you might be asking, well, what do this be?
Speaker 2: What is Weird House Cinema? What you know? You may
Speaker 2: think of Stuff to Blow your Mind, and of course
Speaker 2: you think of a science and culture show. Well, Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind remains a science and culture podcast
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Friday night is our time to
Speaker 2: focus on weird films. We may also discuss science and
Speaker 2: culture on this show, but we put the weird horse
Speaker 2: ahead of the cart on these days. Think of this
Speaker 2: show as the haunted hands of a movie podcast grafted
Speaker 2: onto the body of a science podcast.
Speaker 3: I like it. So this is a movie that's come
Speaker 3: up on Stuff to Blow your Mind proper before I
Speaker 3: think maybe did it come up in talking about I
Speaker 3: don't know, cutting off parts of the body and retaining
Speaker 3: memories or I think it's come up a few times
Speaker 3: because I had never seen the movie before, but I
Speaker 3: had seen the trailer for Mad Love, and the trailer
Speaker 3: is just wonderful because it begins with Peter Lourie sitting
Speaker 3: on a couch next to a dog that's bigger than
Speaker 3: he is and getting a phone call from a beautiful
Speaker 3: actress who wants to tell him how great he is
Speaker 3: in the movie that they start in together.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those wonderfully weird trailers. It's
Speaker 2: just so different from anything you see today because it
Speaker 2: begins with this real, supposedly real life conversation where she's like, oh,
Speaker 2: Peter Laurie, I loved you, and em tell me about
Speaker 2: this new film you have coming up, and then you
Speaker 2: go to a more proper trailer.
Speaker 3: That's right, And for such a mundane beginning of a trailer,
Speaker 3: this is a fabulously strange movie, especially for what you're
Speaker 3: Did it come out in nineteen thirty four? Is that right?
Speaker 2: Thirty five?
Speaker 3: I believe, Okay, thirty four to thirty five. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think you're right thirty five, And Wow, what a strange
Speaker 3: film it's got. It's one of the strangest things I
Speaker 3: think we should just sell right up front, is there
Speaker 3: is a costume that Peter Lourie puts on in the
Speaker 3: later half of the movie that like, is just hard
Speaker 3: to believe it comes from the era that it does.
Speaker 3: It seems very cybernetic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is is frightening to behold. But yeah, outside
Speaker 2: of that, they're just a number of crazy weird elements
Speaker 2: in this film, and it has at least two eccentric performances,
Speaker 2: the first and foremost that of Peter Lorii, which we'll
Speaker 2: get into in a minute. But you know what, I'll
Speaker 2: go ahead and do the elevator pitch for this this movie,
Speaker 2: so you know generally what we're talking about here before
Speaker 2: we get into discussing the players. A gifted but deranged
Speaker 2: surgeon named doctor Gogel becomes obsessed with horror actress Yvonne Orlock,
Speaker 2: and when Yvonne's husband, the famous pianist Stephen Orlock, suffers
Speaker 2: a brutal accident, Google transplants the hands of an executed
Speaker 2: killer onto Orlock, and from here everything just spirals into
Speaker 2: this kind of weird tale of psychological manipulation and delusion.
Speaker 3: Let's hear just a snip of that trailer.
Speaker 4: I boupest have conquered serns.
Speaker 2: Why can't I conquer love?
Speaker 4: He shall be shut up when it's a weere mad,
Speaker 4: but nobody knows that, yes, each man kills the thing
Speaker 4: he loves.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that maybe we should start
Speaker 3: with is the title of this movie, because it doesn't
Speaker 3: really communicate what this film is really all about, which
Speaker 3: is like severed hands and crazy psychological manipulation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Mad Love is I think, kind of an imperfect title.
Speaker 2: I far prefer the alternative title it sometimes it plays under,
Speaker 2: and that is The Hands of Orlock, though that one
Speaker 2: also feels somewhat, I don't know, insignificant, given the focus
Speaker 2: of the film is not on Orlock as much as
Speaker 2: it is on doctor Gogel Peter Lourie's character. I also think,
Speaker 2: I mean for modern viewers, there's also this we also
Speaker 2: have to take into to mind that you have this
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five film that's also called Mad Love that
Speaker 2: many of us might have remembered. If you didn't see
Speaker 2: it then then maybe even you just saw the trailers
Speaker 2: and it starred Chris O'Donnell and Drew Barrymore, and none
Speaker 2: of the plot elements were discussing here. It's a completely
Speaker 2: unrelated film. I'm sure it's quite nice. It was directed
Speaker 2: by Antonio Byrd, who of course directed Ravenous in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine and Priest in nineteen ninety four. But yeah,
Speaker 2: nothing to do with Peter Lourie, The Hands of Warlock
Speaker 2: or anything.
Speaker 3: I believe. It was based on a short story called
Speaker 3: the Hands of Orlock, right like Leman do Orlock?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, This was by French fantasy and horror writer
Speaker 2: Maurice Renard who lived eighteen seventy five through nineteen thirty nine.
Speaker 2: And I'm not I wasn't really familiar with the works
Speaker 2: of Reynard, but he wrote multiple tales of mad scientists,
Speaker 2: alien beings, futuristic technology. And this is just one of
Speaker 2: four screen adaptations of the Hands of Orlock. And it
Speaker 2: wasn't the first. The first was was the nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: four Silent Austrian film starring Conrad Veitt, who many of
Speaker 2: you may know from the Cabinet of Doctor Kligari or
Speaker 2: The Man Who Laughs, which even if you haven't seen it,
Speaker 2: you may have seen a still from it, because it's
Speaker 2: often discussed as being an inspiration for The Joker and
Speaker 2: the Batman franchise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, really otherworldly disturbing face in Cabinet of Doctor Kligari
Speaker 3: does he plays Sesar, the somnambulist.
Speaker 2: I believe. So I have a hard time remembering the
Speaker 2: characters in Caligari as much as just the you know,
Speaker 2: the breathaking visuals. That's that's certainly when it comes to
Speaker 2: silent films worth watching today. That's that's one of the
Speaker 2: good ones. Anyway, Conrad played Orlock in that, but there
Speaker 2: was no Gogel. Instead, there was a less essential character,
Speaker 2: a surgeon named doctor Sarah. So it seems that by
Speaker 2: the time they end up making Mad Love like they've
Speaker 2: they've adapted it enough. They've made more of a character
Speaker 2: out of the surgeon. The surgeon has become the center
Speaker 2: of the piece, as opposed to just this contemplation of
Speaker 2: futuristic hand transplantation and how you know, how that affects
Speaker 2: our idea of body and personality integrity. Now, there were
Speaker 2: a couple of other adaptations of the Hands of Warlock.
Speaker 2: One was a nineteen sixty French British adaptation that actually
Speaker 2: had Christopher Lee in it playing Nero the Magician, of
Speaker 2: which I think was just an. I don't know why
Speaker 2: you would, why you would mess around with the plot
Speaker 2: that much, but there you go. And then in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty two there was an American adaptation titled Hands of
Speaker 2: a Stranger. It started nobody in particular. I think the
Speaker 2: main noteworthy thing about it is that director k newt
Speaker 2: Arnold also directed Blood Sport and was assistant director on
Speaker 2: a lot of major films such as Blade Runner and
Speaker 2: The Godfather Part two.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting, yeah, But.
Speaker 2: The basic plot element here of what you could think
Speaker 2: of is transplant panic and the idea of a transplanted
Speaker 2: limb altering an individual's personality. You see that showing up
Speaker 2: in a great many films and TV episodes. Just to
Speaker 2: name a few, there was The Hand of Fear, an
Speaker 2: episode of the Tom Baker era Doctor Who series. There
Speaker 2: was nineteen ninety one's Body Parts starring Jeff fay Linsey Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Lindsey Duncan and Brad Doriff. And then you'll find various
Speaker 2: horror anthology episodes. I think that they either have this
Speaker 2: particular plot of oh now I have the hands of
Speaker 2: a killer or in the hands of a stranger on
Speaker 2: my body, as well as a related but different form
Speaker 2: of dismemberment. Panic films about disembodied crawling hands. I'd love
Speaker 2: to come back to crawling hand films in the future.
Speaker 3: Oh maybe a future October episode. Now, this reminds me
Speaker 3: of something we talked about not too long ago on
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow your mind when we did the episode
Speaker 3: I Want a New Blood. That was all about blood
Speaker 3: transfusions and how there were experiments in the seventeenth century,
Speaker 3: as far back as the seventeenth century in France to
Speaker 3: transfuse the blood of animals into humans for various reasons,
Speaker 3: some of which were not necessarily all that grounded in
Speaker 3: good science. But for example, you might perform a phlebotomy
Speaker 3: because of the gallinic humoral theory of the day, you'd
Speaker 3: bleed a patient to reduce a fever or to reduce
Speaker 3: mania or something thing. And then there were some surgeons
Speaker 3: at the time who said, you know what we should
Speaker 3: do is take out the bad blood and then replace
Speaker 3: it with the blood of an animal that has the
Speaker 3: sort of personality characteristics that we want to put into
Speaker 3: the person. So if somebody is overly excited, they're suffering
Speaker 3: from a mania, you would put lamb's blood into their
Speaker 3: body because the gentleness and coolness of the lamb would
Speaker 3: come through in the blood. And this also but this
Speaker 3: was also countered by people who opposed blood transfusions on
Speaker 3: the idea that you could create some kind of hybrid
Speaker 3: creature that like, negative qualities of the original animal would
Speaker 3: come through in the new person and they wouldn't really
Speaker 3: be fully human anymore. So there's long been this idea
Speaker 3: that transfusing blood from one creature to another, or transplanting
Speaker 3: a body part from one creature to another or one
Speaker 3: person to another, brings with it some kind of personality characteristic.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this concern over the entire of the body, uh,
Speaker 2: when we get into the transplantation of tissues and fluids
Speaker 2: and organs and limbs. And I think one of course
Speaker 2: thing to note is that while a lot of the
Speaker 2: concerns over the over blood have sort of passed away
Speaker 2: with the with with the widespread use of blood transfusions.
Speaker 2: You know, you will find some religious objections to blood
Speaker 2: transfusions here and there, but for the most part, it
Speaker 2: has become a part of our our everyday life. You know,
Speaker 2: like you even if you're not giving blood every day,
Speaker 2: you may hear about blood drives, et cetera. It's just
Speaker 2: part of the medical reality of the modern world. Hand transplants,
Speaker 2: as we'll discuss a little later, are far far rarer. Uh.
Speaker 2: They are a far more complicated procedure and one that
Speaker 2: is not not every day and uh, and also one
Speaker 2: that is you know, it seems like our ability to
Speaker 2: pull it off is still evolving. So you definitely see
Speaker 2: that that that same kind of energy in these transplantation
Speaker 2: panic films and other bits of fiction that this sort
Speaker 2: of deal with this idea, what if the hands of
Speaker 2: another became my hands, would they really be my hands?
Speaker 2: And that, of course is one of the key things
Speaker 2: going on in this film.
Speaker 3: I like the idea, though, of these science fiction films
Speaker 3: that take a very scientifically or at least ostensibly scientifically
Speaker 3: grounded premise. This is about medical science performing experiments at
Speaker 3: the edge of what was known to medicine at the day,
Speaker 3: but it still basically believes in magic. That still basically
Speaker 3: believes that like hands contain some magical essence of the
Speaker 3: brain of the person they came from. And it seems
Speaker 3: to me, you know, modern science fiction doesn't usually operate
Speaker 3: on quite that level of belief in the supernatural.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is. There's certainly a dash of the supernatural
Speaker 2: in this one. There is a lot of science fiction,
Speaker 2: you know, it is essentially like science fiction is always
Speaker 2: about our hopes and our anxieties concerning where technology is
Speaker 2: taking us. And you know, at the time it was
Speaker 2: looking towards the future in which we would be able
Speaker 2: to carry out hand transplants or certainly double hand transplants.
Speaker 2: We eventually got to that point, but at the time
Speaker 2: it was just pure speculation. It was just we may
Speaker 2: get to this point, and then when we get there,
Speaker 2: what will it mean? What if it goes wrong? And
Speaker 2: then the way it goes wrong is, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: it goes a bit more in the speculative and magical
Speaker 2: direction by going beyond like what if it doesn't work,
Speaker 2: but also getting into that area of what if it
Speaker 2: isn't me anymore.
Speaker 3: Now, if you have seen any image from this film,
Speaker 3: and I think there's a decent chance you have, it
Speaker 3: is probably the image of Peter Lori in his Rollo costume.
Speaker 3: And we'll explain how that fits into the plot a
Speaker 3: little bit more in more detail later, but in this costume,
Speaker 3: it's Peter loriie wearing this bizarre metal and leather neck
Speaker 3: brace that goes over his shoulders and goes up to
Speaker 3: his chin and is laced up with like a shoe,
Speaker 3: and then with metal hands and dark sunglasses are almost
Speaker 3: kind of welding goggles, and a big black hat.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is a really nightmarish image to behold. I
Speaker 2: feel like it was definitely an influence on the Gestapo
Speaker 2: agent taught in Raiders of Lost Arc played by Ron Lacy.
Speaker 2: And Ron Lacey gives a very laure Esque performance in that,
Speaker 2: especially when you take into a when you're take into
Speaker 2: account the code and the hat as well, and also
Speaker 2: early character concepts for that character, and Raiders apparently gave
Speaker 2: him a cybernetic metal arm. I feel like there's a
Speaker 2: there's some strong comparisons to be made there, and I
Speaker 2: think I have read that Spielberg went with Lacey because
Speaker 2: he reminded him of Peter Lourie.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting. Well, this is getting us into the
Speaker 3: people who were involved in this movie, So maybe we
Speaker 3: should start with looking at the director, Carl Freund, who
Speaker 3: was a cinematographer before he was a director proper. And
Speaker 3: I recognized the same immediately when it came up in
Speaker 3: the opening credits, and I realized where I recognized it
Speaker 3: from was from the movies of Fritz Long.
Speaker 2: That's right. He was a cinematographer on Metropolis as well
Speaker 2: as the nineteen not of Fritz Long film, but the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty one Dracula film. Oh, there was another film
Speaker 2: that he was a cinematographer on. He was a cinematographer
Speaker 2: on I think one hundred and sixty three films according
Speaker 2: to IMDb, and was active through the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 3: He worked on some other universal horror films I think,
Speaker 3: didn't he was he involved with The Mummy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he directed nineteen thirty two's The Mummy, starring Boris
Speaker 2: Karloff as Zemmotep Oh. Okay, but the main attraction here,
Speaker 2: really the centerpiece, is Peter Laurie as Doctor Gogel. This
Speaker 2: Laurie is the ultimate highlight in this film, as the
Speaker 2: picture I think gives him a chance to shine just
Speaker 2: in multiple ways because his go go It's interesting. He's
Speaker 2: he's sometimes quite dapper and sly, you know, walking around smoking,
Speaker 2: you know, gazing kind of slyly at everything around him.
Speaker 2: Other times he's this tragic, earnest, even manic character and
Speaker 2: then there's this scene which again we'll get into more
Speaker 2: of the details on in a bit, where he takes
Speaker 2: on the guise of this reassembled Rollo character, and he
Speaker 2: gives a really otherworldly performance in this this kind of
Speaker 2: science fiction within a science fiction, and then ultimately the
Speaker 2: whole plot just Criscindo's into madness and he plays an
Speaker 2: increasingly mad character. So Laurie, I feel like, really gets
Speaker 2: to just trot out all the tools in this particular movie.
Speaker 3: I think that when Mad Love was first released, it
Speaker 3: was sort of mostly or at least partially critically panned.
Speaker 3: I think people look at it, yeah, yeah, okay, this
Speaker 3: is childish trash. But even in those reviews, there was
Speaker 3: a lot of praise for Lori because Peter Laurie is obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, one of the great actors, one of the
Speaker 3: great film actors of all time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He was a Hungarian American actor of Jewish descent,
Speaker 2: made a whole career basically out of playing weird characters,
Speaker 2: just weirdos. You know. He had he had kind of
Speaker 2: a you know, a kind of a weird asymmetrical look,
Speaker 2: and he had this this wonderful accent and this kind
Speaker 2: of you know, raspy voice. The voice I don't even
Speaker 2: have to do an impression, because you're hearing it now.
Speaker 2: You may already be speaking it out loud just to
Speaker 2: hear yourself use it. I mean, it's it's a universally
Speaker 2: known voice. You know, he was, he was a legend
Speaker 2: of cinema. Now, this was his first American film, on
Speaker 2: the heels of nineteen thirty one's much acclaimed im by
Speaker 2: Fritz Lung, and then he played in that, he played
Speaker 2: an accused child murderer. And he would go on to
Speaker 2: have memorable roles and The Maltese Falcon and forty one,
Speaker 2: of course, Casablanca and forty two, along with just a
Speaker 2: long list of great, memorable and occasionally forgettable or embarrassing films.
Speaker 2: But he worked with such directors as John Houston, Alfred Hitchcock,
Speaker 2: Frank Capra. You know, he'd pretty much did it all.
Speaker 3: I mean, Laurie, I think is a great early example
Speaker 3: of someone who would be well known in their own
Speaker 3: right as a powerhouse film star without being a dashing lead,
Speaker 3: without being like, you know, an attractive actor or actress
Speaker 3: who would play the lead role in films, you know,
Speaker 3: to be the hero Laurie was often a villain or
Speaker 3: a strange character actor, and I don't know how common
Speaker 3: it was at the time for actors like that to
Speaker 3: be a household name that was you know, known and revered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you see footage of him, such as in
Speaker 2: that trailer, you know, like how many weird actors and
Speaker 2: character actors today? Can you even imagine such a setup?
Speaker 2: You know, where you're coming at everyone first with the
Speaker 2: celebrity and the natural charisma of the actor, and then
Speaker 2: you hit the trailer. And I think it speaks to
Speaker 2: you know, one of the things about him, It is
Speaker 2: like he was charismatic. He was, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: dashing in his own slightly anti Hollywood way, And like
Speaker 2: I say, he also just became cemented in popular culture.
Speaker 2: I was looking around for, you know, books about him,
Speaker 2: and I ran across The Animated Peter Lourie by Matthew Hahn.
Speaker 2: This is a book that points out apparently seven hundred
Speaker 2: instances of animated cartoons using Laurie's face or voice or both.
Speaker 2: So this is everything from old timey cartoons where it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: suddenly a bunch of dead celebrities have shown up, and
Speaker 2: here's one of them, it's it's Peter Lourie. Two just
Speaker 2: characters like on Scooby Doo or whatever that may not
Speaker 2: be Peter Lourie but have his voice and or his appearance.
Speaker 2: And you see that still today. Like the Peter Lourie
Speaker 2: impersonation is kind of like a standard impersonation one might
Speaker 2: turn to. You see it, for instance, in the Star
Speaker 2: Wars Clone Wars animated series, there's a character that shows up,
Speaker 2: a bounty hunter named Cad Baine, and it has kind
Speaker 2: of like a mechanically augmented voice, but the root of
Speaker 2: it is a Peter Lourie impersonation, and you can pinpoint it.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting. I like how that connects Star Wars
Speaker 3: to the classic old serials.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean clearly, Like this is a guy that
Speaker 2: people like Spielberg and Lucas, you know, they grew up
Speaker 2: watching these films like he was. He was one of
Speaker 2: the maybe not the top tier deities, but one of
Speaker 2: the supporting deities in the pantheon of film.
Speaker 3: Now there's another actor in the movie who I think
Speaker 3: is maybe weirder than people realized when they cast him.
Speaker 3: I don't know. He's supposed to be the hero of
Speaker 3: the film. But this is Colin Clive playing Stephen Orlock,
Speaker 3: who appeared in the Frankenstein movies. He was Doctor Frankenstein
Speaker 3: in James Wale's Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. And he
Speaker 3: has such a such a rat like nervous energy in
Speaker 3: this film. It's similar actually to what you see in
Speaker 3: the Frankenstein movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean in both films he plays an
Speaker 2: accomplished and seemingly confident man who is then riddled by
Speaker 2: madness and trauma. You know, has gone through a traumatic
Speaker 2: experience and is continually haunted by what has occurred. And yeah,
Speaker 2: he seems to just and I have to admit I've
Speaker 2: only seen Colin Clive in this movie, Mad Love and
Speaker 2: the two Frankenstein films of note, but in all three
Speaker 2: of those, like he just has this wonderful raw energy
Speaker 2: to him, and there is this sense of like tragedy too.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much of the tragedy is just
Speaker 2: knowing that, for instance, he would die in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 2: just two years later at the age of thirty seven,
Speaker 2: and that he had, you know, a number of demons
Speaker 2: in his life.
Speaker 3: I believe he.
Speaker 2: He suffered from alcoholism. But you know, whatever, whatever traumas
Speaker 2: he had in his life, you know, he seems able
Speaker 2: to have translated that into these performances. And so, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's perfect for this role. Is this, you know, handsome
Speaker 2: and accomplished individual who is then put through this this
Speaker 2: traumatic situation and then then pushed towards delusion by the
Speaker 2: villainist doctor Gogel.
Speaker 3: He has this energy as if he's undergoing fission. You
Speaker 3: think that you're going to walk into a room and
Speaker 3: catch him just chewing on a corner of the wall.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, there's another major actress in this film, Francis Drake,
Speaker 3: who plays Stephen Orlac's wife, Yvonne Orlac, the heroine of
Speaker 3: the film, who plays an actress within the movie. But
Speaker 3: one thing before we get into details about Francis Drake
Speaker 3: that I thought was interesting is I read that originally
Speaker 3: this role of Yvonne Orlac was cast with another actress,
Speaker 3: an actress named Virginia Bruce. And just clicking around on
Speaker 3: the internet, I discovered that Virginia Bruce played Jane Eyre
Speaker 3: in a nineteen thirty four American adaptation of the Bronte novel,
Speaker 3: and in this movie, Colin Clive, the guy with the
Speaker 3: fision rat nervous energy plays mister Rochester. I just I
Speaker 3: don't know. I would have to see that to believe it,
Speaker 3: because mister Rochester is supposed to be this, you know, dark,
Speaker 3: smooth byronic hunk. But Colin Clive's teeth are almost audibly
Speaker 3: rattling when you watch him. It's hard to imagine him
Speaker 3: really fitting with that role.
Speaker 2: Huh. Yeah, Now I'm gonna have to watch that or
Speaker 2: watch some clips from it, just to see, you know,
Speaker 2: what kind of energy he has in that, because again
Speaker 2: I've only seen this level of energy out of Colin Clive. Now,
Speaker 2: Francis Drake is quite good in this. It's easy to
Speaker 2: lose sight of her because she is kind of sandwiched
Speaker 2: between these very manic performance but she was a star
Speaker 2: of the day. She was only active from nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: three to nineteen forty two, but she lived a long life,
Speaker 2: lived to see the twenty first century. What happened is
Speaker 2: she married into the English aristocracy and her first husband,
Speaker 2: Lieutenant Cecil John Author Howard, urged her to leave show business,
Speaker 2: so she did. But she's she's really good in this.
Speaker 2: I mean there it's one of these roles that you
Speaker 2: encounter for women in films, particularly of this era, where
Speaker 2: you feel like it's definitely suffering from the limitations of
Speaker 2: female roles at the time. You know, like, you know
Speaker 2: she's going to faint when the villain comes comes at her.
Speaker 2: You know it's going she's going to be saved by
Speaker 2: the male hero of the piece, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: But that being said, she's really good in it. You know,
Speaker 2: she's able to. I mean, it's kind of interesting. She
Speaker 2: doesn't come off as a scream queen. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if that was truly a thing yet, but that at
Speaker 2: the same time she kind of plays a scream queen
Speaker 2: and her character is a scream queen in the context
Speaker 2: of the film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, her character ivon Orlock is playing a scream queen
Speaker 3: of the Grand Genial Theater in Paris. It's not named
Speaker 3: as the Grand Genial Theater but the Grand gien yall
Speaker 3: historically is this tradition of extremely gory, morbid stage productions
Speaker 3: that would be done in Paris, and in this movie,
Speaker 3: it's called the Theatre des horus. I can't I don't
Speaker 3: have French pronunciation, sorry, the Theater of Horrors and it's
Speaker 3: got all these creeps sitting in the audience every night
Speaker 3: just watching her get tortured on the rack and doing
Speaker 3: doing a marvelous job screaming and yeah. And so she
Speaker 3: clearly has her fans. I think she's sort of supposed
Speaker 3: to be the Linea Quigley of her day.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And of course those creepy fans include one super
Speaker 2: creepy fan, doctor Gogel, So he is kind of like
Speaker 2: the the you know, the the ultimate creepy fan in
Speaker 2: this a very successful creepy fan, but a creepy fan.
Speaker 3: Nonetheless, I think it's interesting that you mentioned that Francis
Speaker 3: Drake got out of acting because she married a successful
Speaker 3: husband who did not want her to pursue further pursue
Speaker 3: her career, because that is the role she plays in
Speaker 3: this movie. Vonn Orlack is retiring from acting at the
Speaker 3: Theater of Horrors because she's marrying a successful husband and
Speaker 3: they're moving to England.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is interesting. I having not read the Hands
Speaker 2: of Orlocker seen the previous adaptation, I don't know if
Speaker 2: that was part of the original or Like a lot
Speaker 2: of things in Mad Love, you know, it's been embellished
Speaker 2: and added upon now. Believe it or not, there is
Speaker 2: another screen legend in this film, and that is Key Luke.
Speaker 2: You might know him best as the man who sells
Speaker 2: Gizmo to that kid in nineteen eighty four's Grimlins.
Speaker 3: Well, I think he sells him to the kid's dad,
Speaker 3: right the kids.
Speaker 2: Oh look, that's true. The dad gets gizmo as a
Speaker 2: gift to give the kid or does he actually sell
Speaker 2: him or does he kind of the dad steal him,
Speaker 2: like after he won't sell him. I forget how that
Speaker 2: goes down exactly.
Speaker 3: I don't recall exactly. I mean he Key Luke is
Speaker 3: the proprietor of the Shop of a Cursed Items and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and he's good in this film, though it's a small role.
Speaker 3: He plays doctor Gogol's colleague. Basically, he's the other surgeon
Speaker 3: that works at doctor Gogols clinic.
Speaker 2: Yeah. What I like about his role in Mad Love
Speaker 2: is that he's simply playing another doctor, doctor Wong in
Speaker 2: a straightforward part, which I mean it's kind of complicated
Speaker 2: to think about because on one hand, you had a
Speaker 2: lot of stereotypical Asian characters in films at the time,
Speaker 2: and in many cases those characters were played by non
Speaker 2: Asian actors. Laurie himself would go on to play a
Speaker 2: stereotypical Asian character, mister Moto, in several pictures. And this
Speaker 2: is just sadly the practice in Hollywood at the time.
Speaker 2: You see, you would see and even the decades to follow,
Speaker 2: you'd see actors like Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Harrison, Katherine Hepburn,
Speaker 2: Mickey Rooney, Alex Guinness, just to name a few names.
Speaker 2: You know. So it feels perversely progressive to have Luke
Speaker 2: in this role playing just a surgeon. Yet at the
Speaker 2: same time I read that Luke himself pointed out that
Speaker 2: he was often cast in quote good boy scout roles
Speaker 2: like doctors and lawyers, which in this also entails racial stereotyping.
Speaker 2: You know, so we have to keep both extremes in
Speaker 2: mind when looking at films like this, as well as
Speaker 2: with films today. Now that being said, Key Luke, though
Speaker 2: interesting character, very long career in Hollywood. I believe he
Speaker 2: started out in the advertising realm of Hollywood, like promotional
Speaker 2: posters in all, and just became a staple of Hollywood.
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting, I never heard that. Yeah, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: I guess maybe we should talk through the plot in
Speaker 3: a little bit more detail. Now we've already discussed the
Speaker 3: basic setup that Ivonne Orlac, played by Francis Drake, is
Speaker 3: this grand gain y'all scream queen that she she goes
Speaker 3: on stage at the Theater of Horrors every night in Paris.
Speaker 3: They grotesquely torture her for whatever play they're putting on.
Speaker 3: It looks like the play they're putting on is about
Speaker 3: a a count or some you know, wicked aristocrat who
Speaker 3: finds out that his wife is two timing him and
Speaker 3: then puts her on the rack. And so I put
Speaker 3: her on this big wheel and starts stretching her arms
Speaker 3: and she screams. And then it shows these people in
Speaker 3: the audience where there looks like there are a lot
Speaker 3: of couples in the audience, and the women are like
Speaker 3: not happy to be there, and the men are like,
Speaker 3: oh wow, this is great. But she seems to be
Speaker 3: she seems to enjoy her job acting in this theater.
Speaker 3: And she she talks about her husband, Stephen Orlac. I
Speaker 3: think it's communicated that they are recently married. Stephen Orlac
Speaker 3: again is played by Colin Clive and he is a
Speaker 3: genius pianist. So like when she's preparing to go out
Speaker 3: on stage, in her dressing room, she's listening to a
Speaker 3: performance that he's doing live on the radio. And I
Speaker 3: think we're supposed to understand that they're very happily married.
Speaker 3: They adore one another. And the film opens on the
Speaker 3: night of Yvonne's final performance at the Theater of Horrors
Speaker 3: before she's going to move off to England with Stephen.
Speaker 3: But as you mentioned, Yvonne has a creepy secret admirer
Speaker 3: among the audience. Doctor Gogol, it is said, is there
Speaker 3: every single night in his theater box. He's basically keeping
Speaker 3: the theater running, constantly buying this expensive box seat to
Speaker 3: watch her from.
Speaker 2: Because doctor Gogel, I'm not sure if we firmly established this,
Speaker 2: but he is a superstar surgeon of the day. Like
Speaker 2: he is. He is a wealthy, super talented surgeon who
Speaker 2: is clearly I don't know if he's really performed anything,
Speaker 2: you know, miracle level yet at this point you know,
Speaker 2: in the timeline, but like he's out there saving lives,
Speaker 2: Like there's a scene where he is saved a child's
Speaker 2: life through his brilliant surgical intervention.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's communicated that he has a very powerful mind
Speaker 3: and very gifted hands, coming back to a theme throughout
Speaker 3: the movie, and so he saves children's lives. They talk
Speaker 3: about how he saves soldiers who have been injured in
Speaker 3: the war. They don't talk about what war. This is
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirties in Paris, so I guess that would
Speaker 3: refer to World War One. I'm not sure. But then
Speaker 3: doctor Gogol finds out that this is Yvonne's last night,
Speaker 3: and he does not like this. He's horrified, in fact,
Speaker 3: because he is obsessed with her. He's there every night
Speaker 3: to see her. Like she says, I'm leaving and then
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, what theater are you going to? And
Speaker 3: she's like, well, actually I'm just moving to England. And
Speaker 3: he doesn't like this at all. He's distraught. But fortunately
Speaker 3: for doctor Gogol, the theater happens to be removing a
Speaker 3: wax figure of Yvonne. They have it like standing out
Speaker 3: in the lobby, and it looks so much like her
Speaker 3: that it is in fact played by her. It's just
Speaker 3: it's just Francis Drake's standing there, not moving. But they're
Speaker 3: taking the wax figure out of the theater so it
Speaker 3: can be melted down for scrap wax, and then Gogl
Speaker 3: intercepts this delivery, buys the wax figure of her, and
Speaker 3: he has it delivered to his apartment. The whole time
Speaker 3: he's monologuing about the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's a great scene because like the guy
Speaker 2: that you know clearly thinks it's creepy, and Google Google
Speaker 2: just you know, offers them enough money to buy it.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a a pre eBay creepy eBay
Speaker 2: trans transaction.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's very but I don't quite understand how it's
Speaker 3: supposed to be like the myth of Pygmalion or of Galatea,
Speaker 3: because he doesn't make the wax sculpture. He just buys it.
Speaker 3: But he keeps streaming that it's going to come to
Speaker 3: life and love.
Speaker 2: Him, yeah, ranting about the Galatea. Uh yeah, I love
Speaker 2: it and I love that that it's just Francis Drake
Speaker 2: playing the wax duplicate and without any I don't think
Speaker 2: they did anything to her, just have her stand there
Speaker 2: in costume, which which is nice because it plays in
Speaker 2: with what is to come later in the in the plot.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, next thing is we meet the pianist stephn
Speaker 3: Orlac on a train and there's a scene that comes
Speaker 3: here that I love so much. The sausage slash dog
Speaker 3: scene is just amazing. So Orlac is riding in a
Speaker 3: train car. Across from him, there's a passenger who's just
Speaker 3: eating a giant sausage. I'm pretty sure it's a sausage.
Speaker 3: I don't know what else it could be. It's not
Speaker 3: a baguette because it shows him holding a baguette next
Speaker 3: to it, So I think it's just a huge sausage
Speaker 3: the size of a baguette.
Speaker 2: And is the is it that I don't remember this
Speaker 2: part of the movie as much? Is does the guy
Speaker 2: with the bag at have like a snappy American accent?
Speaker 3: No? No, no, no, he's supposed to be French, I believe.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, so the snappy American characters are yet
Speaker 2: to come.
Speaker 3: Okay, there yet to come. Yes, yes, no, The guy
Speaker 3: eating the huge sausage I think is French. And next
Speaker 3: to him on the bench and the train car is
Speaker 3: a picnic basket. And then suddenly a little puppy pops
Speaker 3: up out of the picnic basket pops up its head,
Speaker 3: and the man explains to calin Clive. He's like, well,
Speaker 3: it costs twenty francs extra if you want to bring
Speaker 3: a dog on the train. So I'm sneaking the dog
Speaker 3: on in my picnic basket and don't let the guards
Speaker 3: find out. And then colin Clive wonderfully says, if my
Speaker 3: silence is worth twenty francs, buy it. I'm hungry. So
Speaker 3: the guy cuts off a piece of his monster sausage
Speaker 3: and gives it to Orlac, and then Orlac immediately gives
Speaker 3: the sausage to the basket dog, and then the sausage
Speaker 3: man after that abandons all pretensive utensil use. He like
Speaker 3: puts down his knife and he just gnaws it. He
Speaker 3: just sticks the thing in his mouth and bites it
Speaker 3: like an apple.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I never sausage a scene. It's one of several
Speaker 2: humorous scenes in this film that at once feel completely
Speaker 2: out of place, but also you know, I wouldn't I
Speaker 2: wouldn't want this film without him there. They're they're interesting,
Speaker 2: they're they're funny. I don't know they're funny in the
Speaker 2: way they would have been received at the time, but
Speaker 2: there is there's something kind of slapsticky and amusing about them.
Speaker 3: I think it's supposed to be funny. In any case,
Speaker 3: whatever it was supposed to be, Sausage Man is my hero.
Speaker 3: I want action figures of Sausage Man. I want I
Speaker 3: want our fans to make us Sausage Man t shirts.
Speaker 2: That what it would have been a totally different film.
Speaker 2: By the way, had Sausage Man's hands end up transplanted
Speaker 2: onto Steven Orlock.
Speaker 3: My god, yes, like I can't play the piano anymore.
Speaker 3: I can only grab huge sausages. But anyway, that that
Speaker 3: preludes the next thing we have to talk about, which
Speaker 3: is that a prisoner is brought on board the train
Speaker 3: and it is explained that this is Rollow, the knife thrower,
Speaker 3: who is skilled at throwing knives. I guess that's a skill.
Speaker 3: I'd never thought about that much before. But what do
Speaker 3: they say he did. I think it's that he murdered
Speaker 3: his own father by throwing knife at him.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, which will become important later on. So yeah,
Speaker 2: he's a he's a convicted murderer, and he's he's on
Speaker 2: the way to the guillotine.
Speaker 3: His mannerisms are very soft and friendly and American. They
Speaker 3: specify he is American, He's not French. He just happens
Speaker 3: to be in France going to the guillotine, and he's
Speaker 3: he comes up off almost kind of like Buddy Hackett.
Speaker 2: Yes, he reminds me a lot of and I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I forget the actor's name of the actor who plays
Speaker 2: baby Face Nelson. You know, no brother, where art thou?
Speaker 2: You know that kind of old time he likely he
Speaker 2: comes off as a charismatic, likable character, not a a
Speaker 2: knife wielding murderer. And on one hand, I found myself thinking, well,
Speaker 2: what if they had actually made Rollo terrifying here? Would
Speaker 2: that have been more beneficial later on? But maybe I'm not.
Speaker 2: The thing is, I'm not sure it would because I
Speaker 2: don't know. The The impersonation of a re animated Rollo
Speaker 2: that comes later is very much, you know, a go
Speaker 2: Gole creation, So I don't know. I guess ultimately I'm
Speaker 2: okay with this particular character being a little hammy and
Speaker 2: a little likable despite being a murder.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it kind of works because Gogol, if
Speaker 3: I recall correctly, has never meets Rollo, while he's alive,
Speaker 3: he only gets access to his dead body once it's guillotined. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but we should say before Rollo gets guillotined through happenstance
Speaker 3: orchestrated by sausage Man by the way, because sausage Man
Speaker 3: wants Rollo's autograph. He apparently collects the autographs of famous people,
Speaker 3: including father murderers. He goes next, he goes next to
Speaker 3: the other train car using Steven Orlac's pin to try
Speaker 3: to get an autograph, Orlac has to go get his pin,
Speaker 3: and so by these means he meets Rollo. But anyway,
Speaker 3: Rollo gets off the train to get executed. Laurie goes
Speaker 3: to the guillotining because apparently he always does. But after
Speaker 3: Rollo gets off the train, the train tragically derails and
Speaker 3: Stephen survives the crash, but his hands are mangled and destroyed,
Speaker 3: and of course he's a pianist by trade, so he
Speaker 3: needs his hands to play, and Yvonne wants to so
Speaker 3: she's talking to the surgeon and in the hospital after
Speaker 3: the accident, saying can't you save his hands? And the
Speaker 3: Surgeon's like, I'm sorry, ma'am, we'll have to amputate. So
Speaker 3: Yvonne is desperate and she realizes, oh, I've got this
Speaker 3: creepy admirer, doctor Gogol, and he's the world's greatest surgeon.
Speaker 3: I can take Stephen to him. And so that's what
Speaker 3: she does. She has Stephen taking an ambulance to doctor
Speaker 3: Gogol's clinic and says, you've got to save his hands.
Speaker 3: He needs them to play. But unfortunately doctor Gogol discovers
Speaker 3: it is impossible to salvage his hands as they are.
Speaker 3: But Gogol, in his desire to please Yvonne, manages to
Speaker 3: transplant Rolo the knife thrower's hands onto Stephen's wrists.
Speaker 2: Yes, he decides to to essentially try him. There's that
Speaker 2: great scene where he's in there with doctor Wong and
Speaker 2: Laurie's character proclaims an impossible Napoleon said that word is
Speaker 2: not French.
Speaker 3: Yes, that part's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it seems for a while like all is well,
Speaker 3: or you know, Stephen discovers that his hands work, and
Speaker 3: everything's good until Steven starts to figure out that he
Speaker 3: can't play the piano anymore. You hear, there are these
Speaker 3: scenes of him sort of banging on the keys with
Speaker 3: with nothing like the deafness that he's used to and
Speaker 3: he so he can't play the piano, but he can
Speaker 3: do things he couldn't do before, such as accurately throw
Speaker 3: knives and pins so that they stick into doors and walls.
Speaker 2: Yes, how does he discover this?
Speaker 3: I think he just gets angry. So this is part
Speaker 3: of the personality bleed over too, because there's the idea
Speaker 3: that his hands have the skills of Raloh with throwing
Speaker 3: a knife, but they also have Raullo's murderous inclination. That
Speaker 3: he's suddenly violent when he wasn't before. Now this leads
Speaker 3: to all kinds of problems because he can't play piano. Suddenly,
Speaker 3: they're in want of money, and Stephen and Yvonne's position
Speaker 3: just sorts to fall apart, and Yvonne goes to Gogl
Speaker 3: for help. Go Gol of course demands her love and
Speaker 3: she won't give it to him, and then, in a
Speaker 3: fit of rage, go Gol decides that he needs to
Speaker 3: drive Stephen mad. So his plan is that he's going
Speaker 3: to commit murders and then assume the identity of Rollo,
Speaker 3: the knife thrower who Stephen knows was executed, and try
Speaker 3: to convince Stephen that Stephen himself did the murders that
Speaker 3: the go Gol actually did, by telling him the truth
Speaker 3: that he has Rollo's hands on his wrists and using
Speaker 3: as proof the fact that he go Gol, pretending to
Speaker 3: be Rallo, is now still alive because go Gol transplant
Speaker 3: did his dead head onto another person's body. And this
Speaker 3: is when gogl as Rollo dawns that amazing outfit with
Speaker 3: the neck brace and the leather and the steel hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is just it is a really haunting scene.
Speaker 2: It is if you if you don't have the I
Speaker 2: don't know the courage or the time to watch the
Speaker 2: full movie. I think, uh, I think there's a there's
Speaker 2: some clip. There's a clip of this, an official clip
Speaker 2: of just this scene online and yeah, it's wonderful. It's
Speaker 2: there's so there's the costume level of it, which we've
Speaker 2: described already, but also Gogel as Rollo is speaking in
Speaker 2: this this faint whisper, this raspy whisper, you know, the
Speaker 2: voice of one whose whose head has been refused with
Speaker 2: his body, and he's he feels at once like this
Speaker 2: this this strange, perverse miracle of modern surgery. But also
Speaker 2: he's like a ghost. He's like a wraith brought back
Speaker 2: to warn uh or Lock of what is to come.
Speaker 3: I am a little confused about Gogol's plan or the
Speaker 3: logic of it. So I think what he thinks is
Speaker 3: that if he can falsely convince Stephen that he did murders,
Speaker 3: this will cause Stephen to continue to actually do.
Speaker 2: Murders, right, or get caught by the police, either by
Speaker 2: turning himself in or just by doing more murders. Yeah,
Speaker 2: either way, it's a win for Gogle because then he
Speaker 2: can swoop in and you know, he and Evon will
Speaker 2: be married and live happily ever after.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he sort of neglects to consider the fact
Speaker 3: that Yvonn doesn't want to marry him. Go Gol is
Speaker 3: not thinking clearly at this point, right.
Speaker 2: He doesn't have a good head for romance. No, you know,
Speaker 2: he asked that question at one point. He says, hi,
Speaker 2: peasdant have conquered science, why can't I conquer love? And
Speaker 2: I mean, clearly he has a great head for science,
Speaker 2: but not for love. He doesn't really understand how love works.
Speaker 2: And you know, he can certainly use his technical skills
Speaker 2: in his brilliant mind to put the hands of a
Speaker 2: dead man onto the hands of a survivor. But in
Speaker 2: terms of transplanting Yvonne into his life, that is beyond
Speaker 2: his ability. But he still has this wonderfully perhaps overly
Speaker 2: complex plan to pull it off. It may sound a
Speaker 2: bit overly complex here, but I don't know. I feel
Speaker 2: like within the context of this plot and in the
Speaker 2: context of this movie, it works. You just kind of
Speaker 2: have to roll with it. But it was just.
Speaker 3: Sort of skips lightly over the top of the water
Speaker 3: and then moves on. Yeah, So, of course Stephen is
Speaker 3: implicated in these murders that Gogol did, or at least
Speaker 3: one murder. I think maybe it's just one actually, and
Speaker 3: he so he's arrested by the police, and Yvonne goes
Speaker 3: to Gogol's apartment to confront him. But then while she's there,
Speaker 3: she discovers his evil plan, and.
Speaker 2: Because he's coming back in the rollo costume cackling to
Speaker 2: himself about how about it, basically reveals his entire plot
Speaker 2: and then taking the costume off, and what does she
Speaker 2: do to hide?
Speaker 3: Oh wait, no, before we get there, I've got to
Speaker 3: say about when he's explaining the plot. He's not even
Speaker 3: doing the Bond villain explaining it to Bond. He's doing
Speaker 3: the Bond villain explaining his whole scheme to no one.
Speaker 3: He's just explaining it to the ceiling.
Speaker 2: Isn't there a bird?
Speaker 3: Oh maybe it is the parrot.
Speaker 2: There is a bird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, I take it back. Maybe he's explaining to
Speaker 3: the bird. But yes, So he's coming home, he's coming
Speaker 3: into his study. She's there because she had come to
Speaker 3: confront him, and then she discovers she she has to hide,
Speaker 3: and in this suspenseful final scene, she has to pretend
Speaker 3: to be the wax sculpture of herself, which is a
Speaker 3: fantastic set piece.
Speaker 2: And it's it's really well shot too. There's this wonderful
Speaker 2: sort of long shot where they come around the corner.
Speaker 2: It's like Gogol's point of view, and there she is
Speaker 2: standing there as the wax sculpture. It's it's a beautiful
Speaker 2: moment in the film.
Speaker 3: Mm hmm uh. And then, of course, uh, the steam
Speaker 3: and the police come to the rescue. I feel like
Speaker 3: it has a kind of disappointing conventional ending where Steven
Speaker 3: in the climax puts his new hands to good use,
Speaker 3: you could say, and then it's just like, okay, go
Speaker 3: Goll's dead, and then Steven and Yvonne embrace, and then
Speaker 3: just immediately the end happily ever after. This is the
Speaker 3: thing about a lot of these old movies. It seems
Speaker 3: like they wrap up very fast. They don't have any
Speaker 3: kind of interesting coda that puts a new spin on this.
Speaker 3: Like it's like this movie, it's like the moment the
Speaker 3: villain is defeated, the two main characters embrace and kiss,
Speaker 3: and then music swells and it's over at the end.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, bladders were much smaller back then, and
Speaker 2: you can only make it so far through a film.
Speaker 3: Speaking of bladders, there are some great side plots we
Speaker 3: haven't even mentioned. Actually, I don't know if they're great.
Speaker 3: There are some side plots that exist involving an alcoholic
Speaker 3: housekeeper who's always trying to you get some brandy, and
Speaker 3: a fast talking American reporter played by Ted Healy, who's
Speaker 3: the guy who you know he sounds like a baseball
Speaker 3: announcer of the nineteen thirties, and he's always using strange
Speaker 3: mannerisms and figures of speech. Like there's a scene where
Speaker 3: where Rollo is about to be executed by guillotine and
Speaker 3: he's there to cover it. I don't know why this
Speaker 3: American reporter is there to cover the guillotining of a
Speaker 3: criminal there in Paris, but he's explaining to the police
Speaker 3: commissioner that He's like, look, you know, you got to
Speaker 3: have jen for executions, you got to have champagne for this.
Speaker 3: And I can't reproduce it, but it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But it's that kind of snappy, snappy American accent
Speaker 2: that you hear in these old films and you end
Speaker 2: up wondering, I think people ever actually talk like this
Speaker 2: or is this just this sort of vaudevillian trope, because
Speaker 2: I believe Heally was like a Vaudevillian comic actor. I
Speaker 2: think he had ties to the Three Stooges, even its
Speaker 2: part of that whole syndicate.
Speaker 3: I think it is playing up the Transatlantic accent of
Speaker 3: the time, which was like not an organic accent, but
Speaker 3: an accent that was sort of a a product of training.
Speaker 3: And so it was taking that accent and then accentuating
Speaker 3: it to unreal levels like what it's kind of like
Speaker 3: what a lot of like pop country musicians do with
Speaker 3: their Southern accents and music today, where you're taking something
Speaker 3: that is a real accent but just playing it up
Speaker 3: to a point that it's a parody of itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so it's kind of kind in a
Speaker 2: like a vicious circle of self parody and you end
Speaker 2: up with this just, I have to say, kind of
Speaker 2: obnoxious performance. That's just it's just full of one liners
Speaker 2: and zingers, and I mean, I wouldn't take it out.
Speaker 2: It's it's part of this film, but it's it's I
Speaker 2: feel like the modern parallel here would be an otherwise
Speaker 2: serious film. And suddenly Rob Schneider shows up and he's
Speaker 2: doing some sort of goofy lame character. I meanwhile, you
Speaker 2: have like Peter Lourie and Colin Clive, you know, doing
Speaker 2: their own crazy but ultimately seriously grounded performance. All right, So,
Speaker 2: as we've been pointing out, this film really centers around
Speaker 2: hand transplantation. So let's talk a little bit about the
Speaker 2: science of hand transplantation and also the history of hand transplantation.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, hand transplantation is it's interesting how this
Speaker 3: movie fits into the history of it, because hand transplantation
Speaker 3: is absolutely real now, but it was not at the
Speaker 3: time this film was made, I was looking at a
Speaker 3: paper called the History and Evolution of Hand Transplantation, published
Speaker 3: in the journal hand Clinics in twenty eleven by Furuhar
Speaker 3: at All and so one thing to note is that
Speaker 3: hand transplantation is an example of a broader class of
Speaker 3: surgeries that are now known as vascularized composite ALLO transplantation
Speaker 3: or sometimes vascularized composite allograft a VCA for short, and
Speaker 3: this basically means the grafting of a whole unit organ
Speaker 3: composed of multiple kinds of tissue, so that would mean muscles, tendons, circulation, bones, nerves, skin,
Speaker 3: It's a lot of different stuff and it all has
Speaker 3: to connect properly to be functional, which is not easy.
Speaker 3: It's sometimes described as like there's this ascending ladder of
Speaker 3: the priorities of things that you have to connect and
Speaker 3: in what order of importance they come, and it does
Speaker 3: rely on very advanced techniques in microsurgery. Now, obviously the
Speaker 3: surgery involved to connect a hand to an arm segment
Speaker 3: in a functional way is really complicated, but it's not
Speaker 3: just the complexity of the surgery. One of the main
Speaker 3: barriers to successful hand transplantation in history, or at least
Speaker 3: in previous decades, was the insufficient development of immunosuppression, without
Speaker 3: which the immune system will revolt and reject the new organ.
Speaker 3: The first ever hand transplant that we know of was
Speaker 3: performed by a doctor Robert Gilbert in Ecuador in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty four, and this transplant did not really work. So
Speaker 3: the authors here explained that about three weeks after the
Speaker 3: initial graft, the transplanted hand had to be amputated because
Speaker 3: there was an acute immune rejection. And the authors say
Speaker 3: that quote This early experience, along with similar failures in
Speaker 3: animal models, led researchers to believe that skin bearing transplants
Speaker 3: were prohibitively immunogenic. A thirty year period of stagnation followed,
Speaker 3: but then in the nineteen eighties and nineties, new medications
Speaker 3: came online that made hand transplantation seem viable again, and
Speaker 3: they list a few examples here, including calcineurin inhibitors, cyclospore
Speaker 3: in A, TACROLEMAS, and MMF, and drugs like these opened
Speaker 3: the doors to multiple kinds of VCA. The authors here
Speaker 3: cite a couple of the first successful hand transplants in
Speaker 3: the late nineteen nineties, one of which actually was in
Speaker 3: France by a surgeon named Jean Michel Dubernard and his
Speaker 3: colleagues in Leone in nineteen ninety eight. So this first
Speaker 3: patient in ninety eight received a single hand transplant. The
Speaker 3: surgery apparently took thirteen hours and the operation was at
Speaker 3: first successful, but unfortunately the patient did not follow instructions
Speaker 3: for his immunosuppression and physical therapy, and he eventually left
Speaker 3: the care of the team in Leone, and this had
Speaker 3: disastrous consequences and he had to have the hand amputated
Speaker 3: in two thousand and one. Presumably it didn't say why,
Speaker 3: but presumably this was because of immune rejection. And then
Speaker 3: the same group in France under du Bernard performed the
Speaker 3: world's first bilateral hand transplant, so both hands in January
Speaker 3: two thousand. Here the patient was a painter thirty three
Speaker 3: years old who lost both of his hands when he
Speaker 3: was experimenting with a homemade rocket and it exploded.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Now, the time of this review that was published in
Speaker 3: twenty eleven, the authors believed that more than sixty five
Speaker 3: hand transplants had been carried out worldwide, most of them
Speaker 3: at this point were successful, some had had to be
Speaker 3: amputated due to immune reactions, but most of them were successful.
Speaker 3: I haven't found a more recent estimate, but surely the
Speaker 3: number is a good bit higher than that now as
Speaker 3: therapies have continued to evolve.
Speaker 2: You know, doctor Cody k Azari is a big name
Speaker 2: in hand transplantation, having served as one of the lead
Speaker 2: surgeons on six hand transplantation operations, including the first double
Speaker 2: hand transplantation and first arm transplantation performed in the United States.
Speaker 2: I got to hear him give a talk for the
Speaker 2: Moth in New York City several years ago as part
Speaker 2: of the World Science Festival, and you can listen to
Speaker 2: this at themoth dot org or look it up on YouTube,
Speaker 2: I believe. But it was a really cool talk because
Speaker 2: he talks about just the intensity of the surgery, and
Speaker 2: I remember feeling like like I either got the impression
Speaker 2: or maybe he even used this comparison himself, that you
Speaker 2: got the idea that this was like scaling a mountain,
Speaker 2: you know, it was like the surgical you know, again,
Speaker 2: all the different types of connections that have to be made,
Speaker 2: you know, all the concerns that have to be taken
Speaker 2: into place to pull this off. You know, it's it's
Speaker 2: really impressive. And that's without even getting again into what
Speaker 2: comes afterward. You know, it's not a situation where you
Speaker 2: wake up Stephen Orlock and say hey, you got new hands,
Speaker 2: and he's like okay, I'm gonna go and try and
Speaker 2: play piano and like, no, it's there. You know, there's
Speaker 2: a drug regime that has to be followed, and physical
Speaker 2: therapy is a huge part of adapting to life post transplantation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and some of the sources I was looking at
Speaker 3: emphasized the importance of the psychology, like psychological screening and
Speaker 3: the psychology of how people adapt to hand transplants. I
Speaker 3: mean for multiple reasons, but one of which is following
Speaker 3: through after the surgery is incredibly important, as was for example,
Speaker 3: made clear by that first case where the guy was
Speaker 3: not taking his immunosuppression drugs properly, it was not following
Speaker 3: through physical therapy, and that eventually led to the hand
Speaker 3: being rejected.
Speaker 2: Yeah. On the psychological front, I was looking at a
Speaker 2: paper from nineteen ninety nine by Martin M. Klappeck, MD
Speaker 2: titled Transplantation in the Human Hand Psychiatric Considerations, and the
Speaker 2: author here points out the one has to take into
Speaker 2: account the psychology of the hand as well as the
Speaker 2: quote psychodynamic issues in limb loss and the psychological integration
Speaker 2: of a transplanted hand. He wrote, quote, Potential candidates for
Speaker 2: hand transplantation should receive a psychiatric interview and projective testing
Speaker 2: to assess the patient's adaptability to body image, level of personality, organization,
Speaker 2: and capacity for pathological regression. And one of the things
Speaker 2: that he was pointing out is that at the time anyway,
Speaker 2: there wasn't as much of this, Like just there you
Speaker 2: saw this with the various levels of organ transplantation, but
Speaker 2: there apparently wasn't as much of it in place for
Speaker 2: hand transplantation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this now hopefully that will look for hand
Speaker 3: transplantation is just continuing to get better, it seems like
Speaker 3: it is. But for at least going back to say
Speaker 3: ten or twenty years ago, I was seeing papers that
Speaker 3: were talking about the pros and cons of hand transplantation, saying, well,
Speaker 3: you could potentially get this quality of life increase, like
Speaker 3: with the transplanted hand as opposed to prosthetics. But you know,
Speaker 3: obviously there are major health consequences, like if it is rejected,
Speaker 3: so there are big risks involved as well, and there
Speaker 3: it seems like over time the pros are starting to
Speaker 3: build up and the cons are decreasing. But for a while,
Speaker 3: I think there was serious debate over whether this was
Speaker 3: a reasonable surgery to perform given all the risks and downsides.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you can find sort of outstanding examples
Speaker 2: in either direction. So take bilateral hand transplantation for example.
Speaker 2: You know someone who's lost both hands and they get
Speaker 2: two hands transplanted on. For instance. Some of you might
Speaker 2: remember in twenty sixteen there was the case of American
Speaker 2: double hand transplant recipient Jeff Kepner, who made headlines saying
Speaker 2: that he wanted his own transplanted planted hands removed that
Speaker 2: he had received like ten years earlier. And it wasn't
Speaker 2: something where he was blaming the doctors, like he's communicated that,
Speaker 2: you know, he knew it was a risk to try
Speaker 2: this out, but he wanted to give it a go.
Speaker 2: But at this point he was saying, like I just
Speaker 2: don't have functionality in these hands, like I was better
Speaker 2: with with process is instead, and I would prefer to
Speaker 2: go back, if possible, to what I had before. But
Speaker 2: then on the other hand, you have the case of
Speaker 2: an Austrian police officer named Theo Klez who is able
Speaker 2: to return full to full time work after bilateral hand transplantation.
Speaker 2: So it is very much a success story. And that
Speaker 2: story is even even more dramatic because Klez was a
Speaker 2: bomb disposal expert working to diffuse a bomb placed in
Speaker 2: a school by Austrian mass murder of Franz Fuchs, who
Speaker 2: killed four and injured fifteen in five waves of male
Speaker 2: bombs I think a total of twenty four mail bombs.
Speaker 2: So a rather dramatic case, but ultimately a surgical success story,
Speaker 2: I understand.
Speaker 3: So it seems like the transplantation of hands has made
Speaker 3: great strides and I think is continuing to do so.
Speaker 3: The transplantation of heads is another theme in the movie,
Speaker 3: though I don't think in the film anyone actually gets
Speaker 3: their head transplanted. It's just that doctor Gogol comes up
Speaker 3: with this story to try to drive drive, calling Clive
Speaker 3: Insaying by saying that he is Rollo after having undergone
Speaker 3: a head transplant which didn't actually happen. It's just Gogall
Speaker 3: in disguise.
Speaker 2: Right, and again it's almost almost feels like a tragedy
Speaker 2: that we have created such a fantastic character that is
Speaker 2: itself a fantasy within the context of the film. But
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's still it's still perfect. It's still perfect. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, every few years it seems like you hear new
Speaker 3: stories about a doctor or surgeon somewhere who claims that
Speaker 3: they can perform a head transplant or however you want
Speaker 3: to call it. We could talk about the terminology. It
Speaker 3: just never seems to materialize. I don't know how realistic
Speaker 3: the idea of a head transplant with modern medicine is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's if we can compare hand transplantation to scaling
Speaker 2: a mountain, then ultimately head transplantation or whole body transplantation
Speaker 2: the other way referring to it, this would be the
Speaker 2: Mount Everest, Like, this would be the ultimate peace because.
Speaker 3: It's more like scaling a mountain on the moon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is. Uh, it would be the ultimate
Speaker 2: surgical achievement because this is this is something you know,
Speaker 2: we have to face, like no human being has ever
Speaker 2: truly survived decapitation. I mean, certainly there are arguments and
Speaker 2: various observations about how long consciousness seems to remain in
Speaker 2: a freshly cut head. But this is only brief. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, interns right in terms of keeping it alive
Speaker 2: in a jar or on a pan, as we see
Speaker 2: in a whole other genre of sci fi films from
Speaker 2: the especially the twentieth century. You know, that is that
Speaker 2: is thus far beyond us, as certainly is the idea
Speaker 2: of taking ahead and attaching a body to it so
Speaker 2: that we the head can use the body. And this
Speaker 2: is where it gets kind of weird, like, not only
Speaker 2: is this like not a surgical reality, it's still within
Speaker 2: the realm of fantasy like it even it even further
Speaker 2: accentuates that question of what is self? What is body?
Speaker 2: The idea of head and body it because it is
Speaker 2: a quite literal invocation of the whole. You know, we've
Speaker 2: talked about the mind body connection and how it is
Speaker 2: perhaps unhealthy to think of ourselves as a brain attached
Speaker 2: to a body, a head on a body, like a
Speaker 2: rider on a horse, when instead we're this integrated system.
Speaker 2: We are essentially a centaur of mind and body. But
Speaker 2: then you have an example like this, or at least
Speaker 2: a theoretical idea like this, that you could take the
Speaker 2: head and attach it to another body, and this would
Speaker 2: be the new individual you know, it does raise all
Speaker 2: sorts of questions and and even nightmares in the human mind.
Speaker 3: It does remind me of the Daniel Dinnett short story
Speaker 3: where am I that we've talked about on the show before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it raises all sorts of questions, big
Speaker 2: questions and small questions, thoughtful questions and grotesque ones. I
Speaker 2: feel like there's there's at least one episode right where
Speaker 2: there's a head transplantation on the Simpsons. It's like a
Speaker 2: treehouse of.
Speaker 3: Horror where that sounds right?
Speaker 2: Yeah? The what they put Homer's brain in a robot
Speaker 2: and the robot falls onto mister Burns and then mister
Speaker 2: burns head is transplanted onto Homer's body.
Speaker 3: Why was I imagining Flanders head on Homer's body? That
Speaker 3: doesn't sound That's not right, is it?
Speaker 2: Maybe they got around to that later. There are a
Speaker 2: lot of treehouses I haven't seen. Well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with this point at the Simpsons, basically you can
Speaker 3: just like throw out random ideas and then it turns
Speaker 3: out they already did that in an episode and probably
Speaker 3: maybe did it more than once.
Speaker 2: Now, in terms of surviving decapitation, there are animals that
Speaker 2: can survive longer certainly longer than us without a head.
Speaker 2: It's often pointed out that decapitated cockroaches die of starvation
Speaker 2: rather than just simply the loss of their head.
Speaker 3: But there you're talking about which one? Are you talking
Speaker 3: about surviving the head or the body?
Speaker 2: Yeah, again, it kind of messes with our conception of
Speaker 2: what an individual, even an individual cockroach is, right. It's
Speaker 2: kind of like that running around like a chicken with
Speaker 2: the head cut off, which is alluding to, you know,
Speaker 2: observations that a chicken seems to the chicken's body seems
Speaker 2: to live longer than a human body without a head.
Speaker 2: But is the body living? You know, is the head?
Speaker 2: It gets complicated.
Speaker 3: I could be mistaken about this because it's just off
Speaker 3: the top of my head, so to speak. But I
Speaker 3: think the reason that's observed with chickens is because the
Speaker 3: brain basically isn't fully removed, like you can sort of
Speaker 3: decapitate a chicken, but the brain stem is still there
Speaker 3: and functioning. It's just the upper part of the brain
Speaker 3: that's been taken away. I might be wrong about that,
Speaker 3: but that's what I recall.
Speaker 2: Now. In animals, blood vessel reattachment has been achieved, but
Speaker 2: a full human head reattachment would require a complete reattachment
Speaker 2: of vessels, muscles, et cetera, everything that's involved in transplanting
Speaker 2: a hand, but also the spinal cord as well, and
Speaker 2: we'd need to be able to sustain the head while
Speaker 2: all of this was happening. You know, again, how do
Speaker 2: we keep ahead alive after it is removed from the body,
Speaker 2: and then how would we keep it alive long enough
Speaker 2: to get it reattached. So so yeah, we're simply not
Speaker 2: there yet in terms of reattaching a head to a body,
Speaker 2: though though I love the way that it is real.
Speaker 2: It is created by Gogel in the film, you know,
Speaker 2: the idea of this brace being used to achieve a
Speaker 2: kind of like rough head transplantation, like he seems to
Speaker 2: have approached it with it, you know, the thoughtful mind like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: this would be a very difficult thing to pull off.
Speaker 2: The results would not be pleasant. How would I depict
Speaker 2: this to Orlock?
Speaker 3: I think I just noticed that this entire episode, we've
Speaker 3: been saying all these names in different ways multiple times.
Speaker 3: I think I've been saying Gogall and Gogall, and I've
Speaker 3: been saying or Lock and or Lock, and I really
Speaker 3: don't know which one is right at this point. As
Speaker 3: for Orlock, isn't that the name of the vampire in Nosferatu?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, count Orlock?
Speaker 3: It is Max Shrek.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure. Say is it's felt same?
Speaker 3: No? I don't think so. I think this spell hey
Speaker 3: in't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And of course I think I think Orlock was
Speaker 2: that they chose that name well because they didn't have
Speaker 2: the rights to Dracula, so they're like, all right, come
Speaker 2: up with something else.
Speaker 3: They should have used Alu card or doctor Acula in
Speaker 3: the Doctor.
Speaker 2: That would have been good.
Speaker 3: So there's another thing I wanted to talk about in
Speaker 3: this movie that I thought was interesting is that it
Speaker 3: features a couple of poems that are by two different Brownings,
Speaker 3: that there are parts of the movie where Gogall quotes poetry.
Speaker 3: The first I noticed was there's a part where he's
Speaker 3: I think he's pining for Yvonne, you know, he's he's
Speaker 3: feeling despondent because he loves her and she's married to another.
Speaker 3: And he says he starts reading a quote from a book.
Speaker 3: It sounded familiar to me, and I looked it up,
Speaker 3: and I think the quote is from a poem by
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the English poet Sonnets from the Puguese Seven.
Speaker 3: It's often known by its first line, which is the
Speaker 3: face of all the world has changed, I think, And
Speaker 3: the lines are like the face of all the world
Speaker 3: has changed, I think, since first I heard the footsteps
Speaker 3: of the soul move still, Oh, still beside me, as
Speaker 3: they stole betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink of
Speaker 3: obvious death, where I, who thought to sink, was caught
Speaker 3: up into love and taught the whole of life in
Speaker 3: a new rhythm. And it goes on from there. But
Speaker 3: that's the part that has what he reads. And then
Speaker 3: later in the film I thought this was pretty interesting.
Speaker 3: On the screenwriter's part, he quotes a poem when he
Speaker 3: is trying to murder Yvonne. He starts to strangle her
Speaker 3: with the braids of her own hair, and as he's
Speaker 3: leaning over Francis Drake, I think she has fainted at
Speaker 3: this point, and he quotes from the poem Porphyria's Lover
Speaker 3: by Elizabeth Barrett Browning's husband, the poet Robert Browning. And
Speaker 3: this is a line. You may have read this poem
Speaker 3: in school. It's pretty famous it the poem, the speaker
Speaker 3: is talking about a murder he committed, having murdered his lover,
Speaker 3: and he says, I found a thing to do, and
Speaker 3: all her hair in one long yellow string. I wound
Speaker 3: three times her little throat around and strangled her. No
Speaker 3: pain felt she I am quite sure she felt no pain.
Speaker 3: As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily
Speaker 3: opened her lids again, laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a part of just that. I mean,
Speaker 2: the whole movie is wonderful, where this last stretch is
Speaker 2: just excellent, and where he recites this poem while he's
Speaker 2: going to strangle her while she's unconscious, as as Oorlock,
Speaker 2: Stephen Orlock and the others are trying to beat down
Speaker 2: the door.
Speaker 3: But then I guess Gogaula is undone by his own work.
Speaker 3: In addition to becoming an evil murderer, he also made
Speaker 3: the mistake of giving Stephen Orlock hands that are really
Speaker 3: good at killing from a distance. Yeah right, So Orlac
Speaker 3: sort of reaches through the the grate in the door
Speaker 3: and throws a knife and sticks it in, go galls back,
Speaker 3: and then I don't get I guess somehow right after
Speaker 3: that they get through the door anyway, you know.
Speaker 2: It also drives home why the Hands of Warlock isn't
Speaker 2: a good title for this ether, because it's basically the
Speaker 2: hands of Ralloh, that's what That's what's in the film.
Speaker 2: The Hands of Warlock are lost pretty early on unless
Speaker 2: you're getting deep and wondering about like who owns the hands?
Speaker 2: I don't know. But in the end, also, it is
Speaker 2: Mad Love. It is about mad characters going mad and
Speaker 2: trying to figure out how love works.
Speaker 3: So there is a thing I noticed about this movie
Speaker 3: as it was on Amazon Prime. Amazon declares this film
Speaker 3: to be rated PG thirteen, and I was like, how
Speaker 3: did Mad Love end up rated PG thirteen when movie
Speaker 3: ratings had not been invented yet? Or I don't think
Speaker 3: there were any kinds of ratings. If there were, they
Speaker 3: weren't the system we have now, and certainly not the
Speaker 3: PG thirteen rating, which was not invented till the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: I looked it up. The first PG thirteen film was
Speaker 3: Red Dawn.
Speaker 2: They must have My only guess here is they must
Speaker 2: have accidentally pulled the rating off of nineteen ninety five's
Speaker 2: Mad Love. That we mentioned earlier unrelated film, but that
Speaker 2: was rated PG thirteen. In the air in which that
Speaker 2: rating actually existed, it would be horrible.
Speaker 3: I think if they are going back in applying MPAA
Speaker 3: ratings to like pre code movies, yeah, don't even try.
Speaker 2: Now. You might be wondering, well, where can I watch
Speaker 2: Mad Love? We already mentioned Checking it out on Amazon Prime,
Speaker 2: I found that you can pretty much rent or buy
Speaker 2: digitally Mad Love anywhere that you would rent or buy
Speaker 2: a movie. You can also find it on DVD, sometimes
Speaker 2: thrown unlovingly into a multi pack alongside far more forgotten
Speaker 2: films of the era. I watched it on a nice
Speaker 2: DVD edition that I rented from Video Drum here in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: They had a nice historical commentary track. I mean, it
Speaker 2: was clearly somebody sort of reading no about the film,
Speaker 2: but it was quite interesting. I think this was from
Speaker 2: the Legends of Horror box set.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as far as I know, there's not a BLU
Speaker 2: ray of this film, at least not yet.
Speaker 3: I didn't see one. Okay, one last question before we
Speaker 3: wrap it up, what does Stephen Orlak do the rest
Speaker 3: of his life? So he maybe he just can't play
Speaker 3: piano ever again, but he's good at throwing knives? Does
Speaker 3: that become his new profession? Like they're reunited at the end,
Speaker 3: Yvonne is saved, they embrace. Oh we're all right now,
Speaker 3: And I guess I will enter my life in the
Speaker 3: circus as a knife thrower.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I so identified with doctor Gogel that
Speaker 2: after he was dead, I was just kind of like,
Speaker 2: all right, it doesn't matter, you know, But I did
Speaker 2: think about it more after you brought it up. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess I imagine him taking up knife throwing, professional
Speaker 2: knife throwing and that becomes like his new traveling act.
Speaker 2: And maybe she gets to go back into theater, and
Speaker 2: you know, because now it's like his profession is more
Speaker 2: aligned with hers. Right, maybe they worked again. They do
Speaker 2: a show together.
Speaker 3: Okay, I see, Yeah, they do a stage show where
Speaker 3: he throws knives and she screams while the knives are thrown.
Speaker 2: The fabulous Oarlocks Warlocks coming to a theater tent near you.
Speaker 3: I love it. Okay, we wrap up here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go ahead and wrap up this edition of
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. Obviously, we'd love to hear from everybody
Speaker 2: out there. Did you enjoy Mad Love. If you have,
Speaker 2: you watched it? What do you think of it? Do
Speaker 2: you agree with this? Disagree with this? Do you have
Speaker 2: additional insights that we may have missed? Let us know.
Speaker 2: We'd also love to hear from you. Do you do
Speaker 2: you feel like this is a good use of our
Speaker 2: time producing episodes of Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: We've heard both ways so far.
Speaker 2: Have we? Maybe I'm just I'm blind to the criticism,
Speaker 2: but I haven't noticed anybody saying not to.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. We heard from one person who
Speaker 3: said this was not for them, but.
Speaker 2: Okay, well then that's understandable. Is this show? Is this?
Speaker 2: If the Friday night Weird House Cinema isn't for you,
Speaker 2: just stick to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Our feelings
Speaker 2: will not be hurt. But let us know either way.
Speaker 2: We're excited to hear from our listeners. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow your Mind, you can find us wherever you
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Speaker 2: a listener of the show who's also a self employed illustrator.
Speaker 2: You can find out more about his work at red
Speaker 2: Buffalo dot org. But he created this wonderful shirt that's
Speaker 2: a Pandora motif. Pandora opening this box of interesting, challenging
Speaker 2: and dangerous ideas. There is show topics swirling around her
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Speaker 3: Maybe we'll get a sausage man shirt next. We can
Speaker 3: only only some with it with sausage Man and and
Speaker 3: and go goles oorlock together. I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: We'll figure it out, okay, anyway, huge thanks as always
Speaker 3: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
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