Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener Mail.
Speaker 2: This is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick and today as Rob I
Speaker 3: think just said, we are bringing you listener mail. Of course,
Speaker 3: at the end of every episode we give out our
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Speaker 3: dot com. It's been a little bit since the last one,
Speaker 3: so we are doing some catch up on series that
Speaker 3: have been a few weeks back at this point. But yeah,
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Speaker 3: All right, well, I think we should kick things off
Speaker 3: with some responses to the series we did called The Mysteries.
Speaker 3: This was a collection of episodes about the mystery religions
Speaker 3: or the mystery cults of the ancient Greco Roman world.
Speaker 3: Let's see, Rob, Do you mind if I start with
Speaker 3: this message from Hannah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: This message is responding to a part of the series
Speaker 3: where we were talking about the general context of ancient
Speaker 3: Greek and Roman polytheism, like how the cults of those
Speaker 3: gods were quite a bit different from what a person
Speaker 3: today might expect, especially if that person grew up in
Speaker 3: culture primarily influenced by one of the big monotheisms. Some
Speaker 3: of those differences were that within these ancient Greco Roman polytheisms,
Speaker 3: there was generally no expectation of exclusivity in a person's
Speaker 3: relationship with any one god. The main public cults were
Speaker 3: not really focused on things like faith and belief, but
Speaker 3: instead on rituals and sacrifices, ritual sacrifices and festivals. You know,
Speaker 3: it's a party time as well, so you know, people
Speaker 3: would perform rituals and sacrifices in exchange for the expectation
Speaker 3: of blessings from the god in question. Another thing is
Speaker 3: just how many gods there were. There were lots and
Speaker 3: lots of them who could each provide blessings related to
Speaker 3: different parts of human life, things like economic situations, health
Speaker 3: and reproduction, specific areas of geography and geographical features. And
Speaker 3: in this discussion, Rob brought up this analogy comparing the
Speaker 3: religious environment to a cheesecake factory menu except which I
Speaker 3: thought was a good one, except with the variation that,
Speaker 3: unlike the cheesecake fact which is centrally organized, it's a chain.
Speaker 3: The public cults of the ancient Greek and Roman world
Speaker 3: were not centrally organized. There wasn't really like a pope
Speaker 3: of Greco Roman religion to make everybody do the same thing. Instead,
Speaker 3: you had lots of local cult control and even tons
Speaker 3: of local gods and local variations on the worship of
Speaker 3: widespread gods. And so listener Hannah gets in touch to
Speaker 3: offer a contribution to this analogy, Hannah says, with subject
Speaker 3: line A variety platter of deities. Hi, again, I had
Speaker 3: to pause the Mystery Cult episode just to send you this.
Speaker 3: The perfect metaphor for ancient polytheism isn't a cheesecake factory menu.
Speaker 3: It's a local diner menu. Now that's the kind of
Speaker 3: distinction I appreciate it. Let's hear Hannah's case here. Hannah says,
Speaker 3: you know how some of them can be improbably long
Speaker 3: because they keep adding on odds and ends or recombinations
Speaker 3: of the same and green vidience. Plus, you have some
Speaker 3: standard diner fair you'd expect to see almost anywhere, and
Speaker 3: then in parentheses burger slash sun God maybe, plus local
Speaker 3: stuff parentheses grits in the South scrapple and Pennsylvania hyperlocal
Speaker 3: river God perhaps, and whatever stuff from the culture of
Speaker 3: the diner owners who maybe came from elsewhere. You've probably
Speaker 3: been to a Greek diner or an Italian flavored diner.
Speaker 3: Maybe these are the deities brought to a region by migration,
Speaker 3: trade or conquest. Anyway, thank you as always for sharing
Speaker 3: the joy and light of learning and exploring ideas. Y'all
Speaker 3: are life savers and now I really want to milkshake.
Speaker 3: Cheers Hannah. Well, Hannah, bravo. I thoroughly approve of this analogy.
Speaker 3: I think it's great.
Speaker 2: Yes, our original analogy was imperfect, as sometimes our real
Speaker 2: time analogies tend to be. This is a perfection of
Speaker 2: the analogy, so greatly appreciate it.
Speaker 3: All right, let's see Rob, you want to do this next?
Speaker 3: And from Jamie. Yeah, let's see a bit of context.
Speaker 3: This one brings up a couple things in the episode.
Speaker 3: One is the comparisons between ancient Greco Roman mystery cults
Speaker 3: and Christianity. It's long been a question in historical and
Speaker 3: religious scholarship to what extent Christianity should or should not
Speaker 3: be thought of as one of the mystery cults or
Speaker 3: influenced by one of the mystery cults. And then the
Speaker 3: other thing is just about our use of the word
Speaker 3: cult in the context of ancient Greek and Roman religion,
Speaker 3: where it has none of the negative connotations as today.
Speaker 2: All right, then here is the email from Jamie. Dear
Speaker 2: Robert and Joe. I'm enjoying the pod as always, and
Speaker 2: especially the recent episode on the mystery cults of the
Speaker 2: ancient world. I would have liked to hear even more,
Speaker 2: not just about how Christianity may have been a kind
Speaker 2: of mystery cult to begin with, but about how this
Speaker 2: tradition has continued even to this day, at least in Catholicism.
Speaker 2: Mysteries such as the Trinity, for example, are our essentral
Speaker 2: part of faith, and one is encouraged to contemplate the
Speaker 2: mysteries such as the Resurrection and Denunciation while praying the Rosary.
Speaker 2: On another cult point, I liked how you pointed out
Speaker 2: the call of Cthulhu version of the cultist as a
Speaker 2: hooded fiend. But if you are interested in reading a
Speaker 2: story that does an excellent job, in my opinion, presenting
Speaker 2: Cthulhu worship as if it were a mystery cult in
Speaker 2: the ancient sense, I recommend copying Squid by Michael Shae.
Speaker 2: Keep up the good work, Jane.
Speaker 3: Oh thanks, Jamie. Well maybe we should go in reverse
Speaker 3: order here. I've only read one story ever by Michael,
Speaker 3: she called The Autopsy. But that story was fantastic, so
Speaker 3: I'm interested to read more. Michael Shay's a horror, horror
Speaker 3: and fantasy writer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, horror, fantasy, some science fiction thrown in there as well.
Speaker 2: He lived nineteen forty six through twenty fourteen. One of
Speaker 2: my favorite weird fiction authors. I actually got to exchange
Speaker 2: a couple of like fan emails with him once. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the highlight of my fan emailing career. But his Niffeline
Speaker 2: fantasy tales are absolutely amazing, well worth seeking out. He
Speaker 2: also wrote a number of great weird fiction tales, including
Speaker 2: several that take place in the Cthulhu mythos. Coughing Squid
Speaker 2: is a good one. I haven't read that one in years, though,
Speaker 2: so the mystery cult aspects of it have kind of
Speaker 2: faded for my recollection. But this one is collected in
Speaker 2: a collection that I have demiurge, the Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales.
Speaker 2: That one also includes fat Face, which is one of
Speaker 2: his better known stories. And yeah, the Autopsy, as you mentioned, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that is another really well known Shay story. That one
Speaker 2: was adapted into an episode of Germeal de Toro's Cabinet
Speaker 2: of Curiosity, that one directed by David Pryor.
Speaker 3: Now I wonder in what sense Jamie means Coping Squid
Speaker 3: is about Cuthulhu worship as an actual mystery cult in
Speaker 3: the historical sense. Does that mean that it relies on
Speaker 3: secret knowledge. I mean, I guess the grit knowledge is
Speaker 3: sort of already there in the original story. Maybe that
Speaker 3: it's more about the experience of the initiate like that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the core part.
Speaker 2: I think. So there are there are two different Michael
Speaker 2: she myth those stories that are kind of combined in
Speaker 2: my memory, and I really need to revisit them to
Speaker 2: tease them apart. But I have a vague recollection of
Speaker 2: a story that is very much from the the cultest
Speaker 2: or would be cultest point of view, you know, beginning
Speaker 2: to have this initiation into the sacred rights of Cuthula.
Speaker 3: That's actually a great idea for a story, given the
Speaker 3: like historical knowledge we have now about what the initiation
Speaker 3: process was. Probably, like I'm thinking specifically of the Eleusinian mysteries,
Speaker 3: where there's this idea that you know, everyone would have
Speaker 3: been told that it's a you know, it's a really
Speaker 3: powerful experience, it'll change your life, it'll let you go
Speaker 3: without a burden into the into the underworld at the
Speaker 3: time of death. And so you've heard all this good
Speaker 3: stuff about it, but people can't tell you what it is. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so like what if you get there and the
Speaker 3: truth of what the experience is is quite horrifying. But
Speaker 3: then for some reason you have to keep go telling
Speaker 3: people like, yeah, it's great, you got to go, and yeah.
Speaker 2: I really need to read these stories again, because again,
Speaker 2: Michael Shay is terrific. He is one of those authors
Speaker 2: that I will I keep coming back to and I'll
Speaker 2: just figure out is well, what's a story of his
Speaker 2: that I'm very fond of, but I've also forgotten most
Speaker 2: off and then it's time to dive back in.
Speaker 3: Now coming back to the first half of Jamie's email
Speaker 3: about the comparisons between Christianity and mystery cults, for one thing,
Speaker 3: extending into the comparisons of modern Christianity to mystery cults.
Speaker 3: There's actually a significant part of the book. One of
Speaker 3: the main sources we talked about in that series, the
Speaker 3: book by Hugh Boden Mystery Cults in the Ancient World.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so Boden toward the end of the book
Speaker 3: has a long section in which you makes some pretty
Speaker 3: strong comparisons between what we know about the experience of
Speaker 3: being in an ancient mystery cult, and not so much
Speaker 3: with Catholicism but with certain Pentecostal forms of Christianity. Specifically
Speaker 3: like the ecstatic snake handling cults of Appalachia. But as
Speaker 3: to the broader question of Christianity and mystery cults, it
Speaker 3: is interesting, like there have long been these questions, like
Speaker 3: to what extent does the Christian practice of baptism constitute
Speaker 3: and initiation ritual is the Eucharist, like the ritual taking
Speaker 3: of bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ?
Speaker 3: Is that a mystery practice? Also questions about whether Christianity
Speaker 3: began as something more like the other mystery religions or
Speaker 3: was influenced by them and then maybe drifted away to
Speaker 3: become a more doctrinal cult. But I think a lot
Speaker 3: of scholars now kind of disagree with that interpretive lens
Speaker 3: because specifically the idea that Christianity was strongly influenced by
Speaker 3: the mystery cults or began as a mystery cult. And
Speaker 3: I think one of the main reasons a lot of
Speaker 3: historians have turned against that is that that kind of
Speaker 3: under the particular features of Judaism as a foundational influence
Speaker 3: on Christianity. And it's fair to point out that there
Speaker 3: is a lot we don't know about the early years
Speaker 3: of Christianity and its origins, but of course, that cuts
Speaker 3: both ways against all interpretations, but based on what we
Speaker 3: do know, I think the best interpretation of the origin
Speaker 3: of Christianity is that it began as an apocalyptic movement
Speaker 3: within Judaism, which was focused on the idea that the
Speaker 3: Jewish God would soon come down to destroy wickedness, invert
Speaker 3: existing power relationships like overthrow Roman control and so forth,
Speaker 3: and establish a good, just kingdom on earth, sort of
Speaker 3: right all wrongs. And then as early Christians tried to
Speaker 3: make sense of the death and then their belief in
Speaker 3: the resurrection of their leader, Jesus of Nazareth. And then
Speaker 3: also as the story of Jesus began to spread among
Speaker 3: Greek and Roman polytheists rather than only among Jews, it
Speaker 3: morphed into a religion of individual salvation, being not about
Speaker 3: the fact that God would soon come to earth and
Speaker 3: set things right, but about the idea that you need
Speaker 3: to set yourself right with God by accepting the saving
Speaker 3: sacrifice of Christ. But again, there's a lot we don't
Speaker 3: know about the early years of Christianity with great confidence,
Speaker 3: so it's hard to be too sure about any particular
Speaker 3: story of how it evolved. However, there is an interesting
Speaker 3: vocabulary fact that I don't think we talked about in
Speaker 3: the episode Rob let me know if we did get
Speaker 3: into this, and I'm forgetting. But it's the idea of
Speaker 3: the early Christian use of the Greek word mysterion, which
Speaker 3: is often used to refer to the mystery the initiation rights,
Speaker 3: the secret initiation rights of cults, like the Elusinian mysteries.
Speaker 3: The word mysterion does appear in early Christian texts such
Speaker 3: as the Gospels and in some of the epistles in
Speaker 3: the New Testament, where it seems in this context it's
Speaker 3: used not to refer to initiation rights. Instead, mysterion here
Speaker 3: is always used to refer to secret knowledge, generally hidden
Speaker 3: knowledge that has been revealed in secret to a privileged group.
Speaker 3: So one example is like when Jesus is telling the
Speaker 3: parable of the Sower in the Gospel of Mark. Apparently
Speaker 3: in the Greek there is invocation of the word mysterion there,
Speaker 3: referring to the secret interpretation of the parable that Jesus
Speaker 3: gives only to his inner circle of disciples, so that
Speaker 3: the masses only sort of hear the parable and puzzle
Speaker 3: what to make of it. But then there is a
Speaker 3: secret knowledge, a sort of secret reading of the parable
Speaker 3: that is given to his inner circle. So that's how
Speaker 3: the word mysterion is used in early Christian writings from
Speaker 3: the first and second centuries CE, but then a few
Speaker 3: centuries later, I think it's by like the fourth century CE.
Speaker 3: Boden says, this is happening. The word mysterion is now
Speaker 3: just commonly used to refer to Christian ritual like the
Speaker 3: Eucharist or baptism, and there has been scholarly debate about why,
Speaker 3: like why is the word mysterion used here. Some think
Speaker 3: that it's like the influence of Greek and Roman polytheism. Basically,
Speaker 3: it's like, you know, taking a word from one religious
Speaker 3: context and applying it to the new dominant religion where
Speaker 3: it once referred to these rituals. But Boden actually makes
Speaker 3: an argument that this application of the word mystery on
Speaker 3: to something like the Eucharist is it reflects, in his view,
Speaker 3: an understanding that the Christians had at the time that
Speaker 3: the rituals were forms of secret knowledge. So it's more
Speaker 3: in keeping with the way the word is used in
Speaker 3: the early Christian texts, like forms of secret knowledge that
Speaker 3: are now revealed, So you know, the secret of baptism
Speaker 3: and the Eucharist that was previously known only to God
Speaker 3: and perhaps to some of the prophets, but now these
Speaker 3: rituals are known to all Christians, have been revealed by Jesus.
Speaker 3: It is a secret that has been that you have
Speaker 3: been brought in on. And of course, Uh, there is
Speaker 3: the long running question of comparisons between baptism and UH
Speaker 3: and various forms of cultic initiation, including initiation to the
Speaker 3: mystery cults. Uh. This could well be a legitimate sort
Speaker 3: of common growth or or you know, a legitimate comparison here.
Speaker 3: But of course it's worth pointing out that baptism predates Christianity,
Speaker 3: and that's not even a controversial fact even among Christians.
Speaker 3: Like you know, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.
Speaker 3: It's it was a pre existing practice, right right.
Speaker 2: I can I can see that, basing it for in
Speaker 2: part just on my own experience, like baptism as a child. Uh,
Speaker 2: it's uh, you know, it's it's there are mysteries involved,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's kind of frightful, like you're you have
Speaker 2: to go in the back of the church and go
Speaker 2: through like secret chambers. They're not really secret, but they
Speaker 2: felt kind of secret. You have to like wear awn
Speaker 2: over your swimsuit and then go into a like a
Speaker 2: walk in bathtub with a master it's you know, and
Speaker 2: then you're dunked. It was. It was a weird, memorable experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, though, as you know, we talked about, I think
Speaker 3: a little bit in the episode, the idea that there
Speaker 3: may have been some ways rituals were done earlier in
Speaker 3: Christianity that tended to be more in the imagistic religious
Speaker 3: fashion that became more doctrinal as.
Speaker 2: Time went on.
Speaker 3: That might not be always true in every case, but
Speaker 3: in some certain cases it is. And I think baptism
Speaker 3: might be a good point there, because it could well
Speaker 3: be that baptism was something that was initially meant as
Speaker 3: a much more overwhelming, powerful emotional experience, and then it
Speaker 3: transitioned into something that people did with infants where you're
Speaker 3: not even really going to have an experiential memory of it.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there's less emphasis on the overwhelming emotional experience
Speaker 3: and encounter with the power of God.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And of course walk in bathtubs came later
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, but as your story points out, of course,
Speaker 3: I mean even later Christians and modern Christians still do
Speaker 3: adult baptism, not just infant baptism. You know, it's just,
Speaker 3: you know, there there are different theological points of view
Speaker 3: on that.
Speaker 2: Clearly we could come back at some later date and
Speaker 2: do an entire episode on baptism and baptism related rites.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely, all right, I'm gonna read the next
Speaker 2: one since, uh, since you had a long response to
Speaker 2: that last one, give you, We'll give you a break.
Speaker 2: This one's This one comes to us from Josh, also
Speaker 2: a response to the Mystery Cults, specifically to part three. Uh.
Speaker 2: I don't remember which part three really was, but I'm
Speaker 2: sure the email will get into it, so Josh says, Hi,
Speaker 2: Joe Robert at all. Listening to the Mysteries Part three,
Speaker 2: one of you mentioned eating in the Spirit Realm in
Speaker 2: connection with Cora and Hades. I made an immediate connection
Speaker 2: to one of my favorite films, Spirited Away, which seems
Speaker 2: to have the opposite physics. To Heroes parents were turned
Speaker 2: into pigs, but they had eaten the food for the spirits,
Speaker 2: and thus it was a punished whereas to hero herself
Speaker 2: had to eat from the Spirit realm food in order
Speaker 2: to avoid fading. Out of existence as far as the
Speaker 2: mysteries themselves are concerned. The totality of the descriptions led
Speaker 2: me to wonder if they were what would now be
Speaker 2: considered a magic show. Obviously, if viewers did partake in
Speaker 2: an hallucinogenic substance, it would certainly have heightened the experience.
Speaker 2: If the rights were magic tricks, you wouldn't want outsiders
Speaker 2: copying them because of competition, but also a poor reenactment
Speaker 2: would possibly ruin the magic by exposing the trick.
Speaker 3: I think that's a good point, and I don't. Yeah,
Speaker 3: a lot clearly a lot of theatricality was involved could
Speaker 3: well extend to like sleight of hand or other types
Speaker 3: of tricks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean we got into this a little
Speaker 2: bit with Glicon too. Like the criticism of glic On
Speaker 2: the Serpent God was that it was a like an
Speaker 2: obvious puppet, and you know, they might have had an
Speaker 2: ax to grind, as we discussed, but we might read
Speaker 2: into that that like, yeah, whatever your tricks are, they
Speaker 2: need to be convincing. But then again, are your tricks
Speaker 2: going to be convincing to someone who doesn't like, willingly
Speaker 2: want to believe and be you know, wowed. I can
Speaker 2: imagine some folks just coming into the mystery cults and like,
Speaker 2: do you not want to be converted? Do you not
Speaker 2: want to have a revelation about the nature of the universe?
Speaker 2: You just want to point at things and accuse them
Speaker 2: of being puppets? You know.
Speaker 3: I still think we never got an answer on the
Speaker 3: question I had about like what was the spirit of
Speaker 3: the criticism of the puppet, Like, was it a problem
Speaker 3: that it's a puppet? Because in the religious context here
Speaker 3: you've got cult statues for most cults, so it's not
Speaker 3: like it's a problem to have a physical representation of
Speaker 3: the God that's not literally the God's body. So what's
Speaker 3: the Was it an issue of taste? Did they not
Speaker 3: like that the puppet was animated? I don't know, Like,
Speaker 3: I think we never quite got to the bottom of like,
Speaker 3: what was it about the fact that it's a puppet
Speaker 3: that is so bad?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, there are lots of bits in churches
Speaker 2: Protestant churches today and have been for decades. Christian puppetry
Speaker 2: the whole realm unto itself.
Speaker 3: But then you had the other side where you had
Speaker 3: like the Christian writers just trying to spoil it for people, yeah, saying, like,
Speaker 3: what really happens in the Secret Temple is that they
Speaker 3: have sex in there.
Speaker 2: All right. Well, Josh continues here and says in terms
Speaker 2: of the idea that it may just be copulation or
Speaker 2: some other such mondanity. If they had managed to make
Speaker 2: a non lethal hallucinogen, and if that was not available
Speaker 2: to the masses, anything they showed the initiates would have
Speaker 2: been impressive. Maybe it was just the first black light
Speaker 2: art accompanied by Rosius Floyd's Dark Side of Luna's That's cute. Nice.
Speaker 2: As for Christmas, in the Netherlands, we have center Class,
Speaker 2: which is the Saint's birthday, not Jesus's. Families do a
Speaker 2: sort of secret Sannah where they give gifts which are
Speaker 2: accompanied by a poem written by the giver about the
Speaker 2: receiver from the point of view of the Saint. So,
Speaker 2: even while believing in the authenticity of the living Saint,
Speaker 2: children still pretend to be him and use their knowledge
Speaker 2: of the recipient to further the illusion of the saints' omniscience.
Speaker 2: They are simultaneously on both sides of the farce.
Speaker 3: That's interesting.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that. I like that, I like I
Speaker 2: say I think I talked a little bit about Santa
Speaker 2: Claus and these episodes as well, and I feel my
Speaker 2: own take is like, that's the comfortable space to be
Speaker 2: in with some sort of a right like this, you know,
Speaker 2: to acknowledge the illusion but also embrace the illusion and
Speaker 2: have that middle space for a kind of like the
Speaker 2: mythic Yeah. Anyway, Josh says, thanks for the intellectual stimulation.
Speaker 2: Cheers Josh. By the way, speaking of gods and goddesses
Speaker 2: and cults and mystery cults and so forth, I want
Speaker 2: to give a quick shout out to a product that
Speaker 2: I've really been enjoying recently. This is not a sponsor.
Speaker 2: This is just something I like that it looks like
Speaker 2: like not enough people have heard about. It only came
Speaker 2: out a few months back. It's called Deifi, a mythical
Speaker 2: solo role playing game by Alison de' antonio, and it's
Speaker 2: really good. Like it is essentially, it's a game you
Speaker 2: play by yourself, but it's also heavily based in like
Speaker 2: creative writing prompts, and you use a tarot deck to
Speaker 2: decide like what's happening as you follow the path of
Speaker 2: a god or goddess from their emergence, you know, through
Speaker 2: their prime years into their decline along the way, sort
Speaker 2: of like navigating what's happening between the gods and also
Speaker 2: what's happening with the earthly following below.
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, So.
Speaker 2: Check that out. If that sounds interesting to you, check
Speaker 2: it out. You can buy this book anywhere you get books.
Speaker 2: I'm just personally enjoying it a lot right now.
Speaker 3: All right, maybe let's move on to this email from
Speaker 3: Jeff about an episode you did, Rob that was an
Speaker 3: interview with an author about Douglas Adam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the episode in question was twenty twenty three's The
Speaker 2: Mind of Douglas Adams with Kevin John Davies. Davies wrote
Speaker 2: a book titled The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams,
Speaker 2: detailing you know, a lot about the mind and the
Speaker 2: life of the author who gave us The Hitchhiker's Guide
Speaker 2: to the Galaxy. It was a fun little chat talking
Speaker 2: about Adams, talking about Doctor Who, as well as some
Speaker 2: other related classic science fiction and as is essential here
Speaker 2: some video games that were related to the Hitchhikers world
Speaker 2: and some of the other worlds of Douglas Adams and
Speaker 2: his involvement in those games.
Speaker 3: That's right, So Jeff says, Hey, guys, I found this
Speaker 3: unsent in my drafts folder.
Speaker 2: That's where the angry emails usually end up, right. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I wisely decided not to send this one.
Speaker 3: How dare you? So Jeff goes on to say, maybe
Speaker 3: not so useful for the show, given the delayed response
Speaker 3: to a Vault episode and even more digression than normal,
Speaker 3: But I thought you two might be personal interested anyway, Jeff,
Speaker 3: much to your surprise, here we are here, we are now.
Speaker 3: Jeff did have responses to a few other episodes, but
Speaker 3: we're skipping ahead to the response to Douglas Adams here,
Speaker 3: Jeff says, regarding the Vault episode about Douglas Adams, I
Speaker 3: played the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Interactive Fiction game
Speaker 3: back in the day, and it was indeed maddening. It
Speaker 3: would lie to you at one point spoiler alert for
Speaker 3: a forty year old game. You needed to impress an
Speaker 3: AI screening device before it considered you worthy to access
Speaker 3: a specific area. You had to show it something intellectually challenging.
Speaker 3: The solution was to show it that you simultaneously possessed
Speaker 3: both T and no ta. The only way to achieve
Speaker 3: this was to go into your own mind and remove
Speaker 3: your common sense, after which you could easily pick up
Speaker 3: no tea while you had some tea in your inventory.
Speaker 3: And Jeff, I sympathize. Part of the reason I wanted
Speaker 3: to respond to this email despite your warnings was that
Speaker 3: I also, when I was younger, played the Hitchhiker's Guide
Speaker 3: to the Galaxy game, which was a if you never
Speaker 3: played a game of this sort, it was kind of
Speaker 3: like the Zork game. It was like text based adventure
Speaker 3: game where you would type command so like you know,
Speaker 3: open mailbox, pick up letter, use key, things like that,
Speaker 3: and oh boy, this one. I never made it to
Speaker 3: whatever situation you're talking about here. I got killed, just
Speaker 3: over and over and over again. Much earlier in the game.
Speaker 3: I would always get destroyed, like right in the initial invasion,
Speaker 3: the Martians would come in, or I don't know if
Speaker 3: they were martians, the aliens would come in and bulldoze
Speaker 3: my house.
Speaker 2: I could.
Speaker 3: It took me forever to figure out how to get
Speaker 3: out of the house.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's that's like that happens like right away
Speaker 2: in Hitchhikers.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean I think I was in middle school.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'd figure it out better now. I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe having a little bit of a better sense of
Speaker 3: the Douglas Adams sense of humor. Because also when I
Speaker 3: played this game, I had no idea what Hitchhiker's Guide
Speaker 3: to the cos He was. This was just installed on
Speaker 3: a computer at school. Oh, and I didn't know what
Speaker 3: it was or why.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, coming back to Jeff's message, while playing a different
Speaker 3: interactive fiction game, I was completely baffled by a problem.
Speaker 3: I couldn't just google for cheats back then, so in
Speaker 3: desperation I wrote directly to the author of the game,
Speaker 3: whoa store bough games could be created entirely by one
Speaker 3: person then, And he sent back a hand typed postcard
Speaker 3: I kept for many years that just said, dear Jeff,
Speaker 3: throw the tape recorder through the window. I wonder what
Speaker 3: the postman thought, you know, I think if you're a
Speaker 3: postal worker, you see so much of other people's mail,
Speaker 3: you just get bored with other people's secrets. Does it
Speaker 3: even matter to read it anymore?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Nowadays they probably stop posting it on their Instagram,
Speaker 2: Like after a couple of weeks of being a male
Speaker 2: person Jeff continues.
Speaker 3: The Hitchhiker's Game was released by Infocom, probably the most
Speaker 3: famous interactive fiction game in the company. Infocom's solution to
Speaker 3: easing the adult brains of stuck players was the invention
Speaker 3: of Invisicule's books. The books would include hints without ruining
Speaker 3: the whole game for you. The questions were printed in
Speaker 3: regular ink, but the solutions were in invisible ink that
Speaker 3: would only be revealed when you ran the included magic
Speaker 3: marker over them. So if the question is how do
Speaker 3: I open the locked door, the first clue might be
Speaker 3: something like did you notice the keyhole? The next, have
Speaker 3: you encountered anyone holding a set of keys? And the
Speaker 3: third wait until the guard is sleeping and steal his key.
Speaker 3: The books had a good sense of humor and would
Speaker 3: also mess with you. Since all the questions were immediately
Speaker 3: visible and therefore potential spoilers, they peppered the hints with
Speaker 3: red herrings like don't reveal the next clue until the
Speaker 3: magic bird gives you the shovel, followed by there is
Speaker 3: no magic bird in this game, don't ruin your experience
Speaker 3: by revealing clues before where you are absolutely stuck, and
Speaker 3: then Finally, Jeff says, well, buying and running these lost
Speaker 3: games is difficult to do these days. There are sites
Speaker 3: that allow you to play them now. Infocom's games are
Speaker 3: true classics, but new interactive fiction games are still being
Speaker 3: written today worth checking out.
Speaker 2: Yeah I should. I should check some of these out,
Speaker 2: because this is a whole genre of games, early games
Speaker 2: and contemporary games that I really don't know much about
Speaker 2: and don't have any really any direct experience playing them.
Speaker 3: I can't believe I didn't think about this until now,
Speaker 3: but I not only played a few of these text
Speaker 3: based adventure games, I actually created some when I was
Speaker 3: in middle school. Once again, I guess I was exposed
Speaker 3: to these things and I was learning CE basic and
Speaker 3: I started programming little text based adventures that I thought
Speaker 3: were hilarious at the time. I don't know what i'd
Speaker 3: think now. I don't remember what I thought was so funny,
Speaker 3: but I was really yucking it up there on my
Speaker 3: IBM three eighty six. Okay, should we do some weird
Speaker 3: house cinema? Respont?
Speaker 2: Sure? Sure? This next one comes to us from Scott.
Speaker 2: Subject line the telephone box comments from an old Hi guys.
Speaker 2: I enjoyed listening to your recent weird House episode on
Speaker 2: the telephone box. Being a person who grew up in
Speaker 2: the long ago days when telephone booths ranged the landscape
Speaker 2: in their thousands, I was amused by the two of
Speaker 2: you trying to remember if you'd ever actually used one.
Speaker 2: In questioning the apparent incongruity of seeking privacy to make
Speaker 2: a phone call while standing in a class box in
Speaker 2: full view. As an official old guy, I believe I
Speaker 2: can enlighten you. Privacy is certainly an aspect of the
Speaker 2: enclosed phone booths of your but not in the way
Speaker 2: you surmised. Since phone booths were commonly located in busy
Speaker 2: public spaces, environmental noise was a problem. The enclosure was
Speaker 2: to keep external noises out, rather than keeping your conversation in.
Speaker 2: Since you generally had to have coins in hand to
Speaker 2: use one, it was extremely frustrating to pay for the
Speaker 2: call only to have a loud bust roll past, obliterating
Speaker 2: what you or the other person said.
Speaker 3: They really should have thought of this. Yes, obviously, the
Speaker 3: enclosure is to so you can hear your call despite
Speaker 3: being right on the street corner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because nowadays we all on our cell phones, we
Speaker 2: inevitably have that situation. I have, like a train that
Speaker 2: runs by my house, so sometimes I'll be outside, I'll
Speaker 2: be on the phone. Here comes a train, so I
Speaker 2: can walk inside and get out of the noise. And
Speaker 2: you can do that kind of thing obviously in various
Speaker 2: urban environments as well, you know, walk around the corner,
Speaker 2: walk inside a restaurant, maybe if they'll allow that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I should have thought about this as well. Anyway, they
Speaker 2: continue making it out in public was a safety feature too.
Speaker 2: By being fully exposed to view, thieves couldn't use one
Speaker 2: to lie in ambush undetected, nor could a victim be
Speaker 2: pulled into an opay box to be roughed up away
Speaker 2: from witnesses. The full enclosure also protected the user from
Speaker 2: the elements, keeping you dry in the rain and snow,
Speaker 2: protected from wind, and helping to mitigate the cold. Some
Speaker 2: had small ventilation fans to alleviate the greenhouse effect of
Speaker 2: all that glass in summer, although one has to wonder
Speaker 2: if the protection was for the benefit of the user
Speaker 2: or the telephone equipment. I enjoy being entertained and enlightened
Speaker 2: by your work.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Scott, excellent point, Scott, Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: For some reason, the telephone booth scene that kept going
Speaker 3: through my head while reading this is actually the one
Speaker 3: in Scanners where he hacks the computer with his brain
Speaker 3: from the telephone.
Speaker 2: Yes, great scene. Yeah, we talked about that in our
Speaker 2: Weird House episode on Scanners. I also after we did
Speaker 2: the episode, I kept thinking about Clark Kent, of course
Speaker 2: always goes into or used to always going to a
Speaker 2: phone booth to transform into Superman. Or maybe he didn't
Speaker 2: even do it all that that many times, but he
Speaker 2: became the cliche. It became like the iconic thing, like
Speaker 2: it's a place where you can go and change all
Speaker 2: your clothes and change your identity and come out as
Speaker 2: a superhuman, come out as your real identity, take off
Speaker 2: your human disguise, all right.
Speaker 3: This next message is from Ken. Ken says, I love
Speaker 3: the recent reviews of short films and I have a recommendation.
Speaker 3: If you haven't heard of it before, there is a
Speaker 3: short film called The Cube by Jim Henson of the Muppets, etc.
Speaker 3: I think you can find it on YouTube. I saw
Speaker 3: it on television when I was seven years old and
Speaker 3: it really freaked me out. I also didn't understand it
Speaker 3: at all. I had no recollection of what the film
Speaker 3: was called, and years later I had to do numerous
Speaker 3: online searches with vague descriptions until I finally found it.
Speaker 3: Hope you find it interesting. Thanks again for the podcast. Sincerely,
Speaker 3: Ken Well Ken Weird Minds Think Alike. This is already
Speaker 3: on my list, It's on my running list for the show.
Speaker 3: I've been thinking about it for months now.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm all for it. This is a film that
Speaker 2: I'm very familiar with from some of the Jim Henson
Speaker 2: documentaries I've seen over the years and exhibits to Atlanta's
Speaker 2: Center for Pubetry Arts, that sort of thing. But I've
Speaker 2: never seen it in full, or at least I don't
Speaker 2: think I have. So Yeah, the next time we were
Speaker 2: feeling the pull for some short cinema, let's do it.
Speaker 3: By the way, for those who may be confused about
Speaker 3: this right now, this is a different film than Cube,
Speaker 3: the one where people awaken in a giant maze of cubes,
Speaker 3: many of which are like full of saws and stuff
Speaker 3: that murder them.
Speaker 2: But I'm up for that one as well, and I
Speaker 2: don't think I've ever seen that one in full. I've
Speaker 2: just seen like chunks of it, bloody chunks of it
Speaker 2: on TV back in the day.
Speaker 3: I think that one's Canadian, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It is, in fact Canadian. Yes, so they're both on
Speaker 2: the list. Yeah, both get everything you want. Ken all right,
Speaker 2: This next one comes to us from Lawrence. Lawrence says, Hi, Robert, Joe,
Speaker 2: and JJ, thank you for covering The Hunger. I never
Speaker 2: realized it was poorly received. It's resurgence in the nineties,
Speaker 2: where all things vampire reign culturally supreme, was not nearly
Speaker 2: as surprising. I'll always thought of The Hunger as one
Speaker 2: of those non vampire vampire stories, movies that sort of
Speaker 2: lie somewhere between sci fi blood drinkers and people who
Speaker 2: only think they're vampires. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: I do know what you mean. The only movie I
Speaker 3: can think of at the moment where it's ambiguous where
Speaker 3: the vampire is actually a vampire is George Rameiro's Martin.
Speaker 2: That's a big one. Yeah, you also see this if
Speaker 2: we think of this as like a soft vampire film,
Speaker 2: we do also have examples of software wolf films, and
Speaker 2: as I recently discussed on The Monster Fact, this is
Speaker 2: kind of an interesting category because you can get into
Speaker 2: the history of the terminology for like lacanthropy and werewolf,
Speaker 2: but especially lacanthropy is early usage being like a catch
Speaker 2: all description for different conditions that were probably mental illnesses.
Speaker 2: And so there's this whole realm of usage for the
Speaker 2: term lacanthropy that is just tied to you know, actual
Speaker 2: observations and atten to classify some forms of mental illness
Speaker 2: or disease. So yeah, In fact, one of the big
Speaker 2: ones the the Lon Cheney Junior Wolfman movie. Originally in
Speaker 2: the script that one was going to leave it ambiguous
Speaker 2: whether he was turning into a wolf or not, like
Speaker 2: it was going to be a software wolf movie. And
Speaker 2: then at some point in the production they were like, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: we want a real wolf man. People want to see
Speaker 2: a wolf man, and so it took the form that
Speaker 2: we all know and love. It's hard to argue with
Speaker 2: that absolutely anyway. The email continues here from Lawrence. Lawrence says,
Speaker 2: as for Weird House Picks nineteen eighty two's Cat People
Speaker 2: and Donkey Skin are both touched the fur movies. I
Speaker 2: can recommend both because Criterion has a beautiful transfer of
Speaker 2: Donkey Skin and Cat People spares showing us any Malcolm
Speaker 2: McDowell Sex. Thanks thanks for all you do, Lawrence. Indeed, Lawrence,
Speaker 2: that is all essential to know. Moving farm. All right.
Speaker 3: This next message is from Jesse. Jesse says, hey, guys,
Speaker 3: I'll have to not gush here. I love you both
Speaker 3: and I'm so grateful for your shows. And then Jesse
Speaker 3: goes on to say some very nice things about the podcast.
Speaker 3: We'll skip a bit here, but thank you Jesse, very
Speaker 3: kind of you. Jesse says, I do have some suggestions
Speaker 3: that I have not seen on Weird House Cinema yet.
Speaker 3: The first suggestion is an afterthought and not why I
Speaker 3: originally wanted to write in. However, I was watching this
Speaker 3: movie with my kids tonight and realized with surprise that
Speaker 3: I hadn't yet seen it come into your purview. Flight
Speaker 3: of the Navigator. It is so obvious I am forced
Speaker 3: to conclude that you had already considered it and decided
Speaker 3: it just doesn't fit, which I understand with protest if
Speaker 3: the case. No, I don't think we've ruled it out yet,
Speaker 3: or I don't know if you have. I haven't looked
Speaker 3: into it. I haven't seen this movie.
Speaker 2: I saw it as a kid, and I have to
Speaker 2: say flight to the Navigator. This was nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: This one really unsettled me in a way I don't
Speaker 2: think I ever quite recovered from. Like, it has some
Speaker 2: minor spoilers, it has some plot elements and including that
Speaker 2: involved like time dilation, and and it just gets it
Speaker 2: gets a lot heavier than perhaps I expected, to the
Speaker 2: degree to which I had any expectations going into movies
Speaker 2: as a kid. But yeah, this one troubled me. And
Speaker 2: I think it troubled me enough that I've kind of
Speaker 2: stayed away from it, Like not to this extent where
Speaker 2: I'm turning down opportunities to watch it, but I've maybe
Speaker 2: just have like subconscious barriers up to rewatching Flight of
Speaker 2: the Navigator. Therefore, I would obviously love to go back
Speaker 2: and watch it and reevaluate it as a grown up
Speaker 2: and as a parent and all of that. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I'd love to put it on the list. I know
Speaker 2: it's one that a lot of folks saw. Ask and
Speaker 2: I wonder how many other viewers had a similar reaction
Speaker 2: to the one I had.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I was laughing during your answer because I realized
Speaker 3: I was mixing up two movies. Really, until you started
Speaker 3: talking about I was not thinking of Flight of the Navigator.
Speaker 3: I was thinking of night Flyers from nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 3: which is the George R. R. Martin and vampire movie
Speaker 3: with Miguel Ferraer. Wait, oh my god, no, this is
Speaker 3: I double mixed it up. I was mixing up George R.
Speaker 3: Martin's Night Flyers, the sci fi horror movie, with Flight
Speaker 3: of the Navigator. But what I really had in my
Speaker 3: mind was not Night Flyers. It was The night Flyer,
Speaker 3: a film with Miguel Ferrera about a vampire that is
Speaker 3: based on a story by Stephen King, which I was
Speaker 3: confusing with the Martin sci fi. This is all a
Speaker 3: jumble now, but either way, I was thinking about like
Speaker 3: an R rated horror movie, not not like I made
Speaker 3: for kids.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I haven't seen The night Flyer, nor did
Speaker 2: I ever read the short story that it's based upon.
Speaker 2: But I do remember seeing the video box with that
Speaker 2: piteous looking vampire and the airplane on it.
Speaker 3: It would be hilarious if Jesse wrote in like, yeah,
Speaker 3: the other day I was watching The night Flyer with
Speaker 3: my kids.
Speaker 2: All right, well, we'll put them all on the consideration list.
Speaker 3: Next, Jesse says, the second suggestion is why I'm writing
Speaker 3: have you guys seen the nineteen eighty five made for
Speaker 3: TV rendition of Alice in Wonderland? Hands down the weirdest
Speaker 3: movie I have ever seen, terrifying in parts with the
Speaker 3: grace of such stars as Ringo Starr and Sammy Davis Junior.
Speaker 3: The music is terrible and the movie is long and bad.
Speaker 3: Whether or not you ever take the leap and do
Speaker 3: it for the show, given your proclivities, I highly recommend
Speaker 3: you at least check it out for yourselves, as it
Speaker 3: is unmatched as far as zany eighties fair goes. Also,
Speaker 3: the rendition of the Jabberwaukee in that movie gave me
Speaker 3: nightmares for years as a kid. It is great. You
Speaker 3: can watch it free on YouTube, and then Jesse shares
Speaker 3: a link. Jesse says all my best, deepest thanks to you, guys. Jesse, Well,
Speaker 3: thank you so much, Jesse. I really really appreciate the
Speaker 3: email and the suggestions. I've not seen either of these movies,
Speaker 3: but I'm going to look up the Alice in Wonderland.
Speaker 2: I looked at it briefly on IMDb, and I did
Speaker 2: notice that Jason Lives director Tom McLachlan plays the Jabberwakie
Speaker 2: is in the jabberwaki suit, So there you go.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I just looked it up. It looks
Speaker 3: like what does it remind me of?
Speaker 2: It's like.
Speaker 3: That that Russian rendition of Lord of the Rings, but
Speaker 3: with much brighter colors.
Speaker 2: The jabberwaki costume in question does look horrifying, like in
Speaker 2: not super JABBERWACKI e. You know, it doesn't look like
Speaker 2: that iconic illustration so much. It looks a little weirdly fleshy.
Speaker 3: Man says Bow Bridges and Carol Channing.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, yeah, I glanced at the cast. It's a crazy,
Speaker 2: crazy collection of actors.
Speaker 3: Lloyd Bridges is the White Knight, John Stamos Wow.
Speaker 2: All right. As we begin to close out here, I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna turn to discord here. I have a few
Speaker 2: just random short thoughts from folks here about various things,
Speaker 2: beginning here with Thorkwall. Thorkwell writes then and says, I
Speaker 2: just finished listening to part three of Hunters of the
Speaker 2: Deep and had mentioned it to my significant other, and
Speaker 2: she pointed out a fact I may have missed if
Speaker 2: it was mentioned. I've never realized the Black Sea Devil
Speaker 2: angler it was only six inches or fifteen centimeters or
Speaker 2: so long. I too had similar posters of fish growing
Speaker 2: up like rob and perhaps the various illustrations not drawn
Speaker 2: to scale threw off my perspective. I'm glad it's not
Speaker 2: just me.
Speaker 3: See, it's often hard to get scale with uh, with
Speaker 3: sea creatures, you know. Yeah, you don't have like a
Speaker 3: tree in the background to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or tape measure or a tape dispenser. That's what
Speaker 2: you put next to things, right, all right? And then
Speaker 2: a shadow rat rites, Senden says. I just watched and
Speaker 2: loved La Cabina. It really reminded me of the nineties
Speaker 2: movie Cube. Oh, with this sense that some unchecked industry
Speaker 2: is just producing this horrifying death trap for no reason.
Speaker 2: It has to have been an inspiration for.
Speaker 3: Cube seems quite possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, then hot Napalm death rights, Senden says, finally,
Speaker 2: listening to the Dune episodes, one factor that you missed
Speaker 2: when discussing the failed Jodrowski Dune project was that if
Speaker 2: it had succeeded, we probably wouldn't have Alien or the
Speaker 2: Alien franchise. That's a great, great point as well. I
Speaker 2: think we did allude to the fact that that project
Speaker 2: not coming together did lead to a number of different projects,
Speaker 2: things that Jordroowski himself did, like say the Metabarons graphic
Speaker 2: novel series. That's great in his work with Mobius there,
Speaker 2: but yeah, so many other things kind of sprang out
Speaker 2: of that. It was very much like a we can
Speaker 2: almost think of it as a whale fall, a cinematic
Speaker 2: whale fall. Like it did not come to fruition. It
Speaker 2: sank to the bottom and it was consumed by all
Speaker 2: of these other creatures and therefore fed a rich ecosystem.
Speaker 2: All right, Taylor Wright Senten says, just finish the Hunger episode,
Speaker 2: and it reminded me of another eternal vampire goth romance
Speaker 2: movie that The Hunger must have inspired and would make
Speaker 2: its own excellent weird house episode Only Lovers Left Alive.
Speaker 2: Tilda Swinton and Tom Hilston are our listless immortal in
Speaker 2: that one, which tackles a lot of the same US
Speaker 2: against the World themes that Joe referenced and has a
Speaker 2: great shoegaze score. Also, my wife and I watched The
Speaker 2: Love Witch for our Valentine's Day after a few of
Speaker 2: y'all here in the discord turned me on to it,
Speaker 2: and may I say thank you, it was a darkly
Speaker 2: hilarious treat. All real world reds are dull.
Speaker 3: Now The Love Witch is fantastic. I think often about
Speaker 3: the way that movie looks, which is so interesting. It
Speaker 3: feels both reminiscent of a time gone by, like it
Speaker 3: looks like a way that it seems movies used to
Speaker 3: look but don't look anymore, but also feels like a
Speaker 3: totally different visual aesthetic has been created as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I recently rewatched The Love Witch on an airplane
Speaker 2: and fell in love with it all over again. I
Speaker 2: feel like it in its own way. It's a perfect
Speaker 2: film in that it clearly knew exactly what it wanted
Speaker 2: to convey and what it wanted to capture and and
Speaker 2: seemingly pulled all of that off. So I can't recommend
Speaker 2: The love Which enough. It's you know, it's maybe not
Speaker 2: for everyone, but if it is for you, then it's
Speaker 2: perfect all right. And finally, there was some discussion on
Speaker 2: the discord about what sort of film we should be
Speaker 2: considering for the two hundredth Weird House Cinema selection, which
Speaker 2: is coming up let's see a week from tomorrow, So Joe,
Speaker 2: you can give me some feedback here I'm just going
Speaker 2: to run through the list of the movies that were mentioned.
Speaker 2: First of all, nineteen seventy five is the Rocky Horror
Speaker 2: Picture Show classic of course. Yeah, seventy four's Phantom of
Speaker 2: the Paradise. Ooh, I mean we talk about that at
Speaker 2: least every couple of weeks anyway. Yeah, yeah, Midsommer from
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. I haven't seen that when I can't come.
Speaker 3: I liked it. It's a great feel bad movie. But no,
Speaker 3: I mean it really is good. But the vibes are
Speaker 3: bad and it's a good film, and it I don't
Speaker 3: know if I want to talk about that on Weird House.
Speaker 3: It seems like it'd be a bummer of a time.
Speaker 2: Was that a twenty four film? Yes, okay, there's I
Speaker 2: recently with Serve some ads or maybe I follow the
Speaker 2: account for an a twenty four film themed burless show,
Speaker 2: and my initial thought was like, I think they pulled
Speaker 2: it off. I think they pulled it off. I saw
Speaker 2: later the images It's like it looked fun but I
Speaker 2: was like, wow, that is a challenging theme for your
Speaker 2: burless show to go with a twenty four But.
Speaker 3: I respect that though. That's funny and I can see
Speaker 3: how you can make it work. But yeah, Midsommar is great,
Speaker 3: but I kind of doubt we'll do it on Weird House.
Speaker 2: Okay, how about the next one? Nineteen ninety nine's BeO
Speaker 2: Wolf starting with stuff Lambert.
Speaker 3: I don't know, that's more possible. It's been a long
Speaker 3: time since I've seen it. That's the one that's like
Speaker 3: sci fi BeO Wolf It yeah, place in a castle
Speaker 3: in the future or maybe with lasers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all fun and games until the worst CGI
Speaker 2: thing of all time emerges. It's like Beyond the Rock
Speaker 2: Scorpion monster.
Speaker 3: The Grendel I recall looks like it's made out of
Speaker 3: CGI link sausages.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the one, all right. So that one's a
Speaker 2: maybe nineteen ninety nine's bi centennial man.
Speaker 3: Never seen it. But is that the one that's got
Speaker 3: Robin Williams as a robot of some kind?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I feel like we might do a Robin
Speaker 2: Williams film eventually. He was such a great and weird
Speaker 2: performer in his own right. But I think there's some
Speaker 2: other Robin Williams films that are going to be a
Speaker 2: little higher up the list. Flubber sure, all right, nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine's Wild Zero, the Japanese comedy horror film.
Speaker 3: Weirdly Enough, I was just recently looking at revisiting that
Speaker 3: on the show. I saw that when I was in
Speaker 3: high school. My friend Ben showed it to me, and
Speaker 3: that was a great time. I recall it's been for long.
Speaker 3: I barely remember it, but I recall it was absolutely nuts,
Speaker 3: but in a great, great way.
Speaker 2: All right. The next one is the Romanian sci fi
Speaker 2: animated film Delta Space Mission. This is one I haven't
Speaker 2: seen it. I don't think you've seen it either, but
Speaker 2: this one has been on my radar because looks super weird.
Speaker 2: I actually I watched part of it on an airplane,
Speaker 2: but then switch to something else because I just not
Speaker 2: because there was anything wrong with it, but it just
Speaker 2: wasn't the vibe I was going for at the moment.
Speaker 2: But it was on Criterion Channel for a bit, and
Speaker 2: I believe def Crocodile put it out on Blu Ray.
Speaker 2: I have a really nice package. It looks amazing. I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's right for the two hundredth Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema selection, but it is one we might come
Speaker 2: back to. And then finally it was also mentioned that
Speaker 2: we might consider nineteen eighty three's Video Drome, given that
Speaker 2: we often reference the Atlanta Videodrome a rental store. Plus.
Speaker 2: Videodrome is a movie that does come up in our
Speaker 2: conversations a lot, both on Weird House Cinema and un
Speaker 2: Stuck to Below Your Mind.
Speaker 3: You know, I think of it almost more like a
Speaker 3: reference text for us than something we would feature. But
Speaker 3: if that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: That's somehow I have similar feelings about. I'm very much
Speaker 2: on the fence when it comes to Rocky Horror Picture
Speaker 2: Show because it's Rocky Horror Picture Show feels like kind
Speaker 2: of a foundation text, at least for me personally, and like, so,
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's like sometimes I'm like, yes, we
Speaker 2: absolutely should do Rocky Our Picture Show, and then other
Speaker 2: times I'm like, no, It's like Rocky our Picture Show
Speaker 2: is what you refer back to to make sense of
Speaker 2: everything else.
Speaker 3: So I know, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: That's sort of what I mean about Video Dream.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, seems more like.
Speaker 3: The thing that we compare and contrast the movie we're
Speaker 3: talking about two rather than the movie we talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So ultimately, maybe we're more likely to do like
Speaker 2: shock treatment at some point, or do some sort of
Speaker 2: obviously a bad video drome rip off that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: At any rate, I really enjoyed reading through everyone's suggestions
Speaker 2: in the Discord Server. That's the sort of back and
Speaker 2: forth you can get if you joined The Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow your Mind discord Server.
Speaker 3: I'm not promising either one, but for some reason, I
Speaker 3: would say it's more likely that we do existens than
Speaker 3: that we do video drome.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, that would be that would be
Speaker 2: a choice for sure. I haven't seen that one in
Speaker 2: a while. All Right, well, we're going to keep thinking
Speaker 2: about it. You'll find out one way or another in
Speaker 2: about a week. In the meantime, we thank everyone for
Speaker 2: writing in, and we just encourage you to keep writing.
Speaker 2: We remind you The Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
Speaker 2: We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Again, write in
Speaker 2: if you want to join the discord Server, look look
Speaker 2: find us online. We're on various social media accounts as well.
Speaker 2: Get the podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and if
Speaker 2: you're on letterboxed, you can go there and find us.
Speaker 2: On letterbox our username is weird House. Follow us there
Speaker 2: and you can find a nice list of all the
Speaker 2: Weird House movies we've ever done.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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