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

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Speaker 1: Lamb and today we are rearing an episode that originally

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Speaker 1: published five point thirty twenty twenty five. It is nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty eight, The Crawling Eye. This one has a pretty

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Speaker 1: great monster in it, so dive into the discussion here

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Speaker 1: with us.

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

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Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and today we're going to

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Speaker 3: be discussing the nineteen fifty eight British sci fi horror

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Speaker 3: film The Trollenberg Terror, which was released in the United

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Speaker 3: States and probably a better known overall as The Crawling Eye,

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Speaker 3: a title that is in really bad taste because I

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Speaker 3: think it flagrantly destroys the tension and mystery leading up

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Speaker 3: to the revelation of the monster's true form in the

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Speaker 3: final act. Rob, you and I were talking about this

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Speaker 3: the other day. I love how careless titling and other

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Speaker 3: movie meta used to be with just ruining all the

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Speaker 3: surprises of the story. Here. I believe we have the

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Speaker 3: Distributors Corporation of America to thank for this title, and

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Speaker 3: I have to think like if Citizen Kane had been

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Speaker 3: a foreign film and they had released it in America,

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Speaker 3: they would have called it like Sled Problems or something.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we still do see trailers in our

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Speaker 1: modern day that give away way too much and reveal

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Speaker 1: like most of the plot. I've seen trailers where afterwards

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Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, that's most of the movie. I could

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Speaker 1: maybe just watch the last five minutes of the film

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Speaker 1: to see how it wraps up, and I'd be good

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Speaker 1: at this point instead of watching the whole two hour plus.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, these films of this nature where it was

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Speaker 1: it was something being released to the US market and

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Speaker 1: then packaged in a different way so as to I guess,

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Speaker 1: just try to maximize the eyeballs on it, and maybe too,

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Speaker 1: there is the idea it's like, look, the American teenager

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Speaker 1: just wants to know what they're going to be making

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Speaker 1: out to. We're just going to go ahead and make

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Speaker 1: sure the monster is mentioned in the title.

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Speaker 3: Transparency and advertising.

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Speaker 1: And also maybe leaning more on like the I don't know,

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Speaker 1: like the drive and spectacle of the thing. You know,

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Speaker 1: it's like crawling eye. Don't you want to see that

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Speaker 1: as large as life. I don't know that's my best bet.

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Speaker 1: I think it's mostly though, just take this thing from

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Speaker 1: the UK and just try and get the most attention

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Speaker 1: gathered around it, and so yeah, go ahead and spoil everything.

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Speaker 3: To be fair, Trollenberg is not a word that most

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Speaker 3: people would recognize, and for good reason, because this is

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Speaker 3: not a real place in the movie, like the movie

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Speaker 3: makes up this mountain in Switzerland called Trollenburg.

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Speaker 1: The Trolenberg Terror is a better title in many ways though,

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Speaker 1: because I think The Trollenberg Terror gives you more of

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Speaker 1: a taste of the slow build and slow burn aspect

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Speaker 1: of the picture. That the picture is more mysterious, and

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Speaker 1: it is not really a giant monster movie except for

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Speaker 1: you just like the last what fifteen minutes or so

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Speaker 1: of the picture.

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Speaker 3: But then it really goes whole hog on giant monster movie.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's rather ambitious and its special effects towards the

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Speaker 1: end with mixed results but also some great results.

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Speaker 3: Yes. Yes. On the subject of sloppy marketing material, I

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Speaker 3: would like to submit into evidence the poster for the

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Speaker 3: US release of The Crawling Eye. Sometimes we talk about

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Speaker 3: movie posters, I think, especially with movies from the fifties

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Speaker 3: that this was just a golden age of posters and

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Speaker 3: we've really got some meat to chew on here. So

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Speaker 3: on the crawling Eye poster, we have emerging from a

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Speaker 3: black void, a giant, distinctly human eye, complete with tear

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Speaker 3: ducts and lids, and highlighted by makeup. You can see

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Speaker 3: mascara and eyeliner. So it does look a little freaky,

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Speaker 3: but it does not suggest eyeball monsters from another planet.

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Speaker 3: I think it implies instead a supernatural, disembodied human observer

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Speaker 3: reaching out through some kind of dark space. Maybe you

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Speaker 3: could say that the eye on the poster here connects

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Speaker 3: more to the psychic and esp themes of the movie

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Speaker 3: than to the giant physical eyeballs that we will be

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Speaker 3: hurling firebombs at later in the film. But I think

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Speaker 3: that that's kind of a stretch to say that's really

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Speaker 3: what's going for, especially since the psychic character is not

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Speaker 3: threatening at all in the movie and this eyeball is

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Speaker 3: clearly coming to get you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good read on it.

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Speaker 3: Also, this human eye on the poster has translucent yellow

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Speaker 3: and pink octopus arms, but only four of them, so

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Speaker 3: I guess this would be a tetrapus arms, and the

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Speaker 3: arms are wrapping around the body of a shrieking record

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Speaker 3: woman in a yellow party dress and high heels, who

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Speaker 3: I'm pretty confident does not appear in the movie unless

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Speaker 3: this is supposed to be Janet Monroe, but it does

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Speaker 3: not look like her to me, and I don't think

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Speaker 3: she ever wears an outfit like this.

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Speaker 1: No, no, you know, like we've talked, we've talked about

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Speaker 1: before on the show, if you could at all get

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Speaker 1: the monster carrying a screaming woman on the poster, you

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Speaker 1: absolutely did it. The monsters in this film, maybe it's

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Speaker 1: a little more of a stretch to imagine them carrying

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Speaker 1: a woman, and therefore this is just a rough approximation

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Speaker 1: of what that might consist of.

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Speaker 3: The only person we see them carrying in the movie

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Speaker 3: is the newspaper guy. We see he gets grabbed up,

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Speaker 3: but he has not even held horizontally like the woman

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Speaker 3: shown in the poster. They're holding him firmly vertically. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: and it implies that they usually pick people up vertically

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Speaker 3: because they got to pop the head off, so they're

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Speaker 3: going to be going around, you know, kind of like

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Speaker 3: around the neck near the top anyway. Nothing about this

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Speaker 3: poster also, I would point out, suggests that the movie

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Speaker 3: has to do with mountains or mountain climbing, which it does. Next,

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Speaker 3: there is the copy on the poster. It says, the

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Speaker 3: Nightmare Terror of the Slithering Eye that unleashed agonizing horror

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Speaker 3: on a screaming world. Now, on one hand, I'm hesitant

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Speaker 3: to nitpick because I myself completely lose the ability to

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Speaker 3: write with any style when what's needed is some kind

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Speaker 3: of marketing or promotional copy. I just kind of freeze

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Speaker 3: up mentally there. But this is too wordy. Not every

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Speaker 3: now needs a modifier, but more to the substance of

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Speaker 3: what they're trying to say with taglines like this that

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Speaker 3: unleashes agonizing horror on a screaming world. This got me

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Speaker 3: thinking about how titles and taglines and plot descriptions of

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Speaker 3: horror and sci fi movies from the nineteen fifties display

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Speaker 3: an incredibly strong trend of plot scope misrepresentation. By that,

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Speaker 3: I mean like the actual plot and the events of

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Speaker 3: the film are incredibly local and small ball, but the

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Speaker 3: title and the description imply a feeling like the end

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Speaker 3: of the movie Independence Day, where it's the alien Horde

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Speaker 3: against a coordinated attack by the entire planet Earth. And

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Speaker 3: usually in these movies, only a few characters are involved

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Speaker 3: or presumably even aware of the events of the story.

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Speaker 3: Probably the whole thing takes place within a five mile radius.

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Speaker 3: That's usually the case with these Roger Korman movies and stuff.

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Speaker 3: And yet the movie will be called the Monster that

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Speaker 3: conquered the Planet Earth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like it conquered the world. As a classic example

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Speaker 1: of this, as we discussed in the show, it basically

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Speaker 1: conquers the Tri County area.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's like bigger than just those few examples.

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Speaker 3: It happens over and over again. The actual story is local,

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Speaker 3: but the title suggests a world world spanning events. And

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Speaker 3: I'm kind of cure curious about this, Like, why did

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Speaker 3: advertisers always want to make it seem like the plot

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Speaker 3: had big implications involving millions of people. There's nothing wrong

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Speaker 3: with small stories. Small stories that affect only a handful

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Speaker 3: of characters can be just as thrilling. In fact, I

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Speaker 3: would argue it's easier to make a small scale story thrilling.

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Speaker 3: Was there actually any evidence to suggest that drive in

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Speaker 3: audiences would always prefer the plot of an alien monster

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Speaker 3: movie to involve the entire world.

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Speaker 1: This is an interesting question. I imagine some folks have dug

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Speaker 1: into this. There might be some sort of a Cold

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Speaker 1: War read on the ramifications here. But yeah, but I

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Speaker 1: do certainly agree with you that like the lower stakes,

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Speaker 1: the localized stakes can certainly be just as thrilling. And

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Speaker 1: I think many of these movies are not nearly like

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Speaker 1: incidentally having like a low stakes, like small hometown invasion angle,

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Speaker 1: like that's the kind of thing that people can relate to,

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Speaker 1: like the aliens are coming here, the zombies are coming here.

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Speaker 3: It is actually what makes the story work in the

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Speaker 3: cases where it does work. I mean not to say

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Speaker 3: there are some movies from this period that there are

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Speaker 3: more kind of world stage in terms of their actual mechanics.

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Speaker 3: I think, you know, The Day the Earth Stood Still

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Speaker 3: is more kind of a world stage movie involving those

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Speaker 3: big stakes, but a lot of them, yeah, they're actually

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Speaker 3: quite local, and when they work, they work because they're local.

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Speaker 3: They set the scope of the plot correctly to the

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Speaker 3: ambitions of the story they're going to tell. But then

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Speaker 3: the other thing I was going to ask is I

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Speaker 3: think the answer to this question is more clear, But

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Speaker 3: I was thinking specifically with these lower budget movies. If

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Speaker 3: they thought audiences wanted a huge story with global implications,

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Speaker 3: why did they not actually write a story like that?

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Speaker 3: Why did they make these local stories? I think the

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Speaker 3: answer there is just got to be budget, right, Like

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Speaker 3: the bigger story requires more actors, probably more sets. And

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Speaker 3: so I think you sometimes see these movies trying to

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Speaker 3: bridge the gap by having the direct plot be very

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Speaker 3: local with a small number of characters. But like the well,

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Speaker 3: they'll have a character like placing a phone call to

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Speaker 3: a general in Washington, you know, to like relay the

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Speaker 3: events or something as if that that kind of gets

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Speaker 3: you halfway to the feeling of world spanning events.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, throwing a few phone call, throw in a little

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Speaker 1: stock footage, and you're good to go. News footage as well.

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Speaker 3: Oh that's a good one, yes, yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Like you know, a great example of this is

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Speaker 1: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, you know. Yeah, they actually

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Speaker 1: pull a number of levers in that picture to really

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Speaker 1: drive home the international scope of the of the threat.

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Speaker 3: That's a really good point. Yeah. So, anyway, I was

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Speaker 3: thinking about this, and I did have another thought back

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Speaker 3: on the other side, which is that with a lot

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Speaker 3: of these movies, you could make the argument that, well,

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Speaker 3: the direct plot doesn't really involve the whole world, there

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Speaker 3: are a lot of downstream implications for the whole world.

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Speaker 3: Like I was thinking about, how many of these fifties

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Speaker 3: alien monster movies essentially have the same basic plot situation,

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Speaker 3: and it's that a small group of humans encounter a

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Speaker 3: some sort of advance team or small contingent of alien invaders,

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Speaker 3: usually just a single alien individual, with the idea that

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Speaker 3: if this one alien monster is not defeated, it will

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Speaker 3: pave the way for a full scale invasion and takeover

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Speaker 3: of Earth. So even though the actual plot you're seeing

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Speaker 3: in the movie is small and local, it presages a

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Speaker 3: global conflict. And yet in this case, I've been promised

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Speaker 3: by the poster that the world will be screaming, not

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Speaker 3: just that a guy named Hans will be a couple

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Speaker 3: of other great things about this poster. I love posters

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Speaker 3: that try to make you feel like your life might

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Speaker 3: be in physical danger by seeing the film. This one

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Speaker 3: says warning, if you've ever been hypnotized, do not come alone.

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Speaker 1: I like that, and that's that's that's some William Castle

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Speaker 1: will be proud.

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Speaker 3: Uh huh also we get the like a second tagline,

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Speaker 3: as if the first one wasn't good enough. We see

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Speaker 3: a man dissolves ellipsis, and out of the oozing mist

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Speaker 3: comes the hungry eye, slave to the demon brain. How

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Speaker 3: well does that describe the movie? That's interesting because it

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Speaker 3: those are all words that would describe things in the movie,

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Speaker 3: but in this sentence they refer to the wrong things.

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Speaker 1: This is back when they would employ poets to compose

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Speaker 1: a short poem that could go on the poster that

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Speaker 1: that speaks to, you know, some theme or a particular

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Speaker 1: scene from the picture.

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Speaker 3: That's right. And then final thing on the poster. We

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Speaker 3: get a DCA release again this Distributors Corporation of America,

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Speaker 3: and it's uh, it promises that this is the company

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Speaker 3: that brought you rodin.

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Speaker 1: I mean, come on, yeah yeah. And then then also

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Speaker 1: star Forrest Tucker's name is in red letters. Really, you know,

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Speaker 1: going after that F Troop audience, make sure they make

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Speaker 1: it in for the picture.

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Speaker 3: I don't even know what that refers to. What is

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Speaker 3: F Troop?

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Speaker 1: F Troop was a TV show that Forrest Tucker was on.

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Speaker 3: Oh okay, I have questions about what you're supposed to

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Speaker 3: get out of Forrest Tucker in this movie. He's not

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Speaker 3: bad in it, but he is. He's such a roast beef,

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Speaker 3: you know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, we'll definitely talk about his performance. But I

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Speaker 1: think in general, it's the nineteen fifties, there's an interstellar threat.

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Speaker 1: You need a tall, strong man to potentially lean your

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Speaker 1: head on, and that's where Forrest s Tucker comes in.

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Speaker 3: Yes, Now, all of this said, I actually think The

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Speaker 3: Crawling Eye is not bad. It is in my opinion.

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Speaker 3: I wonder if you agree, Rob, This is one of

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Speaker 3: the better drive in sci fi monster movies of the era.

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Speaker 3: I found it quite engrossing, not boring, with a lot

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Speaker 3: of the same kind of goofy character tropes you often

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Speaker 3: see in these films, but with some pretty good dialogue

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Speaker 3: and some intrigue, some actually quite scary moments, especially with

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Speaker 3: like the zombie assassins later on and the scenes in

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Speaker 3: the cabin up on the mountain and stuff. There's some

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Speaker 3: stuff that actually works as horror.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I think The Crawling Eye is a pretty

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Speaker 1: solid picture. It works better as the trollingberg terror though

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Speaker 1: again because it's ultimately that sort of film. There's a

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Speaker 1: lot of intrigue, a lot of mystery. It gives you

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Speaker 1: some things to think about leading up to the monster battles,

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Speaker 1: which again is it's only going to be the last

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Speaker 1: ten to fifteen minutes of the picture, and at that

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Speaker 1: point they do attempt to pull out all the stops.

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Speaker 3: Yes, And regarding pulling out the stops in terms of

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Speaker 3: the visual effects, I want to say also, this has

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Speaker 3: got to be one of the glorioust films I have

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Speaker 3: ever seen from the nineteen fifties, some actually rather shocking gristle.

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Speaker 3: The scene I was thinking of is when they pull

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Speaker 3: the geology professor Douhurst out from under the bed and

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Speaker 3: you just see a bloody stump on his neck. You

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Speaker 3: don't see other fifties movies like this.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I thought that the gore was shocking, you know,

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Speaker 1: certainly for the nineteen fifties.

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Speaker 3: As for the monster design, this is one that has

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Speaker 3: gone down through the ages as a widely mocked monster design,

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Speaker 3: and I do the design is indeed hilarious, like the

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Speaker 3: effectively scary moments sort of dry up after the monster's

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Speaker 3: true form is revealed. But also I really admire this monster.

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Speaker 3: It's not hilarious in the attack of the the eye

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Speaker 3: creatures way like that. It's hilarious in its shoddiness. This

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Speaker 3: is hilarious in its exquisite detail. I really admire when

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Speaker 3: movies of this era would commit to a fully realized,

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Speaker 3: absolutely insane monster anatomy like we get here, rather than

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Speaker 3: trying to like tone it down, make it maybe look

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Speaker 3: more tasteful or plausible, take less risks. No, no, you fool,

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Speaker 3: get weirder, risk more, And they absolutely did here. This

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Speaker 3: is a this is a swinging for the fence's monster design,

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Speaker 3: and it looks weird, and yes, it looks funny, but

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Speaker 3: it is it makes the movie.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I really like the monster design here, and

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Speaker 1: I agree that. I don't know. On one hand, I

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Speaker 1: certainly agree that people have laughed at it over the years,

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Speaker 1: and we'll get into some of the reasons why. And

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Speaker 1: you know, I made sure to point it out to

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Speaker 1: people in my household so that they could laugh at

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Speaker 1: it as well. But I don't know. I don't that

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Speaker 1: I didn't think it was that funny. I thought it

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Speaker 1: was pretty effect like. It looks real, like I feel

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Speaker 1: like it's a real monster. And if I'm laughing at it,

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Speaker 1: I'm not laughing at it because it's an effect, but

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Speaker 1: I'm like mocking an alien life form.

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Speaker 3: It's just funny that aliens look this way.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's some of it, to be clear.

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Speaker 1: Some of the shots are shot here looking than others.

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Speaker 1: But like that main shot of the crawling eye coming

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Speaker 1: directly at you, I think it's pretty amazing looking.

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Speaker 3: The smoke coming up around it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a solid sequence, and that's

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Speaker 1: one of the reasons they use it several times like that.

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Speaker 3: I also like how many different themes are thrown against

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Speaker 3: the wall in this movie. I think it keeps the

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Speaker 3: plot feeling kind of fresh, the fact that it's not

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Speaker 3: just an alien invasion movie. We get themes of mountaineering,

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Speaker 3: mysterious fog, psychic powers in esp international intrigue kind of espionage,

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Speaker 3: like themes Witchcraft and Resurrection of the Dead. There's there's

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Speaker 3: a lot of stuff going into the stew Yeah.

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Speaker 1: A lot of times in nineteen fifties films, there's this

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Speaker 1: feeling of a very straight laced world and then there

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Speaker 1: is the strange element that is the threat. And here

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Speaker 1: there are enough of strange elements that kind of create

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Speaker 1: a world itself that feels a little off kilter from

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Speaker 1: the buttoned up world we might expect to encounter. The

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Speaker 1: psychic aspects of the plot particularly interest me because while

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Speaker 1: the sisters that will get into here while they are entertainers,

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Speaker 1: one of them does have psychic abilities, and the reality

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Speaker 1: of psychic phenomena in the film feels widely accepted. I

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Speaker 1: don't know to what extent this is just kind of

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Speaker 1: an accident of the writing, or if this was a

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Speaker 1: part of their vision for it, but this would seem

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Speaker 1: to be a world where psychic phenomena is legitimate, but

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Speaker 1: also perhaps not widely understood or certainly capitalized upon.

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Speaker 3: I think in the nineteen fifties there were probably a

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Speaker 3: lot of people who generally thought that among those in

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Speaker 3: the know, parapsychology phenomena were widely accepted, that it was

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Speaker 3: to some people thought of as a kind of a

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Speaker 3: kind of thing that the elites were just aware of.

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Speaker 3: That parapsychology really is onto something. There really is something

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Speaker 3: strange going on. There are powers we don't quite understand,

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Speaker 3: and that the people at the highest levels of society,

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Speaker 3: the real operators there, all know about and accept this.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think a pretty good read on it,

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Speaker 1: and certainly we do have historical evidence for some of

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Speaker 1: the things that were being researched, either in the military

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Speaker 1: or by groups adjacent to the military at the time,

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Speaker 1: just to at the very least see if there was

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Speaker 1: anything to them. But yeah, but it's one of the

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Speaker 1: things I did like about the picture, this idea that

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Speaker 1: like nobody was like, Oh, those silly psychics, what can

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Speaker 1: they teach us about this this real world threat. They

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Speaker 1: were like, I don't know, get the psychics in here,

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Speaker 1: let's see what they can figure out.

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Speaker 3: Well. Yeah, and I would say also within the structure

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Speaker 3: of the movie, there's no real way that the psychics,

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Speaker 3: that the main one psychic character could be trying to

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Speaker 3: like scam anybody. There's like nothing she's going to get

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Speaker 3: out of trying to trick anybody into thinking she's psychic.

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Speaker 3: She's just like clearly experiencing some kind of information download

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Speaker 3: from extraterrestrial sources, and this is having an effect primarily

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Speaker 3: on her more than on anybody else, And so the

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Speaker 3: other characters are trying to be helpful, and yeah, you

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Speaker 3: don't see any like undue hostility toward her or anything.

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Speaker 3: But I also like the scene where they talk about

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Speaker 3: how the sisters used to be tricksters that they started

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Speaker 3: off doing their psychic mind reading act by using a

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Speaker 3: code where they would just be you know, sleight of

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Speaker 3: hand type stuff.

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Speaker 1: Ye.

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Speaker 3: But then they discovered through their career that oh, just

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Speaker 3: so happens one of us actually is fully psychic and

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Speaker 3: we don't need to use tricks anymore. Yeah, which I

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Speaker 3: thought that was interesting because that almost suggests it's not

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Speaker 3: a that in the world of this movie, psychic powers

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Speaker 3: are not something you're born with, but maybe something you

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Speaker 3: develop through training. That somehow by playing the part of

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Speaker 3: a psychic that is how she actually developed the psychic powers.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, Anyway, I thought maybe we should hear just do

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Speaker 3: a basic plot summary and then we can refer we

377
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Speaker 3: can know what we're talking about when we refer back

378
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Speaker 3: to things throughout the connections section and stuff. So the

379
00:21:02,760 --> 00:21:06,520
Speaker 3: basic plot is that you've got the Trollenberg Mountain in Switzerland.

380
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Speaker 3: This has long been a popular destination for sightseers and

381
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Speaker 3: mountain climbers. It's got a mountain side observatory that you

382
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Speaker 3: can reach by suspended cable car, a selection of well

383
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Speaker 3: established routes to the summit, and a cozy village in

384
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Speaker 3: the foothills, offering accommodations for travelers. They don't really play

385
00:21:24,640 --> 00:21:26,800
Speaker 3: up anything in this movie, like, oh, you know there

386
00:21:26,800 --> 00:21:30,240
Speaker 3: are legends about this mountain going back centuries that you

387
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Speaker 3: know there's something evil afoot. It really is more like,

388
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Speaker 3: this is a beautiful, well known mountain and lately something

389
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Speaker 3: weird has started happening here.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not something old that is threatening the folks.

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Speaker 1: It's something entirely new.

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Speaker 3: Right, And what is that new thing? It is a

393
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Speaker 3: series of grizzly accidents in which climbers have disappeared without

394
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Speaker 3: a trace, or in a few cases, have been found

395
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Speaker 3: with their heads torn off. So in the action sort

396
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Speaker 3: of be with an American agent of the United Nations.

397
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Speaker 3: That's an interesting main character here, a guy who's like

398
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Speaker 3: a un fixer, basically named Alan Brooks, who has been

399
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Speaker 3: sent to meet with the observatory's lead scientists to investigate

400
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Speaker 3: this phenomenon. Also visiting Trollenberg are a pair of sisters

401
00:22:20,840 --> 00:22:24,840
Speaker 3: named Anne and Sarah Pilgrim who perform a traveling mind

402
00:22:24,880 --> 00:22:28,480
Speaker 3: reading act. They were originally on their way to Geneva

403
00:22:28,480 --> 00:22:32,280
Speaker 3: by train, but when passing under Trollenberg, the truly psychic

404
00:22:32,359 --> 00:22:35,760
Speaker 3: sister of the two, Anne is overcome with a compulsion

405
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Speaker 3: to get off the train at this stop. She has

406
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Speaker 3: this esp feeling that there's something here she must do.

407
00:22:42,840 --> 00:22:46,720
Speaker 3: So we meet an ensemble of characters including a geologist,

408
00:22:46,880 --> 00:22:52,399
Speaker 3: a covert newspaper reporter, a mountain guide, and an eccentric meteorologist.

409
00:22:52,680 --> 00:22:55,520
Speaker 3: They all come together with other characters to experience a

410
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Speaker 3: weird series of events involving radioactive fog, beheadings on a mountain,

411
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Speaker 3: astral projection, psychic enslavement, zombie assassins, and an alien invasion,

412
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Speaker 3: all culminating in this big showdown where our human characters

413
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Speaker 3: gather inside a scientific facility besieged by giant cyclopean brains

414
00:23:16,240 --> 00:23:19,199
Speaker 3: with tentacles. And that's the other half of the equation

415
00:23:19,400 --> 00:23:22,160
Speaker 3: is they call this the crawling eye, but it could

416
00:23:22,280 --> 00:23:24,879
Speaker 3: well have been called the crawling brain as well, because

417
00:23:24,960 --> 00:23:28,119
Speaker 3: the main mass of the alien is basically a big

418
00:23:28,320 --> 00:23:32,560
Speaker 3: like house sized brain with tentacles coming off of it,

419
00:23:32,640 --> 00:23:35,360
Speaker 3: big octopus arms reaching all over the place, and then

420
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Speaker 3: one huge honkin eye right in the middle.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it could have been the crawling brain as well

422
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Speaker 1: as the crawling eye. It could have been the climbing eye.

423
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Speaker 1: Or the Climbing Brain, because that's really what we see

424
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Speaker 1: more of here.

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Speaker 3: Were you previously familiar with the Misfits song the Crawling Eye?

426
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Speaker 1: This is not an era of the Misfits that I've

427
00:23:55,320 --> 00:23:57,520
Speaker 1: heard as much from. So this is off the nineteen

428
00:23:57,600 --> 00:24:00,560
Speaker 1: ninety nine album Famous Monsters, which I believe it's the

429
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:04,560
Speaker 1: second album from the post Danzig era. I was never

430
00:24:04,640 --> 00:24:08,199
Speaker 1: a Misfits listener growing up, because the Misfits were like

431
00:24:08,240 --> 00:24:11,520
Speaker 1: a little too obscure for me at the time and

432
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Speaker 1: maybe a little too dangerous. I was like, Oh, I

433
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Speaker 1: don't know if I should be listening to you. These

434
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Speaker 1: are a bunch of bad boys. Yeah. Later on I

435
00:24:17,480 --> 00:24:20,359
Speaker 1: got in, But at the same time I got into Danzig,

436
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:23,000
Speaker 1: like Danzig seemed appropriate. Don't know, it was more Danzig

437
00:24:23,040 --> 00:24:25,480
Speaker 1: was more available because there were music videos and it

438
00:24:25,520 --> 00:24:26,040
Speaker 1: was on MTV.

439
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:27,639
Speaker 3: Somehow that feels backwards.

440
00:24:28,800 --> 00:24:31,200
Speaker 1: I mean, some of those Misfits songs are pretty rough.

441
00:24:31,320 --> 00:24:34,520
Speaker 1: I got a lot later and I enjoy a number

442
00:24:34,560 --> 00:24:37,919
Speaker 1: of them, and I enjoy stuff from the different eras.

443
00:24:38,040 --> 00:24:40,240
Speaker 1: So I wasn't as familiar with this one, but I

444
00:24:40,280 --> 00:24:41,800
Speaker 1: am familiar with a few of the tracks off of

445
00:24:41,840 --> 00:24:42,680
Speaker 1: Famous Monsters.

446
00:24:42,840 --> 00:24:45,399
Speaker 3: I also didn't previously know this. I just found it

447
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:49,040
Speaker 3: while I was, you know, reading up before doing this episode. Uh,

448
00:24:49,760 --> 00:24:52,440
Speaker 3: despite it not being in the Danzig era, I kind

449
00:24:52,440 --> 00:24:54,320
Speaker 3: of like this song. I mean, the production feels a

450
00:24:54,320 --> 00:24:56,600
Speaker 3: little clean for the Misfits. I think I like their

451
00:24:56,680 --> 00:25:01,520
Speaker 3: murkier sound on the earlier albums. But yeah, it's I mean,

452
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:06,760
Speaker 3: the lyrics are just a straight plot description of the movie.

453
00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:10,680
Speaker 3: But my favorite verse is one that has a great

454
00:25:10,760 --> 00:25:13,880
Speaker 3: neologism in it. It's the verse that says, all these

455
00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:18,639
Speaker 3: men are dying Crawling Eye, decapitizing Fiends without a face,

456
00:25:18,720 --> 00:25:22,080
Speaker 3: attack mankind. Two things are great there. One is the

457
00:25:22,119 --> 00:25:25,600
Speaker 3: reference to a completely different crawling brain movie fiend without

458
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:30,040
Speaker 3: a face, but then also decapitizing. That's just it that

459
00:25:30,200 --> 00:25:31,119
Speaker 3: sings to my heart.

460
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:31,840
Speaker 1: Nice.

461
00:25:32,480 --> 00:25:37,159
Speaker 3: It reminds me of other of course, Misfits neologism's like myrtilation.

462
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:42,040
Speaker 1: Now, this one came off of your scouting list for

463
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:44,840
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. How did you become aware of the

464
00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:46,760
Speaker 1: Crawling Eye? Was it the song?

465
00:25:47,520 --> 00:25:49,720
Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, Like I said, I heard the

466
00:25:49,760 --> 00:25:53,760
Speaker 3: song for the first time ever today, I'm no. It

467
00:25:54,119 --> 00:25:58,640
Speaker 3: may be the fact that it was featured on the

468
00:25:58,840 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 3: first syndicated episode of Mystery Science Theater three thousand, though

469
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:05,640
Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever seen that episode. I think

470
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:08,000
Speaker 3: it's just come up because I've looked at episodes lists

471
00:26:09,040 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 3: that that could be it, or it could be I

472
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:14,639
Speaker 3: don't know. I really don't remember how I find some

473
00:26:14,680 --> 00:26:16,399
Speaker 3: of these movies that I put on our list. I

474
00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:19,520
Speaker 3: just somehow I come across them. They look interesting to me,

475
00:26:19,600 --> 00:26:21,680
Speaker 3: and I throw them up there to check out again later.

476
00:26:22,760 --> 00:26:24,679
Speaker 1: All right, well, elevator pitch for this one, I'd say

477
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:28,359
Speaker 1: the Misfits lyrics pretty much captured it for us. So

478
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:30,240
Speaker 1: let's move on to hearing just a little bit of

479
00:26:30,240 --> 00:26:41,680
Speaker 1: the trailer audio.

480
00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:46,240
Speaker 4: This alarm fills the night with terror far high on

481
00:26:46,280 --> 00:26:50,159
Speaker 4: a mountainside, a mystereoid fear such as no human being

482
00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:56,399
Speaker 4: has ever seen before. Where there are mountains, there are

483
00:26:56,480 --> 00:26:59,760
Speaker 4: always cloud But this one remains static on the side

484
00:26:59,800 --> 00:27:00,600
Speaker 4: of the Kronberg.

485
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:06,040
Speaker 1: It never moves. Streak of nature that they do. Active

486
00:27:06,080 --> 00:27:06,760
Speaker 1: freak of nature.

487
00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:12,000
Speaker 4: It strikes without warning, wreaking death and destruction, too horrible

488
00:27:12,119 --> 00:27:15,680
Speaker 4: to behold, a force of evil that tortures its victims

489
00:27:15,680 --> 00:27:19,040
Speaker 4: and hurls them mercilessly to the brink of murder and madness?

490
00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:28,560
Speaker 4: What is it and what does it crave? This creeping

491
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:32,359
Speaker 4: horror that hungers and thrives on human flesh while it

492
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:36,720
Speaker 4: inhabits its own silent world that no man can penetrate.

493
00:27:37,680 --> 00:27:40,520
Speaker 4: No one is safe from its spell of destruction. A

494
00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:44,200
Speaker 4: cold hypnotic stare striking fear into the hearts of all,

495
00:27:44,840 --> 00:27:48,199
Speaker 4: creating a frenzied nightmare for those who behold it.

496
00:27:54,359 --> 00:27:56,840
Speaker 1: All Right, so at this point you might be wondering

497
00:27:56,840 --> 00:27:59,560
Speaker 1: where you can watch the Crawling Eye or the Trollnberg

498
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:03,160
Speaker 1: care well. This one has benefited from various physical releases

499
00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:05,840
Speaker 1: over the years and was the again the first season

500
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:09,439
Speaker 1: one episode of Mystery Science Theater three thousand on the

501
00:28:09,520 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 1: Comedy Channel, which would this would have been nineteen eighty nine,

502
00:28:13,640 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: and then the Comedy Channel became Comedy Central in ninety one,

503
00:28:17,440 --> 00:28:20,679
Speaker 1: so this was the first true season of MST following

504
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:24,840
Speaker 1: those KTMA episodes, and many of you will remember the

505
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:28,360
Speaker 1: titular monster from the Crawling Eye in the opening credits

506
00:28:28,359 --> 00:28:33,479
Speaker 1: of MST three k during that early season, though, like you,

507
00:28:33,640 --> 00:28:36,479
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever watched this episode. For one

508
00:28:36,520 --> 00:28:39,920
Speaker 1: for some reason or another, I never watched this film

509
00:28:40,160 --> 00:28:43,600
Speaker 1: MST three K, So I'm not sure how good the

510
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:45,040
Speaker 1: riffs are or aren't.

511
00:28:45,560 --> 00:28:47,720
Speaker 3: I was reading about it. Actually, I've seen a number

512
00:28:47,720 --> 00:28:49,440
Speaker 3: of fans say it's not one of the best. I

513
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:52,760
Speaker 3: think generally the very first season is not one of

514
00:28:52,800 --> 00:28:56,520
Speaker 3: the most prized. It's not like the earliest stuff was

515
00:28:56,560 --> 00:28:58,480
Speaker 3: the best. Most fans tend to think they got a

516
00:28:58,520 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 3: little bit better over time.

517
00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:01,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there are only a couple of episodes

518
00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:04,280
Speaker 1: from season one that I've really watched, maybe two or

519
00:29:04,280 --> 00:29:08,800
Speaker 1: three maybe. However, all of this comes to the point too,

520
00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:11,680
Speaker 1: when you're looking around for streams of The Crawling Eye,

521
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:13,280
Speaker 1: a lot of the streams that are going to pop

522
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:15,920
Speaker 1: up for you on official channels are going to be

523
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:19,560
Speaker 1: that nineteen eighty nine MST three K episode. And you know,

524
00:29:19,600 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 1: I love MST three K. I part of my appreciation

525
00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:28,000
Speaker 1: for weird and sometimes arguably bad films comes from being

526
00:29:28,400 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 1: a misty back in the day and through today as well. However,

527
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:35,560
Speaker 1: I hate it when that's the only version of a

528
00:29:35,560 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 1: film that's officially available. I feel like, yes, if we

529
00:29:37,680 --> 00:29:39,720
Speaker 1: can get the MST three K version, we should also

530
00:29:39,800 --> 00:29:42,400
Speaker 1: have access to the unriffed.

531
00:29:41,880 --> 00:29:42,479
Speaker 3: Version of it.

532
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:45,960
Speaker 1: And it seems a little harder to find official streams

533
00:29:46,320 --> 00:29:49,400
Speaker 1: or even official physical media of The Crawling Eye right now.

534
00:29:49,760 --> 00:29:54,080
Speaker 3: I fully agree there. I used to think that I

535
00:29:54,120 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 3: had seen a movie because I had seen the Mystery

536
00:29:56,600 --> 00:29:59,960
Speaker 3: Science Theater episode on it, and now I don't feel

537
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:02,680
Speaker 3: that way. That's just a different thing. I love Mystery

538
00:30:02,720 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 3: Science Theater. It's probably my favorite TV show of all time.

539
00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 3: But I think when they do an episode on a movie,

540
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:12,160
Speaker 3: that episode is really a quite different thing than the

541
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:15,640
Speaker 3: experience of watching the movie. Even if your experience of

542
00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:18,680
Speaker 3: watching the movie on its own is primarily an ironic

543
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:21,000
Speaker 3: or a comedy driven one, it's still going to be

544
00:30:21,080 --> 00:30:22,720
Speaker 3: different watching it by itself.

545
00:30:23,080 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I like both experiences, but yeah, I need

546
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:29,360
Speaker 1: the uncut version of it. That being said, the version

547
00:30:29,520 --> 00:30:32,720
Speaker 1: I ended up watching was an unofficial YouTube stream of

548
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:35,160
Speaker 1: it that had been colorized. I don't know what it

549
00:30:35,200 --> 00:30:38,480
Speaker 1: was colorized, but I was like, well, I'm tired of

550
00:30:38,520 --> 00:30:41,480
Speaker 1: looking for the version I'm going to stream. I think

551
00:30:41,520 --> 00:30:44,280
Speaker 1: this is it, and I don't know. I like the

552
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:46,240
Speaker 1: colorization in it. It seemed fine to me.

553
00:30:46,560 --> 00:30:50,720
Speaker 3: Okay, the version I saw was streaming on AMC plus Soka.

554
00:30:50,680 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 1: So you did find an official stream of it. That

555
00:30:52,720 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 1: was Oh yeah, okay, that one eluded me. There's so

556
00:30:56,160 --> 00:31:08,000
Speaker 1: many places to look for these things. All right, let's

557
00:31:08,000 --> 00:31:11,000
Speaker 1: get into the people behind this picture. Starting with the director.

558
00:31:11,080 --> 00:31:14,000
Speaker 1: It's Quentin Lawrence, who of nineteen twenty through nineteen seventy

559
00:31:14,080 --> 00:31:17,120
Speaker 1: nine English TV and film director, best known probably for

560
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:20,440
Speaker 1: this film, as well as nineteen sixty one's Cash on Demand,

561
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:23,440
Speaker 1: sixty three is The Man Who Finally Died and sixty

562
00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 1: four is the Secret of Blood Island. He also directed

563
00:31:26,440 --> 00:31:29,520
Speaker 1: an episode of the Old Avengers TV show and was

564
00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:30,920
Speaker 1: originally a physicist.

565
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:33,560
Speaker 3: Oh that's interesting. I wonder how often people make that

566
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:34,479
Speaker 3: career switch.

567
00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:41,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, the IMDb sciences to b movie director. The IMDb

568
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:44,480
Speaker 1: trivia regarding this guy says that he even worked on

569
00:31:44,480 --> 00:31:48,760
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project, but I don't know. I didn't find

570
00:31:48,840 --> 00:31:50,600
Speaker 1: additional information to back it up. I don't know if

571
00:31:50,600 --> 00:31:54,680
Speaker 1: that's true. Sometimes some myth making finds its way into

572
00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:56,320
Speaker 1: the IMDb trivia.

573
00:31:56,400 --> 00:31:58,560
Speaker 3: This movie was directed by Nils Borr.

574
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:03,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I don't think I mentioned this earlier,

575
00:32:03,720 --> 00:32:05,760
Speaker 1: but one of the interesting things about this picture is

576
00:32:05,800 --> 00:32:08,680
Speaker 1: that it is actually a remake of an earlier British

577
00:32:08,720 --> 00:32:12,560
Speaker 1: TV serial titled The Trolllenberg Terror, and a couple of

578
00:32:12,600 --> 00:32:16,360
Speaker 1: cast members return to play the same part in this

579
00:32:16,600 --> 00:32:20,720
Speaker 1: adaptation of that earlier works. Well, yeah, I'll mention those

580
00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:23,800
Speaker 1: as we get to them. But as for the writers,

581
00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:28,160
Speaker 1: there are some additional uncredited writers according to the different databases,

582
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 1: but I'm just going to mention the screenplay credit in

583
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:34,239
Speaker 1: the story credit. Screenplay credit goes to Jimmy Sunster, who

584
00:32:34,280 --> 00:32:37,480
Speaker 1: lived nineteen twenty seven through twenty eleven. Writer and producer,

585
00:32:37,520 --> 00:32:40,760
Speaker 1: best known for his influential work at Hammer Studios, including

586
00:32:40,840 --> 00:32:44,600
Speaker 1: writing on the screenplay for fifty sevens The Curse of Frankenstein,

587
00:32:44,640 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 1: fifty eight s Dracula, fifty nine's The Mummy, sixties The

588
00:32:48,160 --> 00:32:50,280
Speaker 1: Brides of Dracula, in many many more.

589
00:32:50,600 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 3: Oh, he wrote the Mummy movie that I have the

590
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:56,080
Speaker 3: poster for right next to me, the one with Peter

591
00:32:56,200 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 3: Cushing or Christopher Lee.

592
00:32:57,720 --> 00:32:59,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Like, this guy was a big deal

593
00:33:00,080 --> 00:33:02,720
Speaker 1: and Hammer Studio. So for any of you Hammer Studios

594
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:05,040
Speaker 1: nerds out there, this is somebody you definitely know about.

595
00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:08,000
Speaker 1: On top of that, there's an individual by the name

596
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:11,080
Speaker 1: of Peter Key that also has a story credit. As

597
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:14,120
Speaker 1: best I could tell, a British TV writer. But dates

598
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:17,240
Speaker 1: are unknown for this individual. All right, now getting into

599
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 1: the cast, Let's come back to Forrest Tucker playing Alan Brooks,

600
00:33:21,360 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 1: that American un investigator here looking into mysterious mountaintop disappearances,

601
00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:29,840
Speaker 1: strange clouds, and beheadings.

602
00:33:30,440 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 3: The James Bond of the United Nations.

603
00:33:33,040 --> 00:33:37,480
Speaker 1: Yes, he lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen eighty six, American actor,

604
00:33:37,520 --> 00:33:41,440
Speaker 1: best known for his time as Sergeant Morgan O'Rourke on

605
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:44,760
Speaker 1: the long running f Troop TV series. His film work

606
00:33:44,800 --> 00:33:47,480
Speaker 1: consists of a kind of a mix of genres, notably

607
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:49,960
Speaker 1: a bunch of war in westerns, but with some monster

608
00:33:50,000 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 1: films thrown in. So His films include nineteen forty two's

609
00:33:53,480 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 1: Keeper of the Flame, forty threes Sans of Yuajima, forty

610
00:33:57,040 --> 00:34:00,280
Speaker 1: six is the Yearling, fifty sevens The Abominable snow Man

611
00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:04,400
Speaker 1: of the Himalayas, nineteen seventies Chisholm, and nineteen eighty seven's

612
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:05,920
Speaker 1: Time Stalkers.

613
00:34:05,680 --> 00:34:08,279
Speaker 3: Oh, Time Stalkers, Oh Wait I said that, but I

614
00:34:08,320 --> 00:34:10,200
Speaker 3: was thinking of the wrong movie. I was thinking of

615
00:34:10,280 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 3: Time Chasers, also famously featured on Mystery Science Theater. Time

616
00:34:14,680 --> 00:34:17,920
Speaker 3: Stalkers is the one with John Ratzenberger and Klaus Kinski.

617
00:34:18,280 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen Time Stalkers either, but maybe

618
00:34:21,040 --> 00:34:23,040
Speaker 1: that's what we should come back to. Right in listeners,

619
00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:25,920
Speaker 1: if you have an opinion on this now, Joe, I

620
00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:29,920
Speaker 1: want to drive home here that mister Forrest Tucker was

621
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:33,759
Speaker 1: thirty nine years old at the oldest when this film

622
00:34:33,840 --> 00:34:36,000
Speaker 1: was made. There's a there's some common in here where

623
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:39,239
Speaker 1: somebody describes him as his character as being he looks

624
00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:41,319
Speaker 1: about forty, and I was thinking, this man does not

625
00:34:41,400 --> 00:34:45,920
Speaker 1: look forty. This man looks at least fifty, and sure enough,

626
00:34:46,280 --> 00:34:50,319
Speaker 1: he was younger than forty. As far as I can tell, people.

627
00:34:49,960 --> 00:34:54,360
Speaker 3: Were living different back then. This man is this man

628
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:56,320
Speaker 3: is he has had a life?

629
00:34:56,719 --> 00:35:00,560
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, it's a very rugged thirty nine that this

630
00:35:00,640 --> 00:35:05,600
Speaker 1: guy has. We do see him hard drinking and smoking

631
00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:07,719
Speaker 1: throughout the picture. Maybe that's part of it. Maybe it's

632
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:10,319
Speaker 1: the suits that everyone wore. I'm not sure. Maybe I'd

633
00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:11,960
Speaker 1: look that old if I was wearing a suit and

634
00:35:12,000 --> 00:35:17,760
Speaker 1: certainly throwing back that many spirits. But we were talking

635
00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:20,719
Speaker 1: about how we should feel about this character in this performance.

636
00:35:21,120 --> 00:35:23,320
Speaker 1: I'm going to say that ultimately I thought he was

637
00:35:23,360 --> 00:35:27,239
Speaker 1: really good. Granted, it is a square jawed American male

638
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:30,839
Speaker 1: protagonist from a nineteen fifties film. So you know what

639
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:33,239
Speaker 1: to expect here, but I don't know. I felt like

640
00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:36,960
Speaker 1: the character felt lived in. He didn't feel like a

641
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:38,000
Speaker 1: cardboard cutout.

642
00:35:38,360 --> 00:35:41,920
Speaker 3: So he is a rectangular sheet tray of roast beef,

643
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:45,880
Speaker 3: but he is also he's a good version of that.

644
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:50,360
Speaker 3: He's a likable enough character for a character of this sort,

645
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:53,439
Speaker 3: and he brings what is being asked of him, which

646
00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:56,680
Speaker 3: is a sense of authority and command. You know, he's

647
00:35:56,719 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 3: the person who kind of rallies everybody together when they

648
00:35:59,200 --> 00:36:03,040
Speaker 3: need to to take action to defend against the eye

649
00:36:03,080 --> 00:36:07,000
Speaker 3: monsters attacking the observatory. He really feels like he knows

650
00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:10,000
Speaker 3: what he's doing. Took all thirty nine years of his

651
00:36:10,120 --> 00:36:11,640
Speaker 3: life to get that experience.

652
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:17,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. Up next, we have our secret journalist character,

653
00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:21,800
Speaker 1: Philip Truscott, played by Lawrence Payne, who lived nineteen nineteen

654
00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:24,920
Speaker 1: through two thousand and nine, British actor. He also appeared

655
00:36:24,920 --> 00:36:27,719
Speaker 1: in episodes of Doctor Who in the nineteen sixties and

656
00:36:27,760 --> 00:36:31,160
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties different characters, and his other credits include

657
00:36:31,200 --> 00:36:34,920
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two's Vampire Circus and nineteen eighty one Cy Warriors,

658
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:38,480
Speaker 1: one of only two actors reprising their roles here from

659
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:40,520
Speaker 1: the original Trollinberg TV serial.

660
00:36:40,840 --> 00:36:44,960
Speaker 3: Wait, so this guy is in reality the same age

661
00:36:45,000 --> 00:36:49,840
Speaker 3: as Forrest Tucker, but he comes off as significantly younger.

662
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:54,000
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, this guy feels more authentically thirty nine forty

663
00:36:55,120 --> 00:36:57,719
Speaker 1: and it is interesting. You could kind of look at this.

664
00:36:57,760 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: I guess this was a film that was made with

665
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:03,520
Speaker 1: the intention of being marketed to both the US and

666
00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:06,840
Speaker 1: of course to UK and Europe, and so his character

667
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:09,120
Speaker 1: is kind of more in line with what you'd expect

668
00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:12,799
Speaker 1: from a British male lead in a picture from this

669
00:37:12,880 --> 00:37:13,360
Speaker 1: time period.

670
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:17,800
Speaker 3: I would imagine, yeah, exactly. I mean, he's handsome, mysterious,

671
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:20,520
Speaker 3: you don't know exactly what his deal is for about

672
00:37:20,520 --> 00:37:22,560
Speaker 3: half the movie, but then he reveals himself to be

673
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:25,319
Speaker 3: a good guy. Yeah, he's kind of sneaking around a

674
00:37:25,320 --> 00:37:26,080
Speaker 3: lot at the beginning.

675
00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:29,600
Speaker 1: All right, Now, let's look at the Pilgrim sisters. Beginning

676
00:37:29,600 --> 00:37:33,600
Speaker 1: with the non psychic Sarah Pilgrim. She's played by Jennifer Jane,

677
00:37:33,640 --> 00:37:35,839
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty one through two thousand and six,

678
00:37:36,480 --> 00:37:39,040
Speaker 1: British actress perhaps best remembered for this film, but her

679
00:37:39,040 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 1: credit stretch from nineteen forty nine to nineteen eighty five,

680
00:37:42,600 --> 00:37:45,840
Speaker 1: and they include sixty seven's They Came From Beyond Space,

681
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:48,640
Speaker 1: eighty three's The Jigsaw Man in nineteen eighty five's The

682
00:37:48,680 --> 00:37:49,680
Speaker 1: Doctor and the Devils.

683
00:37:50,520 --> 00:37:53,960
Speaker 3: So not only the non psychic of the two Pilgrim sisters,

684
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:56,960
Speaker 3: but also portrayed as the I think supposed to be

685
00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 3: the older sister and the more kind of responsible manager

686
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:00,920
Speaker 3: Serial one.

687
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:04,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the logical one, the one that's making the

688
00:38:04,480 --> 00:38:09,080
Speaker 1: real world choices here, and then playing the psychic Pilgrim's sister.

689
00:38:09,200 --> 00:38:12,600
Speaker 1: And Pilgrim we have the incredible Janet Monroe, who of

690
00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:14,759
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four through nineteen seventy two.

691
00:38:15,640 --> 00:38:18,360
Speaker 3: She's really good in this, I think my favorite performance

692
00:38:18,400 --> 00:38:20,839
Speaker 3: in the movie. It's a tough job to do. She's

693
00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:25,319
Speaker 3: got to, you know, like in multiple scenes sort of

694
00:38:25,360 --> 00:38:28,360
Speaker 3: go into a weird trance where like some kind of

695
00:38:28,400 --> 00:38:31,760
Speaker 3: cloud from a mountain nearby possesses her brain and starts

696
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:35,160
Speaker 3: radioing messages to come out of her mouth. But she

697
00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:39,360
Speaker 3: delivers that with a real kind of urgency and terror.

698
00:38:39,440 --> 00:38:42,600
Speaker 3: And I thought all of her psychic trance scenes were

699
00:38:42,640 --> 00:38:45,239
Speaker 3: really good. There's a there's a kind of danger that

700
00:38:45,320 --> 00:38:48,440
Speaker 3: comes with her, because when the Mountain is controlling her,

701
00:38:48,520 --> 00:38:50,279
Speaker 3: you really feel like you don't know what she's going

702
00:38:50,360 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 3: to do, And at the same time she's a quite

703
00:38:55,080 --> 00:38:58,560
Speaker 3: sympathetic character. I really really liked Monroe in this.

704
00:38:58,960 --> 00:39:02,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like Pilgrim really could be the film

705
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:05,880
Speaker 1: central protagonist, and I think definitely would have been in

706
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:09,760
Speaker 1: a later era. Oh yeah, her character feels the most electric,

707
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:12,759
Speaker 1: the most mysterious, and I think in many ways the

708
00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:16,600
Speaker 1: most relatable, certainly to maybe to modern audiences more than

709
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:19,440
Speaker 1: contemporary audiences. But I don't know. The case could be

710
00:39:19,440 --> 00:39:24,680
Speaker 1: made either way, and I would say my only misgiving

711
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:29,040
Speaker 1: is that she ends up not playing particularly strongly into

712
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 1: the resolution. It would have been an interesting choice had

713
00:39:33,760 --> 00:39:38,240
Speaker 1: her psychic powers, which are deemed dangerous by the aliens,

714
00:39:38,239 --> 00:39:40,040
Speaker 1: would have actually been used to defeat.

715
00:39:39,719 --> 00:39:43,200
Speaker 3: Them, Right, if the story had let her be as

716
00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:47,400
Speaker 3: dangerous as the alien thought she might be. Yeah, I

717
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 3: think that would have been great. I mean, I still

718
00:39:49,040 --> 00:39:49,839
Speaker 3: love her in this role.

719
00:39:50,000 --> 00:39:52,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely still love the performance here, and it's still

720
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:55,360
Speaker 1: the most entertaining character in the picture.

721
00:39:55,480 --> 00:39:58,360
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's got those those fifties drive in dynamics.

722
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:01,000
Speaker 3: She mainly just needs rest, the end.

723
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 1: So I grew up watching Janet Monroe in the nineteen

724
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:09,160
Speaker 1: sixty Walt Disney live action fantasy romance film Darby O'Gill

725
00:40:09,200 --> 00:40:12,360
Speaker 1: and the Little People, in which she plays Katie O'Gill,

726
00:40:12,480 --> 00:40:14,960
Speaker 1: whose father is dead set on capturing the King of

727
00:40:14,960 --> 00:40:19,440
Speaker 1: the Leprechauns and whose suitors include an Irish Sean Connery

728
00:40:19,920 --> 00:40:24,320
Speaker 1: and Estelle Wynwood's horrible son, Pony, played by Kieran Moore.

729
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:27,240
Speaker 3: I've never seen this, but you've mentioned it several times

730
00:40:27,239 --> 00:40:28,839
Speaker 3: on the show. So I looked it up and I

731
00:40:28,920 --> 00:40:32,400
Speaker 3: was I had the wrong idea of what this movie was.

732
00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:36,279
Speaker 3: I had been thinking of it as some kind of

733
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:39,200
Speaker 3: weird throwaway made for TV thing, But it seems this

734
00:40:39,280 --> 00:40:42,239
Speaker 3: movie is widely is like, very well regarded. People think

735
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:42,720
Speaker 3: it's great.

736
00:40:43,160 --> 00:40:45,759
Speaker 1: It was a lavish production, you know. I'm not sure

737
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:50,400
Speaker 1: to what extent true Irish people in place it or not.

738
00:40:50,800 --> 00:40:53,239
Speaker 1: I don't know. Irish listeners write in and let us know.

739
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:58,640
Speaker 1: But it's a film I grew up watching and I

740
00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:01,759
Speaker 1: always really enjoy I rewatched it again just a few

741
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:03,319
Speaker 1: years back, and it was still a lot of fun,

742
00:41:03,480 --> 00:41:05,719
Speaker 1: and she's a big part of its charm. Just a

743
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 1: very charismatic actress. She was a British actress who won

744
00:41:09,040 --> 00:41:12,160
Speaker 1: a Golden Globe Most Promising Newcomer Female for her role

745
00:41:12,200 --> 00:41:14,400
Speaker 1: in Darby Ogill and the Little People, and then she

746
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:17,680
Speaker 1: went on to win a BAFTA a Best British Actress

747
00:41:17,760 --> 00:41:20,240
Speaker 1: nod for her role in the nineteen sixty two drama

748
00:41:20,360 --> 00:41:23,640
Speaker 1: Walk in the Shadows. Her follow up Disney films included

749
00:41:23,680 --> 00:41:26,279
Speaker 1: Third Man on the Mountain from fifty nine, which I'm

750
00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:29,279
Speaker 1: not familiar with, and The Mountain Movie, Yeah, and then

751
00:41:29,280 --> 00:41:32,520
Speaker 1: Swiss Family Robinson from nineteen sixty which I definitely watched

752
00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:33,799
Speaker 1: on VHS back in the day.

753
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:35,440
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we had a tape of that when I

754
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:37,080
Speaker 3: was growing up. I watched that a bunch of times.

755
00:41:37,080 --> 00:41:39,320
Speaker 3: I loved all the traps they made. I was obsessed

756
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 3: with the traps.

757
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 1: She also appeared in the Day of the Earth Caught

758
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:45,480
Speaker 1: Fire nineteen sixty one, which is definitely one of those

759
00:41:45,480 --> 00:41:47,880
Speaker 1: titles that matches up with the themes we were talking

760
00:41:47,880 --> 00:41:53,239
Speaker 1: about exactly. Yeah. This was only her second feature film appearance,

761
00:41:53,360 --> 00:41:57,640
Speaker 1: following nineteen fifty to seven Small Hotel, and she was

762
00:41:57,680 --> 00:42:01,040
Speaker 1: only active from fifty seven through nineteen seventy t so ultimately,

763
00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:04,840
Speaker 1: you know, not that long of a career, and her

764
00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:09,239
Speaker 1: life was cut significantly short, but very memorable screen presence here,

765
00:42:09,680 --> 00:42:13,080
Speaker 1: just tremendous acting presence. Tremendous screen presence.

766
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:16,040
Speaker 3: Agreed. As I said, this movie does stand out from

767
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:18,960
Speaker 3: its genre, and Air appears in a number of ways,

768
00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:21,680
Speaker 3: and I think her performance is one of the main ones.

769
00:42:22,160 --> 00:42:24,800
Speaker 1: All right, let's roll through some of the supporting performers. Here.

770
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:28,279
Speaker 1: We have the character I believe it's Krevit, but they

771
00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:32,319
Speaker 1: mostly just call him the Professor, So I if they

772
00:42:32,360 --> 00:42:33,960
Speaker 1: ever said his name, I missed it.

773
00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:36,200
Speaker 3: I don't remember what they called him. Yeah.

774
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:39,560
Speaker 1: Yeah. The Professor is played by Warren Mitchell, who lived

775
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:42,640
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty six through twenty fifteen. British character actor of stage,

776
00:42:42,640 --> 00:42:45,640
Speaker 1: screen and TV, whose credits include sixty one's The Curse

777
00:42:45,680 --> 00:42:48,160
Speaker 1: of the Werewolf That's the Hammer Studios picture with Oliver

778
00:42:48,239 --> 00:42:52,080
Speaker 1: Reed Is the Werewolf, nineteen sixty five's Help, That's the

779
00:42:52,120 --> 00:42:55,239
Speaker 1: Beatles movie, and nineteen seventy seven's Jabberwockie that was a

780
00:42:55,320 --> 00:42:58,400
Speaker 1: Terry Gilliam picture. I, however, know him best as the

781
00:42:58,480 --> 00:43:02,160
Speaker 1: villain from The Amazing Hammer Studios mod Space Western Moon

782
00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:05,719
Speaker 1: zero two from nineteen sixty nine, a film that was

783
00:43:05,719 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 1: also featured on Industry Science Theater three thousand, but is

784
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:10,960
Speaker 1: also just a goofy good time in and of itself.

785
00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:16,560
Speaker 3: Strange choice with this actor that, if this makes any sense,

786
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:21,040
Speaker 3: Rob he is played as if he is supposed to

787
00:43:21,040 --> 00:43:25,279
Speaker 3: be an eccentric professor in terms of his the voice,

788
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:27,320
Speaker 3: like the voice this actor does for him and stuff.

789
00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:31,080
Speaker 3: Kind of a one of those Einstein modeled eccentric, absent

790
00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:33,880
Speaker 3: minded professors. Except that's not really the way the character

791
00:43:33,960 --> 00:43:37,160
Speaker 3: is written. It's like it's there in the voice and

792
00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:41,040
Speaker 3: the way he looks. But the character is very straightforward

793
00:43:41,160 --> 00:43:42,760
Speaker 3: in terms of his role in the story.

794
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:45,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels like this character should be arguing for

795
00:43:46,000 --> 00:43:50,759
Speaker 1: the return of Santa Claus from the planet Mars, but yeah,

796
00:43:50,760 --> 00:43:53,839
Speaker 1: he's a pretty straight life scientist. The accent I kept

797
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:56,640
Speaker 1: puzzling over. The accent felt very Guido Sarducci, you know,

798
00:43:57,320 --> 00:43:59,520
Speaker 1: and I wasn't sure exactly where this guy was supposed

799
00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:02,120
Speaker 1: to be from. All right, A couple of additional supporting

800
00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:04,399
Speaker 1: characters I want to mention really quickly here because they're

801
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:06,880
Speaker 1: both pretty neat in their own right. We have Andrew

802
00:44:06,920 --> 00:44:10,600
Speaker 1: Folds playing Brett This is a mountaineer, a doomed mountaineer

803
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:13,480
Speaker 1: from early in the picture who then pops up later.

804
00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:16,320
Speaker 1: He lived nineteen twenty three through the year two thousand.

805
00:44:16,960 --> 00:44:19,240
Speaker 1: He was a British actor of stage and screen, whose

806
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:22,080
Speaker 1: best known roles aside from this were sixty threes, Jason

807
00:44:22,080 --> 00:44:25,360
Speaker 1: and the Argonauts and Cleopatra, as well as nineteen seventy

808
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:29,840
Speaker 1: five's Lithsmania. He was also a British Labor Party politician

809
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:32,280
Speaker 1: and served as a member of Parliament from nineteen sixty

810
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: six through nineteen ninety seven.

811
00:44:33,800 --> 00:44:37,239
Speaker 3: Oh interesting, okay, So directed by a physicist, and the

812
00:44:37,320 --> 00:44:40,040
Speaker 3: cast made their way into politics. I'm liking all the

813
00:44:40,040 --> 00:44:44,200
Speaker 3: connections here. I like Andrew Folds in this role because

814
00:44:44,239 --> 00:44:48,320
Speaker 3: he's actually rather scary in some parts of the movie.

815
00:44:49,680 --> 00:44:51,680
Speaker 3: I mean, we'll talk more about the plot in just

816
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:54,560
Speaker 3: a minute here, but he's a kind of man of

817
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 3: few words, but as a kindly presence earlier in the film,

818
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:03,680
Speaker 3: and then appears greatly changed later on, and it works.

819
00:45:03,719 --> 00:45:04,960
Speaker 3: It's a good shift, all right.

820
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:08,040
Speaker 1: And then accompanying him there on a doomed adventure up

821
00:45:08,040 --> 00:45:10,359
Speaker 1: into the mountains, we have the character Dewhurst, played by

822
00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:13,759
Speaker 1: Stuart Saunders, who have nineteen oh nine through nineteen eighty eight.

823
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:17,920
Speaker 1: Another fun performance. This guy had a minor role in

824
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:20,880
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three. He's Octopussy the James Bond film. He

825
00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:23,640
Speaker 1: played Major Clive. This is a character who loses a

826
00:45:23,680 --> 00:45:27,360
Speaker 1: game of backgammon to the villain and then he's like,

827
00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:29,120
Speaker 1: you know, he gets up and then who takes his

828
00:45:29,200 --> 00:45:32,960
Speaker 1: spot playing backgammon with the villain is, of course, Roger Morris.

829
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:33,960
Speaker 1: James Bond.

830
00:45:34,520 --> 00:45:36,840
Speaker 3: Octopusy is one of the Bond movies I have the

831
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:39,360
Speaker 3: fewest memories of. I think I've only seen it once or.

832
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:42,440
Speaker 1: So memorable in that it has an octopus in it

833
00:45:42,719 --> 00:45:46,120
Speaker 1: and Louis Jodan plays the villain. He was always a

834
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:49,200
Speaker 1: lot of fun. But yes, anyway, Stuart Saunders one of

835
00:45:49,320 --> 00:45:51,960
Speaker 1: He's the second of the two actors reprising their roles

836
00:45:51,960 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 1: from the original Trollnberg TV series. All right, A couple

837
00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:06,080
Speaker 1: of notes about the special effects here, because two of

838
00:46:06,080 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 1: the individuals here involved in the special effects are pretty

839
00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:13,360
Speaker 1: impressive names. Les Bowie, who lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen

840
00:46:13,360 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 1: seventy nine, has special effects credit credits here. Canadian born

841
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:20,160
Speaker 1: special effects artists who worked mainly in the UK. A

842
00:46:20,280 --> 00:46:22,760
Speaker 1: legend in the field of Matt paintings, which we definitely

843
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 1: see a few of in this picture. This was not

844
00:46:26,320 --> 00:46:30,920
Speaker 1: filmed in the Alps or anything. It was filmed at

845
00:46:30,920 --> 00:46:33,719
Speaker 1: a UK studio. He's best known for his work on

846
00:46:33,800 --> 00:46:37,480
Speaker 1: various Hammer pictures, including nineteen fifty eight Stracula, as well

847
00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:40,520
Speaker 1: as a handful of Ray Harryhausen films, including seventy seven

848
00:46:40,600 --> 00:46:42,680
Speaker 1: Sindbad and The Eye of the Tiger. No, we were

849
00:46:42,719 --> 00:46:45,359
Speaker 1: just talking about that, yeah, And he was also on

850
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:48,120
Speaker 1: the Oscar winning team behind the effects of nineteen seventy

851
00:46:48,120 --> 00:46:48,800
Speaker 1: eight Superman.

852
00:46:49,239 --> 00:46:50,960
Speaker 3: That's a good resume, yeah.

853
00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:54,560
Speaker 1: And then assisting him on this was Brian Johnson born

854
00:46:54,680 --> 00:46:57,040
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine. Johnson would go on to work on

855
00:46:57,040 --> 00:47:00,719
Speaker 1: the special effects teams for such films as nineteen sixty eight,

856
00:47:00,840 --> 00:47:03,680
Speaker 1: two thousand and one A Space Odyssey, nineteen seventy Nine's

857
00:47:03,719 --> 00:47:07,120
Speaker 1: Alien and nineteen eighties The Empire Strikes Back, all three

858
00:47:07,160 --> 00:47:10,319
Speaker 1: of which won Oscars for their special effects. Wow. He

859
00:47:10,400 --> 00:47:12,799
Speaker 1: also served in the special effects teams for nineteen eighty

860
00:47:12,840 --> 00:47:15,040
Speaker 1: one's Dragonslayer and nineteen eighty.

861
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:17,000
Speaker 3: Four Is the Never Written Story Wow Again.

862
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:20,319
Speaker 1: And then finally the composer here is Stanley Black, who

863
00:47:20,360 --> 00:47:22,759
Speaker 1: lived nineteen thirteen through two thousand and two, British film

864
00:47:22,760 --> 00:47:25,799
Speaker 1: composer and bandleader, whose other credits include Fifty Eights, The

865
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:29,360
Speaker 1: Blood of the Vampire nineteen sixties, The Flesh Fiends, sixty

866
00:47:29,400 --> 00:47:31,960
Speaker 1: one's The Day the Earth Caught Fire in nineteen sixty

867
00:47:32,000 --> 00:47:32,880
Speaker 1: three's Maniac.

868
00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:35,439
Speaker 3: I don't know if the music in this movie really

869
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 3: made an impression on me.

870
00:47:36,840 --> 00:47:38,480
Speaker 1: There are a few scenes where I thought it was

871
00:47:38,560 --> 00:47:42,719
Speaker 1: fittingly creepy, but also, you know, it is definitely a

872
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:46,600
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty genre score, so I thought I thought it

873
00:47:46,640 --> 00:47:48,400
Speaker 1: was quite good. You know, nothing that I'm going to

874
00:47:48,440 --> 00:47:51,520
Speaker 1: listen to in isolation, But I thought it was pretty good.

875
00:47:51,840 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 3: Okay, I'll keep an ear out next time. I mean,

876
00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:56,080
Speaker 3: it certainly didn't strike me as bad. I just don't

877
00:47:56,120 --> 00:47:57,239
Speaker 3: remember anything about it.

878
00:47:57,960 --> 00:48:01,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some creepy sequences where I feel like everybody's

879
00:48:02,200 --> 00:48:05,040
Speaker 1: bringing there all to delivering that vibe, you know, from

880
00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:08,720
Speaker 1: the camera work, the performances, the lighting and so forth.

881
00:48:09,040 --> 00:48:10,520
Speaker 3: All Right, you ready to talk about the plot.

882
00:48:10,600 --> 00:48:12,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's head out to the Alps.

883
00:48:12,360 --> 00:48:15,520
Speaker 3: So the film opens with a landscape showing a narrow

884
00:48:15,640 --> 00:48:19,759
Speaker 3: valley in the Swiss Alps, with massive mountains crowding on

885
00:48:19,840 --> 00:48:22,399
Speaker 3: both sides. And this is one of those things where

886
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:26,240
Speaker 3: even in grainy black and white, it is a beautiful location.

887
00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:29,120
Speaker 3: At the bottom of the valley. There's a little river

888
00:48:29,280 --> 00:48:32,680
Speaker 3: and some farmland and a village, but the mountains are

889
00:48:32,840 --> 00:48:35,880
Speaker 3: so steep and so close. It's one of those places

890
00:48:35,920 --> 00:48:37,799
Speaker 3: where it would seem like the valley's got to be

891
00:48:37,840 --> 00:48:40,719
Speaker 3: in shadow for like a lot of the day. And

892
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:43,759
Speaker 3: then the camera pulls back and then we pan up

893
00:48:43,840 --> 00:48:47,319
Speaker 3: the side of the mountains, and there's this feeling of like, oh,

894
00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:50,359
Speaker 3: it just keeps going up. Like first there's this big

895
00:48:50,400 --> 00:48:53,520
Speaker 3: alpine meadow and a dark spruce forest where it's kind

896
00:48:53,520 --> 00:48:57,799
Speaker 3: of flat halfway up the mountain, and you think this,

897
00:48:58,120 --> 00:48:59,880
Speaker 3: You think you might be looking at the top of

898
00:49:00,080 --> 00:49:02,120
Speaker 3: one of the mountains. But then you just keep panning

899
00:49:02,280 --> 00:49:05,080
Speaker 3: up and you realize that what the mountain you were

900
00:49:05,120 --> 00:49:07,320
Speaker 3: just looking at is like one of the lower slopes

901
00:49:07,360 --> 00:49:09,960
Speaker 3: of the real mountain, which is thousands of feet further up.

902
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:13,560
Speaker 3: And that's sharp, bare rock covered in snow with mist

903
00:49:13,680 --> 00:49:16,720
Speaker 3: hanging all around the peak. And this is the Trollenberg, again,

904
00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:19,360
Speaker 3: not a real mountain in Switzerland.

905
00:49:19,440 --> 00:49:21,560
Speaker 1: And I think already The film's doing a good job,

906
00:49:21,640 --> 00:49:25,040
Speaker 1: whether we realize it or not at this point, because

907
00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:28,319
Speaker 1: it is establishing the mountains as being these, you know,

908
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:31,160
Speaker 1: almost like mythic mountains that are reaching up not merely

909
00:49:31,160 --> 00:49:33,520
Speaker 1: into the sky, but into the place where our world

910
00:49:33,600 --> 00:49:34,760
Speaker 1: borders on the unknown.

911
00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:38,759
Speaker 3: Hmmm, yeah, that's a good point. So up near the

912
00:49:38,760 --> 00:49:41,279
Speaker 3: summit we meet a couple of characters. There are two

913
00:49:41,400 --> 00:49:44,840
Speaker 3: young British men squatting on a narrow rock shelf, surrounded

914
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:48,520
Speaker 3: by ropes, packs and climbing gear, and they're both looking

915
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:52,040
Speaker 3: up above. There's a rope dangling down beside them, suspended

916
00:49:52,080 --> 00:49:55,840
Speaker 3: from an unseen upper figure, and one of the guys

917
00:49:55,840 --> 00:49:57,839
Speaker 3: says to the other guy, what's he doing up there?

918
00:49:57,880 --> 00:50:01,680
Speaker 3: And they call out, hey, Jimmy, and Jimmy calls back down,

919
00:50:01,760 --> 00:50:03,840
Speaker 3: telling them to wait a minute. He says he can't

920
00:50:03,880 --> 00:50:07,840
Speaker 3: see everything up where he is has gone foggy and cold.

921
00:50:08,400 --> 00:50:11,600
Speaker 3: He describes there's a cloud of something falling over him,

922
00:50:12,040 --> 00:50:14,839
Speaker 3: and then suddenly he says, hold on a second, there's

923
00:50:14,840 --> 00:50:19,160
Speaker 3: someone coming. His friends below are incredulous. They're like, what,

924
00:50:19,280 --> 00:50:21,799
Speaker 3: somebody's coming at the top of this mountain. One says,

925
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:25,359
Speaker 3: who is it? Jim The abominable snow man, and then

926
00:50:25,400 --> 00:50:28,640
Speaker 3: we hear some very odd noises from the fog above.

927
00:50:28,800 --> 00:50:32,520
Speaker 3: There is a high pitched hum that is swelling in volume,

928
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:36,840
Speaker 3: kind of like an emergency broadcast tone. Also a repeating

929
00:50:37,080 --> 00:50:40,560
Speaker 3: chirp with delay like some kind of radar system signaling

930
00:50:40,560 --> 00:50:43,560
Speaker 3: a ping, and the ping gets louder, as if something

931
00:50:43,600 --> 00:50:48,239
Speaker 3: is closing in. And suddenly Jim screams, and then from

932
00:50:48,280 --> 00:50:51,080
Speaker 3: the ledge above we see a body fall tied with

933
00:50:51,160 --> 00:50:54,160
Speaker 3: the rope. The body falls below the shelf with the

934
00:50:54,200 --> 00:50:57,080
Speaker 3: other two climbers, and the rope goes taut and they

935
00:50:57,080 --> 00:50:59,799
Speaker 3: struggle to pull their friend back up over the edge,

936
00:50:59,840 --> 00:51:03,319
Speaker 3: thinking Jim may still be alive. As they're hauling, they

937
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:06,480
Speaker 3: actually say heave ho. And then as the body comes

938
00:51:06,480 --> 00:51:08,520
Speaker 3: into view, one of the climbers sees it, but the

939
00:51:08,560 --> 00:51:11,200
Speaker 3: other doesn't, and the one who sees it screams and

940
00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:13,680
Speaker 3: lets go of the rope, and this allows the body

941
00:51:13,680 --> 00:51:16,200
Speaker 3: to plunge down the side of the mountain. The other

942
00:51:16,200 --> 00:51:18,600
Speaker 3: climber says to him, you idiot, We almost had him,

943
00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:21,400
Speaker 3: and the first says, did you see his head?

944
00:51:21,920 --> 00:51:24,200
Speaker 1: It was torn off.

945
00:51:24,200 --> 00:51:27,560
Speaker 3: And the scream of torn off bleeds into the sound

946
00:51:27,640 --> 00:51:30,720
Speaker 3: of a locomotive horn, and suddenly we're on a train

947
00:51:30,920 --> 00:51:34,560
Speaker 3: somewhere else, rushing across the country, going through these ravines

948
00:51:34,640 --> 00:51:37,840
Speaker 3: and then black tunnels, and here we get a title

949
00:51:37,880 --> 00:51:40,960
Speaker 3: screen for The Crawling Eye. At least in the US release,

950
00:51:40,960 --> 00:51:43,120
Speaker 3: I don't know what the credits look like in the

951
00:51:43,160 --> 00:51:46,520
Speaker 3: British release, but a little observation on my second viewing,

952
00:51:46,920 --> 00:51:52,120
Speaker 3: the credit sequence here uses these high contrast arrow designs,

953
00:51:52,200 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 3: these like bold arrows going across the black background and

954
00:51:55,640 --> 00:51:59,359
Speaker 3: pointing to things, kind of similar to the clean arrow

955
00:51:59,400 --> 00:52:02,720
Speaker 3: motif see in the sole Bass credit sequence for Alfred

956
00:52:02,760 --> 00:52:07,160
Speaker 3: Hitchcock's north By Northwest, which came out a year after this. Now,

957
00:52:07,200 --> 00:52:10,560
Speaker 3: I am not saying that sall Bass and Hitchcock borrowed

958
00:52:10,600 --> 00:52:13,560
Speaker 3: from The Crawling Eye, but I'm saying I like these arrows.

959
00:52:13,680 --> 00:52:16,600
Speaker 3: They're very classy, modern. They feel kind of like the

960
00:52:16,640 --> 00:52:19,000
Speaker 3: credit design equivalent of an Eames chair.

961
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:24,360
Speaker 1: According to artofthetitle dot Com, this credit sequence is is uncredited.

962
00:52:24,400 --> 00:52:26,360
Speaker 1: We don't know who the title was who did the

963
00:52:26,360 --> 00:52:29,719
Speaker 1: title design here? So okay, wasn't so bass, but.

964
00:52:30,840 --> 00:52:32,879
Speaker 3: No, it's not as elegant. I want to be clear,

965
00:52:32,920 --> 00:52:35,880
Speaker 3: it's not as elegant and elaborate as the sell bass designs,

966
00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:39,520
Speaker 3: but it's still I like the little arrow theme. It's cool.

967
00:52:40,920 --> 00:52:43,920
Speaker 3: So after the credits, we join our three main characters

968
00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:46,400
Speaker 3: in a train card. They don't know each other yet though,

969
00:52:46,760 --> 00:52:49,440
Speaker 3: so we're in a passenger compartment and we have Forrest

970
00:52:49,480 --> 00:52:53,400
Speaker 3: Tucker as Alan Brooks, looking all of thirty nine. He's

971
00:52:53,440 --> 00:52:58,840
Speaker 3: a handsome, early middle aged man reading a newspaper, minding

972
00:52:58,880 --> 00:53:01,239
Speaker 3: his own business. And then on the other side of

973
00:53:01,280 --> 00:53:03,960
Speaker 3: the car we have Jennifer Jane and Janet Monroe as

974
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:08,040
Speaker 3: Sarah and Ann Pilgrim, who are sisters traveling together. When

975
00:53:08,040 --> 00:53:12,920
Speaker 3: we first see them, Anne is sleeping curled up against Sarah,

976
00:53:12,960 --> 00:53:16,120
Speaker 3: and though the two sisters seem to be fairly close

977
00:53:16,160 --> 00:53:18,360
Speaker 3: in age, there is kind of a feeling of Anne

978
00:53:18,360 --> 00:53:21,760
Speaker 3: being being like a child like snuggled up against a parent.

979
00:53:22,200 --> 00:53:25,080
Speaker 3: When she's leaning on Sarah here and she's having a

980
00:53:25,120 --> 00:53:28,720
Speaker 3: bad dream and she kind of groans and startles herself awake.

981
00:53:29,719 --> 00:53:32,919
Speaker 3: Sarah asks if she was dreaming, and Anne denies it,

982
00:53:33,480 --> 00:53:36,640
Speaker 3: and then as Anne slowly becomes more awake, they joke

983
00:53:36,680 --> 00:53:39,200
Speaker 3: about whether she was talking about men in her sleep.

984
00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:41,120
Speaker 3: I think we're supposed to get the idea here that

985
00:53:41,200 --> 00:53:43,760
Speaker 3: both of these ladies are single and ready to mingle.

986
00:53:44,480 --> 00:53:46,480
Speaker 3: I think all of the characters are single.

987
00:53:46,600 --> 00:53:49,680
Speaker 1: Probably, yeah, yeah, I think so. There's not that nobody's

988
00:53:49,680 --> 00:53:52,120
Speaker 1: discussing their home life all that much.

989
00:53:52,239 --> 00:53:54,200
Speaker 3: You wouldn't have a movie otherwise. All these adults are

990
00:53:54,200 --> 00:53:57,359
Speaker 3: ready to mingle anyway. Sarah points out that they can

991
00:53:57,400 --> 00:53:59,960
Speaker 3: now see the mountains out out of the train window,

992
00:54:00,200 --> 00:54:03,640
Speaker 3: and Anne gets up to look, and at first she

993
00:54:03,760 --> 00:54:06,879
Speaker 3: seems enraptured by the natural beauty. We see this kind

994
00:54:06,880 --> 00:54:11,239
Speaker 3: of angelic light fall over her face. But then as

995
00:54:11,320 --> 00:54:15,399
Speaker 3: she gazes up the slope of the Trollenberg and her

996
00:54:15,440 --> 00:54:19,920
Speaker 3: eyes kind of meet the snowy peak. Eerie music starts

997
00:54:19,960 --> 00:54:24,440
Speaker 3: to play, and her smile fades, and you think maybe

998
00:54:24,480 --> 00:54:27,359
Speaker 3: she's going to start frowning or looking unhappy, but it

999
00:54:27,440 --> 00:54:31,600
Speaker 3: doesn't turn into a frown. Instead, it turns into a blank,

1000
00:54:32,080 --> 00:54:35,760
Speaker 3: slackened expression, like she has lost control of her mind.

1001
00:54:36,320 --> 00:54:39,120
Speaker 3: Anne's eyes roll back and she sort of takes a

1002
00:54:39,160 --> 00:54:42,680
Speaker 3: step toward the door and then just suddenly collapses, falling

1003
00:54:42,719 --> 00:54:45,680
Speaker 3: across the lap of the man across from them. After

1004
00:54:45,719 --> 00:54:48,520
Speaker 3: a moment, she comes around and all is well again,

1005
00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:51,600
Speaker 3: and they all introduce themselves to each other, they become acquainted.

1006
00:54:52,239 --> 00:54:55,719
Speaker 3: Brooks offers and a flask to help her recover from

1007
00:54:55,760 --> 00:54:58,640
Speaker 3: her fainting episode. I love how in these old movies

1008
00:54:59,040 --> 00:55:02,239
Speaker 3: people seem to believe that hard liquor just has general

1009
00:55:02,320 --> 00:55:05,680
Speaker 3: medicinal qualities and it treats everything from the common cold

1010
00:55:05,719 --> 00:55:08,760
Speaker 3: to alien mind control. So he gives her the flask

1011
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:10,839
Speaker 3: and she's like, oh, great, thanks. It takes a big

1012
00:55:10,880 --> 00:55:12,759
Speaker 3: gulp and then her eyes bug out of her head

1013
00:55:12,760 --> 00:55:13,040
Speaker 3: a bit.

1014
00:55:13,440 --> 00:55:15,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, they hit the spirits really hard in this movie.

1015
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:18,840
Speaker 1: Seemingly the drop of a hat, they'll just suddenly have drinks,

1016
00:55:18,840 --> 00:55:20,560
Speaker 1: and it's like, maybe like ten in the morning.

1017
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:24,279
Speaker 3: Nobody really questions that it's good to just have a

1018
00:55:24,280 --> 00:55:28,560
Speaker 3: good belt to liquor before you go mountain climbing. So

1019
00:55:28,680 --> 00:55:31,839
Speaker 3: Sarah explains to Brooks that they're on the way to Geneva.

1020
00:55:32,360 --> 00:55:35,600
Speaker 3: Brooks is getting off at the next stop, this sleepy

1021
00:55:35,600 --> 00:55:40,000
Speaker 3: mountain village of Trollenberg. But suddenly something comes over Anne

1022
00:55:40,040 --> 00:55:42,400
Speaker 3: and she tells her sister that they have to get

1023
00:55:42,440 --> 00:55:45,680
Speaker 3: off at Trollenburg as well. And Sarah's like, no, no, no,

1024
00:55:45,680 --> 00:55:47,520
Speaker 3: what do you mean. We're going to Geneva. But Anne

1025
00:55:47,520 --> 00:55:51,000
Speaker 3: will not agree. She says she cannot travel any further today.

1026
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:53,279
Speaker 3: They've got to get off at the next stop and

1027
00:55:53,320 --> 00:55:57,120
Speaker 3: stay at the Hotel Europa. And again Sarah is confused.

1028
00:55:57,160 --> 00:55:59,640
Speaker 3: They've never been to this place. How does Anne know

1029
00:55:59,719 --> 00:56:03,320
Speaker 3: what hotel to go to? And Anne says she doesn't

1030
00:56:03,320 --> 00:56:05,600
Speaker 3: know how she knows, she just knows, and she is

1031
00:56:05,680 --> 00:56:08,919
Speaker 3: insistent they've got to get off at Trollenberg. No debating this,

1032
00:56:09,880 --> 00:56:13,400
Speaker 3: So fortunately enough, the Hotel Europa is also where Brooks

1033
00:56:13,480 --> 00:56:15,520
Speaker 3: is going, so they're kind of all just traveling together.

1034
00:56:16,440 --> 00:56:19,560
Speaker 3: So at the train station, our three characters meet up

1035
00:56:19,600 --> 00:56:22,960
Speaker 3: with Hair Klein, the proprietor of the Hotel Europa and

1036
00:56:23,000 --> 00:56:26,680
Speaker 3: also the mayor of Trollenberg. He is kind enough to

1037
00:56:26,760 --> 00:56:28,399
Speaker 3: put them up at the hotel, even though they don't

1038
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:31,840
Speaker 3: have reservations. Apparently there are very few tourists at the moment.

1039
00:56:32,640 --> 00:56:35,360
Speaker 3: And on the car ride to the hotel, Anne is

1040
00:56:35,400 --> 00:56:39,680
Speaker 3: staring intently out the window at the mountain. Brooks is

1041
00:56:39,680 --> 00:56:41,360
Speaker 3: in the middle of like trying to get everybody to

1042
00:56:41,360 --> 00:56:45,200
Speaker 3: smoke cigarettes, and Ann starts babbling about mountain climbers. She's

1043
00:56:45,200 --> 00:56:46,960
Speaker 3: saying they shouldn't have tried to go all the way

1044
00:56:47,040 --> 00:56:49,960
Speaker 3: up the mountain, the three English students, one of them

1045
00:56:50,040 --> 00:56:52,879
Speaker 3: was killed. She says, peasants are leaving the mountain. They

1046
00:56:52,880 --> 00:56:57,120
Speaker 3: say it's bad luck, and Kline seems to confirm that

1047
00:56:57,200 --> 00:57:00,000
Speaker 3: what Anne is saying is true, though he doesn't share

1048
00:57:00,320 --> 00:57:03,719
Speaker 3: the evaluation. Like he says that the superstitious worries of

1049
00:57:03,760 --> 00:57:07,080
Speaker 3: the mountain people should be ignored. But how does Anne

1050
00:57:07,080 --> 00:57:10,880
Speaker 3: know all this stuff? Curious now. Upon arriving at the

1051
00:57:10,880 --> 00:57:14,239
Speaker 3: hotel bar, we meet several more characters. We meet Hans

1052
00:57:14,320 --> 00:57:19,000
Speaker 3: played by Colin Douglas, the German speaking bartender. Hans at

1053
00:57:19,000 --> 00:57:21,920
Speaker 3: several points kind of clams up when people start asking

1054
00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:26,720
Speaker 3: questions about the accidents. He's kind of untrusting. We meet

1055
00:57:26,920 --> 00:57:30,360
Speaker 3: Philip Truscatt played by Lawrence Payne. This is the guy

1056
00:57:30,400 --> 00:57:33,240
Speaker 3: we mentioned earlier who was in the TV adaptation playing

1057
00:57:33,280 --> 00:57:36,880
Speaker 3: the same character. This is our darkly handsome and mysterious man.

1058
00:57:37,360 --> 00:57:39,080
Speaker 3: He's having a drink and a smoke at the bar

1059
00:57:39,160 --> 00:57:42,280
Speaker 3: when our heroes arrive. He will later be revealed as

1060
00:57:42,320 --> 00:57:46,000
Speaker 3: a newspaper reporter here on deep cover investigating the mountain

1061
00:57:46,040 --> 00:57:50,439
Speaker 3: missed tragedies. And then, to go ahead and round out

1062
00:57:50,520 --> 00:57:53,320
Speaker 3: the rest of the main cast list, we will also

1063
00:57:53,440 --> 00:57:57,720
Speaker 3: later meet Deuhurst. This is the rotund geology professor here

1064
00:57:57,760 --> 00:58:02,360
Speaker 3: to study the mountain, who is a wiry, laconic mountain

1065
00:58:02,440 --> 00:58:05,600
Speaker 3: guide who will be climbing the mountain with Dewhurst. And

1066
00:58:05,720 --> 00:58:09,000
Speaker 3: also the professor again we think his name is Krevit,

1067
00:58:09,000 --> 00:58:10,800
Speaker 3: at least that's what the wiki says. I don't remember

1068
00:58:10,840 --> 00:58:14,640
Speaker 3: what they call him. The professor a scientist who is

1069
00:58:15,600 --> 00:58:19,560
Speaker 3: again superficially resembling a kind of standard caricature of Einstein,

1070
00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:22,240
Speaker 3: but he's running the lab at the observatory on the

1071
00:58:22,240 --> 00:58:33,600
Speaker 3: mountain side. So here I think I'm going to maybe

1072
00:58:34,080 --> 00:58:36,080
Speaker 3: speak about the rest of the movie in a more

1073
00:58:36,080 --> 00:58:38,600
Speaker 3: summary way, and then we'll see if there's anything we

1074
00:58:38,680 --> 00:58:41,520
Speaker 3: want to come back and focus on in more detail.

1075
00:58:42,760 --> 00:58:45,840
Speaker 3: So from here, some of the main plot threads are

1076
00:58:45,880 --> 00:58:47,960
Speaker 3: that we see Alan Brooks. He goes up to the

1077
00:58:48,000 --> 00:58:50,440
Speaker 3: observatory by way of cable car up the side of

1078
00:58:50,480 --> 00:58:53,520
Speaker 3: the mountain to visit his old colleague, the professor, and

1079
00:58:53,680 --> 00:58:58,160
Speaker 3: they discuss the disturbing incidents on the mountain, like climbers

1080
00:58:58,280 --> 00:59:01,760
Speaker 3: keep disappearing without a trace. Plus there's the recent beheading

1081
00:59:01,880 --> 00:59:06,040
Speaker 3: of the English student on the mountain. Also Krevit explains

1082
00:59:06,040 --> 00:59:09,800
Speaker 3: to Brooks that there is a strange cloud which hovers

1083
00:59:09,880 --> 00:59:13,600
Speaker 3: on one side of the mountaintop, occasionally moving around, and

1084
00:59:13,760 --> 00:59:18,000
Speaker 3: the cloud they have figured out is radioactive. This is

1085
00:59:18,040 --> 00:59:21,160
Speaker 3: another hallmark of the nineteen fifties movie You gotta work

1086
00:59:21,160 --> 00:59:26,360
Speaker 3: our radioactive something in there. So there's some backstory between

1087
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:29,560
Speaker 3: these two. We learned that Brooks was also involved in

1088
00:59:29,560 --> 00:59:33,320
Speaker 3: investigating a similar incident in the Andes of South America

1089
00:59:33,440 --> 00:59:37,680
Speaker 3: several years before, which had some of the same features.

1090
00:59:37,840 --> 00:59:43,160
Speaker 3: There was a weird radioactive bank of fog around a mountaintop,

1091
00:59:43,560 --> 00:59:47,480
Speaker 3: and there were disappearances of climbers, But that case also

1092
00:59:47,600 --> 00:59:51,600
Speaker 3: had other features not yet seen here in Switzerland, Brooks

1093
00:59:51,640 --> 00:59:56,800
Speaker 3: mentions mental compulsion. Also in this meeting, the professor proudly

1094
00:59:56,800 --> 01:00:00,840
Speaker 3: shows off the observatory's defensive measures in cl a lot

1095
01:00:00,840 --> 01:00:04,520
Speaker 3: of like Chekhov's blast doors in this scene. So they've

1096
01:00:04,520 --> 01:00:07,120
Speaker 3: got like metal plates that you can roll down over

1097
01:00:07,120 --> 01:00:11,560
Speaker 3: the windows to shield themselves allegedly against an avalanche. Also,

1098
01:00:11,680 --> 01:00:15,560
Speaker 3: they have somehow got closed circuit TV cameras that can

1099
01:00:15,600 --> 01:00:19,240
Speaker 3: show you anywhere on the mountain at infinitely high resolution.

1100
01:00:19,960 --> 01:00:22,520
Speaker 3: I'm a little skeptical of some of these features, but

1101
01:00:22,560 --> 01:00:27,760
Speaker 3: the point is this obtemps to Yes, yeah, this observatory

1102
01:00:27,840 --> 01:00:32,120
Speaker 3: is basically a fortress. They also argue there's some funny

1103
01:00:32,120 --> 01:00:36,120
Speaker 3: stuff here where they're talking about his funding. The professors like, oh, yeah,

1104
01:00:36,160 --> 01:00:38,320
Speaker 3: the government, they just give me money to do whatever

1105
01:00:38,360 --> 01:00:41,560
Speaker 3: I want as long as I What are they arguing about.

1106
01:00:41,600 --> 01:00:43,880
Speaker 3: He's saying like, they won't give me money if I

1107
01:00:44,000 --> 01:00:46,840
Speaker 3: report that there's something weird happening here, but they will

1108
01:00:46,880 --> 01:00:51,960
Speaker 3: give me money for anything else. We also have these

1109
01:00:52,080 --> 01:00:55,760
Speaker 3: characters Dohurst and Brett. Again, Dohurst is the geologist and

1110
01:00:55,800 --> 01:00:58,960
Speaker 3: Brett is his mountain guide. They're they're gonna ascend the

1111
01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:02,000
Speaker 3: mountains so that do I believe he wants to collect

1112
01:01:02,080 --> 01:01:05,479
Speaker 3: samples for research. He's a geologist and he thinks maybe

1113
01:01:05,480 --> 01:01:07,800
Speaker 3: you can find something weird in the minerals up on

1114
01:01:07,840 --> 01:01:11,120
Speaker 3: the mountain that could explain something. So they're going to

1115
01:01:11,160 --> 01:01:13,000
Speaker 3: go up the mountain. Their plan is to camp the

1116
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:15,440
Speaker 3: first night of the ascent in a hut halfway up

1117
01:01:15,440 --> 01:01:18,840
Speaker 3: the mountain. They're doing a lot of drinking, like they

1118
01:01:18,920 --> 01:01:21,600
Speaker 3: drink before they leave. In the morning, the characters all

1119
01:01:21,640 --> 01:01:25,080
Speaker 3: gather around for just some scotch or whatever before they

1120
01:01:25,160 --> 01:01:27,840
Speaker 3: go up the mountain. They're also drinking a lot along

1121
01:01:27,880 --> 01:01:29,760
Speaker 3: the way and in the hut.

1122
01:01:29,600 --> 01:01:31,720
Speaker 1: But they do explain at least in passing, that this

1123
01:01:31,760 --> 01:01:34,440
Speaker 1: will keep them warm.

1124
01:01:35,200 --> 01:01:38,360
Speaker 3: Folks that ain't how it works. Also, there's a decent

1125
01:01:38,360 --> 01:01:41,600
Speaker 3: amount made of how Dohurst. He's very exuberant at the beginning,

1126
01:01:41,600 --> 01:01:44,600
Speaker 3: but like he's not cut out for mountain climbing, so

1127
01:01:44,600 --> 01:01:46,360
Speaker 3: when they make it up to the hut, he's really

1128
01:01:46,400 --> 01:01:52,960
Speaker 3: like not happy. Meanwhile, Anne continues to receive strange visions

1129
01:01:53,000 --> 01:01:57,120
Speaker 3: and inexplicable downloads of knowledge and information from the mountain,

1130
01:01:57,200 --> 01:01:59,720
Speaker 3: like she knows about all these things she should not.

1131
01:01:59,800 --> 01:02:02,040
Speaker 3: She knows about the climber's hut, she knows about the

1132
01:02:02,080 --> 01:02:06,320
Speaker 3: incidents of the previous weeks. At one point in the

1133
01:02:06,320 --> 01:02:09,200
Speaker 3: middle of the movie, after Dohurst and Brett have gone

1134
01:02:09,280 --> 01:02:12,040
Speaker 3: up to the hut to spend the night there, Sarah

1135
01:02:12,080 --> 01:02:16,080
Speaker 3: and Anne put on a demonstration of their mind reading

1136
01:02:16,160 --> 01:02:19,800
Speaker 3: act for the other guests at the hotel. Basically, Anne

1137
01:02:19,960 --> 01:02:23,440
Speaker 3: is the mind reader and Sarah is her assistant and

1138
01:02:24,240 --> 01:02:27,280
Speaker 3: successfully guesses a bunch of hidden objects. They do their

1139
01:02:27,320 --> 01:02:31,040
Speaker 3: standard tricks as we talked about earlier. Sarah explains to

1140
01:02:31,080 --> 01:02:35,240
Speaker 3: Brooks that they do not use any tricks or secret codes.

1141
01:02:35,400 --> 01:02:39,040
Speaker 3: They used to, but then they discovered that Anne actually

1142
01:02:39,200 --> 01:02:41,320
Speaker 3: is a mind reader, so they don't need to use

1143
01:02:41,320 --> 01:02:44,640
Speaker 3: any sleight of hand anyway. In the middle of this

1144
01:02:44,800 --> 01:02:48,040
Speaker 3: mind reading demonstration, Anne has another one of these mountain

1145
01:02:48,120 --> 01:02:51,080
Speaker 3: mind control episodes where she begins to see what is

1146
01:02:51,120 --> 01:02:55,840
Speaker 3: happening somehow to do Hurst and Brett in the climber's

1147
01:02:55,920 --> 01:03:00,360
Speaker 3: hut up on the mountain, and weirdly, she's almost looking

1148
01:03:00,560 --> 01:03:05,000
Speaker 3: as if from the perspective of a sort of a

1149
01:03:05,160 --> 01:03:08,560
Speaker 3: of a threatened third being up on the mountain that

1150
01:03:08,640 --> 01:03:12,080
Speaker 3: does not like their presence. So I think we're getting

1151
01:03:12,080 --> 01:03:16,720
Speaker 3: some channeling of the crawling eyes mindset, I mindset coming

1152
01:03:16,760 --> 01:03:18,600
Speaker 3: through the and mind reader.

1153
01:03:18,800 --> 01:03:21,480
Speaker 1: Yeah. And this, this scene and many like it in

1154
01:03:21,480 --> 01:03:27,080
Speaker 1: the picture are legitimately unsettling. I think these really held up.

1155
01:03:27,360 --> 01:03:32,120
Speaker 3: Yeah. So in this scene, Brett, the climber, for some

1156
01:03:32,520 --> 01:03:36,040
Speaker 3: inexplicable reason, decides to open up the cabin door and

1157
01:03:36,200 --> 01:03:39,840
Speaker 3: walk outside, and he disappears into the night, and then

1158
01:03:39,880 --> 01:03:43,000
Speaker 3: the cloud of radioactive myst comes down to surround the

1159
01:03:43,080 --> 01:03:46,080
Speaker 3: hut with Dewhurst still in it. The minute at the hotel,

1160
01:03:46,160 --> 01:03:49,800
Speaker 3: after hearing AND's channeling of what's going on up there.

1161
01:03:49,840 --> 01:03:52,040
Speaker 3: They telephone the hut. There is a telephone up there,

1162
01:03:52,080 --> 01:03:55,959
Speaker 3: it's connected by phone line, and Dohurst answers. Not knowing

1163
01:03:55,960 --> 01:04:00,280
Speaker 3: where Brett disappeared to, Dohurst becomes frightened and and then

1164
01:04:00,320 --> 01:04:03,720
Speaker 3: he screams as something seems to be entering the cabin door,

1165
01:04:03,800 --> 01:04:06,480
Speaker 3: and then they lose the call. So it's time for

1166
01:04:06,560 --> 01:04:08,480
Speaker 3: a search party. Got to have a search party and

1167
01:04:08,520 --> 01:04:12,720
Speaker 3: a good mountain movie. The remaining characters organize into a

1168
01:04:12,760 --> 01:04:15,320
Speaker 3: couple of parties to scour the mountain and find out

1169
01:04:15,360 --> 01:04:19,000
Speaker 3: what happened to Dohurst and Brett. Dohurst is found in

1170
01:04:19,080 --> 01:04:21,880
Speaker 3: the cabin without a head, and this is one of

1171
01:04:21,920 --> 01:04:23,680
Speaker 3: the scenes of shocking. Gore.

1172
01:04:23,840 --> 01:04:27,640
Speaker 1: I thought, yeah, absolutely, yeah, the gross, gross thing.

1173
01:04:27,920 --> 01:04:33,240
Speaker 3: It's wet. Yeah. Brett is spotted somewhere elsewhere on the

1174
01:04:33,240 --> 01:04:35,800
Speaker 3: mountain with the aid of an airplane. But when a

1175
01:04:35,840 --> 01:04:39,360
Speaker 3: couple of the mountaineers make it to his location, first

1176
01:04:39,400 --> 01:04:42,680
Speaker 3: of all, they discover that his backpack has a human

1177
01:04:42,760 --> 01:04:43,320
Speaker 3: head in it.

1178
01:04:43,880 --> 01:04:45,960
Speaker 1: And then and you know that backpack is going to

1179
01:04:46,000 --> 01:04:48,680
Speaker 1: have a human head. Like the West. They're just setting

1180
01:04:48,720 --> 01:04:52,800
Speaker 1: there ominously and they're they're stalking up to it, and yeah,

1181
01:04:53,200 --> 01:04:55,760
Speaker 1: it was. It was. This was also a highly effective I.

1182
01:04:55,760 --> 01:04:58,000
Speaker 3: Thought, well, the way it shot, it's like the camera's

1183
01:04:58,040 --> 01:05:00,240
Speaker 3: on the backpack and he's reaching up to p fell

1184
01:05:00,240 --> 01:05:02,720
Speaker 3: away the flap. It's like, what were we going to

1185
01:05:02,760 --> 01:05:09,080
Speaker 3: see in there? But then after this, Brett appears and

1186
01:05:09,400 --> 01:05:12,960
Speaker 3: attacks the rescuers with a climbing axe. So something has

1187
01:05:13,000 --> 01:05:16,760
Speaker 3: happened to Brett. Brett was not like this before. In

1188
01:05:16,800 --> 01:05:19,000
Speaker 3: the middle of the movie, there's also this thing where

1189
01:05:19,160 --> 01:05:23,160
Speaker 3: Anne is she's sort of losing control of herself and

1190
01:05:23,240 --> 01:05:26,760
Speaker 3: she is being compelled by this outside force to try

1191
01:05:26,800 --> 01:05:30,400
Speaker 3: to ascend the mountain alone as she goes into a

1192
01:05:30,520 --> 01:05:33,320
Speaker 3: kind of trance like state, and she takes the cable

1193
01:05:33,400 --> 01:05:36,120
Speaker 3: car up to the observatory and she tries to go

1194
01:05:36,240 --> 01:05:39,200
Speaker 3: up further, presumably up to the cloud, but she is

1195
01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:42,600
Speaker 3: intercepted by other characters and guided back to the hotel.

1196
01:05:43,440 --> 01:05:46,920
Speaker 3: Then at the hotel we get the return of Brett.

1197
01:05:47,360 --> 01:05:51,320
Speaker 3: So we're at the bar and unexpectedly, Brett, the lost mountaineer,

1198
01:05:51,400 --> 01:05:56,160
Speaker 3: staggers in from the cold. He seems dazed and uncoordinated,

1199
01:05:56,520 --> 01:05:58,800
Speaker 3: just saying that he got lost and he's just now

1200
01:05:59,040 --> 01:06:01,640
Speaker 3: was able to make it back and does. Everyone watches.

1201
01:06:01,680 --> 01:06:04,440
Speaker 3: Brett tries to pour himself a drink and light a cigarette,

1202
01:06:04,440 --> 01:06:07,480
Speaker 3: but he can't do it without assistance to steady his hands.

1203
01:06:08,120 --> 01:06:11,520
Speaker 3: In the middle of this interaction, Anne Pilgrim comes down

1204
01:06:11,560 --> 01:06:13,800
Speaker 3: to the lobby to join the group, and as soon

1205
01:06:13,840 --> 01:06:16,960
Speaker 3: as Brett sees her, he turns violent and he tries

1206
01:06:17,000 --> 01:06:19,640
Speaker 3: to lunge at her with a knife. Fortunately, he is

1207
01:06:19,720 --> 01:06:23,680
Speaker 3: subdued and knocked unconscious by Brooks and Truscott, and they

1208
01:06:23,720 --> 01:06:25,720
Speaker 3: lock him up in some kind of dungeon in the

1209
01:06:25,760 --> 01:06:27,840
Speaker 3: basement of the hotel. Maybe it's supposed to be a

1210
01:06:27,840 --> 01:06:28,560
Speaker 3: wine cellar.

1211
01:06:28,840 --> 01:06:32,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, maybe, so your standard issue dungeon.

1212
01:06:32,600 --> 01:06:36,720
Speaker 3: Strangely, despite the fact that Brett is cut in the scuffle,

1213
01:06:36,840 --> 01:06:38,400
Speaker 3: or I don't know if he was already cut. I

1214
01:06:38,440 --> 01:06:40,600
Speaker 3: think he's supposed to be cut in the scuffle, he

1215
01:06:40,640 --> 01:06:44,720
Speaker 3: does not bleed at all. And Brooks ends up relating

1216
01:06:44,760 --> 01:06:48,440
Speaker 3: this to what happened during the previous incidents in the Andes.

1217
01:06:48,560 --> 01:06:50,960
Speaker 3: They say there was a man when there was this

1218
01:06:51,040 --> 01:06:53,360
Speaker 3: cloud in the Andes, there was a man who was

1219
01:06:53,400 --> 01:06:58,520
Speaker 3: presumed dead and then reappeared to murder a local witch

1220
01:06:58,720 --> 01:07:02,800
Speaker 3: in the mountains there who had psychic powers. And then

1221
01:07:03,000 --> 01:07:05,240
Speaker 3: it turns out that they do an autopsy of the

1222
01:07:05,280 --> 01:07:08,320
Speaker 3: man and they find out he had already been dead

1223
01:07:08,440 --> 01:07:11,280
Speaker 3: for days before he appeared to do the murder. So

1224
01:07:11,360 --> 01:07:13,680
Speaker 3: this is some plann nine from outer space stuff. It

1225
01:07:13,760 --> 01:07:18,000
Speaker 3: is reanimation of the dead as zombie assassins, and they

1226
01:07:18,000 --> 01:07:20,480
Speaker 3: are going after Earth's precious psychics.

1227
01:07:21,080 --> 01:07:23,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's this is such an interesting threat in

1228
01:07:23,640 --> 01:07:27,600
Speaker 1: this picture that is not fully explored, like why are

1229
01:07:27,640 --> 01:07:30,600
Speaker 1: the psychics considered such a threat? In fact, they seem

1230
01:07:30,640 --> 01:07:32,560
Speaker 1: to be the only for the most part, they're the

1231
01:07:32,600 --> 01:07:36,760
Speaker 1: only thing deemed a threat by the aliens. They're otherwise otherwise,

1232
01:07:36,760 --> 01:07:39,600
Speaker 1: they seem happy to live about in high altitude clouds

1233
01:07:40,000 --> 01:07:42,760
Speaker 1: and just kill the occasional mountaineer and so forth, at

1234
01:07:42,840 --> 01:07:45,280
Speaker 1: least for now. Who knows what their long term plans are.

1235
01:07:45,480 --> 01:07:48,480
Speaker 3: Well, the explanation the characters eventually land on is that

1236
01:07:48,560 --> 01:07:53,360
Speaker 3: the psychics, because they can connect mentally to the aliens

1237
01:07:53,400 --> 01:07:57,480
Speaker 3: and the clouds, are able to provide information to the

1238
01:07:57,560 --> 01:08:00,920
Speaker 3: humans that would potentially stop the alien and from succeeding

1239
01:08:01,000 --> 01:08:05,080
Speaker 3: in their invasion, because otherwise the Earthlings are going to

1240
01:08:05,120 --> 01:08:08,600
Speaker 3: be you know, caught by surprise. But the psychics can

1241
01:08:08,640 --> 01:08:10,440
Speaker 3: give them advance warning.

1242
01:08:10,600 --> 01:08:12,720
Speaker 1: So ultimately as a privacy issue.

1243
01:08:12,440 --> 01:08:15,520
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, But anyway, in the middle of the night,

1244
01:08:15,840 --> 01:08:19,120
Speaker 3: Brett wakes up and he escapes the wine dungeon. There's

1245
01:08:19,120 --> 01:08:20,960
Speaker 3: a creepy thing where he like reaches out through a

1246
01:08:20,960 --> 01:08:24,680
Speaker 3: hole in the door and strangles the guy. And then

1247
01:08:24,720 --> 01:08:27,080
Speaker 3: he tries to kill Ann in the middle of the night,

1248
01:08:27,200 --> 01:08:30,040
Speaker 3: but she's rescued when Brooks shoots him before he can

1249
01:08:30,120 --> 01:08:32,960
Speaker 3: hurt her. And then there's a there's a cool effect

1250
01:08:33,120 --> 01:08:36,200
Speaker 3: where there's like a rapid decomp effect on Brett's arm

1251
01:08:36,320 --> 01:08:40,120
Speaker 3: I think caused by like after the mind control thing

1252
01:08:40,240 --> 01:08:43,360
Speaker 3: is broken on his zombie corpse, he like rapidly breaks

1253
01:08:43,400 --> 01:08:46,519
Speaker 3: down in the heat of the hotel. Anyway, we move

1254
01:08:46,560 --> 01:08:48,800
Speaker 3: on to the final act where in the final act

1255
01:08:49,080 --> 01:08:52,839
Speaker 3: they discovered that the cloud is now descending the mountain.

1256
01:08:53,120 --> 01:08:55,240
Speaker 3: It has been up there and now it is coming

1257
01:08:55,280 --> 01:08:58,800
Speaker 3: down here. And so our characters who are in the

1258
01:08:58,840 --> 01:09:02,040
Speaker 3: no develop a theory. Basically, they think it's got to

1259
01:09:02,080 --> 01:09:04,720
Speaker 3: be aliens. At one point they say what else could

1260
01:09:04,760 --> 01:09:09,000
Speaker 3: it be? Yeah, yeah, okay, so it's aliens, And they

1261
01:09:09,040 --> 01:09:13,600
Speaker 3: figure out maybe the aliens have to adapt themselves to

1262
01:09:13,920 --> 01:09:18,439
Speaker 3: our atmosphere on mountaintops where the air is thinner, and

1263
01:09:18,479 --> 01:09:22,360
Speaker 3: then as they gradually acclimate to our atmosphere, they can

1264
01:09:22,400 --> 01:09:25,640
Speaker 3: move on down and attack us where we live. I

1265
01:09:25,640 --> 01:09:27,720
Speaker 3: thought that was kind of cool because that's an inversion

1266
01:09:27,800 --> 01:09:30,760
Speaker 3: of like the you know, the mountaintop acclamation that like,

1267
01:09:30,800 --> 01:09:33,320
Speaker 3: if you're going up to a very high altitude, you

1268
01:09:33,400 --> 01:09:36,080
Speaker 3: need to spend some time at a kind of middle

1269
01:09:36,120 --> 01:09:39,040
Speaker 3: altitude to get used to it and allow your body

1270
01:09:39,080 --> 01:09:42,479
Speaker 3: to adjust. And so they're imagining the aliens are doing

1271
01:09:42,520 --> 01:09:43,720
Speaker 3: the exact opposite thing.

1272
01:09:44,280 --> 01:09:46,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I like this idea.

1273
01:09:47,240 --> 01:09:49,759
Speaker 3: So, knowing that the aliens are coming down to the hotel,

1274
01:09:49,880 --> 01:09:53,320
Speaker 3: the characters organize a retreat to the only defensible position,

1275
01:09:53,560 --> 01:09:58,840
Speaker 3: the fortress observatory with the blast doors. Yeah. So there's

1276
01:09:58,880 --> 01:10:03,559
Speaker 3: an evacuation scene at the hotel where Brooks is organizing

1277
01:10:03,600 --> 01:10:05,400
Speaker 3: everybody to get in the cable cars and go up

1278
01:10:05,439 --> 01:10:08,080
Speaker 3: to the fortress. I think one group of people goes

1279
01:10:08,200 --> 01:10:12,200
Speaker 3: up first, and then Brooks is staying behind and realizes

1280
01:10:12,280 --> 01:10:15,080
Speaker 3: that there's like a mother with a little girl there

1281
01:10:15,439 --> 01:10:17,400
Speaker 3: and they were supposed to be part of the evacuation,

1282
01:10:17,520 --> 01:10:20,439
Speaker 3: but the mother can't find her child, and they deduced

1283
01:10:20,479 --> 01:10:23,000
Speaker 3: that the child has gone back to the hotel because

1284
01:10:23,040 --> 01:10:26,040
Speaker 3: she left her ball in the lobby. Uh oh, child

1285
01:10:26,080 --> 01:10:29,559
Speaker 3: in peril. So Brooks runs to the rescue, and here

1286
01:10:29,600 --> 01:10:33,519
Speaker 3: we get the reveal of a great eyeball monster mounted

1287
01:10:33,560 --> 01:10:37,920
Speaker 3: on a brain chassis coming in with tentacles waving all

1288
01:10:37,960 --> 01:10:40,840
Speaker 3: over the place and smoke billowing out around it, and

1289
01:10:40,880 --> 01:10:43,400
Speaker 3: it attacks basically the front door of the hotel. That

1290
01:10:43,520 --> 01:10:45,839
Speaker 3: goes right to the front door and blows it open,

1291
01:10:46,200 --> 01:10:48,320
Speaker 3: and the kids there trying to get the ball and

1292
01:10:48,360 --> 01:10:51,000
Speaker 3: the alien. I guess it's going to eat her or whatever.

1293
01:10:51,280 --> 01:10:53,439
Speaker 3: But then Brooks arrives just in the nick of time

1294
01:10:53,479 --> 01:10:56,599
Speaker 3: and hacks off one of the tentacles and rescues the child.

1295
01:10:57,520 --> 01:11:01,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, the eyeball especially is very convincing. It just feel

1296
01:11:01,160 --> 01:11:04,240
Speaker 1: it does feel to me anyway, very organic, very real,

1297
01:11:04,280 --> 01:11:07,840
Speaker 1: like I'm looking at some sort of a bizarre living creature.

1298
01:11:09,360 --> 01:11:12,120
Speaker 1: The tentacles are maybe a little less convincing and various,

1299
01:11:12,200 --> 01:11:15,559
Speaker 1: but still still as far as tentical effects go for

1300
01:11:15,800 --> 01:11:18,000
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, is still pretty solid.

1301
01:11:18,160 --> 01:11:21,000
Speaker 3: There was a scene where I thought the suspense kind

1302
01:11:21,000 --> 01:11:23,240
Speaker 3: of worked pretty good where they're in the cable car

1303
01:11:23,320 --> 01:11:25,400
Speaker 3: trying to make it up to the observatory and the

1304
01:11:27,040 --> 01:11:29,760
Speaker 3: fog bank makes it up to the bottom station where

1305
01:11:29,760 --> 01:11:33,280
Speaker 3: the car comes in. And they've established earlier that these

1306
01:11:33,320 --> 01:11:37,840
Speaker 3: creatures can freeze like telephone wires and cause them to

1307
01:11:37,880 --> 01:11:40,920
Speaker 3: crystallize and shatter. And you can tell they're trying to

1308
01:11:41,000 --> 01:11:44,200
Speaker 3: freeze out the cable that's guiding the car to cause

1309
01:11:44,240 --> 01:11:47,519
Speaker 3: it to break, and really looks like it's going to happen.

1310
01:11:47,560 --> 01:11:49,800
Speaker 3: But they do manage to make it up to the observatory,

1311
01:11:50,439 --> 01:11:54,559
Speaker 3: and up there they basically agree that, okay, heat is

1312
01:11:54,600 --> 01:11:57,559
Speaker 3: their weakness. We know that they don't like heat, so

1313
01:11:58,040 --> 01:11:59,640
Speaker 3: let's get them with fire. You got to make them

1314
01:11:59,640 --> 01:12:02,080
Speaker 3: all cocktails, that's right.

1315
01:12:02,160 --> 01:12:04,880
Speaker 1: This is where they learned that, yes, we can defeat

1316
01:12:04,920 --> 01:12:10,280
Speaker 1: the alien menace by just lobbing flames at them. And

1317
01:12:10,680 --> 01:12:13,280
Speaker 1: this is pretty much how it goes from there on out,

1318
01:12:13,520 --> 01:12:17,960
Speaker 1: throwing Molotov cocktails at the enemy and then realizing, well,

1319
01:12:18,000 --> 01:12:20,040
Speaker 1: what we should probably bring the military in on this

1320
01:12:20,080 --> 01:12:24,040
Speaker 1: as well. Let's have them fire bomb the observatory that

1321
01:12:24,120 --> 01:12:27,920
Speaker 1: we are in in order to destroy the alien threat.

1322
01:12:28,160 --> 01:12:30,040
Speaker 3: The walls are thick enough that we'll be safe.

1323
01:12:30,320 --> 01:12:32,439
Speaker 1: Yes, they do establish that, but it's still it's a

1324
01:12:32,479 --> 01:12:37,120
Speaker 1: little fun calling the airstrike, what location right here? Also

1325
01:12:37,160 --> 01:12:40,000
Speaker 1: the cloud. There's some arguing back and forth with the pilot.

1326
01:12:40,040 --> 01:12:41,439
Speaker 1: He's like, you want me to bomb a cloud and

1327
01:12:41,479 --> 01:12:42,759
Speaker 1: they're like, yes, bomb the cloud.

1328
01:12:43,080 --> 01:12:45,839
Speaker 3: He's giving orders on the radio to the pilot bomb

1329
01:12:45,880 --> 01:12:46,320
Speaker 3: the cloud.

1330
01:12:46,600 --> 01:12:48,280
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1331
01:12:48,520 --> 01:12:52,120
Speaker 3: And it's kind of like Tarantulas. There were a bunch

1332
01:12:52,200 --> 01:12:54,439
Speaker 3: of movies like this in the fifties where there's this

1333
01:12:54,560 --> 01:12:57,479
Speaker 3: monster they're debating like, how can we possibly beat in

1334
01:12:57,560 --> 01:12:59,919
Speaker 3: the discover In the end the answer is bombs.

1335
01:13:00,439 --> 01:13:03,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I call it. The military air strike just

1336
01:13:03,479 --> 01:13:05,240
Speaker 1: takes care of it, cleans it all up. At the end,

1337
01:13:05,840 --> 01:13:09,559
Speaker 1: you are safe, you are protected. But I do think

1338
01:13:09,600 --> 01:13:12,960
Speaker 1: it would have been interesting, and I think in another

1339
01:13:13,040 --> 01:13:16,519
Speaker 1: era you would have seen this, let's see and defeat

1340
01:13:16,560 --> 01:13:19,800
Speaker 1: the aliens with those psychic powers, which I guess they've

1341
01:13:19,880 --> 01:13:22,599
Speaker 1: established that psychic powers are only a threat to them,

1342
01:13:22,640 --> 01:13:25,720
Speaker 1: like you said, because they reveal the alien's secrets. It's

1343
01:13:25,760 --> 01:13:28,040
Speaker 1: a privacy issue. But what if there was more to that?

1344
01:13:28,240 --> 01:13:31,559
Speaker 1: If what if there was a possibility there that human

1345
01:13:31,600 --> 01:13:34,439
Speaker 1: psychics didn't even realize that they could just like with

1346
01:13:34,600 --> 01:13:39,040
Speaker 1: a particularly potent thought, you know, explode the large brains

1347
01:13:39,080 --> 01:13:43,519
Speaker 1: of these creatures. You know the psycho much yes, scanners

1348
01:13:43,560 --> 01:13:44,040
Speaker 1: them to death?

1349
01:13:44,120 --> 01:13:47,240
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah yeah? Or what if the mind control went

1350
01:13:47,280 --> 01:13:50,200
Speaker 3: two ways? What if Ann Pilgrim could make the aliens

1351
01:13:50,320 --> 01:13:52,719
Speaker 3: like launch themselves off the mountain side or something.

1352
01:13:52,920 --> 01:13:56,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that would have been interesting. But instead we

1353
01:13:56,400 --> 01:13:59,280
Speaker 1: get the air strike, which is you know, fitting of

1354
01:13:59,360 --> 01:14:01,120
Speaker 1: the air There's.

1355
01:14:00,960 --> 01:14:03,360
Speaker 3: One more cool thing in the in the final scene,

1356
01:14:03,400 --> 01:14:06,639
Speaker 3: which is remember the character Hans the bartender. They say

1357
01:14:06,680 --> 01:14:09,240
Speaker 3: he takes one of the cars and he's trying to

1358
01:14:09,360 --> 01:14:11,120
Speaker 3: At first, he's like, no, I'm not going up to

1359
01:14:11,160 --> 01:14:13,560
Speaker 3: the observatory. He's trying to high tail it out of

1360
01:14:13,560 --> 01:14:16,160
Speaker 3: the valley and they see him drive into the fog

1361
01:14:16,240 --> 01:14:19,880
Speaker 3: bank and like, whoops, okay, no more Hans. But then

1362
01:14:19,880 --> 01:14:23,759
Speaker 3: he reappears later he's at the observatory. He's like, I'm fine, Actually,

1363
01:14:24,360 --> 01:14:26,439
Speaker 3: can I Where's Anne? I'm looking for her.

1364
01:14:27,040 --> 01:14:30,200
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we give one more psychic assassin attempt by

1365
01:14:30,200 --> 01:14:32,959
Speaker 1: the aliens, and this one is also pretty tense and effective.

1366
01:14:33,160 --> 01:14:35,639
Speaker 3: Yeah, he almost gets her, but then she is rescued

1367
01:14:35,680 --> 01:14:39,759
Speaker 3: once again by Brooks and Truscott. And then so after

1368
01:14:39,920 --> 01:14:43,280
Speaker 3: they defeat the the eye creatures in the end, I

1369
01:14:43,320 --> 01:14:45,960
Speaker 3: don't know, is it kind of implied that that maybe

1370
01:14:46,080 --> 01:14:49,040
Speaker 3: Anne Pilgrim and Philip Truscott are going to be an item,

1371
01:14:49,240 --> 01:14:53,439
Speaker 3: and maybe maybe Sarah Pilgrim and Alan Brooks are gonna

1372
01:14:53,520 --> 01:14:57,040
Speaker 3: be an item too. I think so, I implied romance.

1373
01:14:57,160 --> 01:15:00,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we're left to do the assumed match making

1374
01:15:00,800 --> 01:15:03,200
Speaker 1: on our own. But it's like, oh, these these kids

1375
01:15:03,240 --> 01:15:08,120
Speaker 1: are all young, let's uh, they should they should get together,

1376
01:15:08,200 --> 01:15:11,360
Speaker 1: settle down. The alien threat is defeated. Now it's time

1377
01:15:11,400 --> 01:15:12,439
Speaker 1: to start a family.

1378
01:15:13,040 --> 01:15:17,960
Speaker 3: They'll they'll become part of the un Investigative Psychic mind

1379
01:15:18,000 --> 01:15:18,599
Speaker 3: reading Team.

1380
01:15:19,240 --> 01:15:21,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I think based on what they've established, like

1381
01:15:21,640 --> 01:15:24,600
Speaker 1: the threat's not over. There are other mountainous regions of

1382
01:15:24,640 --> 01:15:29,400
Speaker 1: the world where these creatures may be taking up residents

1383
01:15:29,439 --> 01:15:32,000
Speaker 1: and they need to be defeated. We need somebody out

1384
01:15:32,000 --> 01:15:34,160
Speaker 1: there with psychic abilities to figure out where they are,

1385
01:15:34,240 --> 01:15:36,040
Speaker 1: and then someone else to call in the air strikes

1386
01:15:36,040 --> 01:15:36,599
Speaker 1: to deal with them.

1387
01:15:36,680 --> 01:15:39,240
Speaker 3: Did you read the same trivia claim I did that

1388
01:15:39,680 --> 01:15:42,559
Speaker 3: John Carpenter said he was inspired to do the movie

1389
01:15:42,600 --> 01:15:44,320
Speaker 3: The Fog by this movie.

1390
01:15:44,640 --> 01:15:47,440
Speaker 1: Oh. I didn't run across that, but it's not surprising

1391
01:15:47,840 --> 01:15:50,000
Speaker 1: because again, this is a highly effective film, and I

1392
01:15:50,000 --> 01:15:51,760
Speaker 1: know a lot of people loved it back in the

1393
01:15:51,840 --> 01:15:55,000
Speaker 1: day I did read. I don't remember this from my

1394
01:15:55,120 --> 01:15:58,160
Speaker 1: reading of the novel, but in Stephen King's It there

1395
01:15:58,240 --> 01:16:01,599
Speaker 1: is a reference to the crawling eye. I think, yeah,

1396
01:16:01,640 --> 01:16:03,400
Speaker 1: one of one of the kids is frightened by one

1397
01:16:03,439 --> 01:16:06,559
Speaker 1: of the sequences in it. You know, so it you

1398
01:16:06,600 --> 01:16:08,640
Speaker 1: know it's it's it stood the test of time for

1399
01:16:08,680 --> 01:16:09,080
Speaker 1: a reason.

1400
01:16:09,320 --> 01:16:12,000
Speaker 3: Though, there's a thing that I think works better in

1401
01:16:12,080 --> 01:16:15,519
Speaker 3: this movie than it does in The Fog. Actually, this

1402
01:16:15,640 --> 01:16:18,720
Speaker 3: is always so I've always had a love hate relationship

1403
01:16:18,800 --> 01:16:21,320
Speaker 3: with John Carpenter's The Fog. I really really like a

1404
01:16:21,360 --> 01:16:23,479
Speaker 3: lot of things about it. The ghost story told at

1405
01:16:23,520 --> 01:16:26,840
Speaker 3: the beginning is fantastic, and a lot of the atmospherics

1406
01:16:26,840 --> 01:16:29,080
Speaker 3: in it are just wonderful, as the FOG's rolling through

1407
01:16:29,080 --> 01:16:31,320
Speaker 3: town and we see all the kind of poltergeist effects,

1408
01:16:31,320 --> 01:16:33,800
Speaker 3: and yeah, there's so much about it that works really well.

1409
01:16:34,120 --> 01:16:36,400
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, I felt like it it

1410
01:16:36,720 --> 01:16:40,519
Speaker 3: feels like it never quite comes together as a story

1411
01:16:40,880 --> 01:16:43,519
Speaker 3: all that much. There's something kind of lacking in terms

1412
01:16:43,520 --> 01:16:45,439
Speaker 3: of like, I don't know, maybe it needs more of

1413
01:16:45,479 --> 01:16:47,920
Speaker 3: a main character with more of a struggle or something,

1414
01:16:48,000 --> 01:16:50,439
Speaker 3: and so I've thought about that before, but Another thing

1415
01:16:50,840 --> 01:16:53,880
Speaker 3: in it that never quite worked for me is the

1416
01:16:54,439 --> 01:16:57,719
Speaker 3: radio announcer character played by Adrian Barbo, who's like calling

1417
01:16:57,760 --> 01:17:00,920
Speaker 3: out to the to the characters over the radio where

1418
01:17:00,960 --> 01:17:03,360
Speaker 3: the fog is in town. Something about the mechanics of

1419
01:17:03,400 --> 01:17:06,120
Speaker 3: that just never made sense, like, oh the fog is

1420
01:17:06,120 --> 01:17:08,679
Speaker 3: there now, Oh it's there now. It makes more sense

1421
01:17:08,720 --> 01:17:11,240
Speaker 3: in this movie when you're like you have an observatory

1422
01:17:11,320 --> 01:17:14,000
Speaker 3: that's watching where the fog is going, like on a

1423
01:17:14,080 --> 01:17:17,960
Speaker 3: mountaintop versus going down in the valley. That kind of

1424
01:17:18,000 --> 01:17:20,519
Speaker 3: reads better, I think than the like street to street

1425
01:17:21,000 --> 01:17:23,240
Speaker 3: fog navigation assistance.

1426
01:17:23,560 --> 01:17:26,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. John Carpenter's the fog

1427
01:17:26,160 --> 01:17:27,880
Speaker 1: of film that I think I only ever saw once.

1428
01:17:27,960 --> 01:17:30,920
Speaker 1: And I like the music and I like the fog

1429
01:17:31,000 --> 01:17:34,439
Speaker 1: pirate effects. Yeah, but I just have never gone back

1430
01:17:34,479 --> 01:17:35,080
Speaker 1: to rewatch it.

1431
01:17:35,479 --> 01:17:37,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, mixed feelings about it, but the strong elements are

1432
01:17:38,000 --> 01:17:40,840
Speaker 3: really strong. I can't believe I didn't mention the music obviously. Yes,

1433
01:17:40,880 --> 01:17:42,480
Speaker 3: the music is fantastic.

1434
01:17:42,960 --> 01:17:45,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, the fog monsters are great. And you know,

1435
01:17:45,720 --> 01:17:48,639
Speaker 1: having mentioned Stephen King, I can only imagine that this film,

1436
01:17:48,720 --> 01:17:52,439
Speaker 1: at least in some small way, helped inspire his novella

1437
01:17:52,600 --> 01:17:56,760
Speaker 1: The Mist, Fog, Monsters, Missed Monsters. There's overlap there.

1438
01:17:57,760 --> 01:17:59,479
Speaker 3: Maybe we should do an episode on the Fog at

1439
01:17:59,479 --> 01:18:01,760
Speaker 3: some point. That could be a good Halloween season one.

1440
01:18:02,040 --> 01:18:04,519
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Pirate Day. I don't know. I forget what

1441
01:18:04,600 --> 01:18:07,120
Speaker 1: day Pirate Day falls, but I don't think we've done

1442
01:18:07,120 --> 01:18:07,880
Speaker 1: a proper pirate mo.

1443
01:18:08,080 --> 01:18:09,800
Speaker 3: Is Pirate Day? Is that different from talk like a

1444
01:18:09,840 --> 01:18:10,400
Speaker 3: Pirate Day?

1445
01:18:10,560 --> 01:18:12,880
Speaker 1: That that is what I'm thinking of? Talk like a pirate.

1446
01:18:14,640 --> 01:18:15,760
Speaker 3: I don't know when that is either?

1447
01:18:15,920 --> 01:18:16,640
Speaker 1: No, I don't need it.

1448
01:18:17,520 --> 01:18:20,840
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, r Maybe are we done here?

1449
01:18:20,960 --> 01:18:23,599
Speaker 1: I believe we are, But are we done? We'd love

1450
01:18:23,640 --> 01:18:25,439
Speaker 1: to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts

1451
01:18:25,479 --> 01:18:28,600
Speaker 1: on this film. At what point you were introduced to it?

1452
01:18:29,760 --> 01:18:32,879
Speaker 1: MSD three K fans definitely right in about the crawling.

1453
01:18:32,960 --> 01:18:35,439
Speaker 1: I just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind

1454
01:18:35,479 --> 01:18:38,080
Speaker 1: is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes

1455
01:18:38,080 --> 01:18:40,439
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside

1456
01:18:40,479 --> 01:18:42,519
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film

1457
01:18:42,600 --> 01:18:44,960
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema. You can find a full list

1458
01:18:44,960 --> 01:18:47,640
Speaker 1: of all the episodes we've covered over the years at Letterboxed.

1459
01:18:48,160 --> 01:18:50,160
Speaker 1: Our user name there is weird House, and you can

1460
01:18:50,200 --> 01:18:53,799
Speaker 1: also look up Weird House as its own playlist. Wherever

1461
01:18:53,840 --> 01:18:56,680
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, you can subscribe to it, you

1462
01:18:56,720 --> 01:18:58,760
Speaker 1: can rate it there. You know, we'd ask that you

1463
01:18:58,800 --> 01:19:02,040
Speaker 1: still subscribe and rate the core Stuff to Blow your

1464
01:19:02,040 --> 01:19:04,760
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed as well, but it's an additional tool

1465
01:19:04,800 --> 01:19:05,800
Speaker 1: that we're experimenting with.

1466
01:19:06,040 --> 01:19:09,719
Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1467
01:19:09,840 --> 01:19:11,280
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1468
01:19:11,280 --> 01:19:13,759
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1469
01:19:13,760 --> 01:19:15,800
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1470
01:19:16,160 --> 01:19:18,720
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1471
01:19:18,760 --> 01:19:26,400
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1472
01:19:26,479 --> 01:19:29,439
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1473
01:19:29,520 --> 01:19:32,320
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1474
01:19:32,479 --> 01:19:35,240
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.