Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener Mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and listener mail is
Speaker 3: the type of episode where we read back messages that
Speaker 3: we receive at the Stuff to Blow your Mind email account.
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Speaker 3: a great time to do it. That address is contact
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Speaker 3: always love feedback to recent episodes, especially if you have
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Speaker 3: All right, should we jump right into the messages?
Speaker 2: Let's do it?
Speaker 3: All right, So we got a bunch of responses to
Speaker 3: our series on Manta rays.
Speaker 4: Maybe let's see.
Speaker 3: Do you want to read this one from Jeff rob
Speaker 3: I shall.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is Jeff with one F. We also have
Speaker 2: Jeff's with two f's. We have jeffs with three f's. Possibly,
Speaker 2: we also have jeffs with no fs, jeffs that are
Speaker 2: just completely out of f. But this is just one F.
Speaker 4: For Jeffanie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but Jeff gets in touch about man rays. Also,
Speaker 3: we should flag that Jeff is going to bring up
Speaker 3: in this email pages from a book series called Animals
Speaker 3: Do the Strangest Things. This is something we've talked about
Speaker 3: in the past. It's come up on previous listener males.
Speaker 3: That was the of nineteen sixties or seventies children's animal
Speaker 3: book series that refers to mating pairs of animals as
Speaker 3: husband and wife.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look up those pages. You can find them in
Speaker 2: your image search of choice. Yeah, all right, Jeff says
Speaker 2: the following greetings. I had the opportunity to swim with
Speaker 2: mantas off the shore of ConA, on the Big Island
Speaker 2: of Hawaii. A charter took us out at night and
Speaker 2: to snorkel in the dark water. They gave us a
Speaker 2: wacky noodle to keep a float with minimal effort, and
Speaker 2: dropped in a floating PVC rig with lights that shone
Speaker 2: down into the water. Various plankton and tiny animals are
Speaker 2: attracted to the lights, and the mantas have learned that
Speaker 2: there will be a free dinner at that location. Shortly
Speaker 2: after our arrival, maybe half a dozen mantas quickly got
Speaker 2: organized and started performing slow, graceful backwards loops under the lights,
Speaker 2: coming within inches of us at the surface, over and over.
Speaker 2: I had always understood somersaults to be headfirst downward flips,
Speaker 2: though it seems backwards sum results are a thing, so
Speaker 2: I wanted to clarify that the sumrsaulting behavior you mentioned
Speaker 2: is essentially backflips. I was with someone who is somewhat
Speaker 2: anxious snorkeling even in good visibility in broad daylight around
Speaker 2: normal sized fauna, so I was a little worried about
Speaker 2: her freaking out in the middle of a dark ocean
Speaker 2: with giant sea monsters circling below us. As soon as
Speaker 2: the Mansas showed up, she erupted in a noise that
Speaker 2: I couldn't immediately identify. I wasn't sure if it was
Speaker 2: terror or delight, but thankfully it was the latter, and
Speaker 2: she giggled almost continuously throughout the wonderful experience. I don't
Speaker 2: know if these trips are considered to be ecologically responsible,
Speaker 2: but I didn't get any pictures because they told us
Speaker 2: to keep our hands on the floating PVC bar and
Speaker 2: not to bring cameras, gloves, or anything else that might
Speaker 2: encourage us to reach out toward the rays. They warned
Speaker 2: us that even just touching them with a fingertip could
Speaker 2: remove some of their protective coating that keeps them safe
Speaker 2: from parasites and disease. For their part, the Mantas seem
Speaker 2: completely disinterested in the human jetsum and we're not looking
Speaker 2: for a snuggle. I imagine that altering their dining plan
Speaker 2: could lead to some negative side effects, but the operation
Speaker 2: we went out with appeared to be nothing but careful
Speaker 2: and respectful. This is fascinating. This is not an experience
Speaker 2: I have had, I believe on one of our trips
Speaker 2: out to the Hawaiian Islands, my wife was going to
Speaker 2: do one of these trips with a friend and then
Speaker 2: due to weather, it got canceled. And I certainly I'm
Speaker 2: not saying I wouldn't do it, and in fact, I'm
Speaker 2: more inclined to do it now that I have had
Speaker 2: such an awesome experience in the water with mantas during
Speaker 2: the daylight. You know, I can definitely understand, you know,
Speaker 2: once you're in them on once you're in the water
Speaker 2: with them, once you see them, this kind of giddiness
Speaker 2: overcomes you, like you know that these creatures are not
Speaker 2: a threat to you, and it's such a magical experience.
Speaker 2: That being said, I I have never gone snorkeling at night.
Speaker 2: It's something that has long not appealed to me. But
Speaker 2: I'm willing to potentially press through my own ease to
Speaker 2: have a new experience, which I've done many times before.
Speaker 2: Otherwise I wouldn't have any new experiences.
Speaker 3: I have no experience snorkeling at all, but I think
Speaker 3: I would be scared to death to get.
Speaker 4: Into the dark ocean at night.
Speaker 3: I don't know if there's a name for that specific fear.
Speaker 3: But you can't see very far in the water, so
Speaker 3: you just you don't know what's down there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but I will for my own part anyway.
Speaker 2: If there's like a good guide, a good good team,
Speaker 2: like leading things like that gives me a lot of
Speaker 2: confidence too. It's like this, if this person's not worried,
Speaker 2: I'm not worried, all right, Jeff continues to digress a moment.
Speaker 2: My unsolicited travel advice is that the Big Island of
Speaker 2: Hawaii offers the most amazing diversity. Waterfalls, lava, moonscapes, steaming
Speaker 2: sulfur events, giant craters, snow covered mountains, rain forest, black
Speaker 2: green and regular sand beaches, snorkeling among beautiful, colorful fish
Speaker 2: in clear water right off of public beach, which you
Speaker 2: can walk through a lava tube and if conditions are right,
Speaker 2: you can see fresh orange lava. Going all the way
Speaker 2: to Hawaii without seeing real lava was a deal breaker
Speaker 2: for me, so the Big Island was a requirement. You
Speaker 2: can start in town at sea level, drive up a mountain,
Speaker 2: passing through the clouds with the occasional alarming lack of visibility,
Speaker 2: then break into the clear air above the clouds to
Speaker 2: visit an observatory with amazing views of distant galaxies. I
Speaker 2: wouldn't plan on any long hikes up there, as we
Speaker 2: were winded just walking through the parking lot at that altitude.
Speaker 2: When we got back into town on the same night,
Speaker 2: a half full water bottle that we closed at the
Speaker 2: top of the mountain was impressively crumpled, being crushed by
Speaker 2: the sea level air pressure. I agree with all this.
Speaker 2: The Big Island is indeed a special place. I've visited
Speaker 2: it only twice, once in my twenties when I had
Speaker 2: a friend who lived ont in Hawaii, and once more
Speaker 2: a few years back with family and friends. For my money.
Speaker 2: Volcano National Park alone is worth the journey, just such
Speaker 2: an amazing land escape. But indeed there's rich and varied
Speaker 2: natural beauty there, just in spades, so highly recommended. Have
Speaker 2: the chance to go there, all right, But Jeff is
Speaker 2: not done. Jeff continues, speaking of creepiness. We were kayaking
Speaker 2: in the Cayman Islands, and the sting rays must have
Speaker 2: been accustomed to being fed, because not only did they
Speaker 2: appear as ominous moving shadows on the ocean, floor. They
Speaker 2: would also sometimes follow us or head straight for us.
Speaker 2: Knowing that they are not interested in eating your face
Speaker 2: is one thing, but it's still deeply disturbing when something
Speaker 2: huge you thought was a boulder or a patch of
Speaker 2: coral starts charging at you from a completely different plane
Speaker 2: of existence. In the Sea of Cortes, we saw mobular
Speaker 2: rays leaping out of the water with such frequency that
Speaker 2: we almost got bored with them. They are much smaller
Speaker 2: than giant mantas, so the splashdowns are not exactly thunderous,
Speaker 2: but apparently at some times of the year, great schools
Speaker 2: of rays will launch out of the water, all at
Speaker 2: the same time. I observe that they continue to flap
Speaker 2: their wings as they shoot through the air, which is
Speaker 2: both charming and a little bit funny. Maybe one day
Speaker 2: the atmosphere will be thick enough for them to really
Speaker 2: take off. Oh, we can only hope for fun. I
Speaker 2: have included the chapters on rays and remoras from fish
Speaker 2: do the Strangest things. The advice about dragging your feet
Speaker 2: to avoid stingrays has stuck with me for life, although
Speaker 2: given the accuracy of some of the information in those books,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if this is actually good intel. Oh
Speaker 2: and in case no one else mentions that, if you're
Speaker 2: in the market for weird house space mantas, you might
Speaker 2: want to check out the Roger Korman movie Lords of
Speaker 2: the Deep from nineteen eighty nine, the golden year of
Speaker 2: the underwater monster movie. Although maybe not, because if I
Speaker 2: recall correctly, it's kind of boring.
Speaker 3: I tried to watch it one time and remember almost
Speaker 3: nothing about it except that it had the flavor of
Speaker 3: one of those grunge era Canadian TV shows Are You
Speaker 3: Afraid of the Dark sets?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of the titles where my nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine underwater sci fi enthusiasm starts to peter out
Speaker 2: a bit. So I've never actually seen it, but I
Speaker 2: remember loving the VHS cover back when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: I included it here for you to look at, Joe,
Speaker 2: along with a couple of screen caps of the alien
Speaker 2: manta in question with enormous glowing red eyes.
Speaker 3: But the manta's wings don't really look like wings.
Speaker 4: Instead, it just looks like.
Speaker 3: A huge severed bunny head with it. It's like the
Speaker 3: ears flopping out to the side. It's like white fur
Speaker 3: bunny with red eyes.
Speaker 2: I guess it does kind of look like a demonic bunny,
Speaker 2: like some sort of dark bunny god from Watershipped Down. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Jeff says, thanks for your series on these particularly fascinating creatures.
Speaker 2: They are quite astoundingly graceful and soothing to encounter, assuming
Speaker 2: you're not a copa pod all right.
Speaker 3: As Jeff mentioned, he attached some pages from Fish to
Speaker 3: the Strangest Things. One is about the Remorra that's called
Speaker 3: the hitch Hiker, and another is called the Flying Saucer
Speaker 3: that's about sting rays and manta rays.
Speaker 2: I love how the remora here seems to have a
Speaker 2: googly eye. Yeah, he's like I'm about to go stick
Speaker 2: my head to a shark.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I can't read the full selections here, but maybe I'll
Speaker 3: read just from the Remorra chapter again to get a
Speaker 3: flavor of the wonderful cadence of this riding. It says
Speaker 3: the Hitchhiker. The Remora can travel for thousands of miles
Speaker 3: beneath the sea without swimming. He has a wonderful way
Speaker 3: of getting around. He just catches a ride on a
Speaker 3: bigger fish. The Remora holds on with the top of
Speaker 3: his head. The top of his head is flat, there
Speaker 3: is a suction cap on it. With this cap he
Speaker 3: can quickly fasten on to another fish. He cannot fall
Speaker 3: off unless he wants to. The Remora rides on sharks
Speaker 3: so much he is often called a shark sucker. Sometimes
Speaker 3: many Remoras will ride on the same shark at the
Speaker 3: same time, but Remoras will ride on almost any.
Speaker 2: Big fish as beautiful as there's a poetry to it.
Speaker 3: There are so many things that are just kind of
Speaker 3: tickling about the writing style of these books. But I
Speaker 3: think we may have mentioned this in the last one,
Speaker 3: that there's this constant feeling of light moralism about it,
Speaker 3: like a little it's not the standard way of talking
Speaker 3: about nature. There are constantly little gentle judgments being passed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like, there's a one of the pages that you
Speaker 2: shared here as a titled the Flying Saucers, and it's
Speaker 2: about rays, and it begins with rays are strange looking fish,
Speaker 2: which I mean that seems a little rude. There's a
Speaker 2: picture of a human child looking at them with a
Speaker 2: look of astonishment on his face, and you know, the
Speaker 2: rays might well say, you know, child, you are a
Speaker 2: strange looking mammal. Most mammals don't look like you at.
Speaker 3: All, especially with the way this child is drawn with
Speaker 3: the weird spiny fingers. It looks like a gill Man
Speaker 3: hand there.
Speaker 2: Well, you know the artist was strong fish all day
Speaker 2: and then had to suddenly switch back to humans and yeah,
Speaker 2: it's jarring.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: We also got some shorter messages about our Manta ray series.
Speaker 3: This one comes from Danny. She says we went to
Speaker 3: sting ray City off the coast of Grand Cayman. When
Speaker 3: feeding them, you hold the raw squid in your fist
Speaker 3: like an ice cream cone, very loosely. Okay, the ray
Speaker 3: swims over your hand and hoovers it up. My stepdad
Speaker 3: was holding his too tightly and the ray nipped the
Speaker 3: skin between his thumb and pointer finger. It was like
Speaker 3: a pinch between the bony plates that took a bit
Speaker 3: of skin with it. Only person I know of who's
Speaker 3: actually been bitten by a ray lol, feel free to
Speaker 3: use Danny. Yeah, I understand that the sting ray is
Speaker 3: somewhat different than the mobulid rays that you know. Mobulid rays,
Speaker 3: from what I understand, are not ever going to bite you,
Speaker 3: but maybe a stingray can do this a little bit
Speaker 3: more likely, and the stingray is also a little bit
Speaker 3: something you have to be more cautious of because it
Speaker 3: has the tailbarb.
Speaker 2: All right, another quick one here. This one comes to
Speaker 2: us from Greg. This is in response to this is
Speaker 2: part of our like Manta Week Shenanigans. I did a
Speaker 2: Monster Fact episode on mantas and Dungeons and Dragons, talking
Speaker 2: about the different ways that mantas have been invoked in
Speaker 2: Dungeons and Dragons and how it reflects sort of earlier
Speaker 2: attitudes about mantas that you see in pre Dungeons and
Speaker 2: Dragons fiction, you know, pulp fiction and fantasy and so forth,
Speaker 2: and everything that was in the zeitgeist that kind of
Speaker 2: impacted the way that they were presented. So Greg writes,
Speaker 2: you forgot a couple aside from the exits that you'les,
Speaker 2: this is one that's like sometimes a vampire that pops
Speaker 2: up in Dungeons and Dragons, And so Greg includes a
Speaker 2: link to information on the Cloaker and the Lurker and
Speaker 2: says both date back to the First Attention Monster Manual
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven and cover the fear that mantas will
Speaker 2: wrap you up and smother you with those big creepy wings.
Speaker 2: And yes, Greg, you were absolutely correct. I did manage
Speaker 2: to leave these two off that they basically line up
Speaker 2: with some of the other monsters that I discussed there,
Speaker 2: But it's good enough for me. I should probably go
Speaker 2: back and record a part two to Manta Rays of
Speaker 2: Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 3: I was looking at these, and the cloaker appears to
Speaker 3: be not only mantiforms but also literally cloak formed, like
Speaker 3: it takes the shape of a cloak that you might
Speaker 3: pick up and put on because you think it's just
Speaker 3: a discarded piece of clothing, but it's actually a monster
Speaker 3: that wraps around you and eats you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, as I discussed in that Monster Fact episode.
Speaker 2: You know, you have like the cloak of the Manta Ray,
Speaker 2: which is a pretty famous Dungeons and Dragons magical item.
Speaker 2: But if you go back to that first monster manual,
Speaker 2: there are stats for like the man to ray and
Speaker 2: information about how it will stain you and also swallow
Speaker 2: you holes. So then that's just supposed to be a
Speaker 2: straight up Manta ray and not these various mnemonic fantasy
Speaker 2: variants that you know, lean into the idea that that
Speaker 2: array could be some sort of a horrendously dangerous creature.
Speaker 3: Come on, now, Gary, you know better than that.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was the seventies. We were, as we
Speaker 2: discussed in our Manta Ray episodes, like we were beginning
Speaker 2: to wake up in the West to the fact that
Speaker 2: that Manda's were not our enemy.
Speaker 3: Are there stats in the Monster manual for the panda
Speaker 3: bear like that it'll bite your bite your legs off?
Speaker 2: And that's a great question. I don't I don't know
Speaker 2: if I've ever looked at the stats for a panda,
Speaker 2: but I bet there are panda stats. Yeah. If if
Speaker 2: not in some of those original monster manuals, then certainly
Speaker 2: by the time they came around to like Karratur there.
Speaker 2: You know, there have to be some some panda stats
Speaker 2: in there somewhere to look it up.
Speaker 3: Chaotic evil creature. Okay, This next message is from Ben.
Speaker 3: Ben says, Hi, Robert and Joe. In today's episode, part
Speaker 3: three on Manta Rays, you described the hypothesis that Manta's
Speaker 3: developed their large brains to generate heat and that their
Speaker 3: intelligence is a side effect.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, this is, to be clear, something that is not
Speaker 3: known for sure, but it is a possibility explored in
Speaker 3: one of the papers we looked at that because the
Speaker 3: design of the mantray's brain case is good at retaining
Speaker 3: heat in cold water. It could be that that is
Speaker 3: actually the characteristic that was selected for in the evolution
Speaker 3: of the manta brain. And then as a side effect,
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, it just happens to be now that
Speaker 3: these are much smarter than your average fish, because, yeah,
Speaker 3: the manterrays show a kind of intelligence that is generally
Speaker 3: not seen in other fish. Ben continues, this immediately made
Speaker 3: me think of Deep Blue Sea nineteen.
Speaker 4: Ninety nine, a movie we've covered on Weird House.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In this classic shark action movie, after the shark attacks
Speaker 3: seem to be very well planned and organized, the character
Speaker 3: doctor Susan McAllister admits that she illegally genetically modified the
Speaker 3: sharks to give them bigger brains so they could harvest
Speaker 3: more magic shark juice to treat Alzheimer's disease, and that
Speaker 3: the side effect of that was smarter sharks. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: if you recall the plot of this movie is they
Speaker 3: make genetically modified sharks as a source of something for pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 3: So Ben says, those smarter sharks then wreak utter havoc
Speaker 3: and kill everyone in a cold systematic and planned out way.
Speaker 3: The way the Good Doctor phrases it in the movie
Speaker 3: and the way you guys phrase the Mantarey brain hypothesis
Speaker 3: were delightfully similar.
Speaker 2: Ben, Yeah, this is a great point. Yeah, I totally
Speaker 2: forgot about this detail Deep Blue Sea when we were
Speaker 2: recording our Manta episodes.
Speaker 3: Another Deep Blue Sea connection is so if this actually
Speaker 3: is what happened with Mantas again, it was to fight
Speaker 3: off the cold. You may recall that obsession with cold
Speaker 3: and ice is a major plot point in that movie
Speaker 3: as well, because Russell Franklin, the character played by Samuel L. Jackson,
Speaker 3: is you might recall, terrified of ice. He's like giving
Speaker 3: a speech about how ice is like it's got a
Speaker 3: mind of its own and it'll come to get you.
Speaker 3: He's giving that speech right when he gets eaten by shark.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I forgot what he was talking about that.
Speaker 2: I mainly remember just that horrifying and shocking moment when
Speaker 2: he gets taken out. Yeah, best moment in the film.
Speaker 3: All right, rob let's see you want to do this
Speaker 3: one from Larry about skating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Larry writes in and says, hey, guys, thank you
Speaker 2: for the recent episode on the invention of the roller skate.
Speaker 2: I've recently gotten back into it. Have you seen this
Speaker 2: dance skating music video in case you don't want to
Speaker 2: click a link in an email. The song is Gold
Speaker 2: by Chet Faker or maybe it's Fokker. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I'm not familiar with this artist, so my apologies. So
Speaker 2: I got that wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know anything about this musical artist. But
Speaker 3: the choreography, yeah, it's interesting. So it's like the video
Speaker 3: is three roller skaters coming at you out of the
Speaker 3: darkness to skate to dance as the camera continually glides
Speaker 3: away along a dark road at nights, Like the camera
Speaker 3: is constantly pulling back along this dark road and the
Speaker 3: skaters are constantly coming towards you while they're dancing. I
Speaker 3: think kind of dancing Queen on roller skates meets David
Speaker 3: Lynch's Lost Highway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's really it's a cool video, but it's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not necessarily super happy fun times, more like phantoms
Speaker 2: of skating on the open road. But the song sounds
Speaker 2: pretty cool and I looked it up and it's directed
Speaker 2: by the music videos directed by Hiro Murray, who is
Speaker 2: direct did episodes of several great recent TV shows. It's
Speaker 2: only a matter of time till this guy directs a
Speaker 2: feature film of note, I imagine. Anyway, Larry continues here
Speaker 2: and says, the music video is a bit surreal, so
Speaker 2: I figured you'd find it interesting. The skaters in the
Speaker 2: video remind me of the dancing Muses and Bodicelli's The
Speaker 2: Three Graces, and to a lesser degree, the sirens from
Speaker 2: O Brother where Art thou Ah? Would you do an
Speaker 2: episode on the Three Muses or other personifications of inspiration?
Speaker 2: I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on how the
Speaker 2: trope came about and why these depictions seem to celebrate
Speaker 2: or worn against the allure of creative pursuits. Thanks for
Speaker 2: the excellent show, Barry.
Speaker 3: Now, I know we've discussed the Muses in a segment
Speaker 3: in some previous episode, but I don't remember why or
Speaker 3: what the context was. But yeah, they could be their
Speaker 3: own topic, I'm.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, yeah, some of them back if we've had
Speaker 2: them on the show before. The Muses are always welcome.
Speaker 2: That's stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Larry.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think we're going to move on to some
Speaker 3: responses to the episodes that I did a few weeks
Speaker 3: back with Annie Reese and Lauren Vogelbaum, the hosts of
Speaker 3: the food podcast Saver. We called that series food Storage
Speaker 3: Mad Science. It was all about weird transformations and reactions
Speaker 3: that foods can undergo while just sitting around in storage.
Speaker 3: And we ended up talking a lot in the second
Speaker 3: part of that series about more dramatic things like unintentional fermentation,
Speaker 3: explosions and even spontaneous combustion in food. But for the
Speaker 3: first episode there we focused largely on looking for a
Speaker 3: scientific explanation for a memory of mine in which a
Speaker 3: tray of baked pasta ate holes in a sheet of
Speaker 3: aluminum foil while it was sitting in the fridge. I
Speaker 3: was like, what was that? And we did find the answer.
Speaker 3: The answer turned out to be bizarre and fascinating and
Speaker 3: led in a bunch of different directions. But the short
Speaker 3: version is, if you leave a salty web mass of
Speaker 3: food like a bunch of baked pasta, in contact with
Speaker 3: two different metals, like say a steel pan and a
Speaker 3: sheet of aluminum foil, and you have them in the
Speaker 3: right configuration where like the foil is touching where they're
Speaker 3: both touching the food and the foil is in contact
Speaker 3: with the pan around the edges and then also touching
Speaker 3: the food, you can accidentally create what's called a galvanic cell,
Speaker 3: in other words, a simple battery. So the holes in
Speaker 3: the aluminum were actually being they were the aluminum was
Speaker 3: the anode and a simple battery, and it was being
Speaker 3: eaten away by the electric flow there.
Speaker 4: And this is something called galvanic corrosion.
Speaker 2: Wow, electric pasta Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3: The electric pasta acid test is what was happening in
Speaker 3: my fridge.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So several listeners got in touch with emails to varying
Speaker 3: degrees about that. The first one is from Matthew, subject
Speaker 3: line Galvazania very good.
Speaker 2: That's good. That's even better, Matthew.
Speaker 3: Says, I'm sending you my semi yearly email in regards
Speaker 3: to your recent episodes with the Savor ladies. I was
Speaker 3: a restaurant chef for years and encountered melted foil a
Speaker 3: few times, always discounting it with Wow, that acid really
Speaker 3: reacts with aluminum. I never considered that electricity was a
Speaker 3: factor in my current career. I am an aluminum welder
Speaker 3: in a shop making boats for a DoD contractor. I
Speaker 3: can't seem to escape my Viking heritage and ended up
Speaker 3: making military boats, unlike Naglfar, that is the ship from
Speaker 3: Norse mythology made out of toenails, I think toenails and fingernails.
Speaker 4: Maybe.
Speaker 3: Unlike Naglfar, these vehicles are almost entirely aluminum and are
Speaker 3: finished with a coating of specifically non reactive paint. You
Speaker 3: guessed it, it's green that covers the entire exterior of
Speaker 3: the boat save for two small areas on the bottom.
Speaker 3: These spots are where the anodes are attached chunks of
Speaker 3: metal alloy mostly lead I think, that are more reactive
Speaker 3: than the aluminum of the boat. These sacrificial bricks lose
Speaker 3: their ions faster during the natural galvanization process that occurs
Speaker 3: all the time, but especially quickly when the boats are
Speaker 3: used in salty water. Being in a circuit with the hull,
Speaker 3: they corrode away instead of the aluminum and are replaced yearly.
Speaker 3: And even bigger threat is the boat's own electrical system.
Speaker 3: Unlike cars and trucks, where the electronic components are grounded
Speaker 3: to the chassis, the whole electrical system is self contained.
Speaker 3: If a ground wire happens to detach and come in
Speaker 3: contact with the hull, the galvanic corrosion process gets supercharged.
Speaker 3: I'm told that only a few weeks in salty water
Speaker 3: with a grounded hull could be devastating. A reminder that
Speaker 3: I am not a nautical electrician. I am a welder,
Speaker 3: so my understanding is limited and probably flawed. Thank you
Speaker 3: for the wonderful show. It's been at the top of
Speaker 3: the list for a decade. Weird House suggestion The Barbarians
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty seven. Twin beefcakes with bronx accents fight against
Speaker 3: magic forces, a dragon, and each other to free their
Speaker 3: adopted mother and save their small tribe. It actually has
Speaker 3: a few references to classical literature.
Speaker 4: Thrown in and amazing costumes.
Speaker 3: Matthew, Well, Matthew, thanks for adding on the subject of
Speaker 3: galvanic corrosion. Yeah, so certainly this is a case in
Speaker 3: all kinds of different construction and manufacturing processes. But also
Speaker 3: I had the same reaction as you when I first
Speaker 3: saw the melted aluminum foil not melted, you know, the
Speaker 3: corroded aluminum foil. I didn't know what it was, but
Speaker 3: I just assumed, I guess maybe something reaction with the
Speaker 3: acid or something. Aluminum can react with acid, but this
Speaker 3: is a much more powerful and faster process when you
Speaker 3: accidentally make the food battery. So beware the food battery, folks.
Speaker 2: Now, as for the Barbarians, I keep coming back to
Speaker 2: the Barbarians. So every few years I get excited about
Speaker 2: the idea of this movie, because I mean, look at
Speaker 2: you got like, not one, but two. You got twin
Speaker 2: Barbarian beefcakes in the Barbarian Brothers. You've got Richard Lynch
Speaker 2: as the main villain. You've got Michael Berryman in there
Speaker 2: as a sidekick of Stogie character. And even the great
Speaker 2: Georgia Eastman pops up at some point or another.
Speaker 3: The personable George Eastman.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, wow.
Speaker 2: And it's directed by Ruggero Diodado, director of nineteen eighties
Speaker 2: Cannibal Holocaust. So there are, you know, some great connections there.
Speaker 2: But every time I've sat down to watch it, it's
Speaker 2: the Barbarian Brothers themselves who throw me off.
Speaker 3: Really, So, I've had this movie on disc for years
Speaker 3: and have still never watched it. I keep thinking, at
Speaker 3: some point I'm going to get there, because I love
Speaker 3: a leather diaper Barbarian movie. But haven't made it to
Speaker 3: this one. I've actually watched Your Hunter from the Future
Speaker 3: three or four times since I've had the Barbarians, and
Speaker 3: I've never made time for the Barbarians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I can only speak to my own experience here,
Speaker 2: and this has been my experience thus far. Certainly my
Speaker 2: opinions can change on films, but every time, Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: the Barbarian brothers that really throw me off. It's like
Speaker 2: they're two charismatic. There's an effortless charm to these two guys,
Speaker 2: and I do not like it. I mean, I love
Speaker 2: a fun peplum beefcake movie, but me personally, I prefer
Speaker 2: it when there's a either a a believable stoicism to
Speaker 2: the central muscle man. So think of Arnold and the
Speaker 2: first Conan movie Conan the Barbarian Yeah, or certain Hercules
Speaker 2: actors have managed to pull this off as well. You know,
Speaker 2: there's like the thinking, cerebral Beefcake. And then also you
Speaker 2: have plenty of examples where you have a very green
Speaker 2: awkwardness to your lead because, as is sometimes the case,
Speaker 2: you know, you would just have a bodybuilder plucked off
Speaker 2: the street and given a starring role in a motion picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or like Red Brown and Your Hunter from the Future,
Speaker 3: just kind of what is going on here?
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know what this scenees about.
Speaker 4: I'm just doing it.
Speaker 2: So I like both of those vibes. But these two,
Speaker 2: the Barbarian brothers, they just they just felt they almost
Speaker 2: take to it naturally, and I don't. I don't love
Speaker 2: their vast but that's just me. There are a number
Speaker 2: of fun elements of the film where I mentioned the
Speaker 2: costumes and certainly other folks involved in the production. So
Speaker 2: maybe I should really press on and give it a
Speaker 2: third or fourth chance.
Speaker 3: Here, maybe I'll actually watch it this time, or maybe
Speaker 3: I'll just watch.
Speaker 4: Your again, Yours World.
Speaker 3: Oh wait, but I have a question about your your
Speaker 3: categorization of beefcake barbarian leads. Where does Jorge Rivera from
Speaker 3: Conquest fit in?
Speaker 2: Absolutely solid? Yeah, okay, he's great. Yeah, I easily watch
Speaker 2: another film in which he is a Barbarian or anything else. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's a lot of fun. Really, I'm struggling to think
Speaker 2: of anyone who's actually failed the Peplham beefcake test here
Speaker 2: for me, but these these guys did that. They bothiled it.
Speaker 3: What about Reg Park in the Hercules and the Haunted World.
Speaker 3: How'd you feel about him?
Speaker 2: Was he he's great?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Okay cool?
Speaker 3: I liked him too, but he was he was charismatic?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like he was. He was somewhere between like
Speaker 2: a really great stoicism and maybe a little like green awkwardness,
Speaker 2: though it is hard to judge sometimes in these films
Speaker 2: where things are dubbed as well. But yeah, I thought
Speaker 2: he was great. Yeah to Lou for Igno in the
Speaker 2: Hercules movie we watched him, which he played Loue frign
Speaker 2: I love that so so yeah. I can't think of
Speaker 2: anyone else who felt like a fumble.
Speaker 3: For me, sweetheart, Lou, all right, you want to do this?
Speaker 3: Next message from Tanner, This is partially in response to
Speaker 3: the food, but also some other things.
Speaker 2: All Right, Tanner writes in and says, hey, gang, First off,
Speaker 2: love the pod and yet to find another podcast that
Speaker 2: synthesizes history, culture, philosophy, and information the way you do.
Speaker 2: I'm always surprised by the connections you make to seemingly
Speaker 2: disparate topics, and Weirdhouse has turned me on to so
Speaker 2: many strange and delightful movies. I watched The Wickerman Blind
Speaker 2: per your recommendation and what it alighted was. I'm curious
Speaker 2: how differently an audience member from nineteen seventy three and
Speaker 2: today might view the townsfolk given changes in popular opinion
Speaker 2: towards sex and organized religion.
Speaker 4: I've thought about that before.
Speaker 3: While The Wickerman is still one of my favorite movies
Speaker 3: and I think it hits very hard today, I do
Speaker 3: have to wonder if it hit quite differently when it
Speaker 3: came out, just given the change in the cultural landscape.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, It's always a fun exercise to just try
Speaker 2: and imagine how the immediate intended audience viewed something versus
Speaker 2: how we look at it now. And you know, I
Speaker 2: think it's an essential exercise to play with with many
Speaker 2: of these older films, you know, and sort of certainly
Speaker 2: enjoy it from where you're standing, But yeah, try and
Speaker 2: time travel as well, and try and put yourself in
Speaker 2: the in the shoes and slippers of the original of
Speaker 2: the original audience members. Anyway, they continue. I love the
Speaker 2: most recent episode on food storage. Your guest host made
Speaker 2: a great addition, and then as an aside, they knowe
Speaker 2: Robin Annie's weird House on Congo is a favorite of mine.
Speaker 2: So yes, Annie Reese also guest starred on Weird House
Speaker 2: Cinema a while back, and we talked about the fabulous
Speaker 2: film that is Congo.
Speaker 4: Tim Curry in the role of a Lifetime There.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, a lot of great, great performances in that film.
Speaker 2: Really fun. But anyway, they continue and say episodes about
Speaker 2: food are always a favorite in that vein. I have
Speaker 2: a couple of things I'd like to share. I work
Speaker 2: in the composites industry, building carbon fiber parts for aircraft,
Speaker 2: and galvanic corrosion is a major consideration in how parts
Speaker 2: are designed and manufactured. Carbon fiber is conductive and when
Speaker 2: it's in contact with some metals, chiefly aluminum, it acts
Speaker 2: as an anode that corrodes the metal, and since it's
Speaker 2: bad business to have your aircraft eating itself, manufacturing steps
Speaker 2: are added to prevent galvanic corrosions, such as adding a
Speaker 2: barrier like fiberglass or epoxy between the two materials, or
Speaker 2: using a more combatible metal like titanium. On the topic
Speaker 2: of fermented foods, during lockdown, my dad made his own kombucha,
Speaker 2: and my most salient memory of this endeavor was of
Speaker 2: the yeast colony called a Scobie which I only just
Speaker 2: learned as an acronym for symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast.
Speaker 2: I just learned that for the first time as well.
Speaker 2: I did not know that either that grew in the
Speaker 2: kombucha jug. It was a round, slimy, pallid tortilla that
Speaker 2: I remember being distinctly skin like in a way I
Speaker 2: found deeply unsettling. To get the carbonation, the kombucha had
Speaker 2: to be kept in these pressure safe flip top bottles.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it is just par for the
Speaker 2: course and a homemade kombucha. The fruit pulp was a
Speaker 2: contributing factor, I think, but whenever we opened the bottle,
Speaker 2: the contents exploded out in a champagne like fountain that
Speaker 2: got everywhere, so we had to open future bottles over
Speaker 2: the sink. The kombucha, for its part, was pretty tasty.
Speaker 2: After my dad lost interest in making more, he emptied
Speaker 2: the jug into the grass, where the scoby dried out
Speaker 2: into something like those dried pig ears who give to dogs. Ugh, Joe, am,
Speaker 2: I mistaken. You made your own kombucha for a while.
Speaker 3: Right now, I've never made kombucha. You've done a home fermenting.
Speaker 3: I've made Sauer kraut and kimchi and all that, but
Speaker 3: I've never made kombucha.
Speaker 2: Oh Okay, yes, okay, I'm thinking about your kimchi and
Speaker 2: sour kraft making.
Speaker 3: Okay, no visible scoby in a pot of kimchi.
Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, and I've never made either. I haven't made
Speaker 2: kombucha either, but I do love a good kombucha.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not a super fan, but I've enjoyed it
Speaker 3: when I've had it.
Speaker 2: All Right, They continue here getting into movies and says
Speaker 2: it's fitting that the Warriors made it into rewind since
Speaker 2: my recommendation is basically the Warriors we have at home.
Speaker 2: Home is Italy. I present to you nineteen ninety the
Speaker 2: Bronx Warriors. My pitch to you is just this scene.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I went and looked up the scene. It
Speaker 3: begins with a guy sitting at a drum kit playing
Speaker 3: a drum solo in an empty parking lot by the
Speaker 3: water somewhere in New York. There is a dead body
Speaker 3: impaled on a stake by the water. Then about ten
Speaker 3: thousand motorcycles rolled in, and you got all your different
Speaker 3: biker varieties. You got some leather bikers with Ramon's haircuts.
Speaker 3: You got some Nazi bikers, you got some just weird
Speaker 3: kind of classic tattoo bikers, some hair metal bikers in
Speaker 3: there also, and then one guy who looks like Steve Earl,
Speaker 3: not Steve Earl in nineteen eighty whatever, Steve Earl now.
Speaker 4: And then a bunch of dudes.
Speaker 3: In hilarious suits haul up in classic cars. They're wearing
Speaker 3: kind of I don't know what you call this, like
Speaker 3: a cross between kind of seventies Italian style suits and
Speaker 3: then nineteen twenties or thirties gangster suits.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they could decide if they're going for classic
Speaker 2: gangsters or like seventies pimps. And it's some lay and
Speaker 2: somewhere in between.
Speaker 3: Yeah, am I Dillinger or disc And so they have
Speaker 3: a face off and they're I don't know, they're arguing
Speaker 3: about something.
Speaker 4: I didn't follow the dialogue.
Speaker 3: But then what somebody opens up a car and is
Speaker 3: that Fred Williamson in there right at the end?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe he's in this. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I only got a quick look, but I think it's him.
Speaker 3: So I'm interested in this. It is strongly Italian flavored.
Speaker 2: Yes, this film's great, So m S T three K
Speaker 2: fans will recognize it because it was featured on MST
Speaker 2: three K, But it's pretty great in its own ride.
Speaker 2: It's directed by Mzog Castellari, who we've talked about in
Speaker 2: the show before it stars. You want to talk about
Speaker 2: a green beefcake hunk. Mark Gregory is in this. He's
Speaker 2: pretty great. I've seen him in some other things as well.
Speaker 2: He was in a tremendously bad Adam and Eve movie
Speaker 2: in which he plays Adam of course nice and then
Speaker 2: elsewhere in this film, in addition to Fred Williamson, you
Speaker 2: also have Vic Morrow, and you also have George Eastman
Speaker 2: once more. So it's a real treat and it has
Speaker 2: some great actual New York locals. It makes visiting New
Speaker 2: York City's Roosevelt Island an extra special treat because that's
Speaker 2: where Give Memory serves, That's where the finale takes place.
Speaker 3: Isn't it weird? How many coincidental overlaps there are between
Speaker 3: the last two emails, like both talked about the topic
Speaker 3: of galvanic corrosion by sharing experience working in heavy transportation manufacturing,
Speaker 3: and then both emails turned to a recommendation of an
Speaker 3: Italian beef Man action movie from the eighties with the
Speaker 3: recommendation involving the word bronx.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we need to keep this in mind the next
Speaker 2: time there's an effort on the part of our work
Speaker 2: bosses to be like, we need to figure out who
Speaker 2: is the listener for stuff to build your mind. Will say, well,
Speaker 2: let's break it down for you. They make ships or
Speaker 2: airplanes or composite pieces. They're into food, and they like
Speaker 2: a very particular sort of nineteen seventies or nineteen eighties Italian.
Speaker 3: Film cinema italianissimo. Yeah, all right, Robie, ready to get
Speaker 3: into some weird house cinema responses. Sure, let's okay, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna do this. First one from Daniel. This is subject
Speaker 3: line digital data on tape, and this is in response
Speaker 3: to the Weird House Cinema episode that I did with
Speaker 3: JJ about the movie Deer Skin. So Daniel says, greeting's
Speaker 3: Joe Robert and in this case also JJ. Posway, I
Speaker 3: was listening to your Weird House Cinema episode on Deer
Speaker 3: Skin and really perked up once you went off on
Speaker 3: a tangent about the digital camcorder using cassette tapes and
Speaker 3: how quaint. That idea seemed so rob This is a
Speaker 3: whole tangent we got into in the movie because there's
Speaker 3: there's a character who is given a camcorder and he
Speaker 3: is told that it is digital because you can't be digital.
Speaker 3: Digital is tops, but he has to keep buying these
Speaker 3: little tapes to put in it. And we were confused
Speaker 3: by that, or at least I was so confused by that,
Speaker 3: because I was like, I thought digital would mean it's
Speaker 3: like recording to a little card or something, not to
Speaker 3: a tape. I don't know, but maybe I think that
Speaker 3: just revealed that I didn't actually understand what digital means
Speaker 3: when it comes to the idea of like how the
Speaker 3: information is stored and stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, So is it like a straight up cassette
Speaker 2: tape or is it more like these like weird tapes
Speaker 2: that you would put into computers to store information on.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it's like the latter.
Speaker 3: But Daniel's email I think will also help explain, Daniel says. Historically,
Speaker 3: storing digital information on tape has been quite common, particularly
Speaker 3: in the European microcomputer market of the nineteen eighties and
Speaker 3: parts of the nineties, for systems such as the Commodore
Speaker 3: sixty four and ZX Spectrum. I have no personal experience
Speaker 3: with these machines, but as I understand it, the data
Speaker 3: was stored on these tapes as analog audio signals, which
Speaker 3: were then interpreted as binary data by the machines. This
Speaker 3: was a very slow process and also so prone to error,
Speaker 3: with the tradeoff of it being much cheaper to produce
Speaker 3: than other formats. DAT or digital audio tape cassettes were
Speaker 3: also used in the music industry from the mid eighties
Speaker 3: to two thousands, but unlike the aforementioned microcomputer tapes, these
Speaker 3: stored innately digital information. Looking into this topic also sent
Speaker 3: me down quite a rabbit hole on the distinction between
Speaker 3: analog versus digital storage. I had always assumed that DAT
Speaker 3: and also floppy disks and traditional hard drives given their
Speaker 3: magnetic discs, were considered analog storage, but that was evidently
Speaker 3: not the case. It all seems to come down to
Speaker 3: the nuances in how the signals are being read or transmitted,
Speaker 3: and also factoring in the technical distinction between the concepts
Speaker 3: of format and medium. Going on a bit of a
Speaker 3: tangent here myself, but there have been some numerous other
Speaker 3: inventive ways of distributing digital information. One of the most
Speaker 3: fascinating for me was hearing about software being and submitted
Speaker 3: via radio broadcasting. Thought this was fascinating, Daniel says. As
Speaker 3: an example, in the nineteen eighties, the Yugoslavian radio show
Speaker 3: Ventilator two two would broadcast signals for various software that
Speaker 3: listeners could record on tape, which could then be read
Speaker 3: by the type of computer it was made for. Best regards, Daniel, WHOA.
Speaker 3: I mean that's like a kind of wireless internet before
Speaker 3: that existed, right, Yeah, you could download software that was
Speaker 3: coded into a series of I don't know, sounds, beeps
Speaker 3: and boops. I guess that would code onto the tape
Speaker 3: that you're recording on and then would be report would
Speaker 3: be executable.
Speaker 2: I'd never heard of that before. That's really interesting, crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: when you get into some of these it's fun when
Speaker 2: these technology questions come up about things that we see
Speaker 2: in these films. I remember diving into somewhat bowling scoring
Speaker 2: technology in that elevator movie that we watched, The Lift.
Speaker 3: Oh that's right, Yeah, is that a Dutch elevator movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Haunted Elevator.
Speaker 2: All right. This next one comes to us from Andrea.
Speaker 2: It is titled Invitation to Hell. This is not an
Speaker 2: in self an invitation for us to go to Hell.
Speaker 2: It is a response to our Weird House Cinema episode
Speaker 2: on the Wes Craven film, Invitation to Hell. Andrea writes, Hi,
Speaker 2: Robert and Joe, I've only written to you once before.
Speaker 2: You won't remember, but rob was deeply skeptical that I
Speaker 2: once had a cat who could count. But I was
Speaker 2: prompted to write again by your latest episode of Weird House,
Speaker 2: Invitation to Hell. It's true. I do not remember this.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess I vaguely remember it now that
Speaker 2: you mention it. I mean, I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna doubt cats maybe they can count.
Speaker 4: But let's hear her out.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, anyway for the counting cats aside, She writes first,
Speaker 2: regarding the Wizard of Oz's popularity being bolstered by TV.
Speaker 2: You guys are too young to probably know this, but
Speaker 2: before cable and DVDs, when I was a little kid
Speaker 2: in the sixties and seventies, the Wizard of Oz was
Speaker 2: not the kind of old movie you could catch on
Speaker 2: your local UHF channel on a random weekend afternoon. It
Speaker 2: was shown on network TV in primetime, and unless my
Speaker 2: memory is faulty, only once a year, making it an event.
Speaker 2: Lots of people looked forward greatly to their infrequent opportunity
Speaker 2: to see it. That doesn't explain why someone in the
Speaker 2: TV industry originally picked the not originally a blockbuster film
Speaker 2: to be an event, of course, but it explains how
Speaker 2: it became a movie that everybody knew and a lot
Speaker 2: of people loved. This is a great point, and I'm
Speaker 2: glad that she points it out, because I feel like
Speaker 2: a lot of the TV movies that I think back on,
Speaker 2: I think there were cases where I have a strong
Speaker 2: memory of watching a theatrical film released in primetime as
Speaker 2: a special event. I want to say that Aliens was
Speaker 2: given and that treatment at one point with some expanded
Speaker 2: scenes and all.
Speaker 4: Edited for TV.
Speaker 2: I guess, yeah, but with added footage like the footage
Speaker 2: with the gun sentries and so forth. I remember watching
Speaker 2: that on network television. But still other shows. Still, other
Speaker 2: movies were movies that were just shown all the time
Speaker 2: at various times of days, such as the Beast Master
Speaker 2: movie or Clash of the Titans, or even the movie
Speaker 2: we're going to be covering on tomorrow's Weird House Cinema
Speaker 2: Willy Wonk and the Chocolate Factory. I asked my wife.
Speaker 2: I was like, Hey, I'm going to rewatch this for work.
Speaker 2: Do you want to watch it with me? And she's like, no,
Speaker 2: I watched that a million times when I was a
Speaker 2: kid because it was just on all the time. So
Speaker 2: it's good to be reminded that, yes, there are these
Speaker 2: cases where a theatrical film featured on network television. It
Speaker 2: was a big deal event, it was an event. It
Speaker 2: was appointment television, if you will anyway, She continues and says,
Speaker 2: but onto my real reason for reaching out, I'm hoping
Speaker 2: you are one of your Weird House listeners can help
Speaker 2: me find the source of a made for TV movie
Speaker 2: scene that has haunted me for half a century. I
Speaker 2: think I saw it when I was between the ages
Speaker 2: of nine or eleven, so in the ballpark of seventy
Speaker 2: two through seventy four. I am almost certain it was
Speaker 2: a TV movie rather than say, an episode of Night
Speaker 2: Gallery or a theatrical film, and I think the plot
Speaker 2: involved witchcraft or the Devil or both. The scene in
Speaker 2: question involved a shed or basement with rows of dusty
Speaker 2: canning jars, except they contained human eyeballs. At the time,
Speaker 2: my family had a washer in our apartment, but the
Speaker 2: clothes dryer was down in the scruffy, unfinished basement. My
Speaker 2: mom used to make me run down to the basement
Speaker 2: and put the laundry in and out of the dryer.
Speaker 2: I also had a grandmother who made pickles and did
Speaker 2: lots of other canning, so he had rats of dusty
Speaker 2: canning jars in the basement too. You see where this
Speaker 2: is going. For a good year after I saw the
Speaker 2: scene on TV, every time I had to go down
Speaker 2: to the scary basement, I walked by the shelves of
Speaker 2: canning jars with my head cranked firmly in the opposite direction,
Speaker 2: because to look upon them surely meant that they would
Speaker 2: contain human body parts. If this rings any bells for
Speaker 2: the made for TV horrorficionados among weird house cinema listeners,
Speaker 2: I would love to know what the probably terrible movie
Speaker 2: was so I could seek it out and watch it again.
Speaker 2: Thanks again, guys for all your wonderful content.
Speaker 3: Andrea, I don't know off the top of my head
Speaker 3: what this movie would be, but I would love to
Speaker 3: help you out Andrea, I feel like we could make
Speaker 3: this emission and maybe maybe other listeners can chime in,
Speaker 3: somebody out there, this is ringing a bell for.
Speaker 4: You right in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I love the memories that she shared of
Speaker 2: the unfinished basement reminds me of two different basements. One
Speaker 2: was a basement of my aunt's house, and this was
Speaker 2: the time when my family was living in that house,
Speaker 2: and you had to go down like these long stairs,
Speaker 2: wooden stairs, into this unfinished basement where there was still
Speaker 2: a heap of coal in one corner from that wing.
Speaker 2: They used coal, so it was this big coal heap,
Speaker 2: and then there were various chests and jars and some
Speaker 2: of the also a lot of camel crickets down there.
Speaker 2: And then there was at least one jar of water
Speaker 2: that was open and it had like a drowned camel
Speaker 2: cricket in it that had like stuff growing around it.
Speaker 2: Still firmly fixed in my mind. And then then many
Speaker 2: many years later, when I was in my like in
Speaker 2: my twenties, I believe I was living in this house
Speaker 2: in Atlanta that also had an unfinished basement, and that
Speaker 2: was where the washer and dryer were. So you'd go
Speaker 2: down there and you'd have to wash your stuff then
Speaker 2: transfer over to the dryer, and you would just pray
Speaker 2: that you wouldn't drop your underwear onto the floor down there,
Speaker 2: because it was just dust. It was dirt, and there
Speaker 2: would be no picking it back up again. So there
Speaker 2: were like different underwears from different people that lived in
Speaker 2: the house or had previously lived in the house, that
Speaker 2: were just abandoned down there. And I guess they're still
Speaker 2: there because I think this house has not changed. It's
Speaker 2: one of the few houses in the particular neighborhood that
Speaker 2: I lived in that has not changed at all.
Speaker 3: Oh Man, years ago, Rachel and I lived in the
Speaker 3: house in Atlanta that had a I mean, the kitchen
Speaker 3: was basically like held onto the back of the house
Speaker 3: with staples. It was like literally sagging off. And then
Speaker 3: underneath that, in an unfinished basement, was where we had
Speaker 3: to do laundry. And yeah, just like you're saying that
Speaker 3: the laundry basement was like a set from the Bronx Warriors,
Speaker 3: It's just you didn't want to go down there. And
Speaker 3: there would be funny times where, like, you know, we'd
Speaker 3: be in the middle of watching a horror movie and
Speaker 3: Rachel would be like, oh, I need to change the launcher,
Speaker 3: I need to flip.
Speaker 4: Them around there. Can you come down with me?
Speaker 2: So, listeners, if you have unfinished basement scenes that you
Speaker 2: would like to set for us right in, we would
Speaker 2: legitimately love to experience them as well. But anyway, as
Speaker 2: far as this movie goes, yeah, I don't know what
Speaker 2: this could be either. I got excited when you mentioned
Speaker 2: Night Gallery and I was like, oh, I think there's
Speaker 2: actually an episode of Nine Galleries titled Eyeballs, and I
Speaker 2: believe Steven Spielberg directed it. But I don't remember what
Speaker 2: was in that, and I don't know if there were
Speaker 2: ever jars of Eyeball Night Gallery. So yeah, this is
Speaker 2: the sort of challenge that I'm willing to accept. Okay.
Speaker 3: Next message is from Gary, subject line, I watched Invitation to.
Speaker 4: Hell on TV in the eighties.
Speaker 3: Yes, Gary, says, Hi, there, your episode on Invitation to
Speaker 3: Hell took me back in the nineteen eighties. In New Zealand,
Speaker 3: there was a regular slot on Sunday Night TV aptly
Speaker 3: called the Sunday Night Horrors, when a horror movie would
Speaker 3: be broadcast, just the right thing to help you with
Speaker 3: your anxiety about going back to work the next day. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Gary says, I used to watch these regularly as a
Speaker 3: young teenager sitting in the dark being petrified by classics
Speaker 3: like Poltergeist, Halloween, the Omen American Werewolf in London, and
Speaker 3: because there are a finite number of big horror movies,
Speaker 3: the memorable Invitation to Hell, which I think I would
Speaker 3: have watched in nineteen eighty five. For some reason, whilst
Speaker 3: most of these straight to TV horror movies have been
Speaker 3: erased from my memory, Invitation to Hell has always stuck
Speaker 3: with me, forever, scarring me into being highly suspicious of
Speaker 3: any country club like institutions I have encountered since because
Speaker 3: of the chance that they might be hiding an infernal
Speaker 3: portal to the underworld. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Cheers, Gary.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks Gary, I really enjoyed hearing that. And I
Speaker 2: had to look up Sunday Night Horrors and assuming this
Speaker 2: is the same one, and I'm reading this on stuff
Speaker 2: dot co dot Nz, there's an article about it, because
Speaker 2: I was wondering it's like the sounds like there might
Speaker 2: have been a horror host. Indeed, it seems like there
Speaker 2: was count Robulus ouppears to have been the host or
Speaker 2: was one of the hosts. I'm not sure at least
Speaker 2: maybe they only had one host, but Count Robulus is
Speaker 2: definitely in the mix. And this character was seemingly played
Speaker 2: by a former Prime Minister of New Zealand. All right,
Speaker 2: that is this is a rabbit hole. I was not
Speaker 2: prepared to go down. More information is required, but I
Speaker 2: can't research it in real time as we record an episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll have to bookmark that for later. Okay, Rob,
Speaker 3: you want to read any more of these weird House messages,
Speaker 3: take your pick?
Speaker 2: All right, let's see. Oh yeah, here's one from Paul
Speaker 2: Hi Robin Joe. This is my second time writing about
Speaker 2: weird house cinema. Last time it was regarding Danger Diabolic,
Speaker 2: which I loved. This time i'm writing with a recommendation.
Speaker 2: Are you familiar with the Quatermass series made in England
Speaker 2: in the late fifties. Quartermass two is a dark, serious
Speaker 2: movie dealing with an alien infiltration with Cold War overtones.
Speaker 2: I think it would make a fine Weird House episode.
Speaker 2: As always, looking forward to your next episode, Paul. Well, Paul,
Speaker 2: thanks for writing it. I've only seen one Quartermass episode,
Speaker 2: and that's a quarter Mass and the Pit, which I loved.
Speaker 2: This was one that I saw on TV I forget
Speaker 2: what channel, and I was really just enraptured by it
Speaker 2: on the whole. I think it is really good effects,
Speaker 2: but you know, effects that are maybe going to not
Speaker 2: hold up to at the time modern expectations of sci
Speaker 2: fi movie effects. But the story is so good and
Speaker 2: so haunting and just so well executed. And Joe, didn't
Speaker 2: you have a film from this series kind of bouncing
Speaker 2: around as a possibility at one point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been meaning to look at one called The
Speaker 3: Quatermass Experiment.
Speaker 2: I'll add this is also a series. I used to
Speaker 2: read this in my head as quarter Mass. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: if I if I'm mistakenly say quarter Mass now or
Speaker 2: in the future, that is why.
Speaker 3: For some reason I keep getting the quater Mass Experiment.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I'm mixed up with a different
Speaker 3: British horror movie called The Earth Dyed Screaming m.
Speaker 2: Yeah that is yeah, that's that's not a part of
Speaker 2: this franchise. But maybe part of the reason is Quater
Speaker 2: Moss in the Pit was also what fifty million years
Speaker 2: to Earth?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, okay, maybe yeah, they're all I'm grouping them
Speaker 3: together in my head for some reason, but I plan
Speaker 3: to come check them all out at some point. All right,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do this message from Mike about Weird House,
Speaker 3: says Dear Robert and Joe. I'm listening to the Weird
Speaker 3: House Cinema episode about Uninvited, and you were talking about
Speaker 3: favorite director cameos. You mentioned David Cronenberg. Yeah, one of
Speaker 3: my favorite directors to get in front of the camera.
Speaker 4: Mike says.
Speaker 3: A few years ago, I was watching Star Trek Discovery.
Speaker 3: The later seasons of the show have the crew forced
Speaker 3: to jump nine hundred or so years into the future,
Speaker 3: and the version of the Federation there had an intelligence
Speaker 3: officer named Kovich. As soon as I saw him, I
Speaker 3: thought he was giving serious Kronenberg vibes until I realized, Hey,
Speaker 3: that is David Cronenberg. He just basically shows up in
Speaker 3: several episodes dressed in a normal suit and tie and
Speaker 3: seeming very incongruous with everything going on around him. Love
Speaker 3: the show, Thank you, Mike and Mike Attash is a
Speaker 3: screenshot where I would say Cronenberg is looking a little
Speaker 3: bit like, well, what's her name? She's She's a current
Speaker 3: judge on The Great British bakeoff pro Leath.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I know the one you're talking about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, this is the Glasses, I think, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I had heard about his role in these in the
Speaker 2: Star Trek series. This is not one of the Star
Speaker 2: Trek series I've watched, but I was tempted to when
Speaker 2: when I heard the Cronenberg shows up. Yeah, he occasionally,
Speaker 2: even fairly recently in recent years, You've seen him show
Speaker 2: up on a few different things. There's some period drama
Speaker 2: that my wife was watching and like, Cronenberg just shows
Speaker 2: up in that as well. There's little acting gigs here
Speaker 2: and there. I think it just stays busy. All right.
Speaker 2: There's another one. This one comes to us from Chris
Speaker 2: good Day. I recently heard a podcast give a spoiler
Speaker 2: warning where they sarcastically added in case you need a
Speaker 2: spoiler warning for a forty year old movie, which I
Speaker 2: thought was odd. Since you all are very good at
Speaker 2: giving spoiler warnings, I'm really interested in what you'd have
Speaker 2: to say about them and how cultures treat them. What
Speaker 2: are spoilers? What counts as one? Why do some people
Speaker 2: care about them more than others? Thanks for doing good work,
Speaker 2: Best wishes, Chris.
Speaker 3: Oh, thanks Chris. That is an interesting idea, like when
Speaker 3: do spoilers matter and why? What is the logic we
Speaker 3: use to decide that it's certainly we're inconsistent about it
Speaker 3: on Weird House, and I think it's just a case
Speaker 3: to case judgment call. It's like when we're talking about
Speaker 3: a movie where I feel like the revelations that come
Speaker 3: in the plot are actually surprising and there is some
Speaker 3: amount of pleasure in being surprised by them. That's when
Speaker 3: I throw in, like a oh, spoiler warning. A lot
Speaker 3: of the movies we talk about, you have many great
Speaker 3: things to love, but maybe a lot of the pleasure
Speaker 3: doesn't come from the the you know, surprising or inventive
Speaker 3: nature of the plot dynamics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it gets a careful line to walk,
Speaker 2: because on one hand, I think it can be said
Speaker 2: that pretty much any movie is at its best if
Speaker 2: you can go in cold. But it's also unrealistic to
Speaker 2: have that expectation for every film you watch, and in
Speaker 2: part because stuff is going to be spoiled for you,
Speaker 2: obviously by promotions for the film, by the cover art
Speaker 2: for the film, or just people telling you about the film,
Speaker 2: and on top of that, some spoilers are sometimes necessary
Speaker 2: just to get you interested in it. Like you want
Speaker 2: to see a film more X happens and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I want to see a film more X happens, and
Speaker 2: then you look it up, Whereas if you didn't know
Speaker 2: X was going to happen, you might never have watched
Speaker 2: that movie to begin with.
Speaker 3: I guess another virtue of the fact that more often
Speaker 3: we cover older movies on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 4: I mean we you know, we don't.
Speaker 3: Have a rule against doing newer movies, but more often
Speaker 3: we cover older movies. That does take some of the
Speaker 3: spoiler pressure off. I feel like with movies that are
Speaker 3: a few decades old, I still will give.
Speaker 4: A warning, you know, just for people who have never
Speaker 4: seen them.
Speaker 3: If it's like there's a lot there are many great
Speaker 3: surprises that I want to keep intact and protect, But
Speaker 3: there's just generally less pressure with older stuff to be
Speaker 3: careful about it.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah. And I also think when it comes
Speaker 2: to spoilers in general, intention is a big thing. So
Speaker 2: is are things being spoiled, you know, in a mean
Speaker 2: spirited way or a careless, reckless way. You know, that's
Speaker 2: that's one thing. But are spoilers being used to entice
Speaker 2: you to see something, to get you excited about something,
Speaker 2: or to prepare you for something that you might not
Speaker 2: want to see. You know, it's kind of like a
Speaker 2: you know, trigger warning or something to that effect. You know,
Speaker 2: everyone has a different, you know, different different values and
Speaker 2: expectations along those lines. I used to to work with
Speaker 2: someone who would religiously spoil everything in a movie, like
Speaker 2: read full spoilers before she watched a film, because she
Speaker 2: didn't want to be surprised by anything, you know, And
Speaker 2: I get it. It's not not what I tend to do.
Speaker 2: But you know, sometimes you know, certainly we we will
Speaker 2: look into movies before we select them for a weird house,
Speaker 2: to see if there's anything, you know, in particular, that
Speaker 2: we don't want to deal with, we don't want to
Speaker 2: talk about, and so you know, it pays to spoil
Speaker 2: ourselves a little bit in those cases.
Speaker 3: I once had a literature professor, actually an English professor,
Speaker 3: who told me that he would always read the last
Speaker 3: chapter of a book first, or always wante the ending first.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he was telling the truth, but
Speaker 3: that's what he claimed, and that seemed perverse to me.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think his explanation was, you know, he
Speaker 3: wanted to see the end first, to see to figure
Speaker 3: out how they're going to get there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. So again, I'm not endorsing
Speaker 2: that life style. Yeah, everyone's mileage on this is going
Speaker 2: to vary, but yeah, I guess the way we tend
Speaker 2: to do it is, yeah, well, we may spoil a
Speaker 2: little bit to try and get you excited about it,
Speaker 2: but we also don't spoil as much as a modern
Speaker 2: movie trailer, which is generally made by someone who is
Speaker 2: just trying to make you see that movie at all costs,
Speaker 2: even if they have to ruin everything. We don't actually
Speaker 2: make any money off of you seeing the films that
Speaker 2: we cover on Weird House Cinema. Our incentive is, if
Speaker 2: this is the sort of film you'd like to see,
Speaker 2: we really want you to watch it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I hope we're just making an entertaining, interesting and informative show.
Speaker 3: And yeah, if any movie we talk about tickles your fancy,
Speaker 3: we hope you see it.
Speaker 2: All Right, we're going to go and close up the
Speaker 2: mail bag for today, but we'll be back in the
Speaker 2: not too distant future to cover more listener mails, lister
Speaker 2: mails that we had in the mail bag for today
Speaker 2: but didn't get to, or new listener mails that you're
Speaker 2: going to send in in the weeks to follow. If
Speaker 2: you want to talk about current episodes, past episodes, or
Speaker 2: future episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, the Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: the artifact on amalyst Dependium, or of course, Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 2: write in we would love to hear from here.
Speaker 3: Here's things as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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