# Weirdhouse Cinema: Messiah of Evil

An episode of [Stuff To Blow Your Mind](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/350359306), 9 Oct 2026, 1 h 31 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/6ea152c0-9e3a-45de-8672-ae2f0056b113/dc885c6a-c7f5-406e-8f01-b4de0015f6bc/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=d8936746-9e22-4dba-b762-ae2f0056b126

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Ron and Joe discuss the dreamlike 1973 American supernatural horror film “Messiah of Evil,” written and directed by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck. It stars Michael Greer, Marianna Hill, Joy Bang, Anitra Ford and Royal Dano. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
[0:13] Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
[0:16] Speaker 3: And this is Joe McCormick. And for today's Halloween season
[0:21] Speaker 3: Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking about a bizarre, meandering,
[0:26] Speaker 3: I think fascinating horror film called Messiah of Evil from
[0:31] Speaker 3: the filmmaking duo Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, shot in
[0:37] Speaker 3: 1971 and released in 73. Also known under different titles
[0:42] Speaker 3: at various points, it was at one point promoted under
[0:46] Speaker 3: the legal action-inducing title Return of the Living Dead. But
[0:51] Speaker 3: also its most charming alternate title, I think, is Dead People.
[0:56] Speaker 2: Yeah, when I looked this film up in the Psychotronic
[0:58] Speaker 2: Film Guide, I looked up Messiah of Evil under M's,
[1:01] Speaker 2: and then there's Messiah of Evil, and it just says,
[1:04] Speaker 2: see dead people. And then you have to go to
[1:06] Speaker 2: the listing for dead people, but I love that, see
[1:08] Speaker 2: dead people.
[1:09] Speaker 3: Really good.
[1:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, so many titles for this film, and it was,
[1:14] Speaker 2: I think by most accounts, not a hit, but it
[1:16] Speaker 2: has certainly acquired a well-earned cult following over the decades.
[1:21] Speaker 2: with many now championing it as a true gem of
[1:24] Speaker 2: weird 70s filmmaking. I had not seen it before. I
[1:26] Speaker 2: just sort of heard of it by reputation, and I'm
[1:29] Speaker 2: glad I finally got a chance.
[1:30] Speaker 3: To watch it. Yeah, that's my impression as well. When
[1:33] Speaker 3: it was first released, I think it was not seen
[1:35] Speaker 3: by a whole lot of people, and I think reviews
[1:38] Speaker 3: were mixed. But now, yeah, it seems like it's become
[1:42] Speaker 3: a retrospective darling, and I can see why. So I
[1:46] Speaker 3: thought I might start with a quick summary of the
[1:49] Speaker 3: plot to a large extent there isn't a plot what
[1:52] Speaker 3: plot is there is just some loose connective tissue to
[1:56] Speaker 3: kind of get us from one weird scene to the
[1:59] Speaker 3: next but the premise is this there is a young
[2:02] Speaker 3: woman named Arletty Arletty Lang who drives out to a
[2:07] Speaker 3: small coastal town in California called Point Dune and I
[2:12] Speaker 3: think it is Point Dune even though in some sources
[2:15] Speaker 3: they call it Point Doom and.
[2:17] Speaker 2: It sounds like doom in the movie at times.
[2:19] Speaker 3: Yes. And there is a real point doom in California.
[2:23] Speaker 3: So I think that this might actually just be a
[2:27] Speaker 3: play on the fact that there was a point doom.
[2:29] Speaker 3: So they called it point doom to, you know, and
[2:31] Speaker 3: it sounds so close, it actually gets confused. But anyway,
[2:35] Speaker 3: she goes to point doom to visit her father, a
[2:38] Speaker 3: well-known painter and visual artist named Joseph Lang, from whom
[2:43] Speaker 3: she has been estranged for some time. And when she
[2:46] Speaker 3: gets into town, she finds his house empty, and not
[2:51] Speaker 3: like he moved out. It's like he just got up
[2:53] Speaker 3: and left in the middle of the night, all his
[2:55] Speaker 3: stuff strewn out everywhere. And she finds his diary full
[2:59] Speaker 3: of entries describing nightmares about a blood moon and the
[3:03] Speaker 3: end of the world, about a dark presence that approaches
[3:06] Speaker 3: from the sea, and ominous gatherings of people on the
[3:10] Speaker 3: beaches at night, people who seem to be waiting in
[3:13] Speaker 3: the sand and watching for something.
[3:16] Speaker 2: Yeah, people becoming animals, dark shadows, that.
[3:18] Speaker 3: Sort of thing. Yeah. So searching for answers, Arletty asks
[3:23] Speaker 3: around town, and she has a sequence of weird encounters
[3:28] Speaker 3: with locals and other visitors alike, eventually becoming acquainted with
[3:33] Speaker 3: a trio of bohemian libertine travelers named Laura, Tom, and Tony.
[3:39] Speaker 3: They end up moving into her father's house with her.
[3:42] Speaker 3: I don't know if it's even really with her permission.
[3:44] Speaker 3: They're just kind of there at some point. And then
[3:49] Speaker 3: we follow these characters as events in Point Dune become
[3:53] Speaker 3: increasingly disturbing and unreal. And the out-of-towners start one by
[3:58] Speaker 3: one having run-ins with mobs of people who appear to
[4:01] Speaker 3: be kind of stuck between life and death. These people
[4:05] Speaker 3: who weep blood and hunger for meat and including not
[4:09] Speaker 3: just animal meat. There's some cannibalism involved.
[4:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes this film is described very loosely as a
[4:17] Speaker 2: zombie movie, and these people are described as zombies. But
[4:23] Speaker 2: I would hesitate to firmly call it such. We're in
[4:28] Speaker 2: some other type of weird, ambiguous zone here with these guys.
[4:31] Speaker 3: I was actually going to bring this question up in
[4:33] Speaker 3: a bit, but we can address it now. So, yeah,
[4:35] Speaker 3: what are the flesh-eating townspeople of the movie? I've seen
[4:40] Speaker 3: critics debate the point of whether they're zombies or not.
[4:43] Speaker 3: To look at the pros and cons, they do eat
[4:46] Speaker 3: human flesh. Mm-hmm. They do mob people like zombies. It's very,
[4:51] Speaker 3: you know, like you would see in later movies like
[4:54] Speaker 3: Day of the Dead, or I guess earlier movies like
[4:56] Speaker 3: Night of the Living Dead.
[4:57] Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
[4:58] Speaker 3: Um, they do not seem to be re animated corpses.
[5:02] Speaker 3: It's not like in night of the living dead where
[5:04] Speaker 3: people get up out of their graves and come walk
[5:07] Speaker 3: the earth looking for flesh, but they do seem. Half dead.
[5:11] Speaker 3: They've got discolored flesh. Like there's blue makeup on them usually. Uh,
[5:16] Speaker 3: and they've got blood running out of their eyes. They
[5:18] Speaker 3: sometimes shamble, but other times they run and they seem
[5:22] Speaker 3: fully alive and even athletic, like hot blooded humans. However,
[5:27] Speaker 3: there are lines, just general lines about the dead rising.
[5:31] Speaker 3: For example, there's that scene with Elisha Cook Jr. where
[5:34] Speaker 3: he tells Arletty not to bury her father, but to
[5:38] Speaker 3: burn his body because the suggestion is if she buries him,
[5:42] Speaker 3: he's just going to come right back.
[5:43] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So, again, we have to sort of go
[5:47] Speaker 2: back to the fact that this film is going to
[5:48] Speaker 2: be a little light on the connective tissue. But, yeah,
[5:53] Speaker 2: I kind of thought of them less as, yeah, not
[5:55] Speaker 2: the reanimated dead, but more people to whom a catastrophic
[6:00] Speaker 2: revelation has been revealed. And that revelation makes you just
[6:06] Speaker 2: sort of cast aside all of these illusions that you
[6:09] Speaker 2: had in life and now realize, you know, it's just
[6:12] Speaker 2: all about eating meat, whatever kind of meat you can
[6:15] Speaker 2: get your hands on and, and following the dark master.
[6:18] Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well I get in that regard, it's
[6:22] Speaker 3: kind of like in the mouth of madness when people
[6:24] Speaker 3: read the book and then start crying blood.
[6:26] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[6:27] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[6:27] Speaker 2: This film, there are a lot of comparisons to be
[6:29] Speaker 2: made between it and in the mouth of madness. Um,
[6:33] Speaker 2: just by virtue of maybe some of the things that
[6:35] Speaker 2: inspired both films, um, And then some of the set
[6:39] Speaker 2: pieces that are involved. So basically, I'm just saying, if
[6:42] Speaker 2: you like one, check out the other.
[6:45] Speaker 3: So a bunch of characters in this movie get eaten.
[6:49] Speaker 3: And then Arletty, our heroine, clearly feels that she is
[6:53] Speaker 3: hurtling ever closer to some terrible revelation about her father.
[6:57] Speaker 3: Like there's one part where She's confronted with a body
[7:02] Speaker 3: by the police that is alleged to be the body
[7:04] Speaker 3: of her father, but then she later says she doesn't
[7:07] Speaker 3: think it was really him. So there's a question of
[7:10] Speaker 3: how the story with her father will resolve. There is
[7:13] Speaker 3: this issue of the watchers on the beach. What are
[7:16] Speaker 3: they waiting for? What's going to come to them about
[7:18] Speaker 3: the thing that's going to return from the ocean? And
[7:21] Speaker 3: eventually it ends in a big climax that I doesn't
[7:24] Speaker 3: answer most of these questions, but, uh, we'll at least
[7:27] Speaker 3: give you some pretty weird stuff to watch. Uh, so
[7:31] Speaker 3: like I said, the movie is not really about the plot. Uh,
[7:34] Speaker 3: instead the audience is being asked to rub the fur.
[7:37] Speaker 3: This is a rub the fur movie. It is a
[7:39] Speaker 3: parade of pleasingly weird, frightening, funny, bizarre images and situations.
[7:47] Speaker 3: And I think the goal of the filmmakers was to
[7:49] Speaker 3: conjure a sense of dread through place and atmosphere. And
[7:52] Speaker 3: that's very much what they do. So it's a unique
[7:55] Speaker 3: film in many ways, but if, uh, if I had
[7:57] Speaker 3: to compare it to other movies in the same zone,
[8:00] Speaker 3: I'd say, uh, Fulci gates of hell trilogy, definitely, especially
[8:04] Speaker 3: like city of the living dead. Uh, though of course
[8:07] Speaker 3: those come later. So they're definitely not an influence on this.
[8:10] Speaker 3: If anything, this might be an influence on them though.
[8:12] Speaker 3: This was pretty obscure. So I don't know if Fulci
[8:14] Speaker 3: ever saw it, but, uh, certainly, uh, the, the gates
[8:18] Speaker 3: of hell movies, uh, night of the living dead also, uh,
[8:21] Speaker 3: John Carpenter's The Fog. There's a little bit of that
[8:24] Speaker 3: in here. And then a dash of Manos' The Hands
[8:27] Speaker 3: of Fate. Yeah.
[8:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think all of those are solid references for sure.
[8:32] Speaker 2: It was very much reminded of Fulci for sure, as
[8:37] Speaker 2: well as early and sometimes later works of John Carpenter.
[8:41] Speaker 2: Messiah of Evil is just an intense, disturbing dream that
[8:45] Speaker 2: doesn't seem to end. And I mean that in a
[8:47] Speaker 2: good way. The film doesn't feel overlong. But there's this
[8:51] Speaker 2: great drawn-out, qualudic energy to the scenes combined with the
[8:56] Speaker 2: surrealist elements and the weird choices and pacing and plotting.
[9:00] Speaker 2: It makes it feel like a dream you're on the
[9:02] Speaker 2: cusp of waking from in the early morning, but you
[9:05] Speaker 2: can't quite shake. It keeps kind of drifting, you know,
[9:08] Speaker 2: how sometimes the dream will keep coming back to it.
[9:11] Speaker 2: And you never completely return to a real solid plot line.
[9:15] Speaker 2: You end up with all this meandering stuff, but it's
[9:18] Speaker 2: still kind of the same dream. That's sort of the
[9:20] Speaker 2: way this felt for me.
[9:22] Speaker 3: I was going to say the exact same thing about
[9:23] Speaker 3: the dreaminess of it. It has that wandering, meandering quality
[9:27] Speaker 3: of dreams, the way you just kind of end up
[9:30] Speaker 3: going from one thing to another in a way that
[9:32] Speaker 3: doesn't fully make sense. Things seem to arise for their
[9:36] Speaker 3: imagistic significance instead of being like causally following from the
[9:41] Speaker 3: thing before. Mm-hmm. I did. So the reason I compared
[9:44] Speaker 3: it to Carpenters, the fog is, of course, the atmosphere
[9:48] Speaker 3: of the coastal town in California where there's this sinister
[9:51] Speaker 3: force taking over from the water. So it feels very
[9:54] Speaker 3: much like the fog and that way I'm pretty sure
[9:56] Speaker 3: the fog comes later also. Yeah, certainly the fog comes later.
[10:00] Speaker 3: Night of the Living Dead was earlier than this, of course.
[10:04] Speaker 3: So in that comparison, it's because of the kind of wet,
[10:10] Speaker 3: visceral revision of what movie horror meant with Night of
[10:14] Speaker 3: the Living Dead. So, you know, night is often credited
[10:17] Speaker 3: with moving things away from the Gothic and the ethereal
[10:21] Speaker 3: and horror into the physical and the modern. And then finally,
[10:26] Speaker 3: I say Manos, the hands of fate, because it has
[10:30] Speaker 3: a bit of that, that grungy last known photograph cinema
[10:35] Speaker 3: of no cinema quality. I do not compare it to
[10:39] Speaker 3: Manos in the sense that it's poorly or incompetently made,
[10:42] Speaker 3: which it is not at all. It's like full of
[10:45] Speaker 3: creativity and experimental energy and, Some people might even say
[10:49] Speaker 3: student film energy, though sometimes that comes with negative connotations,
[10:53] Speaker 3: and I don't mean any negative connotations here. But it is,
[10:57] Speaker 3: I think, fair to say student film in a lot
[11:00] Speaker 3: of ways, because at the time this was made, the filmmakers,
[11:03] Speaker 3: Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, they were both only a
[11:07] Speaker 3: few years out of film school, though I think Huyck
[11:11] Speaker 3: At least Huyck didn't graduate. He went to USC film
[11:14] Speaker 3: school and dropped out. And Katz, I believe, went to
[11:17] Speaker 3: UCLA film school. I don't know if she graduated or not.
[11:20] Speaker 3: But they'd both recently been film students.
[11:23] Speaker 2: Yeah, very much part of that scene.
[11:24] Speaker 3: Yeah. And were friends with George Lucas and worked together
[11:27] Speaker 3: with George Lucas, as we'll talk about later. So, yeah,
[11:30] Speaker 3: that late 60s, early 70s, new Hollywood LA film school scene.
[11:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And we'll get into some of the folks
[11:39] Speaker 2: that these guys were peers with. But I love the
[11:43] Speaker 2: sense of an early 70s apocalypse to this film. I
[11:47] Speaker 2: was a child of the 80s. I was a teen
[11:48] Speaker 2: of the 90s. But I was born in the 1970s.
[11:52] Speaker 2: And this probably says a lot about the media that
[11:53] Speaker 2: I tend to gravitate to, especially on Weird House Cinema. Obviously,
[11:57] Speaker 2: we're going to be nostalgic for the films and the
[11:59] Speaker 2: music that shaped us in our formative years. But there's
[12:02] Speaker 2: always something intriguing about the decade that spawned us, especially
[12:07] Speaker 2: if you're someone like me, who, since I was born
[12:10] Speaker 2: in 78, I don't have any memories of the 70s,
[12:14] Speaker 2: but I know that I came out of the 70s.
[12:16] Speaker 2: All of my earliest memories are going to be, you know,
[12:18] Speaker 2: vaguely from the early 80s. And so the music and
[12:21] Speaker 2: films of the 70s often feel like some sort of
[12:23] Speaker 2: dark fantasy realm from which I emerged and maybe to
[12:26] Speaker 2: which I'm somehow destined to return. You know, its horrors
[12:30] Speaker 2: are the horrors that I was shielded from. Its sexuality
[12:33] Speaker 2: is the sexuality that spawned me. Its anxieties inform my
[12:37] Speaker 2: own anxieties. And I'm I'm quick to see its reflection
[12:40] Speaker 2: in our contemporary times. And Messiah of Evil, I think just,
[12:45] Speaker 2: it does a fabulous job of, I mean, obviously of
[12:49] Speaker 2: presenting the early 70s. It is very much a product
[12:52] Speaker 2: of the early 70s. And, you know, almost like a
[12:54] Speaker 2: time capsule in some ways of certain particular details, especially
[12:59] Speaker 2: of 1971 California.
[13:02] Speaker 3: I'm glad you said that last part. I want to
[13:04] Speaker 3: come back to that in just a minute.
[13:05] Speaker 2: Yeah. And I'll have a lot more to say about
[13:07] Speaker 2: some of the Particular especially the locations that we have
[13:10] Speaker 2: in this film, but there's several key locations that they
[13:13] Speaker 2: feel absolutely early 70s You know again time capsule and everything,
[13:18] Speaker 2: but they also feel completely pristine In part like they've
[13:23] Speaker 2: been preserved in a time capsule, you know But also
[13:25] Speaker 2: it illuminated with the full spectrum of modernity's light, you
[13:29] Speaker 2: know it it fires up many of the same circuits
[13:32] Speaker 2: this film does that other 70s films do like blue
[13:35] Speaker 2: sunshine or even death moon and But really becomes something
[13:39] Speaker 2: else for me, at least via this surreal dreamlike Fulci
[13:42] Speaker 2: vibe where you have this like weird juxtaposition of gleaming
[13:46] Speaker 2: gas station chrome, but also the patina of sweat on
[13:50] Speaker 2: youthful 70s flesh. I don't know. It kind of has
[13:53] Speaker 2: this strange feel of being like antique, but also very
[13:57] Speaker 2: modern and new, which, of course, it was when it
[13:59] Speaker 2: was filmed in 1971. But, yeah, it just it kind
[14:03] Speaker 2: of seems to have like a foot in two different
[14:06] Speaker 2: worlds here. And I love it.
[14:07] Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I can see what you're saying there in
[14:09] Speaker 3: multiple ways. I mean, in one sense, of course, from
[14:13] Speaker 3: our perspective, these things are from a time before we
[14:16] Speaker 3: were born. So they seem old to us, but they
[14:19] Speaker 3: were new at the time they were shot. So they're
[14:21] Speaker 3: still in very good condition. They look very clean, gleaming.
[14:25] Speaker 3: But also, I think there are just some things about
[14:27] Speaker 3: like the popular color palettes in a lot of consumer
[14:31] Speaker 3: goods at the time. It's just were in the, in
[14:34] Speaker 3: pairing that with like the quality of the films used
[14:37] Speaker 3: at the time, just make everything look old in a
[14:40] Speaker 3: certain way. Everything that was photographed then, um, there, I
[14:44] Speaker 3: don't know, there's some natural interaction of the colors used
[14:48] Speaker 3: in the film used that gives this faded look to
[14:51] Speaker 3: the world. Um, despite the fact that, I mean, a
[14:54] Speaker 3: lot of the scenes in this movie are just popping
[14:57] Speaker 3: with color.
[14:57] Speaker 2: Yeah. So again, they, they, they at once feel old
[15:01] Speaker 2: and new at the same time, you know, especially when
[15:03] Speaker 2: we start talking about the gas station.
[15:05] Speaker 3: That's a gas station. I love the gas station. So
[15:09] Speaker 3: definitely for me, one of the unique lingering impressions of
[15:16] Speaker 3: this movie comes from the way it combines two things.
[15:23] Speaker 3: You might say these are the two dominant forces fighting
[15:27] Speaker 3: to define the aesthetic of the film. One is apocalyptic, unnameable,
[15:32] Speaker 3: Lovecraftian dread. And the other is mainstream West Coast consumer
[15:39] Speaker 3: geography and architecture. So like there's an encounter at a
[15:44] Speaker 3: gas station in this movie and it's not an, it's
[15:47] Speaker 3: not a horror movie gas station. It's not an old
[15:50] Speaker 3: broken down gas station, you know, with the, you know,
[15:54] Speaker 3: tumbleweed blowing by. It's like a new pristine gas station
[15:57] Speaker 3: that looks like some, you know, I've actually seen some
[16:00] Speaker 3: essays online that compare it to gas stations that were
[16:05] Speaker 3: painted in works of pop art from the time by
[16:09] Speaker 3: like Ed Ruscha.
[16:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a mobile gas station and it feels just like,
[16:14] Speaker 2: like a showcase. It doesn't feel like this thing has
[16:17] Speaker 2: even been open at all. Like they got it in
[16:19] Speaker 2: shot before it was even used.
[16:21] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's, again, gleaming. There's also a scene at
[16:25] Speaker 3: a Ralph's that's gleaming in a similar way. And so, yeah,
[16:29] Speaker 3: so the scene at the Ralph's, there's this long shot
[16:32] Speaker 3: where the character Laura walks down the street of this
[16:35] Speaker 3: unfinished housing development. There's a scene at a movie theater
[16:39] Speaker 3: where we see the concession stand and all the candies.
[16:43] Speaker 3: And so we get all of these modern, familiar, even
[16:47] Speaker 3: kitschy consumer locations that rather than locations people normally think
[16:54] Speaker 3: of as spooky or dreadful. But what's happening in these
[16:57] Speaker 3: locations is so incongruous with our expectations. A big part
[17:02] Speaker 3: of the movie's effect is that it takes the moon-worshipping
[17:06] Speaker 3: cult of doom out of its natural narrative roost at
[17:11] Speaker 3: Stonehenge or an old castle in Europe, the places you
[17:14] Speaker 3: would normally think to set a horror movie like this,
[17:17] Speaker 3: and it makes them go shopping in the San Fernando Valley.
[17:20] Speaker 3: So it's like Nyarlathotep has got to stop and get
[17:23] Speaker 3: gas at this pristine new gas station. Or, you know,
[17:26] Speaker 3: you're getting the suggestion of Yog-Sothoth at the Ralphs.
[17:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. All right. Well, elevator
[17:35] Speaker 2: pitches for this one. I had a few that I
[17:37] Speaker 2: came up with. When there's no more room in hell,
[17:40] Speaker 2: the dead shall walk the 1970s. Look at rational existence
[17:44] Speaker 2: on the run in the 1970s. And then the 1970s
[17:46] Speaker 2: are not real and cannot hurt you. Uh, I, these
[17:51] Speaker 2: are all ones that may not make a lot of, uh,
[17:54] Speaker 2: a lot of objective sense, but they feel appropriate for
[17:57] Speaker 2: this movie. All right. Well, um, for those of you
[18:09] Speaker 2: out there wondering, well, how can I watch Messiah of evil? Uh, well,
[18:13] Speaker 2: widely available in a few different ways. Um, mainly you're
[18:17] Speaker 2: going to want the remastered version. Uh, I think the
[18:20] Speaker 2: remastered version, or at least a remastered version initially came
[18:24] Speaker 2: out in 2009 via the now sadly defunct code red remaster. Uh,
[18:29] Speaker 2: this is the one I think I'd seen on shelves
[18:31] Speaker 2: for a while. And then more recently, there's this 2023
[18:34] Speaker 2: radiance films, blu-ray. And this one I think is, is
[18:38] Speaker 2: probably the way to pick it up now on physical
[18:40] Speaker 2: media and to watch it in great quality.
[18:43] Speaker 3: I've got the radiance blu-ray, uh, Really enjoyed it.
[18:46] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[18:46] Speaker 3: And it's got some good extras, too, that I'll talk
[18:48] Speaker 3: about as we get into talking about the connections. Excellent.
[18:51] Speaker 2: And if you're streaming it, I ended up streaming it
[18:53] Speaker 2: myself off of the excellent Eternal Family streaming app, which
[18:56] Speaker 2: is a great digital source for many of the sorts
[18:58] Speaker 2: of films we discuss on Weird House Cinema. That one
[19:02] Speaker 2: has certainly become my buddy on flights that I have
[19:05] Speaker 2: to take.
[19:06] Speaker 3: All right. Should we talk about the connections? I guess
[19:08] Speaker 3: we should start talking. We should probably talk about Willard
[19:11] Speaker 3: Hike and Gloria Katz together because they usually worked as
[19:14] Speaker 3: a team.
[19:15] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, pretty much always work together. So let's start
[19:19] Speaker 2: with Huyck. Willard Huyck, director, writer, born 1945, American writer
[19:25] Speaker 2: and director, who came up in the 60s as part
[19:28] Speaker 2: of this talented group of filmmakers that came out of
[19:30] Speaker 2: USC's School of Cinematic Arts. Sometimes I see him looped
[19:33] Speaker 2: into this list of dirty dozen, and this includes the
[19:37] Speaker 2: likes of George Lucas and Milius and others, with George
[19:42] Speaker 2: Lucas being, I think, the big connection here for Hike,
[19:45] Speaker 2: as we'll get to. This was Hike's first film, made
[19:48] Speaker 2: with his wife, Gloria Katz. He'd previously worked on the
[19:52] Speaker 2: screenplay for The Devils 8 and 69, along with Milius. Afterwards,
[19:57] Speaker 2: he worked with his wife on 73's American Graffiti, and
[20:01] Speaker 2: then 75's Lucky Lady, 79's more American Graffiti, 84's Indiana
[20:06] Speaker 2: Jones and the Temple of Doom, and and 94's Radio
[20:09] Speaker 2: Land Murders. As a director, he directed three more pictures,
[20:13] Speaker 2: 79's French Postcards, a drama, 84's Best Defense, a Dudley Moore,
[20:18] Speaker 2: Eddie Murphy comedy that I think famously did not land,
[20:22] Speaker 2: did not connect with folks. And then there's 1986's Howard
[20:27] Speaker 2: the Duck, a film that I have not seen since
[20:30] Speaker 2: my childhood, but one I remember enjoying quite a bit.
[20:34] Speaker 2: A Katz and Lucas produced big budget comic book movie,
[20:37] Speaker 2: with terrific industrial light and magic effects, including an amazing
[20:41] Speaker 2: Phil Tippett stop-motion monster. Yet adults at least famously hated
[20:46] Speaker 2: this movie, and I think this one was kind of
[20:48] Speaker 2: like the nail in the coffin of Hike's directorial career.
[20:52] Speaker 3: Howard the Duck is a notorious film, widely hated, one
[20:57] Speaker 3: that I would say... hated in a way that I
[20:59] Speaker 3: think it does not deserve. I haven't seen it in
[21:02] Speaker 3: a while, but years ago I saw it and I
[21:04] Speaker 3: remember I kind of liked it. You know, there's some
[21:06] Speaker 3: charming things about it. Like it's weird, but I don't know.
[21:10] Speaker 3: Don't we like weird movies now? Are we finally like, yeah. Um,
[21:14] Speaker 3: you know, uh, so, so I kind of like Howard
[21:16] Speaker 3: the duck. I actually, my, uh, I've got an old friend. My,
[21:19] Speaker 3: my friend Chuck really loves Howard the duck. He's like
[21:21] Speaker 3: a staunch defender of Howard the duck. Uh, so, so
[21:25] Speaker 3: I think this movie gets a lot of unfair hate.
[21:28] Speaker 2: Yeah. Like I said, I remember liking it as a kid, though,
[21:30] Speaker 2: of course, as a kid, I also liked Leonard part six.
[21:32] Speaker 2: So I don't know. So I'll put the caveat by,
[21:37] Speaker 2: but I've been, I've wanted to re-explore Howard the Duck.
[21:42] Speaker 3: It might not hold up in every regard, but I
[21:44] Speaker 3: think it is more interesting and more fun than people
[21:48] Speaker 3: give it credit for. Yeah. Yeah.
[21:50] Speaker 2: And hey, nothing else. I want to see that monster again.
[21:53] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[21:53] Speaker 2: All right. Gloria Katz, also director, writer on this. 1942
[21:58] Speaker 2: through 2018 um writer and producer who worked extensively with
[22:03] Speaker 2: her husband and earned alongside him an oscar nomination for
[22:06] Speaker 2: american graffiti she also worked on its sequel she worked
[22:09] Speaker 2: on temple of doom best defense and howard the duck
[22:12] Speaker 2: and um among the various family connections on this film
[22:15] Speaker 2: this is one of those films you know scrappy first
[22:18] Speaker 2: film where you'll see the same last names over and
[22:20] Speaker 2: over again because people were just bringing in like every
[22:23] Speaker 2: resource and family resource that at their disposal. So among
[22:27] Speaker 2: these various family connections, Gloria's brother, Stephen M. Katz, serves
[22:31] Speaker 2: as cinematographer on this film.
[22:33] Speaker 3: And I think ends up being one of the major
[22:35] Speaker 3: inputs on the aesthetic of the film.
[22:37] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[22:38] Speaker 3: But yeah, so that's Willard and Gloria, and they frequently collaborated.
[22:44] Speaker 3: They often worked as a team, even to the point
[22:47] Speaker 3: where I was listening to an interview. In fact, I'll
[22:50] Speaker 3: just go ahead and introduce it. So on the, uh,
[22:54] Speaker 3: Blu-ray disc that I have, there is an extra that's
[22:57] Speaker 3: an interview with Willard hike. This was after Gloria's death.
[23:00] Speaker 3: I think this interview took place in 2019. Uh, but
[23:04] Speaker 3: it was conducted by shout out to Mike white of
[23:07] Speaker 3: the projection booth podcast. So that's the interviewer here. Uh, but, uh,
[23:12] Speaker 3: hike in this interview says a bunch of things, but
[23:15] Speaker 3: one of them is that he and Gloria used to
[23:17] Speaker 3: work together, uh, writing together on the same computer with
[23:22] Speaker 3: two keyboards plugged into it. Oh, wow.
[23:25] Speaker 2: Whoa.
[23:25] Speaker 3: That sounds like you really got to have a good
[23:27] Speaker 3: working relationship with somebody.
[23:29] Speaker 2: Not every long-term couple has that kind of working relationship.
[23:33] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[23:34] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[23:35] Speaker 3: Um, but are you ready to talk about a few
[23:37] Speaker 3: other interesting things from this interview?
[23:39] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
[23:39] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[23:39] Speaker 2: What do you got?
[23:40] Speaker 3: So a few things caught my attention. One is that
[23:43] Speaker 3: hike was high school friends with another well-known filmmaker, the
[23:49] Speaker 3: late Curtis Hanson who directed LA confidential wonder boys, a
[23:53] Speaker 3: bunch of other famous movies. Um, and there's an interesting
[23:56] Speaker 3: thematic connection here, which is that Curtis Hanson was one
[24:00] Speaker 3: of the writers on the Dunwich horror movie from 1970,
[24:04] Speaker 3: which is a Lovecraft adaptation.
[24:06] Speaker 2: This is the one we watched. Yes. Yeah.
[24:09] Speaker 3: The one with, uh, the guy from, um, guy from
[24:12] Speaker 3: quantum leap was in it. Wasn't he?
[24:14] Speaker 2: Dean Stockwell.
[24:15] Speaker 3: Yes, that's it. So, uh, so, uh, I thought that
[24:18] Speaker 3: was interesting, of course, because of the overwhelming Lovecraftian vibes
[24:22] Speaker 3: of Messiah of Evil. And then this high school friend
[24:25] Speaker 3: of Hikes, Curtis Hanson, also kicked his career off with
[24:29] Speaker 3: a Lovecraft adaptation, this time an explicit one, taking a
[24:33] Speaker 3: story and turning it into a movie. So Hikes says
[24:36] Speaker 3: that he and Hanson together made a 50-minute movie when
[24:40] Speaker 3: they were still in high school with an 8mm camera
[24:43] Speaker 3: that belonged to the father of a friend of theirs. Um, but, uh,
[24:47] Speaker 3: he explained, so hike explains that he got to know, uh,
[24:51] Speaker 3: George Lucas and Gloria Katz in his college years when
[24:54] Speaker 3: he was in California. So I think he was going
[24:56] Speaker 3: to USC and Gloria Katz was at the film department
[25:00] Speaker 3: at UCLA. He says he met her. Here's another fun connection.
[25:04] Speaker 3: He met her one night when he and a friend
[25:07] Speaker 3: went over to UCLA to see a screening of Roger
[25:10] Speaker 3: Corman's the wild angels. And he says, quote, Corman was
[25:14] Speaker 3: sort of a god to us in those days. But
[25:19] Speaker 3: Gloria Katz was there and they met. So Huyck, soon
[25:23] Speaker 3: after this, quit film school to go straight to work
[25:26] Speaker 3: at AIP, American International Pictures, around 1968. So he gets
[25:30] Speaker 3: sucked into the Corman vortex. He says he was making
[25:34] Speaker 3: motorcycle movies and things like that. Really, he was working
[25:38] Speaker 3: as a reader at AIP at that time. So This
[25:41] Speaker 3: would be working in the story department under Lawrence Gordon, uh,
[25:45] Speaker 3: reading scripts and books for potential adaptation. This was a
[25:49] Speaker 3: job held by multiple up and comers at the time.
[25:51] Speaker 3: John Milius also worked in the story department of AIP
[25:54] Speaker 3: at the same time. Uh, and apparently hike worked, uh,
[25:58] Speaker 3: I think in the story department for witch finder general, uh,
[26:01] Speaker 3: if I remember correctly. Uh, but hike and cats got
[26:04] Speaker 3: married in 1969 and they became creative partners as well. Um, So,
[26:10] Speaker 3: you know, they, they would write together and he talks
[26:13] Speaker 3: about the process of collaborating on screenplays. It it's something
[26:18] Speaker 3: I would think.
[26:20] Speaker 2: I don't know.
[26:20] Speaker 3: He, he just talks about it. Like it wasn't, it
[26:22] Speaker 3: wasn't a problem. I would expect to hear more about
[26:24] Speaker 3: the challenges of working together and collaborating, but he's like, no, yeah,
[26:28] Speaker 3: your screenwriting is a good thing to do together. Uh,
[26:31] Speaker 3: he says that it, it, it lends itself to collaboration
[26:34] Speaker 3: more naturally than say, writing a novel or a piece
[26:38] Speaker 3: of fiction meant for the page. because he says, apart
[26:41] Speaker 3: from the dialogue, quote, the words themselves aren't as important.
[26:45] Speaker 3: It's kind of more of a process of problem solving,
[26:48] Speaker 3: of the logic of figuring out what would be cool here,
[26:51] Speaker 3: what happens next. And so he kind of describes it
[26:54] Speaker 3: as just not that difficult to approach screenwriting as a collaboration,
[26:58] Speaker 3: at least in his experience with Gloria. And that was
[27:01] Speaker 3: cool to me.
[27:01] Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, yeah. I can imagine that you're thinking about
[27:04] Speaker 2: like the structural nature of building out a screenplay and
[27:08] Speaker 2: In the different beats.
[27:09] Speaker 3: Yeah. Okay. So how did Messiah of Evil happen? He
[27:14] Speaker 3: tells the story that he and Gloria were approached by
[27:17] Speaker 3: an agent, or I think maybe it was their agent
[27:20] Speaker 3: at the time. Somebody approached them with a proposal that
[27:25] Speaker 3: there was some money going around looking for talent among
[27:28] Speaker 3: UCLA film students, young talent at the time. And the
[27:33] Speaker 3: idea was that they could get financing to make a movie,
[27:37] Speaker 3: make a low-budget movie around, I think, $ 90, 000 or $ 100, 000.
[27:40] Speaker 3: And the only condition was it had to be a
[27:44] Speaker 3: horror film. Now, they weren't naturally horror people, they say. Like,
[27:49] Speaker 3: that wasn't, you know, they weren't out there looking to
[27:52] Speaker 3: make a horror movie. But if money to make a
[27:55] Speaker 3: movie came attached to the condition that it had to
[27:57] Speaker 3: be horror, they were like, sure, yeah, sounds good. Yeah.
[28:01] Speaker 3: So they wrote a screenplay very quickly. They quickly put
[28:04] Speaker 3: together a crew. Again, they got Gloria's brother, Stephen Katz,
[28:07] Speaker 3: to shoot it. Hike shouts out several people who were
[28:13] Speaker 3: important here. He mentions the art directors and I think
[28:16] Speaker 3: production designer and art director who he says went on
[28:19] Speaker 3: to work on a bunch of Terrence Malick films. He
[28:23] Speaker 3: also mentions that the film had two different editors. He
[28:27] Speaker 3: says that usually the way they're filmmaking collaboration broke down
[28:32] Speaker 3: was that they would you know totally work together when
[28:36] Speaker 3: writing and then he would do the bulk of the
[28:39] Speaker 3: directing on set and gloria would be the producer though
[28:43] Speaker 3: there are some stories from the messiah of evil set
[28:46] Speaker 3: where it does sound like hike did most of the
[28:49] Speaker 3: onset directing though sometimes uh cats would in some scenes
[28:54] Speaker 3: kind of step in and do some directing work she
[28:56] Speaker 3: describes how just the work of producing the film was
[29:00] Speaker 3: something that nearly drove her to a nervous breakdown because
[29:03] Speaker 3: they were trying to make it on such a tight budget.
[29:06] Speaker 3: Obviously that can be stressful. Ike says that the version
[29:11] Speaker 3: of Messiah of evil that is out today is pretty
[29:15] Speaker 3: close to what they had in mind, except for the
[29:18] Speaker 3: fact that there were scenes that were supposed to be
[29:21] Speaker 3: in the movie, but they never shot because they ran
[29:23] Speaker 3: out of money. And I think that's funny that he
[29:25] Speaker 3: would consider that close enough. But it was technically unfinished.
[29:32] Speaker 3: So the movie we have is not the full movie.
[29:35] Speaker 3: It is what we have is like something that they
[29:39] Speaker 3: shot most of it. They were unable to, I think,
[29:41] Speaker 3: shoot the original ending they intended. They couldn't get the
[29:44] Speaker 3: more money they wanted to complete it. And basically they
[29:49] Speaker 3: handed off the work print to their investors and then,
[29:53] Speaker 3: you know, they walked away from it. somehow their investors
[29:56] Speaker 3: managed to paper over the gaps with editing tricks and
[30:00] Speaker 3: some voiceover and that left us with the movie we have.
[30:04] Speaker 2: Yeah and i mean i find what we have pretty
[30:06] Speaker 2: effective like for the most part there are no points
[30:09] Speaker 2: in it where i'm like well i wanted to see
[30:10] Speaker 2: this but we didn't see it or feeling like we
[30:13] Speaker 2: needed more of the movie like i feel like i
[30:16] Speaker 2: feel like we got a pretty solid package.
[30:17] Speaker 3: Here yeah i agree i would kind of say the
[30:20] Speaker 3: strengths of this movie are such that it can be
[30:25] Speaker 3: sort of unfinished and still be a pretty good movie,
[30:27] Speaker 3: if that makes any sense. It's not highly mechanical in
[30:32] Speaker 3: a plot sense, so it doesn't really rely on having
[30:35] Speaker 3: that crucial ending scene that would make sense of everything.
[30:38] Speaker 3: Some mysteries remain at the ending of the movie, and
[30:41] Speaker 3: that's okay. That kind of feels like it would make
[30:44] Speaker 3: sense for it to end that way.
[30:46] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of immune from plot holes because of
[30:50] Speaker 2: the dreamlike nature, the apocalyptic vision, and so forth.
[30:55] Speaker 3: Haik tells one story in this interview about how he
[30:57] Speaker 3: got sued by George Romero. So Romero, the creator of
[31:02] Speaker 3: Night of the Living Dead, at one point tried to
[31:05] Speaker 3: sue him because one of the titles used in the
[31:10] Speaker 3: distribution of Messiah of Evil was too close to Night
[31:14] Speaker 3: of the Living Dead. Haik, in the interview, says that
[31:17] Speaker 3: it was the title Dead People, but I kind of
[31:19] Speaker 3: suspect it was that alternate title, Return of the Living Dead,
[31:22] Speaker 3: which is a lot closer to that.
[31:24] Speaker 2: I think I read something about one of the tagline
[31:27] Speaker 2: using a tagline that was too close or identical to
[31:29] Speaker 2: something that had been used on Return of the Living Dead.
[31:31] Speaker 2: And in any case, like I think we're talking about
[31:34] Speaker 2: things that are probably out of his hand.
[31:36] Speaker 3: Right. Totally out of his hands.
[31:37] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[31:37] Speaker 3: He says he had to explain to Romero's people. He's like, look,
[31:40] Speaker 3: I don't own the movie. I didn't pick the title.
[31:42] Speaker 3: It's not my business at this point. but I can
[31:45] Speaker 3: imagine that would be stressful having somebody trying to like
[31:48] Speaker 3: coming at you with legal action over something that you
[31:51] Speaker 3: have nothing to do with.
[31:52] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[31:52] Speaker 2: I mean, especially with somebody like more established in, in
[31:55] Speaker 2: the field and somebody you kind of look up to
[31:57] Speaker 2: on some level, I'm sure. And then suddenly that person
[32:00] Speaker 2: is threatening legal action like that. That could be rather demoralizing.
[32:03] Speaker 3: I imagine. Um, let's see. Uh, A few more notes
[32:07] Speaker 3: from this. So like, what were the scenes that were
[32:10] Speaker 3: supposed to be in there that they didn't have money
[32:12] Speaker 3: to shoot and ended up being cut? I think one
[32:15] Speaker 3: was going to be a big crowd scene at the
[32:17] Speaker 3: beach that would have had a lot of people in it.
[32:19] Speaker 3: That seems like it would make sense with the arc
[32:22] Speaker 3: of the movie, like these, you know, these watchers on
[32:25] Speaker 3: the beach, the weird people staring at the moon out
[32:27] Speaker 3: on the sand. Maybe at the end of the movie,
[32:29] Speaker 3: there would have been a big gathering of those people
[32:32] Speaker 3: that would come to some kind of violent climax. I
[32:34] Speaker 3: can imagine that. And then also Hike says he thinks
[32:39] Speaker 3: that there were supposed to be more scenes after Arletty
[32:43] Speaker 3: goes to a mental institution at the end of the film.
[32:46] Speaker 3: We don't really get much there. Yeah.
[32:47] Speaker 2: In both cases, these are not things that I felt
[32:50] Speaker 2: like I really wanted or needed more of in the
[32:52] Speaker 2: actual film.
[32:53] Speaker 3: Yeah. So let's see. What were the main influences on
[32:59] Speaker 3: the story? Well, Hike, number one, explicitly acknowledges H.P. Lovecraft.
[33:05] Speaker 3: He says that, yeah, I loved H.P. Lovecraft. And they
[33:09] Speaker 3: started thinking, what if there were an H.P. Lovecraft story
[33:13] Speaker 3: set in the modern day? That sort of thing. And
[33:17] Speaker 3: what does the modern day mean to them? Well, that's
[33:19] Speaker 3: the other major element. It's Lovecraft, but it's also very location-based.
[33:24] Speaker 3: He says that they wanted to make a movie, and
[33:27] Speaker 3: I've actually seen interviews where Gloria Katz says the same thing,
[33:30] Speaker 3: They very much wanted to make a movie about Los Angeles.
[33:34] Speaker 3: They wanted to make a movie about the places that
[33:37] Speaker 3: they knew, like in the San Fernando Valley. So it's
[33:40] Speaker 3: a very place-based movie. Looking at my notes here, you
[33:45] Speaker 3: mentioned that, of course, some family members were brought in.
[33:49] Speaker 3: You see the names repeating in the credits. I made
[33:52] Speaker 3: a few more notes of the things that Hike mentions
[33:55] Speaker 3: in this interview. He says, remember that girl in the
[33:58] Speaker 3: opening scene who slashes Walter Hill's throat? We'll talk about
[34:01] Speaker 3: that later. Yeah. She was the editor's niece. Hike says
[34:07] Speaker 3: his own parents and grandmother are in it. In this movie. Yeah.
[34:13] Speaker 2: And, of course, they both show up at different times
[34:15] Speaker 2: as well.
[34:16] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[34:16] Speaker 2: Different cameos. I think he plays a zombie and she
[34:19] Speaker 2: plays the ticket person.
[34:21] Speaker 3: Willard and Gloria.
[34:22] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
[34:22] Speaker 3: They show up in it as well.
[34:23] Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
[34:24] Speaker 3: That's great. Oh, she, you said she plays the ticket
[34:27] Speaker 3: taker at the, at the, uh, at the movie theater. Yeah. Oh, awesome. Yeah.
[34:31] Speaker 3: That's cool. She's a cool presence on camera too. Uh,
[34:35] Speaker 3: and then one more thing he says, I thought this
[34:36] Speaker 3: was funny. He says there had been a bunch of
[34:39] Speaker 3: aerospace layoffs around the time the movie was made. So
[34:42] Speaker 3: he says there were out of work aerospace engineers playing
[34:46] Speaker 3: the ghouls.
[34:48] Speaker 2: I read that as well.
[34:48] Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
[34:50] Speaker 2: So, yeah.
[34:51] Speaker 3: Oh, you know, one thing, did we mention this a
[34:53] Speaker 3: minute ago that Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz did, famously
[34:58] Speaker 3: did an uncredited script doctor pass on the script for
[35:02] Speaker 3: Star Wars?
[35:03] Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. That's another, that's part of the whole Lucas connection. Yeah. Yeah.
[35:07] Speaker 3: So, of course, they, you know, there were the co-writers
[35:09] Speaker 3: with George Lucas of American Graffiti. So, they knew Lucas.
[35:12] Speaker 3: They'd worked with him before. And Huyck talks about this
[35:16] Speaker 3: in the interview. He says that, you know, we all
[35:18] Speaker 3: were friends with George. We knew that He was working
[35:21] Speaker 3: on Star Wars. He kept telling everybody about Star Wars.
[35:24] Speaker 3: And he says, quote, we were all worried.
[35:27] Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, you go back and you watch documentaries
[35:30] Speaker 2: about the making of the original Star Wars. And there
[35:32] Speaker 2: were a lot of reasons to think that this might fail. And,
[35:37] Speaker 2: you know, fortunately, that was not the case.
[35:39] Speaker 3: Yeah. So he says that I think they were about
[35:42] Speaker 3: to start shooting the movie. Like it was down to
[35:44] Speaker 3: the wire. And Lucas called Willard and Gloria. And told
[35:48] Speaker 3: them he thought he needed a little work revising the
[35:50] Speaker 3: dialogue for the film, but he didn't want to tell
[35:53] Speaker 3: the studio because they were already getting nervous about the
[35:56] Speaker 3: movie and he didn't want to spook them. So he
[35:59] Speaker 3: asked them to do a secret polishing draft of the script.
[36:03] Speaker 3: I think literally like as they were shooting, they were
[36:06] Speaker 3: telexing him revised pages with new dialogue. He says most
[36:11] Speaker 3: of their changes were to dialogue, and I've read it
[36:14] Speaker 3: said online that some very iconic lines are sort of
[36:18] Speaker 3: due to their influence. The people who made Messiah of
[36:21] Speaker 3: Evil are a major part of the flavor of Star Wars.
[36:25] Speaker 3: There's also some discussion of to what extent the final
[36:30] Speaker 3: beloved spunky characterization of Leia is a result of Gloria
[36:34] Speaker 3: Katz's influence.
[36:35] Speaker 2: That's cool, too. I've also read, I don't know if
[36:38] Speaker 2: there's any truth to this because there's probably a lot
[36:40] Speaker 2: of myth making and all of this, but I've also
[36:41] Speaker 2: seen it said that Willard is the one who's like, hey,
[36:45] Speaker 2: what if Darth Vader was Luke's father? I don't know
[36:49] Speaker 2: if that's true or not, but at any rate.
[36:52] Speaker 3: He doesn't claim that in the interview.
[36:53] Speaker 2: I don't know.
[36:54] Speaker 3: But there's a lot that he didn't get into specifics
[36:57] Speaker 3: about that. So that's all from this interview with Willard
[37:00] Speaker 3: Huyck after Gloria had passed away. But I was looking
[37:03] Speaker 3: around for some interviews with Gloria Katz regarding Messiah of Evil.
[37:07] Speaker 3: I saw one interview cited in a book called I
[37:10] Speaker 3: Spit on Your Celluloid by Heidi Honeycutt. This book, it's
[37:14] Speaker 3: actually citing interviews that Gloria Katz did with Fangoria magazine.
[37:20] Speaker 3: But one of the things she says, again, coming back
[37:22] Speaker 3: to this idea of how place grounded the movie is,
[37:26] Speaker 3: is that she said, quote, We knew we wanted to
[37:28] Speaker 3: make something about Los Angeles, and we thought it would
[37:31] Speaker 3: be interesting to use the San Fernando Valley as a
[37:34] Speaker 3: setting for a horror film because it's very mundane. So
[37:39] Speaker 3: that's the one thing. But then the other part of
[37:41] Speaker 3: the equation is Katz said, quote, the only influence was H.P. Lovecraft.
[37:47] Speaker 3: I had always loved his writing. So there you go.
[37:50] Speaker 3: It's it's. LA San Fernando Valley plus HP Lovecraft equals
[37:55] Speaker 3: Messiah of Evil, at least according to the creators.
[37:58] Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I believe it. And we'll get into some
[38:00] Speaker 2: specific examples, I think, of where it lines up with
[38:02] Speaker 2: Lovecraft's writing.
[38:13] Speaker 3: So given the importance of the sets, the locations and
[38:17] Speaker 3: the atmosphere in the movie, I think we really should
[38:20] Speaker 3: mention by name the production designers, of course, who are
[38:23] Speaker 3: always very important in movies. But, you know, we probably
[38:26] Speaker 3: don't acknowledge them enough on the show. But in this case,
[38:29] Speaker 3: this is one where we really do need to talk
[38:31] Speaker 3: about them. Yeah.
[38:33] Speaker 2: Yeah. So the art director is credited as Joan Mocine. Dates,
[38:38] Speaker 2: not public record. Joan was apparently Katz's roommate at UCLA
[38:43] Speaker 2: and is responsible for all of the strange, or at
[38:46] Speaker 2: least within the context of the film, their strange works
[38:48] Speaker 2: of art that we see in the film, like all
[38:51] Speaker 2: these big murals of people in suits and escalators. And
[38:56] Speaker 2: it's just often perplexing some of these, these artworks that
[38:59] Speaker 2: are supposed to be her father's work. You know, he's,
[39:03] Speaker 2: she goes to the home of a working artist and
[39:06] Speaker 2: this is the, this is the imagery that's everywhere.
[39:10] Speaker 3: The like perspective murals on his walls are very disorienting
[39:15] Speaker 3: because he's got like a giant wall that's like a
[39:19] Speaker 3: realistic looking painting of a boardwalk going into the distance.
[39:23] Speaker 2: And we're like, are we at a boardwalk now? Is
[39:25] Speaker 2: this like a map painting situation? No, it's the art
[39:27] Speaker 2: on the wall and it's a very dreamlike distortion.
[39:30] Speaker 3: Effect there also escalators they were painting big walls with
[39:34] Speaker 3: paintings of escalators coming down and i kept expecting people
[39:37] Speaker 3: to walk up them and be like oh no wait
[39:39] Speaker 3: no that's a painting.
[39:40] Speaker 2: Yeah almost an escher feeling to those sequences for sure
[39:43] Speaker 2: yeah Uh, so yeah, Joan Moseen, um, also has an
[39:47] Speaker 2: artwork credit on Terrence Malick's 1973 film Badlands, uh, terrific
[39:52] Speaker 2: film that I had the pleasure of seeing on the
[39:54] Speaker 2: big screen when I was in college. Uh, really good worth, worth,
[39:57] Speaker 2: worth seeking that one out.
[39:59] Speaker 3: So she's the art director, but then the production designer
[40:02] Speaker 3: is a guy named Jack fisk who has done a
[40:04] Speaker 3: lot of work in hollywood including with like pt anderson
[40:08] Speaker 3: and david lynch.
[40:08] Speaker 2: Yeah yeah born 1945 still active american production designer art
[40:13] Speaker 2: director and also director uh you know still active today
[40:17] Speaker 2: with just top level directors like the ones you named
[40:19] Speaker 2: this was filmed in 71 so it's really one of
[40:23] Speaker 2: his earliest credited projects prior to messiah's 74 release um.
[40:29] Speaker 3: Let's see.
[40:29] Speaker 2: He'd worked on 71's Angels Hard As They Come, biker film.
[40:33] Speaker 2: 72's Cool Breeze. This was a blaxploitation film starring Thalmus
[40:39] Speaker 2: Rasoolala of Blackula. 73's Terminal Island, which is like an
[40:44] Speaker 2: island prison movie. 73's The Slams, which was a Jim
[40:48] Speaker 2: Brown crime drama. And then 1973's Badlands as well.
[40:53] Speaker 3: Oh, also the Terrence Mallory.
[40:55] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So all of these as art director, but
[40:57] Speaker 2: his first production designer credit was on 74's Phantom of
[41:01] Speaker 2: the Paradise. And his five directorial credits, films that he
[41:06] Speaker 2: himself directed, include 1981's Raggedy Man and 86's Violets Are Blue,
[41:12] Speaker 2: both starring Sissy Spacek, who Fisk has been married to
[41:16] Speaker 2: since 1974.
[41:16] Speaker 3: Oh, okay. I didn't realize that.
[41:20] Speaker 2: All right, let's jump into the cast here. And we're
[41:22] Speaker 2: going to start not with top build, but our main character.
[41:25] Speaker 2: And that's Arletty, who we've already talked and spoken about.
[41:27] Speaker 2: This is our main character, a woman making her way
[41:30] Speaker 2: across an apocalyptic dream of Southern California in search of
[41:34] Speaker 2: her estranged artist father. And she is played by Mariana Hill,
[41:38] Speaker 2: born 1942. Um, no, no relation, I believe, to Walter Hill.
[41:45] Speaker 2: They just happen to have the same last name. I
[41:47] Speaker 2: didn't see any indication that they were related, but, uh,
[41:50] Speaker 2: because a lot of the other people with the same
[41:51] Speaker 2: last name in this film are related.
[41:52] Speaker 3: Uh-huh.
[41:53] Speaker 2: Yeah, so here, Marianna Hill, actress best known for her
[41:57] Speaker 2: work in the 60s and 70s, especially her roles in
[42:00] Speaker 2: 73's High Plains Drifter and 74's The Godfather Part II,
[42:05] Speaker 2: in which she plays Deanna Corleone. This is Fredo's wife.
[42:09] Speaker 2: Her TV credits go back to 1960, include the likes
[42:12] Speaker 2: of Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Outer Limits, Batman, and
[42:17] Speaker 2: the original Star Trek. I think she's one of the many,
[42:20] Speaker 2: at least temporary, love interests of Captain Kirk. She makes
[42:23] Speaker 2: the move into film with 69's Medium Cool, followed by
[42:27] Speaker 2: El Condor and The Traveling Executioner in 1970. I'll also
[42:33] Speaker 2: note that she, this is a weird coincidence, she is
[42:36] Speaker 2: in the very episode of TV's The Magician that we
[42:40] Speaker 2: discussed in our episode on Mercury. We were talking about like,
[42:43] Speaker 2: what if there was a sculpture made out of mercury
[42:46] Speaker 2: and you used it as part of some sort of
[42:50] Speaker 2: an art theft uh sort of plot line this is
[42:53] Speaker 2: that episode so she just happens to be in something
[42:55] Speaker 2: with some this obscure thing that we've talked about on
[42:58] Speaker 2: stuff to blow your mind.
[42:59] Speaker 3: Before wow what are the chances yeah her.
[43:02] Speaker 2: Later film roles include 1980s schizoid and blood beach which
[43:07] Speaker 2: i just happened to be looking at the other day
[43:08] Speaker 2: it's like some sort of like a pre-trimmer sand monster
[43:11] Speaker 2: movie cool but at any rate uh i think she's
[43:15] Speaker 2: everything you want in a role like this i mean
[43:17] Speaker 2: she's strong, beautiful, able to invoke a mad scream queen
[43:22] Speaker 2: energy on top of everything, uh, but not just the
[43:25] Speaker 2: scream queen, uh, energy. And, and also the scream queen
[43:29] Speaker 2: stuff is just certain key moments, especially at the beginning
[43:31] Speaker 2: and the end. Um, most, most of this is not
[43:35] Speaker 2: like screaming, running from the slasher sort of stuff. Um,
[43:38] Speaker 2: there's a, no, it's.
[43:39] Speaker 3: More like screaming, stabbing a blue faced man with scissors.
[43:42] Speaker 2: Well, yeah.
[43:43] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[43:44] Speaker 2: We'll get back to the blue face, man. Um, But yeah,
[43:48] Speaker 2: I think she's great. Fabulous lead here.
[43:53] Speaker 3: I've seen people describe her energy on the set as spacey.
[43:57] Speaker 3: And I can see that element too. But yeah, I
[44:01] Speaker 3: think she's great.
[44:02] Speaker 2: Well, I mean, spacey certainly fits the vibe, you know,
[44:05] Speaker 2: because it is, again, the viewer feels like they are
[44:07] Speaker 2: in a dream. This is the character through which we
[44:10] Speaker 2: experience that dream. And it makes sense that she should
[44:12] Speaker 2: feel a bit confused by what's going on, especially in
[44:15] Speaker 2: these confusing scenes. Like the gas station sequence we'll get
[44:19] Speaker 2: to shortly.
[44:20] Speaker 3: Speaking of confusing, let's talk about Michael Greer.
[44:22] Speaker 2: Yeah, playing Tom. He's kind of like a 70s playboy
[44:28] Speaker 2: that just kind of emerges with his own little band
[44:32] Speaker 2: of hedonistic counterculture figures. Yeah, he just kind of pops in.
[44:39] Speaker 2: And very interesting character.
[44:42] Speaker 3: I feel like this casting is kind of, it plays
[44:44] Speaker 3: against the way the character is written, but in a
[44:47] Speaker 3: way that works to the movie's benefit. Uh, and what
[44:50] Speaker 3: I mean by that is the character seems to me
[44:53] Speaker 3: obviously written as a highly magnetic, charismatic character. And this
[44:59] Speaker 3: guy shows up with like anti charisma in my opinion.
[45:03] Speaker 3: And I don't mean an insult to Michael Greer, uh,
[45:06] Speaker 3: but he has this weird kind of, stilted looming awkwardness
[45:14] Speaker 3: in these scenes where he is supposed to be a
[45:16] Speaker 3: suave playboy, but it actually becomes this third other thing
[45:20] Speaker 3: that is a very interesting and works. I don't know.
[45:24] Speaker 3: It makes for a lot of interesting scenes.
[45:26] Speaker 2: Yeah. His character, Tom has, it has the, like it's
[45:29] Speaker 2: feel everything with him. It feels like a weird hang
[45:32] Speaker 2: and you get, he has the vibe of someone who
[45:35] Speaker 2: is hanging out with noteworthy or interesting people and but
[45:40] Speaker 2: mainly because perhaps there is some sort of vital, uh,
[45:44] Speaker 2: connection he has, be it money or drugs or something
[45:47] Speaker 2: like that. Like he's, he's kind of like the, the
[45:50] Speaker 2: dealer who just, who is hanging out. Um, and, um,
[45:54] Speaker 2: and everyone's like, who's this guy?
[45:55] Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
[45:56] Speaker 2: He's the guy who brought the pot.
[45:58] Speaker 3: Um, yeah, yeah.
[46:00] Speaker 2: But, uh, but yeah, it's, it's still a cool and
[46:02] Speaker 2: in its own way, it's, it's a kind of, it's
[46:04] Speaker 2: a charismatic performance, but, um, But yeah, not in the
[46:08] Speaker 2: way that it appears to be written, like you said.
[46:10] Speaker 3: I agree. It's charismatic, but not in the James Bond sense.
[46:14] Speaker 3: It's a kind of monster charisma. Yeah, yeah.
[46:18] Speaker 2: And so, yeah, Michael Greer, I think, is great in
[46:20] Speaker 2: this role.
[46:21] Speaker 3: Otherwise, 1943 through 2002.
[46:21] Speaker 2: His acting credits go back to 1969's The Gay Deceivers
[46:23] Speaker 2: and The Curious Female. His other credits include 79's The Rose. American,
[46:34] Speaker 2: openly gay actor of stage, screen, and TV, also a comedian,
[46:39] Speaker 2: sort of like stand-up, but also perhaps more in the
[46:42] Speaker 2: domain of cabaret, because he often used elements of drag
[46:46] Speaker 2: and camp in his performances. And he notably rewrote aspects
[46:51] Speaker 2: of his character in The Gay Deceivers, in which he
[46:53] Speaker 2: plays a flamboyant gay landlord, in order apparently to make
[46:57] Speaker 2: it more realistic and less homophobic. I checked out a
[47:01] Speaker 2: clip of this performance and I think the performance and
[47:03] Speaker 2: the character here is still certainly over the top and
[47:06] Speaker 2: certainly in the domain of camp. But I guess we
[47:09] Speaker 2: have to remind ourselves that this was the late 1960s.
[47:11] Speaker 2: And so what we think of is like toned down
[47:14] Speaker 2: and made more, you know, less homophobic or more, you know, acceptable.
[47:18] Speaker 2: It's going to be a different measuring stick today. But
[47:22] Speaker 2: still considered, you know, he's still considered something of a trailblazer,
[47:25] Speaker 2: especially again for being like an openly conservative. gay actor
[47:29] Speaker 2: who was working at times in mainstream Hollywood pictures at
[47:32] Speaker 2: the time. But despite that, he found it increasingly difficult
[47:36] Speaker 2: to get much mainstream work after the early 1970s, and
[47:39] Speaker 2: then mostly worked as a cabaret performer after that. He's
[47:43] Speaker 2: also known for an important role in the 1971 prison
[47:46] Speaker 2: drama Fortune in Men's Eyes, based on a 1967 play.
[47:52] Speaker 2: Both of these were written by John Herbert, a Canadian
[47:54] Speaker 2: playwright and drag queen. as well as the 1970 counterculture film, um,
[47:59] Speaker 2: the magic garden of Stanley sweetheart, uh, in which he
[48:03] Speaker 2: co-starred alongside Don Johnson. I didn't really know any of
[48:06] Speaker 2: this about him when I first watched the film. My
[48:09] Speaker 2: main note going into it was thinking this guy kind
[48:11] Speaker 2: of looks like Peter Fonda and it's, so it's kind
[48:14] Speaker 2: of like they like, let's, let's find somebody that looks,
[48:17] Speaker 2: let's go. I want to cast Peter Fonda, but cheaper.
[48:20] Speaker 2: And maybe they end up, um, with uh with michael
[48:23] Speaker 2: greer who ends up bringing his own wonderful energy to
[48:25] Speaker 2: the role and it becomes this i can imagine peter
[48:28] Speaker 2: fonda would have been more in line with the way
[48:30] Speaker 2: we're talking about the film having been written.
[48:32] Speaker 3: Yeah i think that's right though then again now i'm
[48:36] Speaker 3: starting to kind of doubt what i said a minute
[48:37] Speaker 3: ago about it being played about it playing against the
[48:40] Speaker 3: way the character is written just because you know it
[48:43] Speaker 3: wasn't it wasn't like it was written by somebody else
[48:45] Speaker 3: like the the people who wrote the script also directed
[48:49] Speaker 3: the movie and thus they made final casting decisions and
[48:52] Speaker 3: they told the actors what to do in the scenes.
[48:54] Speaker 3: So I don't know, that makes me think, well, maybe the, uh,
[48:58] Speaker 3: the performance we're getting on screen is exactly what was
[49:01] Speaker 3: intended when they were writing it.
[49:02] Speaker 2: Or certainly it could have been in the, in the, um,
[49:05] Speaker 2: the nature of collaboration that they certainly were familiar with
[49:08] Speaker 2: working together to make the film that, uh, that Greer
[49:11] Speaker 2: was familiar with certainly in adapting some of the parts
[49:15] Speaker 2: that he was given. So I can imagine it being,
[49:17] Speaker 2: you know, they wrote it one way, they have an
[49:19] Speaker 2: actor that brings a certain energy to it and makes
[49:21] Speaker 2: it a slightly different way. And at the end of
[49:23] Speaker 2: the day, they're like, yeah, that worked. Let's keep it.
[49:26] Speaker 2: That's the movie now.
[49:28] Speaker 3: Another note on Michael Greer's character. Was that him playing
[49:33] Speaker 3: the dark stranger?
[49:35] Speaker 2: It was, yes.
[49:36] Speaker 3: You think so? Okay.
[49:38] Speaker 2: I've read people claim that it is.
[49:40] Speaker 3: It certainly looks like him.
[49:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, we never see his face, but I believe he
[49:45] Speaker 2: plays the Dark Stranger as well.
[49:47] Speaker 3: The titular Messiah of Evil. There is this kind of
[49:51] Speaker 3: religious apocalyptic figure, kind of the presence that seems to
[49:54] Speaker 3: be coming back. The thing that the characters are worried
[49:58] Speaker 3: is returning is this figure we learn about later, you know,
[50:02] Speaker 3: dressed in black. His face is always hidden in shadow.
[50:05] Speaker 3: But just in profile, like in his body proportions and
[50:09] Speaker 3: some things about his face, even when hidden in shadow,
[50:11] Speaker 3: it looks a lot like Michael Greer. And so it's
[50:15] Speaker 3: kind of weird, though, because when you watch the movie,
[50:18] Speaker 3: Michael Greer's character, Tom, the character doesn't feel like somebody
[50:22] Speaker 3: who's going to later reveal, like, ha-ha, I was the devil. Right, right.
[50:27] Speaker 2: And I don't think we're left to... to make that connection, exactly.
[50:30] Speaker 2: But anyway, we'll have more to say about The Dark
[50:34] Speaker 2: Stranger as we continue. But first, let's talk about Tom's ladies.
[50:37] Speaker 2: He has two different lady friends that he's traveling with
[50:40] Speaker 2: when we first encounter him. The first is Tony. And
[50:44] Speaker 2: Tony is played by Joy Bang, born 1945. And I
[50:49] Speaker 2: have to stress here, Joy Bang totally sounds like a
[50:54] Speaker 2: show name, but Bang was her married name. She married
[50:57] Speaker 2: somebody with the last name Bang. but early 70s, former
[51:01] Speaker 2: go-go dancer turned brief counterculture figure, very much a part
[51:04] Speaker 2: of the Californian bohemian scene at the time. I was
[51:08] Speaker 2: looking around for images of her, and here's one of
[51:11] Speaker 2: her just riding around in a convertible with Jimi Hendrix,
[51:14] Speaker 2: who she was hanging out with for a while there. So, yeah,
[51:18] Speaker 2: very much a part of this scene. Her film credits
[51:21] Speaker 2: go back to 67, and she pops up in various
[51:23] Speaker 2: underground films in the late 60s and early 70s notably
[51:28] Speaker 2: appears in 71's Pretty Maids all in a row and
[51:31] Speaker 2: 72's Play It Again Sam and Night of the Cobra
[51:34] Speaker 2: Woman from the same year but by the time Messiah
[51:37] Speaker 2: comes out in 70 what 73 she's already left acting
[51:41] Speaker 2: so um you know brief but notable career and I
[51:46] Speaker 2: think she's tremendous in this um.
[51:48] Speaker 3: Yeah She plays a character whose main personality trait is
[51:52] Speaker 3: that she's immature and cusses about things. She's always mad
[51:57] Speaker 3: and cussing.
[51:58] Speaker 2: But also, yeah, is naive, but also, I don't know,
[52:03] Speaker 2: fun-loving and just kind of open for experience. I was
[52:09] Speaker 2: looking up stuff about her. I found that Roger Ebert
[52:11] Speaker 2: interviewed her when she was 22. And this interview is
[52:15] Speaker 2: hosted on the Roger Ebert website. You can look it up.
[52:17] Speaker 2: But He describes her, quote, as expressive as anyone I've interviewed.
[52:23] Speaker 2: So I just thought, you know, she's just a real flower,
[52:26] Speaker 2: this one. So that's one of the two ladies. The
[52:29] Speaker 2: other one is Laura, and she's played by Anitra Ford,
[52:32] Speaker 2: born 1942. Model and actress. In fact, she was one
[52:35] Speaker 2: of the original models on The Price is Right back
[52:39] Speaker 2: in 72, I believe. Best known for, let's see, she
[52:42] Speaker 2: was in 74's The Longest Yard with Burt Reynolds. I
[52:44] Speaker 2: think he plays... burt reynolds character's girlfriend or wife or
[52:48] Speaker 2: something i haven't actually seen it um but you know
[52:51] Speaker 2: notable football movie and then she also is in the
[52:54] Speaker 2: women's prison exploitation film the big bird cage from 72
[52:58] Speaker 2: and she's also in invasion of the b girls from 73.
[53:03] Speaker 3: I'll note that she's great on screen in this and
[53:07] Speaker 3: a lot of the stills I'd seen of the movie
[53:11] Speaker 3: that made me interested in watching it were actually not
[53:14] Speaker 3: featuring our main character, but were Laura here, Anitra Ford.
[53:19] Speaker 3: The scene where she goes to the Ralphs is sort
[53:22] Speaker 3: of a highlight.
[53:23] Speaker 2: Yeah. So, yeah. So, Bang and Ford here, both of
[53:28] Speaker 2: Tom's gals, both fun characters, both ultimately great scream queen
[53:33] Speaker 2: type characters, as we'll explore. They're both a little bit doomed.
[53:37] Speaker 2: But they get some great sequences to go out on.
[53:40] Speaker 3: Both get eaten by a mob.
[53:42] Speaker 2: All right. We have a character searching for her father.
[53:46] Speaker 2: The father is Joseph Lang, the artist, played by Royal Dano,
[53:51] Speaker 2: who lived 1922 through 1994. And this is mostly experienced
[53:56] Speaker 2: in the film as a voiceover. We keep hearing his
[53:59] Speaker 2: voice talking about these things he's learning about the darkness
[54:03] Speaker 2: that's coming.
[54:04] Speaker 3: And so I'm sorry, I kept thinking the voiceover was
[54:07] Speaker 3: done by Walter Matthau.
[54:09] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he sounds very different compared to how
[54:13] Speaker 2: he sounded in the last Royal Dano film we talked about.
[54:16] Speaker 2: We talked about him last October because he's in 1988's
[54:19] Speaker 2: Killer Clowns from Outer Space. He's the old man with
[54:22] Speaker 2: the dog who discovers the clown tent at the beginning.
[54:27] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[54:28] Speaker 2: But yeah, as we discussed last time, quirky American character
[54:31] Speaker 2: actor with credits going back to 43. Those credits include
[54:35] Speaker 2: 56's Moby Dick, the 72 TV movie Moon of the Wolf.
[54:40] Speaker 2: This is the New Orleans werewolf movie we keep talking
[54:43] Speaker 2: about in passing. He's in The Outlaw Josie Wales from 76,
[54:47] Speaker 2: Something Wicked This Way Comes from 83, The Right Stuff
[54:50] Speaker 2: from 83, 87's House 2, 87's Ghoulies 2, and 93's
[54:55] Speaker 2: The Dark Half. A slew of TV credits on top
[54:58] Speaker 2: of that.
[54:59] Speaker 3: Oh, this is the guy who was in spaced invaders.
[55:01] Speaker 3: He's the old farmer in that. Yeah. Yeah.
[55:06] Speaker 2: All right. Yeah.
[55:07] Speaker 3: And, uh, and so wait, moon of the wolf. Is
[55:09] Speaker 3: that the one that you were told that a future
[55:11] Speaker 3: shock video is not actually that great?
[55:13] Speaker 2: Uh, that's what I've heard. So I, you know, I,
[55:15] Speaker 2: I'm not opposed to checking it out, but I've, I've
[55:17] Speaker 2: heard mixed things, but I love the cover art. The
[55:19] Speaker 2: cover art looks great. Uh, and I'll watch a bad
[55:22] Speaker 2: werewolf movie. Y'all know that.
[55:24] Speaker 1: Sure.
[55:25] Speaker 2: Um, let's see who else we have. Oh, we have, um,
[55:29] Speaker 2: Elijah Cooke Jr., playing the character Charlie. Cooke lived 1903
[55:34] Speaker 2: through 1995. And he plays a vital role here, a
[55:39] Speaker 2: role that we find in other horror movies, and we
[55:42] Speaker 2: also find very concretely in the work of H.P. Lovecraft,
[55:48] Speaker 2: particularly in The Shadow Over Innsmouth. He is a drunk
[55:53] Speaker 2: revelator who lets us know about dark secrets and that
[55:58] Speaker 2: are going to be played out throughout the rest of
[56:00] Speaker 2: the narrative.
[56:01] Speaker 3: Yeah, we get a role like this in the Shadow
[56:04] Speaker 3: Over Innsmouth, mostly movie adaptation that is actually called Dagon,
[56:10] Speaker 3: where there's a guy who does this also.
[56:11] Speaker 2: Yeah, they bring him to life in that. Zadok Allen,
[56:15] Speaker 2: I believe is the name of the character in the
[56:16] Speaker 2: original Lovecraft story. But here, played by Elijah Cooke Jr.,
[56:22] Speaker 2: Very recognizable American character actor whose credits included 1941's The
[56:27] Speaker 2: Maltese Falcon, 46's The Big Sleep, 59's House on Haunted Hill,
[56:31] Speaker 2: and 68's Rosemary's Baby. Very prolific on TV and screen.
[56:35] Speaker 2: He also appears in 79's Salem's Lot, and he was
[56:39] Speaker 2: in 72's Blackula.
[56:40] Speaker 3: I think in these crime movies he did in the
[56:42] Speaker 3: 40s and 50s, he played a lot of doomed men
[56:46] Speaker 3: who were getting driven out to the woods while sweating
[56:49] Speaker 3: or like, you know, squealers, squealers who were about to
[56:52] Speaker 3: rat their boss out.
[56:53] Speaker 2: It makes sense. He, he had a, he had a
[56:55] Speaker 2: good face for it and a good voice. He has
[56:57] Speaker 2: kind of like a, I, especially in this film, I
[57:01] Speaker 2: would describe it as kind of a squirrely voice, you know?
[57:04] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[57:04] Speaker 2: Yeah. But yeah, solid character actor, very long career, uh,
[57:08] Speaker 2: pops up on a lot of TV shows, including Alf.
[57:11] Speaker 3: Hey, did you catch that the guy who's frantically shooting
[57:17] Speaker 3: into the darkness at the gas station and then comes
[57:20] Speaker 3: over and offers to fill her up is Doyle, the
[57:23] Speaker 3: henchman from The Sting?
[57:24] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. This guy's got a pretty memorable face. Charles Deercock,
[57:29] Speaker 2: who lived 1936 through 2024.
[57:29] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
[57:34] Speaker 2: Very signature look like he's one of these guys apparently
[57:37] Speaker 2: had his nose broken several times when I was younger
[57:39] Speaker 2: So it's kind of this, you know boxers. Yeah, but
[57:42] Speaker 2: even that even if that were not the case I
[57:45] Speaker 2: think he has like very piercing eyes and a very
[57:47] Speaker 2: stern look so, you know on top of his acting
[57:50] Speaker 2: ability made him like a great casting choice for various
[57:54] Speaker 2: heavies or maniacs or generally disturbed disturbed characters and So, yeah,
[58:00] Speaker 2: he's best known for 61's The Hustler, 69's Butch Cassidy
[58:04] Speaker 2: and the Sundance Kid, and 73's The Sting. He also
[58:08] Speaker 2: played an outlaw biker in 71's Angels Hard As They Come.
[58:13] Speaker 2: And he's also in Night of the Cobra Woman. He
[58:15] Speaker 2: also played the killer Santa Claus in 1984's Silent Night,
[58:19] Speaker 2: Deadly Night.
[58:21] Speaker 3: Oh, I don't think I realized that.
[58:22] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So we have a Santa actor in our
[58:25] Speaker 2: midst here. Here he's scary. and troubling, but also kind
[58:33] Speaker 2: of a normie. He's kind of playing a normal character,
[58:35] Speaker 2: but he's playing a normal character in a nightmare. So,
[58:39] Speaker 2: you know, take that for what it's worth.
[58:41] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's funny. So Arletty arrives at the gas station.
[58:44] Speaker 3: This guy is just shooting into the dark with a
[58:47] Speaker 3: gun and And then walks up to the car and
[58:50] Speaker 3: he's like, fill her up. Yeah. And so you think like, yeah,
[58:57] Speaker 3: this guy's the creep who is going to, what is
[59:00] Speaker 3: this interaction with him going to turn out to be?
[59:02] Speaker 3: But then somebody else arrives at the gas station and
[59:05] Speaker 3: they're the weird one. That's right.
[59:07] Speaker 2: And that weird one is going to be a character
[59:09] Speaker 2: that's only... I think his only name is just the
[59:11] Speaker 2: albino trucker. And this character is played by Benny Robinson.
[59:18] Speaker 2: Date's not public record. This is his only film role.
[59:22] Speaker 2: And I have to say, he's pretty great in this.
[59:24] Speaker 2: He plays this creepy dude who shows up saying creepy things.
[59:30] Speaker 2: And his unique appearance, and I think non-actor delivery, helps
[59:34] Speaker 2: give him this distinct otherness, which does play into certain
[59:39] Speaker 2: Lovecraftian elements. As Lovecraft's actual fiction often zooms in on
[59:44] Speaker 2: racial otherness or racial ambiguity, this, of course, is a
[59:49] Speaker 2: known factor in Lovecraft's writing today, certainly. But I think
[59:53] Speaker 2: you can sort of identify some of it, some of
[59:55] Speaker 2: that influence on on this film in the way that
[59:59] Speaker 2: this character is utilized.
[1:00:00] Speaker 3: Hmm. I mean, Robinson brings a lot of just unique
[1:00:06] Speaker 3: little notes to the role. I mean, the way that
[1:00:08] Speaker 3: he does this thing where he like moves his eyes
[1:00:11] Speaker 3: really fast. Yeah. And it's not quite clear what he's doing,
[1:00:15] Speaker 3: but it's almost like he's like a computer downloading something.
[1:00:18] Speaker 3: And then there's the scene where he offers Anitra Ford
[1:00:24] Speaker 3: a ride in the car and asks her about whether
[1:00:26] Speaker 3: she likes Wagner. He's talking about Wagner, the composer. And
[1:00:30] Speaker 3: he then just eats a rat.
[1:00:32] Speaker 2: Oh, God.
[1:00:33] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[1:00:33] Speaker 2: And it's a whole bunch of maniacal stuff.
[1:00:36] Speaker 3: Oh, yeah.
[1:00:37] Speaker 2: He's tremendous in this. It's really, it's one of these
[1:00:39] Speaker 2: performances where you're like, I wanted to see this guy
[1:00:41] Speaker 2: in more horror films and playing this exact same role
[1:00:44] Speaker 2: because he does it so well.
[1:00:46] Speaker 3: Haik mentions in the interview that he, that everybody liked
[1:00:49] Speaker 3: this guy. Like, he was super sweet and cool on set.
[1:00:51] Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
[1:00:52] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[1:00:52] Speaker 2: I mean, he's great here. But in a way, you
[1:00:54] Speaker 2: almost don't want him to have been in anything else
[1:00:56] Speaker 2: because it makes it seem more real. Like, this is
[1:00:59] Speaker 2: just a real, real, like, cult member in this film
[1:01:03] Speaker 2: or something.
[1:01:03] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[1:01:05] Speaker 2: All right. Well, let's turn to the music real quick
[1:01:08] Speaker 2: because the music in this film is amazing. It's outside
[1:01:13] Speaker 2: of the Wagner or Wagner needle drop that we get
[1:01:18] Speaker 2: in this and some other bits of music. It's pretty
[1:01:21] Speaker 2: much an all synth score. Very mogey. I've seen it
[1:01:27] Speaker 2: described as one of the earliest fully electronic feature film scores.
[1:01:31] Speaker 2: The earliest, of course, would be Forbidden Planet in 56,
[1:01:34] Speaker 2: which we've talked about. But, you know, whatever the case,
[1:01:38] Speaker 2: tremendous scent here. Just amazing. I think it was finally
[1:01:43] Speaker 2: released on vinyl in 2018, and it's now a collector's item.
[1:01:47] Speaker 2: The individual behind it, I don't think I've even mentioned
[1:01:49] Speaker 2: his name, it's Philan Bishop, who lived 1948 through 1991.
[1:01:54] Speaker 2: One of only three film scores that he did, the
[1:01:56] Speaker 2: other two being 73's The Severed Arm, 75's Kiss of
[1:02:00] Speaker 2: the Tarantula. I don't think either of these have huge
[1:02:04] Speaker 2: cult followings, but Even if they're terrible and boring, I
[1:02:07] Speaker 2: kind of want to see them now just because I
[1:02:09] Speaker 2: want to hear what this guy laid on top of
[1:02:11] Speaker 2: them because it's so good. And I couldn't find out
[1:02:14] Speaker 2: much about him. Sometimes you look up guys like this
[1:02:17] Speaker 2: on Discogs and you'll realize, oh, well, they're in the
[1:02:19] Speaker 2: liner notes on this, or at least they were like
[1:02:21] Speaker 2: a synth technician on this album or this album. But really,
[1:02:25] Speaker 2: outside of these three scores, I couldn't find much. So
[1:02:28] Speaker 2: I don't know if there's anything that turned up in
[1:02:31] Speaker 2: the extras on your disc or not.
[1:02:33] Speaker 3: No, I don't know anything about him.
[1:02:36] Speaker 2: Maybe he's not real. It just beamed directly from outer
[1:02:39] Speaker 2: space into this film. But terrific, terrific stuff. It's kind
[1:02:42] Speaker 2: of like an unhinged synth feeling. You can imagine if
[1:02:46] Speaker 2: this were in another production, they might have reined him
[1:02:49] Speaker 2: in a little bit, but it's great. No notes from
[1:02:53] Speaker 2: me other than it's just tremendous. All right.
[1:03:03] Speaker 3: So here's the part where we would usually talk about
[1:03:06] Speaker 3: the plot. As we said earlier, there's not a lot
[1:03:08] Speaker 3: of plot. So we're not going to like walk through
[1:03:10] Speaker 3: the narrative chronologically. Instead, I think we're just going to
[1:03:13] Speaker 3: like focus on some scenes that we like. One that
[1:03:18] Speaker 3: is interesting. We already mentioned that Walter Hill dies in
[1:03:21] Speaker 3: this movie. The director, Walter Hill. He is an actor.
[1:03:25] Speaker 2: Also one of the writers on Alien.
[1:03:28] Speaker 3: Streets of Fire.
[1:03:29] Speaker 2: Producer. Like his name's on all of the Alien franchise stuff.
[1:03:32] Speaker 3: Yeah. So Walter Hill, uh, was, uh, yeah, he's, he's
[1:03:37] Speaker 3: just an actor in this movie. The film opens with
[1:03:39] Speaker 3: us on a sidewalk. We're looking at a neighborhood sidewalk
[1:03:43] Speaker 3: with a strip of grass next to it. Some trees
[1:03:45] Speaker 3: planted along looks like, I don't know, crepe myrtles or something.
[1:03:49] Speaker 3: And then there's this block wall, uh, like cinder block wall.
[1:03:52] Speaker 3: Walter Hill comes running down the sidewalk. He collapses on
[1:03:56] Speaker 3: the sidewalk, a gate opens nearby. He goes inside the
[1:04:00] Speaker 3: gate and then he's in somebody's yard. I think he's
[1:04:02] Speaker 3: next to a pool. He sees a girl come around
[1:04:05] Speaker 3: the corner. Oh, who's this girl? And then the girl
[1:04:08] Speaker 3: comes up to him and cuts his throat with a razor.
[1:04:10] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:04:10] Speaker 3: Okay.
[1:04:13] Speaker 2: And I was trying to make sense of all this
[1:04:15] Speaker 2: because I didn't know what kind of movie this truly
[1:04:17] Speaker 2: was yet. And I was like thinking, okay, who is
[1:04:20] Speaker 2: this guy? Does he know this girl? Do they like,
[1:04:23] Speaker 2: is this like a father and daughter or are they
[1:04:26] Speaker 2: just neighbors?
[1:04:27] Speaker 3: I don't think so.
[1:04:28] Speaker 2: Why? And then why is she stabbing him?
[1:04:30] Speaker 3: I guess.
[1:04:30] Speaker 2: And then I realized, oh, she's stabbing him because, you know,
[1:04:33] Speaker 2: madness or coldness or some sort of supernatural thing that
[1:04:36] Speaker 2: we'll find out more about later. But I was just
[1:04:38] Speaker 2: very confused.
[1:04:40] Speaker 3: You know, this is a dream I've had one time
[1:04:42] Speaker 3: in Southern California. Yeah.
[1:04:45] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:04:45] Speaker 3: So should we talk about that gas station scene? I
[1:04:47] Speaker 3: think that one is really important because that is the
[1:04:50] Speaker 3: scene where I was watching this with Rachel. And I
[1:04:53] Speaker 3: feel like that is the scene where both of us
[1:04:55] Speaker 3: realized this was going to be really good. Yeah.
[1:04:58] Speaker 2: Again, this mobile station is immaculate. It feels like it
[1:05:02] Speaker 2: has never been used. Not only that, it feels like
[1:05:06] Speaker 2: it is a spaceship that has landed on the planet,
[1:05:09] Speaker 2: or it feels like it is the first thing that
[1:05:12] Speaker 2: a creator god has made and installed upon the void.
[1:05:18] Speaker 2: There's a strong sense of that, especially towards the end
[1:05:22] Speaker 2: of the sequence where the lights gradually go out at
[1:05:25] Speaker 2: the gas station and leave us in complete darkness. Almost
[1:05:28] Speaker 2: as if this was the only thing that had ever
[1:05:30] Speaker 2: been made.
[1:05:31] Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's surrounded completely by darkness on all sides,
[1:05:35] Speaker 3: but it is brightly illuminated itself. Similar quality to the
[1:05:39] Speaker 3: Ralph Slater, actually.
[1:05:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to say, like, I really love a
[1:05:43] Speaker 2: good gas station scene, especially in horror. The TV series
[1:05:49] Speaker 2: Widow's Bay had a really great one recently. It had
[1:05:51] Speaker 2: a couple of really great ones. And I think one
[1:05:53] Speaker 2: of the reasons is that a gas station is very much,
[1:05:55] Speaker 2: you know, it's a waypoint. It's this... this little pocket
[1:05:59] Speaker 2: of civilization and at least some level of authority. Like
[1:06:04] Speaker 2: there's a person who works there. They have access to
[1:06:07] Speaker 2: communication systems of some sort. They're almost like they're some
[1:06:10] Speaker 2: sort of a minor sheriff. So the gas station is
[1:06:13] Speaker 2: always positioned as a place where you can go into
[1:06:16] Speaker 2: the light, away from the darkness of the surrounding wilderness,
[1:06:20] Speaker 2: and you can get some level of help.
[1:06:22] Speaker 3: So it's like the trading post in the woods.
[1:06:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. It's exactly a trading post. And so I'm
[1:06:28] Speaker 2: always game for a great horror movie sequence with a
[1:06:30] Speaker 2: gas station, even outside of our sequence. It has thematic
[1:06:34] Speaker 2: importance and it's so well utilized here.
[1:06:38] Speaker 3: But I think clearly to the filmmakers had a lot
[1:06:41] Speaker 3: to do with the texture of L.A. and Southern California
[1:06:45] Speaker 3: at the time. You know, there are there are thoughts
[1:06:47] Speaker 3: about like, what is the defining architecture of Los Angeles?
[1:06:51] Speaker 3: You know, unlike many other big American cities where you
[1:06:54] Speaker 3: can think about the big like buildings or landmarks or
[1:06:57] Speaker 3: something in LA, it's very much like open space and
[1:07:01] Speaker 3: highways and cars and the sprawl and gas stations, gas
[1:07:05] Speaker 3: stations that power it all.
[1:07:07] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[1:07:09] Speaker 3: Anyway, so yeah, she pulls up to this gas station.
[1:07:12] Speaker 3: As we mentioned earlier, the guy who works there is
[1:07:15] Speaker 3: just like shooting into the darkness. I loved that moment.
[1:07:18] Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's like, what are you doing? He's like, oh,
[1:07:20] Speaker 2: I'm shooting at dogs. Like, what else could it be?
[1:07:23] Speaker 2: What else could it be? And it's this great mad energy,
[1:07:27] Speaker 2: which also reminded me of some of the comedy in
[1:07:29] Speaker 2: Widow's Bay. Some strong Widow's Bay vibes there. But then,
[1:07:35] Speaker 2: like you said, he just goes back to, all right,
[1:07:36] Speaker 2: let's go back to work here. Let's fill your car up.
[1:07:39] Speaker 2: And then we get the albino trucker showing up with
[1:07:41] Speaker 2: all of the cryptic dread that he brings with him.
[1:07:44] Speaker 2: And we see what he has in the back of
[1:07:46] Speaker 2: his truck. Things just get crazier and crazier.
[1:07:51] Speaker 1: Right.
[1:07:51] Speaker 3: So he's got dead bodies in his truck.
[1:07:53] Speaker 2: Seemingly, yes. With like, yeah, their eyes are missing and stuff. Yeah.
[1:07:57] Speaker 3: And, uh, then later somehow this scene ends with the, uh,
[1:08:01] Speaker 3: the gas station attendant is like back in the service
[1:08:04] Speaker 3: station part and he's working under a car and I'm like, Oh,
[1:08:08] Speaker 3: I know where this is going. But then the car
[1:08:10] Speaker 3: starts descending and he gets out of the way. So
[1:08:12] Speaker 3: he doesn't get crushed, uh, which, you know, it's enough,
[1:08:16] Speaker 3: just the suggestion of the lift coming down on you
[1:08:19] Speaker 3: and crushing you. But, uh, he still does. I think he, wait,
[1:08:22] Speaker 3: now I've forgotten how this ends. He meets a violent end,
[1:08:24] Speaker 3: I believe.
[1:08:25] Speaker 2: Yes. A four. we will call it a zombie jumps
[1:08:29] Speaker 2: out of the car that was up on the left
[1:08:32] Speaker 2: and presumably kills him. Um, at some point earlier, when
[1:08:35] Speaker 2: he's talking to our main character, he talks about somebody
[1:08:38] Speaker 2: or something being quote dead or in hell. And I
[1:08:41] Speaker 2: was thinking of all the, the titles that were given
[1:08:43] Speaker 2: to this movie, why not dead or in hell? That's,
[1:08:46] Speaker 2: that's a pretty good title. That would be a good one,
[1:08:49] Speaker 2: but it was, it was not meant to be, but
[1:08:51] Speaker 2: also just other than the characters we've mentioned, nobody else's
[1:08:54] Speaker 2: at this gas station. And so, the way that it's lit,
[1:08:57] Speaker 2: the way that it's depopulated, you know, made into this
[1:09:00] Speaker 2: liminal space it just adds to this unnatural feeling of
[1:09:03] Speaker 2: dread that we have.
[1:09:04] Speaker 3: Here totally i think we should talk about arletti's father's house.
[1:09:10] Speaker 2: Oh god this place is amazing yes What.
[1:09:13] Speaker 3: A bachelor pad. It is so cool. So we already
[1:09:16] Speaker 3: mentioned the walls. He's painted the walls with these landscape
[1:09:20] Speaker 3: murals that are, have finally realized, uh, uh, perspectives in them.
[1:09:26] Speaker 3: So that, you know, things seem to move away to
[1:09:28] Speaker 3: vanishing points. And so they look very real. You have
[1:09:31] Speaker 3: these boardwalks that look like they might be real space,
[1:09:34] Speaker 3: but also. All the walls have all these creeps painted
[1:09:38] Speaker 3: on them. They're dudes standing around in dark suits with
[1:09:41] Speaker 3: ties just in the corner kind of gazing at you.
[1:09:44] Speaker 3: And you keep thinking they're real people in the shot.
[1:09:46] Speaker 3: And then you're like, oh, no, wait, that's just the
[1:09:48] Speaker 3: wall again.
[1:09:49] Speaker 2: It's weird because there's so many details about this house
[1:09:52] Speaker 2: that makes it feel like this is a late 60s,
[1:09:54] Speaker 2: early 70s house that's just designed to do drugs in.
[1:09:57] Speaker 2: You know, it's like this is a hippie hangout. This is,
[1:10:00] Speaker 2: you know, a place to trip and wander around in.
[1:10:03] Speaker 2: But then why are there like literal... murals of the
[1:10:07] Speaker 2: man on the wall staring at you. It just seems
[1:10:10] Speaker 2: like this is a bad idea.
[1:10:13] Speaker 3: This painter, he just wanted nothing more than to imagine
[1:10:16] Speaker 3: all of his walls were boardwalks going out into the
[1:10:19] Speaker 3: ocean and then think that there were G-men standing in
[1:10:22] Speaker 3: every corner.
[1:10:25] Speaker 2: Because otherwise you have things like hanging beds, like beds
[1:10:28] Speaker 2: hanging on chains from the ceiling, but not in a
[1:10:31] Speaker 2: Hellraiser way, but in a cool way.
[1:10:35] Speaker 3: God, I love that bed. And it's not just a bed, actually.
[1:10:38] Speaker 3: It's like a whole rectangular slab that is suspended from
[1:10:43] Speaker 3: the ceiling by four chains, has a bed on it,
[1:10:47] Speaker 3: but the bed is not the whole thing that's suspended.
[1:10:49] Speaker 3: There's like potted plants and stuff on it. Yeah, yeah.
[1:10:53] Speaker 2: So it's lots of 70s lounge zones we're going to
[1:10:56] Speaker 2: see in this household. There's paint, paint, and more paint.
[1:11:01] Speaker 2: And then also it is a house that is positioned...
[1:11:04] Speaker 2: near the beach, it is a house that's literally at
[1:11:07] Speaker 2: the end of the world. It is a boundary line
[1:11:10] Speaker 2: between the sane world of Southern California and the deep,
[1:11:14] Speaker 2: dark ocean, the ocean from which some sort of dark
[1:11:17] Speaker 2: secret is about to emerge.
[1:11:19] Speaker 3: And don't forget the other bedroom in the house that
[1:11:22] Speaker 3: Tom and his two lady friends move into, which has
[1:11:26] Speaker 3: the gigantic round bed with a tree hanging over it inside.
[1:11:31] Speaker 2: Yeah, this is definitely... This is definitely a hangout for sure. Yeah.
[1:11:38] Speaker 3: So, yeah, it's interesting that, like I said, you keep
[1:11:42] Speaker 3: thinking that things painted on the walls are real things,
[1:11:45] Speaker 3: like the figures of men in suits. But another thing
[1:11:49] Speaker 3: I wanted to point out is that you've got this
[1:11:52] Speaker 3: highly colorful interior decor and colors everywhere, but the colors
[1:11:58] Speaker 3: of the men in suits painted on the walls are
[1:12:01] Speaker 3: are mostly muted. They're like black and white and a
[1:12:05] Speaker 3: little bit of blue and gray. And I thought it
[1:12:07] Speaker 3: was interesting that that turns out to be the same
[1:12:11] Speaker 3: color palette of the flesh eating townspeople later. You very
[1:12:16] Speaker 3: often see them. I mean, not all of them. Some
[1:12:18] Speaker 3: of them are dressed a little differently, but most of
[1:12:20] Speaker 3: the time they're, they're dressed overwhelmingly in black and white
[1:12:24] Speaker 3: kind of funeral attire, grayscale coated clothes, sometimes blue.
[1:12:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, it does kind of thematically work. Getting into this
[1:12:32] Speaker 2: idea of some sort of dark force is beginning to
[1:12:36] Speaker 2: manifest in this otherwise colorful world.
[1:12:39] Speaker 3: Yeah. How about that hotel scene? So the first scene
[1:12:43] Speaker 3: where Arletty meets Tom, Laura, and Tony, I don't even
[1:12:48] Speaker 3: remember how she ends up there. She's wandering around and
[1:12:50] Speaker 3: she just kind of goes into a motel room.
[1:12:53] Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like we just kind of wander in
[1:12:54] Speaker 2: and we're there.
[1:12:56] Speaker 3: Yeah, and then inside... There are these three people. There's Tom, Laura,
[1:13:02] Speaker 3: and Tony, and they're hanging out on the bed interviewing
[1:13:05] Speaker 3: Elisha Cook Jr., who is a wandering hobo, I think,
[1:13:11] Speaker 3: a guy who's looking for some booze or some money.
[1:13:15] Speaker 3: And they want him to tell them his tale because
[1:13:18] Speaker 3: Tom says he is a collector of tales.
[1:13:20] Speaker 2: Yeah, like they basically give him a bottle of wine
[1:13:22] Speaker 2: to tell them the craziest thing he knows about. which
[1:13:26] Speaker 2: is going to be about some of the dark stuff
[1:13:28] Speaker 2: that's about to go down in this movie. And I
[1:13:30] Speaker 2: love everything about this weird hang. This is, yeah, this,
[1:13:34] Speaker 2: this is kind of shabby hotel room, but, um, all
[1:13:37] Speaker 2: these weird deliberate choices, like Tony is introduced. We hear
[1:13:41] Speaker 2: the toilet flush. Yeah. And then Tony comes out and
[1:13:45] Speaker 2: she's like moisturizing her skin and then keeps moisturizing her skin. Uh,
[1:13:50] Speaker 2: and like I say, all these elements just feel like
[1:13:53] Speaker 2: very weird. weird and i don't know there's something about
[1:13:56] Speaker 2: the moisturizing of the skin i kept coming back to
[1:13:58] Speaker 2: maybe it's like it's in such close proximity to introduction
[1:14:02] Speaker 2: to weird characters and weird plot elements and then it's
[1:14:04] Speaker 2: just such a like an everyday thing i don't know
[1:14:07] Speaker 2: it's it's bizarre.
[1:14:08] Speaker 3: The shot of elisha cook jr when he's telling his
[1:14:11] Speaker 3: story he's the same color as the wall behind him
[1:14:16] Speaker 3: and the tv beside him.
[1:14:18] Speaker 2: He's situated next to a just a black powerless television
[1:14:21] Speaker 2: set i yeah the I love the way it's blocked.
[1:14:24] Speaker 2: I have no idea exactly how to interpret it other than,
[1:14:28] Speaker 2: you know, something rather straightforward. Like they are watching him.
[1:14:31] Speaker 2: Like he's a television set. Like they're doing this for kicks.
[1:14:34] Speaker 2: They're just some, you know, they're just, this is what
[1:14:37] Speaker 2: they're reduced to. They've done all the drugs in Southern California.
[1:14:40] Speaker 2: And now the way that they are entertained is just
[1:14:42] Speaker 2: by finding strange people and getting strange stories out of them.
[1:14:46] Speaker 3: But the monochromaticness of the shot is so interesting. It's
[1:14:49] Speaker 3: like the, the, wood panel television with the tan wall
[1:14:54] Speaker 3: behind and the brown tan jacket and the tan shirt
[1:14:58] Speaker 3: he's wearing. Yeah.
[1:14:59] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:15:00] Speaker 3: So interesting. So good. Um, and yeah, he, of course
[1:15:04] Speaker 3: he tells a story about, uh, the blood moon and the,
[1:15:07] Speaker 3: you know, the, I don't even remember what it is. The,
[1:15:09] Speaker 3: I think he tells a story about, uh, uh, a
[1:15:12] Speaker 3: baby that eats something. Uh, I don't know.
[1:15:16] Speaker 2: Basically, we're going to eventually get this, this tale of
[1:15:19] Speaker 2: the dark stranger about a, a mysterious man who survived
[1:15:24] Speaker 2: the Donner Party by embracing some sort of new religion,
[1:15:28] Speaker 2: some dark god, and then came out of the mountains
[1:15:33] Speaker 2: bringing with him some sort of plague of cannibalism and
[1:15:38] Speaker 2: dark revelation. And it is his plague. It is this
[1:15:42] Speaker 2: new way of understanding the universe that he's bringing with
[1:15:45] Speaker 2: him and is apparently coming back. And it's going to
[1:15:48] Speaker 2: bring this into the 1970s.
[1:15:51] Speaker 3: This detail doesn't really matter much for the movie, but
[1:15:53] Speaker 3: I do think it's interesting that it, it later becomes
[1:15:57] Speaker 3: the premise in a much more integrated way of the
[1:16:00] Speaker 3: movie ravenous.
[1:16:01] Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. It reminded me of ravenous as well.
[1:16:04] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[1:16:04] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:16:05] Speaker 3: That like, I'm bringing the religion of cannibalism out of
[1:16:08] Speaker 3: the mountain pass and that you will now all follow me. And, uh, it's,
[1:16:12] Speaker 3: you know, it's going to change the world.
[1:16:14] Speaker 2: Yeah. And here it does fittingly feel like a, a
[1:16:16] Speaker 2: dark presence in a dream. Um, so I absolutely love
[1:16:21] Speaker 2: the way it's presented and presented like piece by piece
[1:16:24] Speaker 2: to us.
[1:16:34] Speaker 3: We've already talked about this in some ways, but there
[1:16:36] Speaker 3: is the scene where Laura leaves. So eventually Tom, Laura
[1:16:40] Speaker 3: and Tony move into the house with Arletty without asking her,
[1:16:43] Speaker 3: they just show up there. And then at one point,
[1:16:46] Speaker 3: Laura is, I think, trying to leave because, I don't know,
[1:16:49] Speaker 3: she gets bored of the scene and wants to split.
[1:16:52] Speaker 3: And she goes out walking in the night and is
[1:16:55] Speaker 3: walking down this long, empty road that's surrounded on both
[1:16:58] Speaker 3: sides by unfinished construction of houses. Just these bare boards
[1:17:03] Speaker 3: of houses, which are, it's a very cool looking shot.
[1:17:08] Speaker 3: And then a pickup truck comes up behind her. And
[1:17:11] Speaker 3: this is where the character played by Benny Robinson, like,
[1:17:14] Speaker 3: offers her a ride and then eats a rat in
[1:17:17] Speaker 3: front of her.
[1:17:17] Speaker 2: Oh, God. Like, yeah, he pulls up in this vehicle.
[1:17:21] Speaker 2: And I think at this point we know what's in
[1:17:23] Speaker 2: his trunk or in the bed of the truck. We
[1:17:25] Speaker 2: know he's got bodies back there.
[1:17:26] Speaker 3: Well, they're live at this point.
[1:17:28] Speaker 2: They're live at this point.
[1:17:29] Speaker 3: Okay.
[1:17:29] Speaker 2: So even worse, they all look creepy and sus. And
[1:17:34] Speaker 2: he's blaring Wagner. Which, at the time, I was like, oh,
[1:17:38] Speaker 2: this sounds a lot like Entry of the Gods into Valhalla,
[1:17:41] Speaker 2: which I already know to distrust anyone playing that music.
[1:17:45] Speaker 2: It turns out, I think it's from a different Wagner piece,
[1:17:47] Speaker 2: but very much that kind of vibe. And she's like, yeah,
[1:17:50] Speaker 2: I'll get in. This seems perfectly safe.
[1:17:53] Speaker 3: She literally kind of shrugs and says, whatever, and gets
[1:17:56] Speaker 3: in the car.
[1:17:57] Speaker 2: Yeah, close enough. Uh, and of course it just gets
[1:18:00] Speaker 2: creepier and creepier and yeah, it kind of, uh, reaches
[1:18:03] Speaker 2: its crescendo when he bites the head off of a
[1:18:05] Speaker 2: live rat.
[1:18:06] Speaker 3: And, uh, he offers her some, well, he mean he's
[1:18:09] Speaker 3: a good guest. Yeah. You're going to offer that host. Yeah. Yeah. Uh,
[1:18:13] Speaker 3: and then she tries to leave or she does leave
[1:18:15] Speaker 3: the car and then goes to the Ralph's. Uh, she
[1:18:18] Speaker 3: goes inside a grocery store and man, I love the
[1:18:22] Speaker 3: Ralph scene. I love so much about how it looks. Um,
[1:18:27] Speaker 3: It made me think about how the concept of the
[1:18:29] Speaker 3: uncanny is sometimes described as the feeling you get from
[1:18:34] Speaker 3: suddenly seeing the mundane or the familiar as unsettling. It's
[1:18:39] Speaker 3: when the mundane and familiar become scary. And if that's true,
[1:18:44] Speaker 3: if that's what the uncanny is, what is more familiar
[1:18:48] Speaker 3: and mundane than the grocery store? than the Ralph's it's
[1:18:51] Speaker 3: familiar and mundane in many ways at once. Like it's
[1:18:55] Speaker 3: a place we're familiar with because we go there all
[1:18:57] Speaker 3: the time to do very mundane tasks. It's absolutely crammed
[1:19:03] Speaker 3: with familiar and even friendly imagery that in the way
[1:19:07] Speaker 3: of brands that have spent billions of dollars trying to
[1:19:10] Speaker 3: get you to form positive associations with them. There's also
[1:19:14] Speaker 3: something kind of silly and awkward about a grocery store,
[1:19:19] Speaker 3: the way we pick over products and then, oops, excuse me,
[1:19:22] Speaker 3: got to get my cart past you. So it's just
[1:19:27] Speaker 3: the opposite of the kind of place you think of
[1:19:29] Speaker 3: as spooky and haunting. But then when Laura goes in,
[1:19:34] Speaker 3: there are all these other elements. Uh, it's this place
[1:19:36] Speaker 3: of bright lights in the middle of a dark, expansive night,
[1:19:40] Speaker 3: much like with the service station. It's like a, you know,
[1:19:42] Speaker 3: moth to the flame quality there. Uh, and then the
[1:19:47] Speaker 3: way that you see other people across the aisles again
[1:19:51] Speaker 3: and again, this can be one of those goofy, awkward
[1:19:54] Speaker 3: things at the grocery store. Like you bump into somebody
[1:19:56] Speaker 3: there and then you see them again later. And it's like, oh, hi, hi.
[1:19:59] Speaker 3: You know, that's awkward except here. She keeps seeing these
[1:20:03] Speaker 3: same people again across the aisles, but they're kind of
[1:20:05] Speaker 3: freaking her out. Yeah, they're ghoulish.
[1:20:08] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[1:20:09] Speaker 3: And then, of course, it's also a place you go
[1:20:10] Speaker 3: to get food. And maybe that's why the other people
[1:20:14] Speaker 3: are here, too. And maybe the food is her. And
[1:20:17] Speaker 3: it turns out it is because she finds a bunch
[1:20:19] Speaker 3: of the townspeople leaning over the meat case and just
[1:20:22] Speaker 3: cramming raw meat into their mouths. And then they swarm
[1:20:26] Speaker 3: Laura and eat her. Yeah.
[1:20:27] Speaker 2: This is a great sequence. We get that sense of
[1:20:31] Speaker 2: passing through the different rows of the different aisles of
[1:20:34] Speaker 2: the grocery store. And, of course, I couldn't help but
[1:20:37] Speaker 2: be reminded of, I think, my favorite sequence ever shot
[1:20:41] Speaker 2: in a grocery store, that being at least part of
[1:20:44] Speaker 2: the big chase sequence in Raising Arizona.
[1:20:47] Speaker 3: Totally.
[1:20:48] Speaker 2: Which also, in a different way, in a non-horror way,
[1:20:51] Speaker 2: makes great use of the familiar grocery store setting. Mm-hmm.
[1:20:55] Speaker 3: Also, Empire of the Dark.
[1:20:57] Speaker 2: Yes, Empire of the Dark as well. It's another one
[1:21:00] Speaker 2: of those things. It sucks me in a bit any
[1:21:03] Speaker 2: time that we're in any kind of a real grocery,
[1:21:06] Speaker 2: especially if it's a real grocery store. Sometimes I'll watch
[1:21:09] Speaker 2: things and it's like, this feels like they set this up.
[1:21:11] Speaker 2: Like they just got an old Whole Foods and then
[1:21:13] Speaker 2: they just filled it with some stuff and created the
[1:21:15] Speaker 2: bare minimum for the experience, which, you know, it's fine.
[1:21:18] Speaker 2: You've got to make a movie one way or another.
[1:21:19] Speaker 2: But I really like it when it's like, oh yeah,
[1:21:21] Speaker 2: this is just a supermarket at night. They just got
[1:21:24] Speaker 2: in here and they cleared out one meat, part of
[1:21:27] Speaker 2: the frozen meat section so that they could have some
[1:21:30] Speaker 2: ghouls eat some meat out of it. You know, I
[1:21:32] Speaker 2: just love that.
[1:21:34] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[1:21:34] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[1:21:35] Speaker 3: So I really appreciate whatever Ralph's manager it was that
[1:21:39] Speaker 3: agreed to do this. I think it was a good call. Yeah, absolutely. Okay.
[1:21:44] Speaker 2: So that's one of our ladies taken out of action
[1:21:47] Speaker 2: by cannibalism, but there's still Tony. What's Tony up to?
[1:21:51] Speaker 3: Well, Tony goes to the movies. And what a great
[1:21:55] Speaker 3: scene that is. I think Tom is trying to get
[1:21:58] Speaker 3: rid of her. I don't remember why. I think maybe
[1:22:01] Speaker 3: he's trying to get some alone time with Arletty or something.
[1:22:04] Speaker 3: Sends her off to the movies. So she goes to
[1:22:06] Speaker 3: watch a Western that's a big shoot-em-up. And she buys
[1:22:11] Speaker 3: a ticket, I think, from Gloria Katz. You said? She
[1:22:15] Speaker 3: buys a ticket from Gloria Katz, goes in. gets herself
[1:22:17] Speaker 3: some popcorn, an endless bucket of popcorn that we see her,
[1:22:21] Speaker 3: we see her eat a hundred buckets worth of popcorn. Uh,
[1:22:25] Speaker 3: and there's still more popcorn in it. Uh, but as
[1:22:28] Speaker 3: she goes, she goes and sits down in the theater.
[1:22:30] Speaker 3: And as the film goes on, other people slowly trickle in, uh,
[1:22:35] Speaker 3: the townsfolk. And so, and a lot of them don't
[1:22:38] Speaker 3: appear to be dressed the way you would dress to
[1:22:40] Speaker 3: go out and see a movie theater. A lot of
[1:22:42] Speaker 3: them are wearing, you know, funeral attire, uh, but they
[1:22:45] Speaker 3: come and they sit down. And they start crowding in
[1:22:49] Speaker 3: closer and closer, and it's a very slow build because
[1:22:52] Speaker 3: we see them kind of come in one at a
[1:22:53] Speaker 3: time until there are just really a lot of them,
[1:22:56] Speaker 3: and they're getting closer and closer to Tony in the
[1:22:58] Speaker 3: seating arrangements. And it has a big, great payoff. Yes, yeah.
[1:23:05] Speaker 2: At times, the setup for this reminded me a bit
[1:23:08] Speaker 2: of In the Mouth of Madness, just a little bit.
[1:23:12] Speaker 2: And I thought that the choice of footage was strange.
[1:23:15] Speaker 2: So when she first arrives at the theater, the marquee
[1:23:18] Speaker 2: says it's going to be Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, which I
[1:23:21] Speaker 2: had to look this one up. Not a film I'm
[1:23:22] Speaker 2: super familiar with. 1950 noir film. But then she ends
[1:23:26] Speaker 2: up watching this Western, Gone with the West, a 1975 release.
[1:23:32] Speaker 2: This started making me feel crazy because I'm like, OK,
[1:23:35] Speaker 2: this movie shot in 71, comes out in 73. What's
[1:23:39] Speaker 2: this movie they're watching? Oh, it's a 1975 film. With
[1:23:42] Speaker 2: James Caan and Sammy Davis Jr. I had to look
[1:23:45] Speaker 2: this up. Finally, I felt myself return to the world
[1:23:49] Speaker 2: of sanity when I realized, oh, this film was shot
[1:23:52] Speaker 2: in 69. So it was just released later. So I
[1:23:57] Speaker 2: guess the math works out after all.
[1:23:59] Speaker 3: But still, you think that two or three year wait
[1:24:02] Speaker 3: on the release of Messiah of Evil is a long time.
[1:24:04] Speaker 3: This is like seven years later.
[1:24:05] Speaker 2: So you know this is a good movie. I don't know.
[1:24:08] Speaker 3: I haven't seen it.
[1:24:09] Speaker 2: But it's also just weird. Like Western, I don't know.
[1:24:12] Speaker 2: I'm not sure how to really figure out how we're
[1:24:15] Speaker 2: supposed to make use of and make sense of the
[1:24:18] Speaker 2: combination here. But it's unsettling. Again, it's dreamlike. Like why
[1:24:21] Speaker 2: are these two things next to each other on the shelf? Well,
[1:24:24] Speaker 2: it's a dream. Sometimes the choice doesn't make a lot
[1:24:28] Speaker 2: of sense, at least at first.
[1:24:30] Speaker 3: Well, if I could say, what's more... in terms of
[1:24:33] Speaker 3: movie genres, what is more familiar and mundane in America
[1:24:37] Speaker 3: than a Western?
[1:24:38] Speaker 2: Yeah. Especially a mainstream one with someone like Sammy Davis jr.
[1:24:41] Speaker 2: And it, you know, it's like, it was a big name.
[1:24:43] Speaker 3: So great movie to get eaten to, I guess. No,
[1:24:47] Speaker 3: as we talked about, it, uh, builds up to a
[1:24:49] Speaker 3: big finish where Tom and Arletty are chased around by
[1:24:52] Speaker 3: these beings. They eventually break into the house. Uh, there's
[1:24:55] Speaker 3: a great, there are some great scenes out in the
[1:24:57] Speaker 3: city where I think Tom goes out and witnesses things like, uh,
[1:25:01] Speaker 3: this scene where a couple of police officers do battle
[1:25:05] Speaker 3: with uh with a mob of the undead or maybe
[1:25:07] Speaker 3: not the undead whatever you call these things the townsfolk
[1:25:10] Speaker 3: the ghouls and uh that doesn't work out so well
[1:25:13] Speaker 3: for the cops especially since one of them turned seems
[1:25:15] Speaker 3: to turn into a ghoul in the middle of the
[1:25:17] Speaker 3: battle yeah yeah and uh just these other weird encounters
[1:25:23] Speaker 3: uh you know people crying blood and all that and
[1:25:25] Speaker 3: so tom comes back to the house they're attacked in
[1:25:28] Speaker 3: the house with these ghouls busting through the skylight and
[1:25:31] Speaker 3: coming through everything. We've seen them kind of pressing up
[1:25:34] Speaker 3: against the skylight before this, I think.
[1:25:36] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. And I love the pressing. And then when
[1:25:40] Speaker 2: they start busting through, I really wasn't expecting it to
[1:25:42] Speaker 2: go to that level. But yeah, I loved this in
[1:25:46] Speaker 2: part because I'm reminded of a time when we were
[1:25:48] Speaker 2: having some work done at the house and we stayed
[1:25:50] Speaker 2: at a nearby Airbnb for like a couple of weeks.
[1:25:53] Speaker 2: And one of the bedrooms in that house has a skylight.
[1:25:56] Speaker 2: Kind of like skylights do. It gets a little grungy
[1:25:59] Speaker 2: and you can't really see through it anymore. But a
[1:26:01] Speaker 2: family of raccoons would walk across it in the wee
[1:26:04] Speaker 2: morning hours. And you couldn't see the raccoons. All you
[1:26:06] Speaker 2: could see would be their little hands and footprints on
[1:26:09] Speaker 2: the glass.
[1:26:11] Speaker 3: Oh, it's like of unknown origin. Rat foot shots.
[1:26:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Kind of like that. Luckily, I couldn't see
[1:26:16] Speaker 2: it in that much detail. But this reminded me of
[1:26:19] Speaker 2: that a bit. And thematically, it's like the dead or
[1:26:25] Speaker 2: the enemy, some sort of madness. about to press through
[1:26:28] Speaker 2: and then finally breaking through into, into the house, into
[1:26:31] Speaker 2: our world.
[1:26:33] Speaker 3: And of course, things in the end are pushed out
[1:26:35] Speaker 3: to the beach where it all began, you know, where
[1:26:38] Speaker 3: we've had these, these rumblings, the whole movie, there are
[1:26:41] Speaker 3: people out on the beach staring at the moon in
[1:26:43] Speaker 3: the night, and there's something that may be coming out
[1:26:45] Speaker 3: of the ocean. Uh, and our characters end up trying
[1:26:48] Speaker 3: to swim away from their pursuers, swim out to a
[1:26:51] Speaker 3: boat on the water. Tom is eventually lost in the waves,
[1:26:55] Speaker 3: but Arletty doesn't know where he went, and she swims
[1:27:00] Speaker 3: back to shore. She does make it out of the town,
[1:27:02] Speaker 3: but like many a character in a Lovecraftian story, is
[1:27:06] Speaker 3: driven mad by the experience. She goes insane after her
[1:27:10] Speaker 3: encounter with the things beyond this world, and she is
[1:27:14] Speaker 3: left in the end in a mental hospital. And we
[1:27:16] Speaker 3: get a kind of circular ending that connects to a
[1:27:19] Speaker 3: monologue of Arletta's at the beginning. Yeah. Yeah.
[1:27:22] Speaker 2: Again, very, very Lovecraftian. Um, the, the whole writing her
[1:27:26] Speaker 2: story from an asylum ending reminded me, uh, of, of
[1:27:29] Speaker 2: the ending we get in the 1977 film shock waves,
[1:27:32] Speaker 2: which we previously discussed on weird house. That one also
[1:27:35] Speaker 2: ends with the lead female character, uh, writing or drawing something, um,
[1:27:40] Speaker 2: in some sort of a medical or psychological care facility. Um,
[1:27:45] Speaker 2: I think they're both just drawing on the same sort
[1:27:47] Speaker 2: of trope that you get in a lot of those
[1:27:49] Speaker 2: old mythos, weird fiction type stories where like the person
[1:27:53] Speaker 2: who's been telling you this has been writing to you
[1:27:55] Speaker 2: from the insane asylum, that sort of thing. Oh, we did.
[1:27:59] Speaker 3: They say I'm mad.
[1:28:02] Speaker 2: One thing we forgot to mention in the whole big,
[1:28:05] Speaker 2: all this craziness that goes down in the house, there's
[1:28:07] Speaker 2: also the bit where she ends up having to kill
[1:28:10] Speaker 2: her father. I guess.
[1:28:12] Speaker 3: Oh, we skipped over that. Yeah. Her father shows back up,
[1:28:15] Speaker 3: but he's been changed somehow. He's had a horrible encounter with, uh, with, uh,
[1:28:21] Speaker 3: you know, the mythos with, uh, with whatever this being is. And, uh,
[1:28:26] Speaker 3: she has to battle him in the basement of the
[1:28:28] Speaker 3: house in his art studio, basically. And so there are
[1:28:30] Speaker 3: a lot of interesting images there. Like she ends up
[1:28:34] Speaker 3: throwing blue paint all over his face. And so she's
[1:28:37] Speaker 3: battling her blue father, uh, up, I think having to
[1:28:41] Speaker 3: stab him with scissors.
[1:28:42] Speaker 2: Is that right? I believe so.
[1:28:43] Speaker 3: And then there's some, some fire involved, have a little
[1:28:47] Speaker 3: fire scarecrow.
[1:28:49] Speaker 2: So yeah, the memorable sequence as well. And yeah, the
[1:28:52] Speaker 2: ending of the movie is pretty, you know, pretty apocalyptic.
[1:28:55] Speaker 2: The dark stranger has returned. We're told that he's, He's
[1:28:58] Speaker 2: brought his plague of cannibalism and madness in service of
[1:29:02] Speaker 2: some strange new religion to the coast that he's working
[1:29:05] Speaker 2: down the coast. And soon he and his followers are
[1:29:09] Speaker 2: going to arrive in the big city. And at that point,
[1:29:12] Speaker 2: it's going to pretty much be over. The end has begun.
[1:29:15] Speaker 2: Our time has come. There's nothing else to be done.
[1:29:19] Speaker 2: So very apocalyptic. The world ends in 1971 or 1973,
[1:29:24] Speaker 2: depending on how you want to take production versus release date.
[1:29:28] Speaker 3: I'd say my final verdict on Messiah of Evil is
[1:29:32] Speaker 3: weird hang, good hang. Yeah.
[1:29:35] Speaker 2: Yeah, I would agree. This one's a lot of fun.
[1:29:38] Speaker 2: I'm going to have to dive back into this one
[1:29:40] Speaker 2: some more. I'm going to have to introduce this one
[1:29:43] Speaker 2: to some people. Again, this one has quite a cult
[1:29:46] Speaker 2: following at this point, and it's well-deserved. More people should
[1:29:49] Speaker 2: see it.
[1:29:49] Speaker 3: Make it part of your Halloween viewing. I think it's
[1:29:52] Speaker 3: great for the season.
[1:29:53] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, let's go ahead and
[1:29:56] Speaker 2: close out this episode of Weird House Cinema. But we'd
[1:29:59] Speaker 2: love to hear from everyone out there. If you have
[1:30:03] Speaker 2: history with Messiah of Evil, if you have thoughts about it,
[1:30:06] Speaker 2: or California people, write in about some of these locations
[1:30:10] Speaker 2: and types of locations we've been discussing. I always love
[1:30:13] Speaker 2: to hear from folks who have field reports to share
[1:30:15] Speaker 2: with us. On top of that, just remind you that
[1:30:19] Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
[1:30:20] Speaker 2: culture podcast. But on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns.
[1:30:24] Speaker 2: We just talk about a weird movie here on Weird
[1:30:26] Speaker 2: House Cinema. We've been doing this for years at this point.
[1:30:29] Speaker 2: We've looked at hundreds of movies. If you want to
[1:30:31] Speaker 2: see a list of those hundreds of movies, go to Letterboxd.com.
[1:30:35] Speaker 2: Look us up. Our username is Weird House. We have
[1:30:37] Speaker 2: a nice list of all the movies we've covered thus
[1:30:39] Speaker 2: far and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next.
[1:30:43] Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.
[1:30:47] Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
[1:30:48] Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
[1:30:51] Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
[1:30:53] Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.
[1:31:04] Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
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