227: The Black Cat...Suggested by Satan

This is Roger Corman and you're listening to Movie Meltdown. The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised. It's showtime, folks. Enjoy the show.

Our nuclear reactor pumping out. One million kilowatts of power. To provide more cooling in the containment chambers. To your stations, we have a movie meltdown. A black cat went past us, and then another that looked just like him.

What's up, and welcome to Movie Meltdown. I'm Brian. I'm Dave. I'm Christian. I'm Fred.

I'm Lucy. I'm Greg. And I'm Sterling. And we are coming to you live via digital recording from the Dreamland Film Center. And Sterling, you were commenting how much you were taken with the space?

Yeah, apparently it was originally a church. Yep. Very hip for the 1970s kind of church. But it's been converted into a movie theater, and it's got this nice, quiet ambiance that we're in right now. I'm really kind of digging it.

Of course, I always love it when people make movie theaters out of unusual spaces, or churches for that matter. I one time saw a church down in Tennessee... that was made out of a McDonald's complete with drive-thru. I was wondering if you could actually use the drive-thru in the service. That would be awesome. It would be.

Cut down on your church time like that, you know. But no, so we're in a very nice church space. All the pews are comfortably positioned so that you can watch the screen. And we have some. Lights above us that look like they were on the ceiling.

Do they turn on? Sweet. Fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Yeah, that's what I mean by hip for the 1970s. On the sloping ceiling looking a bit like they should have been stained glass windows in another church.

In a less broke church. I'm sure it was having problems. Otherwise it wouldn't have been converted into something else. So that's how it goes. So yeah, but anyways, it's a very nice space.

This is at the Dreamland Theater, is that right? Dreamland Theater or any Dreamland Film Center, however they want to work it. But we're, I mean, we've also got you back this week because we're working on future projects with The Alley. If you remember our flashback to a while back when we were at The Alley. So we're working on devious plans with Sterling to do more crossover stuff with you guys, so.

Yes. With any luck, hopefully more movie meltdown shows can be filmed at, what am I saying, taped at the Alley. If someone will put the money up to do a full video version of it, I'm fine with that. It's not going to be us. I'm sorry.

Our partnership will only go so far. Damn. Yeah. One day, though. Never mind, then.

Get the hell out. Okay. They'll film us talking, and we'll render it in 3D so they can see us talking in 3D right in front of you. That will be wonderful. So to throw a quick geek activity in, Lucy, do you want to go ahead and address wrong?

Oh, you're throwing it to me immediately? Most people have it. You were there. I'm kind of staying out of it. So I think you have a take on it.

I loved it. That's a good thing. Now I'm confused. Did you not love it? It was a midnight movie.

I was in a bad mood. Okay. They need to stop having those at midnight. I saw you slope down in your seat. We were about two rows behind you.

Yeah. And you kept getting lower and lower and lower. And then you felt something around your feet. The return of crawling. Yeah.

I know that story. Getting into scary territory. I thought it was fantastic. I haven't seen Rubber, so that's the next thing I'm going to do before I do. Anything else, before I eat or sleep.

The kids were watching. That the other night. Did you watch it? No. That's a kid's movie, duh.

Rubber? I loved a lot of rubber, but there's a lot of it that just went too far for me. I thought Wrong was brilliant. I mean, it was just delightful. And so, I mean, just...

For whatever reason, our colleague, Alan, thought that I was going to dislike it. You dislike most things, I think we've come to realize. But the things that I do love, I love passionately. That's true. I reserve all of that.

You make up for your apathy for everything else. Exactly. And I thought it was amazing. He thought that I was going to think it was weird for weird's sake, but it wasn't. It was absurdist, which is a completely different thing.

Yeah. That's what I took from it. I was like, it is to some extent, but it also is very... artistically chosen to be that way. It's not just, hey, this will mess with people, let's do this. Like it's, they planned everything out exactly how they want it to be.

And whether you like it or not, I don't think they give a rat's ass. And so many of the absurd elements where you're like, that was random, come back around and are actually really important and integral to the plot. I mean, I thought it was just so beautifully constructed. I thought the acting was incredible. I thought it was beautifully shot.

I mean, I'm like literally worshiping this guy who I guess was cinematographer, director, Editor, what am I leaving out? Writer. Writer, yeah. Yeah. He kind of puts Robert Rodriguez in shame, yeah.

So, I'm sorry, back me up a little bit. What is this movie, Wrong? Yeah. Brian, I had no idea it was happening. I didn't know anything about it.

I just was like, oh, that sounds amazing, and sort of jumped in. So you know more than I. I just knew it was from the director of Rubber, and it wasn't getting a wide release, and Bo had somehow roped it into the midnight showings, which is cool. They just need to make those at like 9 o'clock or something. But, yeah, it was cool that we got it here at all, and I'm not sure how many cities it's hitting now.

So I guess if you don't see it show up in your theater, give it like three weeks, and it'll be like on demand or at your DVD store. So it's definitely worth seeing if you're okay with weird. Yeah, I was going to say, is there any way to explain any of the things that happen in it, or is it that absurd? A guy loses his dog. Yeah, I saw the preview for this.

I know which one you're talking about. Yeah. And you kind of don't want to know anything beyond that. I mean, the way that it unfolds is just so much fun. But it's not like that David Spade movie, Lost and Found.

Exactly. Ultimately, it's not entirely similar. You're re-releasing it under the new name. Except now it's considered an absurdist. Remember when Gus Van Sant did Psycho?

It's basically. It's exactly. No, I don't want to remember Wings. Suddenly, I'm so enthusiastic. Okay, yeah, Rubber is one of those movies that perpetually pops up on my Netflix queue.

Like, you really have to watch this movie right now, except Netflix isn't saying that to me, except I feel that they're kind of hinting it constantly. You're going to watch this, whether you like it or not. Love Netflix. Yeah, sometimes I do feel a little bit like I'm being bullied by Netflix. You should have a house full of kids and see what happens to your recommendations.

I think anytime you have to share with someone else, it throws it up. Because I've realized mine's just me, and it's pretty frighteningly accurate. I will look at that and go, oh, damn, I do want to see that. Quit reading my mind, Netflix. It's scary when it is sort of honed to one person.

The scariest experience for me at the computer was when Hulu added in that feature where they say your name to you. Like, hey, Sterling, in large letters, you probably want to check this out next. I was just sitting at this computer and going, oh, God. It knows me. Evil spirits are in my computer.

And yeah, so one of the other things we can be grateful for with the Google prevalence. Everywhere and all the information being present all over the place. Not me. I. For all the loss of privacy, I never see a recommendation for anything I have any interest in.

I like to believe there's some other reason for that, though. I don't know why that is. You'd think they'd get it. I buy stuff I like, I watch. Stuff I like, and they recommend things, and I'm like, you're just not getting me, man.

You just don't get me. Damn you, Google. Well, I guess definitely... Go see Rung. At some point, maybe we need to return to it for a full episode.

I would love that. We'll keep that in mind somewhere down the line. Our other business at hand, as you heard, we have Dave here with us. We're also coming up on the next big Wonderfest. We thought we'd let you tell people what you've got going on this year.

We're about three weeks out from this year's show. Got a pretty mixed bag this year. While the country seems to be becoming overrun With genre-oriented conventions. There's a lot of them. I go to many.

And, you know, they're all great, and there's room for everybody. I think. Yours is different, though. Yours is different. We're kind of going the other way, whereas most shows are very celeb-oriented and very autograph-oriented.

We really can't compete... in that arena. I can't pay these kind of upfront expenses and fees anymore. So if anything, we're folding back on what we always have been, which we are a hobby show, primarily guys who build model kits. or guys who work in special effects, which is a shrinking business as well, as you saw from what went on at the Oscars this year and all the protests that are going on with VFX. But we've kind of occupied our niche even more, and it takes us back to our roots, and we're happy with that. So we've got a lot of different things going on this year.

Jerry Anderson, who was a producer and a showrunner back in the 60s and 70s, passed away. He produced a lot of fun shows that people grew up with, like Space 1999 and UFO back in the 70s, and before they did all the weird Supermarionation puppet shows like Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, and Stingray, and all these amazing shows that went on back then. So we've got one of the authorities coming, Anthony Taylor, who's a regular visitor. He's coming, and we're going to do some presentations about Jerry. We're going to have a lot of displays of some of the props and costumes and things from those shows over the years.

I've got... Sarah Karloff coming in, Boris Karloff's daughter. She hasn't been with us for about 10 years. So it's going to be kind of neat to have Sarah back. And we're going to be concentrating on Boris's later career in the 60s, which is the era she was mostly around for and the era when I first was aware of him from The Grinch and Thriller and all those shows he did back then.

And she's thrilled because she's about Frankensteined out. She's tired. She's tired. Of talking about the classic era, because it's all anybody ever wants to talk about. And there's a lot of great stories from the 60s, because that's when Boris kind of came into his own.

He was such a superstar at the time. Are you talking about stuff like Black Sabbath and the Crimson Death? Or, sorry, Crimson Cult? Yeah, those. Also, the Corman pictures.

He did The Terror. He did The Raven. Right. And Comedy of Terrors. And I'm going to be showing The Raven on Saturday night, which is really one of my favorite movies.

It's like a comfort movie. From my childhood, because you've got Peter Lorre and Vincent Price in that as well, and Jack Nicholson, one of his first roles. Nice. And all the episodes of Thriller and things like that that he did. And Targets, which was one of Peter Bogdanovich's first films.

It was actually very good. That's a cool movie. I've seen it. It's a great movie, because Boris owed something like two weeks' worth of work to Carmen, and he told Bogdanovich, go off and write a script. So he wrote this terrific script about a sniper at a drive-in theater. who was meticulously planning to kill people at this horror movie premiere.

And Boris essentially plays himself. I think his name is Byron Orlok. It's a weird setup for a movie. It's about classic horror versus the new horror. And how he literally confronts this gunman.

It's a really cool picture. I've got that going on. I've got a lot of special effects guests. John Eves, who's a regular of ours, who's a designer. He worked on Iron Man 3 this year.

He worked on the new Trek movie, which is opening that weekend. He's going to be working on the Star Wars films, but of course he's been sworn to silence on all that stuff. We may actually torture him in a public venue. Could I be there for that? People will sign up for that.

He owes me, so we'll see. He owes me for some other stuff. Also, the prop builder from the new Trek film is coming in. He just joined us and he did all the new phasers. He's working on the new Godzilla movie.

He's doing all kinds of cool stuff, so he's going to be there. Lee Stringer, who's a A VFX producer did Firefly, the new Battlestar Galactica, all kinds of stuff. He's coming in from Thailand because the industry is moving out of the country. It's all going east. And he's been there for a while.

And I think Eric Chu is going to be back. Yeah. Brian knows. We're going to try to rope him into doing another episode with us. He may fight it.

It's a lot of fun. We like Eric. And he's busy getting married and having kids. Lame. Yeah.

That's not a geek way of life. Come on. It's weird. It's weird. He has nothing to talk about.

He's doing familial stuff. John Goodwin, who was the makeup supervisor on CSI, will be coming back and doing some live makeup demonstrations. I got Lee Merriweather from the 60s. She was on all genre television back in the 60s. She was in the Time Tunnel.

She was the first cinematic Catwoman in the 67 Batman movie, which is the first movie I ever saw In an outside venue, I saw it at a drive-in. The first Batman or the first movie? It was the first Batman and the first movie I saw outside of home. It was at the Dixie Drive-In on Dixie Highway in 1967. I was like three.

I remember being alarmed because the title sequence was so different. It just wasn't the same as the show. Do you own it? Oh, yeah. I don't own the first movie.

It's a fun movie. I still think it's probably the second best Batman movie. I can't stand any of the Tim Burton stuff. Or any of the stuff that came after. I do like Nolan's first movie.

But I think that the first Batman movie, since it's tongue-in-cheek, is actually still one of my favorite movies. It's a lot of fun. Lee Merriweather would be a really interesting person to talk to. Yeah, she's cool. Her daughter is a professional stuntwoman.

She's done a lot of work in the industry. So she's going to come. We're going to do a Q & A with her as well. So a lot of cool stuff. Looking forward to it.

Also the Alley Theater. We have a Sunday night. It's a post-show party we do every year. And starting last year, Alley Theater did a terrific Star Wars. It was Star Wars in 30 minutes, I think.

60 minutes, yeah. 60 minutes. Yeah, we cut it into two sections and did that last year. It was great. So they're going to be coming back this year for Sunday night and doing Flash Gordon and Commando Cody.

So we're looking forward to that. Yeah. It will be fun. I'm in that troupe, so you'll see me pretend to improv. Yeah, you've got an appreciative audience there.

Everybody's so geeked out. They're very familiar with the source material, so I think you'll really enjoy the response. We had a great time last year. Yeah, we're really looking forward to it this time. Very cool.

So I think you're planning on talking to Sarah at the show, right? Hopefully, if she's up for it. Oh, she is. She's great. We'll definitely try to tie in some of the 60s movies and then come back around and we can sit down and watch.

Some of those. Yeah, it'll be a lot of fun. So I'm really looking forward to watching The Raven with her because she has great memories of being on the set during that and comedy of terrors at that time. So Boris is wonderful in that movie because he just moves from the sinister to the comical sort of effortlessly. It's great to watch him in that.

Everybody in it is having such a great time. And there are all different kinds of performers. You've got Peter Lorre who's completely off the cuff. He doesn't stick to the script. You've got Karloff, who is visibly frustrated at times because of that, but he holds his own pretty well.

So it's a lot of fun. I really, really like that picture. Very cool. Well, that's our tie-in for this week anyway. We were deciding what to do movie-wise, and then we're like, well, since we'll possibly talk to her about some of the 60s stuff, we'll go back to the early stuff that she probably wasn't around for, and we'll watch one of the earlier ones, so...

That's why we came to this week's movie. So I say we take a break, and when we come back, we will get into this week's movie. You never give us a real break. I give you an option right now, and you just went, no. Yeah, well, I think we're going to go union.

Demand higher pay. As long as you start paying your union dues, you have to pay it to me. Well, there's a bad cat Crows in my path Won't change my direction. I ain't never turning back. Listen to me.

On the side of the street, was jumping on his guitar and. Was stomping his feet. I said, now, what's going down on this side of town? A whole lot. Of something you know nothing about.

He said, well, take your time, feel fine for a sip of this wine. I'll show you around the city if you buy me a dime. And I'm feeling kind of sleepy, baby. Death is gonna beat. Me like a black cat crossing my path.

My bones and thighs are aching. I've been shivering, I've been shaking. Got to get that monkey off of my back. Well, there's a rain dog. Popcorn freshly popped and buttered.

Look good? Sure it looks good and it tastes even better. Get some now. They live by night. They hide in the dark and.

Rise from the shadows. They can never feel the warmth of living human blood in their veins. Their bodies are cold and dead. Dracula versus Frankenstein. A doctor who serves the dead.

A dead man who controls the doctor and the living creature horribly created from the mangled corpses of their victims. Dracula versus Frankenstein. His blood is cold, but his mind is keen. He cannot die, for he is already dead. His name is Dracula.

Another lives, but his body belongs to the dead. The two will join forces, but only one will survive. Dracula versus Frankenstein. Dracula vs. Frankenstein Together in one film they meet in a fight of fright The kings of horror battle to the death Dracula vs.

Frankenstein Hey guys. Look what I've got check out these awesome earbuds I'm using right now. Look at that. That's, that's wood right there. That's actual wood.

Why would you use wood to make technology? Because they're, it's, it's like, um, they're steampunk. These are, is steampunk really wood? I thought it was more of a brass thing. Well, you got to work the wood in to hold the brass together.

So it's, these are the fancy high end steampunk versions. With a mic built in mind you. But, um, yeah, where, where, where would I, Get these you under tweaked audio. Way to pitch. You want to hear more?

You say. Tweaked audio.com. Hey, they are available in three styles and seven colors and they sound pretty damn good. I kind of forgot cause I hadn't had my old pair in a while and I was using the knockoff crappy ones I bought at the store and I, I got these and put them in. I was like, Oh shit, that's right.

These are actually really good. So they are professional. Quality earbuds, mind you. And, you know, noise reducing, compatible with your iPods and most. Phones, unless you have a dumb phone.

You should really get a smart phone, not a dumb phone. So anyway, the basic rundown here, if you need yourself some earbuds, tweakedaudio.com. And if you go there, there's a deal. There's a Meltdown deal. If you go, there's a discount code and you put in Meltdown, you get 33% off and free shipping.

You guys are excited, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. As well you should be. Tweakedaudio.com.

Use the Meltdown code. That's all I'm saying. We're a show that is ostensibly about horror. Boobie bouncing. Is that what it was?

From the running. That monkey was Benson. He had sex with Kim Cattrall. Opiate mouth so I can fill the void. Rats are gross.

Far eastern yeti have smaller feet than. So like what are we supposed. To learn from that? You're like, shit, this is the one with the really fat guy. Yeah.

Damn it. Okay. They gave each other a Dutch rudder. It was fine. Apparently you've never been to makeitandy.com.

Those are flaps, not doors. Woody. Anyway. Who's Woody? It's a wiker with a booty.

It looks like Mike's jerking it over there. I'm going to class it up now. After that slut. Shows are most popular by the way they smell. You're a real black hole right now.

He sure is. I'd bang him. The horror of unreleased Beach Boys songs. There you go. Are you referring to my lady right now?

Nope. Night of the Living. Podcast. N-O-T-L-P dot com. Want some music for your ears?

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We're serious about music. This is Julie Adams, and you are listening to Movie Meltdown. It's time for Sofa Theater. Sofa Theater. You must be indulgent of Dr.

Verdigast's weakness. He is the unfortunate victim of one of the commoner phobias, but in an extreme form. He has an intense and all-consuming horror of cats. Ancient books say that the black cat is the living embodiment of evil. And that evil enters into the nearest living thing.

It is the black cat does not die. Those same books, if I'm not mistaken, teach that the black cat is deathless. Deathless is evil. It is the origin of the common superstition. Step right up and don't be shy.

Because you will not believe your eyes. She's right here behind the glass. You're gonna like her cause she's got class. You can look inside another world. You get to talk to a pretty girl.

She's a rapper. She's a beauty She's a beauty Why would I lie? Why would I lie? You can say anything you like It all comes back around. So we unionized during a break.

And we're back. All right. We already had a strike and we got back together. Everything's been smoothed over. Crisis averted.

The negotiations were tough. Yeah. When you have no money on all sides, it makes it really easy to figure this stuff out. It's hard to decide who has the power, though. There is no power.

So with that, yeah, we are coming back. Actually, this one, I guess we'll just leave it as our usual sofa theater. We actually have a subsection running theme of Edgar Allan Poe movies. This doesn't really count. No.

It mentions him in the credits, and that's about it. Yeah, in fact, it says in the title, The Black Cat Suggested by a Tale by. Edgar Allen Poe. We one time read a story by. Edgar Allen Poe.

Like, not even inspired or based on, just suggested by. Somebody overheard the words. Right. There barely is a cat whatsoever. It's not clear what the cat is doing in the film either.

It's clearly they've used it as marketing. Oh, yeah. It's not by accident, I'm sure. So, yeah, I think we'll just sort of graze past that and stick with our usual setting. So this week's Sofa Theater feature is The Black Cat.

The year is 1934. Director Edgar G. Ulmer. The plot? American honeymooners in Hungary are trapped in the home of a Satan-worshipping priest when the bride is taken there is.

How is this word? Thank you, IMDb. When the bride is taken there for medical help following a road accident? IMDb. At work.

Spoiler alert! They already kind of threw a little in there. You don't need to know anyway. But from here on out, we will continue to ruin the movie. So go watch it now.

Actually, it's on YouTube, so there's no excuse for you not to watch it, so. Where would you like to begin with the black cat? At the very begin, who takes a honeymoon in Hungary? Well, we were planning to. I mean, I would go.

Other than Fred. I mean, yeah. They did reference that, though, and made a little joke out of it. We should have gone to Niagara Falls. Funny enough, I was actually thinking about moving to Hungary this year.

Until you saw the movie? I kid you not, yeah. Until I saw the movie, I was like, no, bad idea then. No, but, yeah, no, Hungary, especially, like. Hungary in the 1930s, you know, which is, that whole area was, what, this is post-World War I.

It's still, like, in major economic. Ruing on World War II. Yeah, looming on. So you have, like, major economic downturn. The country was briefly taken over by communists and then taken back very bloodily.

And then now you got Hitler massing in the north. It's like. That equals honeymoon. Seems like a fun place. It's cheap, I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. These guys are not as. These American tourists are not as wealthy as they might appear in the film, perhaps. On the other hand, Niagara Falls is where people go to honeymoon.

Or kill themselves. That's a fine line. Anyway, really. Yeah, or both. See, all I ever knew from a kid was from Looney Tunes going over it in a barrel.

I think it was the Looney Tunes. Which in the real world doesn't turn out so well, by the way. No, but it was like the only reason you go to Niagara Falls is to go over in a barrel. That sounds about right, sure. I'm sure many American tourists would concur with that statement.

Only because our side has a big rock in the middle of it. We got ripped off. We need to renegotiate that with Canada. See if we can't just have the other side instead. Well, there is a great.

Podcast about niagara falls this american life and they examine how it's the opposite of the american dream because the american dream is where you start with nothing and you build something awesome and niagara falls is where they started with something awesome and they can't do anything with it it's just a desolate failure. That's uh that there's a really great tv show actually based around that Yeah, it was called Wonderfalls. It aired for like one season. I remember that. It came and went really quickly.

It's actually really good. It was one of the shows of Brian Fuller, who I think got his start along with many other great genre writers of the last decade in Deep Space Nine, started working on that show. Then he did Wonderfalls. His big break was Dead Like Me, which of course was quickly ripped out of his hands and turned into something else. And then he went on to do Pushing Daisies, which is such a show I love so much.

But yeah, Wonder Falls is about a young girl with a, it was great for me because I started watching the show shortly after I graduated with. My own philosophy degree. She has a philosophy degree from Brown, she's 24, and she's working like a convenience store basically at Niagara Falls selling crapped tourists. And at one point some tourist comes in to complain because the little wax animal figurine that they bought at her terrible like souvenir shop, like it was dented and it starts talking to her, telling her to do things. And that is the premise of the show is this girl wanders around and is told to do things by anthropomorphic animal toys.

So you can see immediately why it's a great show and why no one watched it. Two things. No, So I don't know, where do we want to get into the movie itself and I guess the main two stars? Well, it was the first team-up with Morris and Bella, which Universal had been pushing for for a long time. It's the single most perverse film ever.

Of the universal cycle from the 30s. I was really struck by how sick it was. It is. And so casually, when he's laying there in bed reading his satanic book, it's just so. He's like sleepily reading it.

It's like, oh, this is light reading before bed. It's just so casually. Really, really messed up. I think they were counting on the fact that they were just going to soar right over the heads of the Hays office. Probably did.

And it did largely. They did come back with some major complaints. But you've got Satanism. You've got necrophilia. You've got incest.

You've got any number of just combinations of those going on in that movie. And you've got Karloff as the villain, which is kind of interesting in that. And Lugosi more or less playing the hero, but at times you kind of wonder about him as well. Kind of a dark anti-hero type character. Yeah, and initially in the original scripts he got even darker to the point where by the end of the film you couldn't tell either character apart.

It's questionable in the middle. I was kind of wondering what the motives were on both ends. I think it was the same with the director. I think they got so muddled up at times. I think the real question in this film is not even.

One of the interesting things about it, especially for a Universal picture, and also remarkable, by the way, just has to point this out. I have to point this out, that it was apparently Universal's biggest box office success that year. It was big. It was a huge box office, which is very strange because it's such a very atmospheric, gothic movie. It's not at all like some of the other, like the Thin Man series or the other stuff that was really popular in the 30s.

This is... bleak. But the question for me when I was watching it is really, the only reason Lugosi, you can see him as a good guy is because ostensibly he wants the Americans to live. He doesn't want anything to hurt them, but you really, the film is swallowed up by that conflict between him and Karloff. It's a question, we have these two powerful men, both of them are bent on very dark desires, and The question is which one of them is going to win, which one of them is going to be successful. And of course the ditzy Americans who really are just like in the middle of that film, you're like, oh my God, why haven't you realized what is going on?

You are the dumbest people on earth. They are almost at times there just to be pawns. Literally. Yeah, literally, because there's a giant chess metaphor in the middle of the. Film.

That being said, it's like David Manners was Universal's go-to leading man for that whole period, because he's in Dracula and he's in The Mummy. And as big a milksop as he is, he's more effective in this than either of those other two. He's at least got a little bit of comic flair going on in this picture. And in the others, he's reduced to just kind of running around and screaming for Mina. So he's having more fun, obviously.

But yeah, it's just those two guys, kind of at the peak of their abilities. Of course, the girl spends most of her time passed down on. The bed, not really doing much except trying to be saved or not be killed. Yeah, the sickness of it isn't really like the bizarre strain. It's just.

The sickness in our culture. I mean, it really is reflective of something in our culture that I don't know if it's surviving. It's just this obsessiveness. about like possessing a particular woman like he has this woman under glass to preserve her beauty and i mean even a live woman has to well what is it rita rudner said it's like being a female impersonator every day i mean but he's preserving this dead woman under glass and then there's the daughter but that is something that you see in poe too it's uh that same kind of obsessive possessiveness, this masculine weirdness. An attachment to one woman. Even when it doesn't make sense, when death has separated you.

So much so that just anybody that resembles them falls into this sphere of obsession. Yeah, but that's part of the bleakness of the film in another way, too, because we're presented two... well, maybe three relationships effectively in this movie. I still can't figure out the, the live girl that turns up towards the end. It's a lot of mystery there, but, um, we're presented two relationships, neither of which seem at all to be a meaningful image of love. And granted, you know, this is a genre movie of a period.

So it's, I mean, I'm not saying that we can't look to it for deeper human motivation, but you know, there's a certain roundedness that we expect these days that those movies weren't necessarily there to provide. Um, But no, so we have the obsessive, dark relationship, and that informs Lugosi and Karloff's conflict, which is all about male honor. It's like, well, you took her from me. Well, she was my daughter, and rah, there's all that going on. But then the American relationship, the two Americans are just, they're goofy.

They're silly. They're like the. First scene with them. I'm just like, I'm just like, please, dear God, tell me they're going to stop talking to each other like that. Yeah.

There were the people that are sitting behind you on the bus. Yeah. And when you just got your girlfriend and you're like, stop it. Yeah. Well, you know, there was a lot of commentary, I think about Americans in it.

The, when the, the police officers or the, come in and he introduces them as Americans. Oh, you're American. You know, like it plays to that feeling that everybody thinks that, or we think that everyone's impressed by us because we're Americans or something like that. And I think they were playing, almost playing to the audience with that. Like, you know, obviously everyone loves you.

You're an American. And I don't know, it reveals a naive side side that they're naive. They almost like we're represented representative of America. We have no idea really what's going on in Hungary. Why would they have gone there in the first place?

They had no idea what they were getting into. This all still kind of holds true actually. And they, and they are oblivious to what's going on around them until it's, you know, check, check, obviously. So, Yeah. And I think the other, you know, when you talk about relationships is Lugosi and Karloff, I mean, you don't, obviously they don't tell you their whole story about each other in the past, but they, but it's also, it's a friendship and a hatred.

And I think it almost is perfect for the two of them in real life as roles as well. You know, you could tell that They're almost the characters that they're playing. I'm doing this because I have to. I respect you. Karloff was a pretty sedate, easygoing guy.

Guy. He admits he was lucky in taking the role of Frankenstein back when he did, because Lugosi turned it down. Lugosi didn't want his features covered up. He was a matinee idol. They apparently were friendly enough on the set, but Lugosi always had that stuck in his craw that Karloff was the bigger star and basically the better actor.

And Universal kind of encouraged that belief, I think. They promoted it as the clash of the two great titans. Because they went on to do The Raven the next year, which has about as much to do with The Raven as it has to do with Black Cat. It's still a lot of fun, but not nearly as perverse a movie. But Lugosi kind of was always poor Bella.

He was always dear Boris and poor Bella. That's kind of how it worked out with their lives. Yeah, that's another reference to what Lugosi says in Ed Wood, you know, in Tim Burton's Ed Wood, you know, he's constantly cussing out, you know, Karloff whenever his name is mentioned or horror movies are mentioned. Yeah, no, this thing about the Americans being innocents in a much deeper situation, like that's played out in a number of other things. We've got the third man.

Which is the same kind of scenario, etc. which is interesting too because it's also a dark story in which a naive. American kind of stumbles his way through. Heck, Mark Twain, The Innocence Abroad, Henry James wrote his stories with the same vibe of Americans uncovering these deeper, simmering European hatreds that they can't really comprehend but somehow provide catalysts for just, I guess, by blundering blindly into things. knocking over pedestals and whatnot. The thing that. Strikes me about their relationship in the film, Karloff and Lugosi, is that despite them nominally being good guy and bad guy, that's, like you said, the sedateness of that relationship.

Nevertheless, they're both in a way kind of restrained and everyone is a little. Flat in the picture. They don't really engage one another in the way that we're. Used to expecting. So when we're watching the action unfold, it's kind of, I think that's one of the things that makes it a really good movie actually.

It's kind of when, when we reached the sudden fever pitches of emotion, we're like, wow, I didn't know I was headed there. I didn't know that these guys could actually pull out my emotions to this degree and yet be so calm about everything. quietly discuss while viewing the body under glass, the rightness and wrongness of their past. Yeah, that's what's so funny when Greg was saying, well, about relationships. It reminds me of, oh, on SNL when John Lovitz did Satan. And he was, he was showing the courtroom his new album and he said, it's about relationships.

Yeah, these are some fucked up relationships. Yeah. Yeah. I think that whole tone makes you like uneasy too because it's, it's like you feel like they should be, you know, especially like the ghost, you're like, he's at the point he wants to kill him, but he's still so calm that you're like, he's still like, what the hell? Yeah.

It's like you put on. My pajamas and that's, that's the, that's the strange thing. Cause he pulls a gun on him. Like Legosi pulls a gun on Karloff and then Carla, and then he sees the cat drops the gun, you know, everything. And then we have that weird monologue by Karloff where we're led through the house.

And then, Next thing we know, Lugosi's like, ah, well, you know, getting into bed. We imagine Karloff picked up his gun and handed it back to him, you know, or something. And they're like, well, we'll deal with this again in the morning. It's kind of a Wes Anderson quality. Well, it seems like a sort of disagreement between gentlemen, sort of rules of engagement, sort of like, at the appropriate time, I will kill you.

And then the cat comes into play. It's like, well, the moment has passed. I will bide my time. We're over this bit of unpleasantness, and you know what? We'll have tea in the morning, and we'll begin our rivalry.

I can't kill you because I'm breakfasting. Okay, now it just became the Warner Brothers where they clock in and clock out. See you tomorrow. See you tomorrow. I'll finish beating the hell out of you tomorrow.

Yeah. Yeah. But that's, but that's one of those things that we don't, I don't know. We don't see it so often in movies anymore. I don't think we experience it.

Or I hope, I hope we don't so much in our lives is, is that sense of living with that multifaceted relationship with another person where you really love where, like, cause like you said, you could tell that they're great friends at some point. Like at some point you, you can sense that they were very close to one another. And, they have these deep simmering hatreds, but somehow that never really shatters their relationship. It only seems to intensify it. So watching those two like hang out together, you're like, you know, like you can imagine like this is just what they argue about whenever they're alone together, even though they haven't been in the same room.

It looks like they've been doing this for decades. You stole my wife when I was in prison. Oh, that again. Yeah. You know, are we men or are we children?

Of what use are all these melodramatic gestures? You say your soul was killed and that you have been dead all these years. And what of me? Did we not both die here in Marmaris 15 years ago? Are we any the less victims of the war than those whose bodies were torn asunder?

Are we not both the living dead? And now you come to me playing at being an. Avenging angel, childishly thirsting for my blood. We understand each other too well. We know too much of life.

We shall play a little game, Venus. A game of death, if you like. But under any circumstances, we shall have to wait until these people are gone, until we are alone. Well, that's what I wanted to go into. I mean.

How much do we know on the backstory? Are we to believe that both of them were prisoners of war at some point. And then one gets out? Seemingly. He sold out his friends.

It's very hard to say. You mentioned the tour of the house and that weird sequence. It's almost like a dreamlike sequence. That initially, there was no dialogue over that sequence. Yeah, I noticed it all seemed very voiceover.

It's all post-up. It's this odd sort of walk. kind of explaining the function of that house and what it was. And a great deal of the movie was post-dubbed. There's that weird sequence where, you know, Lugosi tells his servant to obey Karloff. Why?

Why does this go on? It's like they're literally kind of exchanging identities. And it was actually one of the very first, I've loved this movie for so long, it's one of the first VHS tapes I ever bought. back in the 80s, was a double feature of this and The Raven. And that print is different than the one that's on DVD or currently circulating in that they did post-dubbing, and sometimes it's the director's voice. It's actually Ulmer trying to approximate their lisps and their accents.

He was just on hand. But at some point, Lugosi's voice was coming out of Karloff's mouth. That happens. And vice versa. It was very weird.

These were long shots. I remember winding this back and going, okay, who said that and why? They almost exchange roles. But it does have that weird. The beginning is kind of clear-cut, and then the ending is fairly clear, at least as far as what the stakes are, what the conflict is.

But there's that two-thirds of the way in, yeah, I was lost. I didn't know why suddenly the satanic mass was being brought into things or why that was an issue as Karloff wanders around in that really awesome... robe that he's got. It looks like he should be working for Hugh Hefner's Gothic division or something. By the way, do you know anything about the soundtrack? Because I understand that this is one of the first films that was actually soundtracked.

All the way through. There are bits that I noticed from classical music. Universal was of a habit of beating Swan Lake to death. You got that a lot. You got that with Dracula and the Mummy.

And most of the time they would literally only have music at the beginning of the picture or at the end especially if you watch Dracula it's very stage bound you've got Swan Lake at the beginning and Swan Lake at the end and that's it there's a little interval in the middle King Kong kind of revolutionized that you know a couple years later by having Steiner basically score the whole picture and you do have a lot more music in Black Cat and it was them kind of learning we need to do this especially in a film like that you've got to add something to the atmosphere but they were still using a lot of stock music at that point but they learned how to manipulate it better I think with Black Cat And then the next year they did Bride of Frankenstein, and that was another big, big score where they basically scored the whole picture.

They used it to cue moments, like we're used to with film movies now, but back then it was kind of a new art form. Yeah, I could tell there were moments in Black Cat, and I sense this a lot in films of that period, too, in the sense of someone left the stereo on in the background, and it's like reaching some crescendo in some odd moment, and you're just like, And sometimes it overplays sequences like when Karloff. Comes into the room expecting to wake up Lugosi. Another bland sequence. He expects to wake up Lugosi and then Manners turns over.

What? He's like, I've got you now. Oh, it's you. I'm sorry. Lugosi shows up at the door.

He's like, oh, no, I'm in this room. He's like, oh, okay. And he's like, we'll be in here. He shuts the door. See, they almost could have been a laugh track there.

It was awesome. It was. And then Manders is just like, oh, man, I can't wait to get some sleep, you know. Dismisses it, yeah. I thought if I'm in a strange country. in a strange home and two strange men are my hosts, I am not going to sleep down the hallway from my wife.

Oh, no. Yeah, I didn't understand that at all. What was that about? And her bedroom was adjoining on the opposite side. His, which is even worse.

You're letting her sleep between these two men? I thought it would have been weird had they not been married. It would have made sense if they weren't married. Okay, obviously she's got to have a separate room from them, but the fact that they were married, I was like, that really, like, well, that's weird. Honey.

Yeah. I think, I think it. Was more that they were trying to let her recover and not, you know, excited. That was the cover story. Not have him elbowing her in the head.

I'm sorry. I was trying to go more for that. But it's David manners. He does what he's told. He's a milk.

He's mannered. Um, But what was funny in that same scene was then, okay, so she's recovering, the door's closed, but he's like, hey, mind if I leave this door open? Like, wait, who's this weird old Hungarian guy that's leaving the door open between our bedrooms? No, no, better yet, better yet, that's what Manners says, is like, man, you know, I'm in a strange house, it'd be much better for me if I'm not just sleeping alone here, you know, to leave the door open. And it's kind of chilly.

Bella, would you come cuddle me? Come on. Yeah. But. but it's, it's one of those things that doesn't really make a whole lot of narrative sense, but at the same time it kind of fits, you know, it's like, he's in this. House with this strange guy.

And of course he starts like, like he allows, he allows him to separate them. And, you know, like they kind of fall into his, he falls into the, they fall into the places that he's prepared for them. Almost, you know? Um, so it's, it doesn't make a whole lot of narrative sense, but it still kind of fits that when they're in this guy's place, they do what he says, you know, or he has some kind of weird power over them. And because everyone has that politeness, you know, they just kind of accept it.

Well, it's your house. Like I'll sleep down the hallway or whatever. No questions asked later on when you can't produce a car or telephone or anything like that. Then suddenly I get alarmed and want to leave, but I'll send for my stuff later. The house, um, And, you know, he's supposed to be an architect.

But at the same time, the house almost seems like it was still 20 or 30 years ahead of its time for the modern, you know, that 60s modern look. It looks very mid-century. Yeah. And so somebody had a good eye on having an avant-garde, I think, architect for the time because I was like, wait, when was this recorded? I mean, I was.

See, it's the house porn, too, is making me think Wes Anderson. House porn. Yeah. All these adjoining rooms. Yeah.

It was odd. And it was built on top of a fort. I don't know. I wanted to see it in the daylight and take a tour of it. That was probably the most interesting part of the.

Movie to me. Yeah, in L.A., there's a house... Up in the hills on Glendower, I think it's the Ennis Brown House. They always called it the Black Cat House. It is not where they shot this film, but apparently it's where they took their inspiration.

That film did turn up in a lot of movies. It's in Blade Runner. It's Deckard's apartment. It's in a house on Onnit Hill. The exteriors are shot.

It's a very cubist, Frank Lloyd Wright kind of design. Everyone always said that's where they took their inspiration. They always called it the Black Cat House. It's a cool place. Yeah, they were kind of going for that Bauhaus 30s sleek look, and they accomplished it really well with the set and with the way Karloff looks.

He looks very deco. He's got that great haircut and the great clothes. That's fantastic. Really strange for a film of that time. I just want to be sure I'm the first one to say this line.

Supernatural perhaps. No, what is it? Bologna, perhaps not. Just making him say bologna was my favorite part of the whole movie. I'm waiting for it.

There was a long pause, and I'm like, he's going to say bologna, perhaps not. He gives you time to know where he's going. I always wanted to do a wacky packages type of advertising. It's Bela Lugosi's Supernatural Bologna. Supernatural Bologna.

Get some now. Sounds like a lot of supernatural bologna. He works that line. He chews up more than the scenery, doesn't he? Perhaps.

Baloney. Perhaps not. God, what a line. Um, I'm going to go to the paranormal convention and set up a table. That just points the finger at everyone else around me.

You're a supernatural baloney and you're just, yeah, I will be hated at all. No, we need to sell supernatural baloney. That's the Oscars tie in. There we go. Definitely.

Bring it back. Speaking of lines from the movie, uh, Manners, I think, has one great line from this film. It's actually when he's describing the house. He says something about it being like, well, if I ever need a reserved insane asylum building or something to live in, then I'll call this guy. It's like his one witty moment in the film.

What is the drug that he supposedly gives to her? A very strong narcotic. She'll be out with it. She was wacky. She wasn't quite right.

I wondered if he hadn't been slipped something in his drink as well because he wasn't acting. He was kind of grumpy. Actually, I was acting pretty strangely. The film is the drug. It's the whole scene where the cat enters the picture and then when the cat's killed, They insinuate the spirit of the cat has entered her.

She's picked up on this. You see that look in her eyes. She looks very sultry. She changes. It's that moment where you see Carlos gripping that statue.

Some neat stuff going on. You're not sure what it is. It's a lot more than what's going on in the other movies from the 30s and Universal. More of that more of that great gothic filmmaking that they that they kind of brought back with hammer pictures and stuff that you know i love that scene where he grips the statue it's like the what is it a woman arching her back or something and he and and you see like uh deep focus like his hand gripping it with her like in the background writhing and it's like man. That's awesome why don't we make shots like that anymore it's just.

Fantastic i was doing the math Because they kept talking about being in the war, and I'm like, wait, how old were you. Guys in the war? Yeah, they were 12. Then I, well, no, it depends. If we're just going back, like, did he just get out?

Like, if we're just going back 15 years, they were, like, in their late 30s. Like, how long? Yeah, they were actually. Probably both in their 40s by that time, the actors. I think, yeah, I can't remember how old.

I think he said it was 18 years, because he was traveling the world for three years. Trying to find them. Either way, they were, but again, I was like, well, that's actually not that far from the truth because like wars back then you were, you did have 40 year old guys fighting them. It wasn't till like Vietnam that we started drafting children to go fight the wars, but you used to actually have like, you know. Grown men in the war.

Yeah. Career soldiers. Yeah. So it's probably not too far off, but it was, I think both of them just look a little older than they even were at that point. So it was just like, how long ago was this war?

Especially since I think Lugosi, didn't Lugosi serve in the military? Wasn't he? Yeah. Yeah, he was in the Austro-Hungarian military, so that's actually kind of perfect for him. Yeah, he got entangled with politics, and then that's one of the reasons he left Hungary at the time, was to get out from under.

He was probably the only soldier to never get his uniform dirty, because he doesn't seem like the kind that ever got dirty with anything. Everything's always well-pressed, and he knew how to look. He was really masterful at the physical things. aspects of acting, his hands and everything. I can see him using that. You don't want to shoot me.

All right, you got a point there. But that's mirrored, though, by Karloff's impeccable taste. Again, just that outfit that he wears, just fantastic. It looks like he's wearing a fully black jumpsuit. Is it just me, or are they both really odd-looking guys to be like matinee actors?

They are. Karloff's face is, like, amazing, though. Like, I kept watching it going, like, it's so, like, they're both so, like, specific and identifiable. But, yeah, Karloff, like, the more I watch it, like, seeing him outside of the Frankenstein makeup is just, it's funny how much it's. Still, like, he's just.

Well, it really was the first chance he had to do a role outside of his makeup. I think in 32, he did Old Dark House, where he was just a scary butler. Mm-hmm. And grunted, never spoke. And then he did The Mummy.

In heavy makeup, both of those roles. So by 34, it was a chance for him to actually do a lot of line readings and being a star. And that's when they were billing him only by his last name. He was such a big star. He was just Karloff.

And it was kind of a breakout for him. It's what Lugosi always wanted. So it was kind of like they were throwing a bone to Lugosi because he agreed to be in the picture. So they They beefed up his role as Vertigast as well when they realized he was going to agree to this. But he was very standoffish after Dracula.

I mean, they didn't want to hire him for Dracula, even though he made that role famous on Broadway. He was not on their list for the longest of times because he really did not speak English. He learned to speak the language watching like cowboy movies. He'd go to the movies and phonetically learn how to do roles. And they considered a lot of other guys like Conrad Veidt and other people to do Dracula, but then eventually hired him and they had a huge hit.

So they had a star, but they had a temperamental star. There's a lot of talk. This is a pretty fun book about their collaborative career. What is that book you have? It's called Karloff and Legosi, The Story of a Haunting Collaborations by Greg Mank.

It's a really good book about all the films they did with each other. He's got a nice chapter on Black Cat, and they're constantly talking about how Bella mangled English on the set. He'd be trying to do lines, and they'd just keep blowing them, and eventually they'd just settle for what they got. Most of the time it worked. Yeah, I tried to turn on the closed captioning at one point because I was having trouble figuring out what.

Was going on. You know what to speak Hungarian? Yeah, he gets in a hurry there at one point. What? Yeah, but baloney, he takes his time.

He knew that was a key line right there. I always take your time with baloney. But, I don't know, it's... It works to his advantage a little bit in some of his roles. I remember Ebert said, I think, about Dracula that when he's speaking in English, it's almost like he's kind of amused by the way these people talk to each other.

Like, oh, good evening. Like, that's what you say now. That's cute. Like he really is just so kind of amused by these human fashions of the way they talk to each other now. Like people.

Um, and, but no, uh, Bela Lugosi is a, he's an interesting character. I wish I, I wish I knew more about him a little bit, but haunting collaboration. Good book. Yeah. Yeah.

It was at one point talk about doing an actual movie based on this was about their rivalry, but never quite got off the ground because you've got all the families involved. Right. And the legacies of the actors. I know most of those people. I was going to say, Lugosi's kid is a lawyer.

He's a lawyer. He's like the lawyer in Hollywood. He actually worked. He sued Aurora Models back in the 60s when they first did the Dracula model because they didn't ask for permission. Right.

Nice. And it took him like 25 years, but he finally won. He's worked with the Three Stooges families and all those folks just to try to get proper licensing done. He's a pretty nice guy. He looks just like his dad.

Yeah, I've seen a picture of him. It's eerie. It's eerie to. Be in the room with him. If anything, he's like taller and better looking.

And it's just like weird to walk into a room with Bella Jr. Wow. In a dimly lit room especially. It's like, whoa. And he's overall a nice guy.

Sarah's a wonderful woman, Karloff's daughter. And Ron Chaney is a nice guy. Lon Chaney. Lon Chaney's grandson. Lon Chaney Sr.

's great-grandson. He looks a lot like his great-grandfather. But they're all actually pretty nice people. But Universal, being a studio, doesn't want to share with anybody. So it's the way things work.

What about the ending? What about that hokey, corny wrap-up at the end? Because he was a mystery writer. And he's reading a review. I kind of liked it.

I did. It didn't matter because it needed something. I don't know. It needed something. Prior to that, so strangely, with Karloff being skinned alive.

Yeah. The shooting. Weirdly enough, that seems like a more appropriate ending, though, is where does this all end? Well, it ends with Karloff being skinned alive by Bela Lugosi and then getting shot Spoiler. And then the two of them look horrified for a moment and then run out.

That's how most of those movies ended back then. They ran off. In The Bride of Frankenstein, they run off and watch the castle collapse. Movies kind of end suddenly in the 30s. The tag at the end is a little more modern.

It feels like a studio going, come on, we need something to make people happy. We won't get moved whiplash out of this at all. It has that quality like old Reader's Digest jokes. It always felt like the couple was in a different movie anyway. I mean, it started, it sort of booked into the movie, and then in the middle of the musical cues, whenever there was the two of them in a scene together, it was this very sort of romantic, sort of lighter.

Even if the situation didn't call for it at all, it was like, this is their soundtrack. They were kind of odd together anyway. I know you're newlyweds and all, but calm down. Why did they both deny being hungry and then suddenly laugh and admit they were both starving? Because they were hungry.

There's so many strange. My favorite weird series. Speaking of Reader's Digest jokes. That's what I'm good for. I'm sorry.

No, no, it's fine. There were a lot of strange lines, like that moment when the bag nearly falls and Bella and Manners jump up to prevent it from falling. And they're like, oh, I'm so sorry that you got frightened. And then Lugosi says, charmingly enough, it's better to be frightened than crushed. And everyone's like, ah, it's like, what was funny about that?

Like it was a very odd and heavy line. And then, and you're right. Like they did feel like they were in a different film almost. And towards the middle of the film, it felt kind of pathological almost like, like Karloff and Bella were playing their chess game and they were like, okay, we're going to leave now. And he's like, great.

I'm going back to my game. All right, okay, we'll send you a car. I'm going back to my game now. I'm playing my chess game. Go away.

I'm in my movie right now. You guys need to go back to your set. And he asks him, did you get the hotel on the phone? He's like, the phone is dead. Did you hear that?

Even the phone is dead. It's just like, he's just there. He's being pushed around by everyone else. Yeah, yeah. You've got that, and then you've got the weird comic interlude with the locals and the cops, which is the only thing that kind of drags them into a screeching halt as you have to deal with the cops.

They're the gravediggers of the movie, aren't they? Like, okay, all this heavy stuff's going on. Let's talk to these guys for a minute. Let's have a fight about hometown. Yeah, the two guys who come in with their.

Guards waiting at the door. I wonder in these films, what were police like back in those days in Europe when two police officers show up, And they come in with a couple of soldiers bearing rifles over their shoulder and what sounds like a Jeep or something like that outside. But as it turns out, they rode bicycles? Yeah. And women can't ride bicycles.

She was injured if nothing else. Awkward. It would be awkward. Yeah, it wasn't that she couldn't make it. It was that it would be awkward.

And we don't want to make things awkward for the lady folk. Right. So we'll just leave her here with all you creepy-looking dudes. And adjoining doors. About the ending, though, if he were that sort of writer, he should have been expecting some of that that was going on, or at least more aware of what was going on.

He's not real aware of anything, it seems. He doesn't have the ability to be that sort of writer. They're a curiously oblivious Brad and Janet family. It's funny the way you were talking about earlier when he like takes them to their separate rooms I was like it's almost like O'Brien was sitting there taking notes and then they go to it does kind of feel like later like this is what he was watching what he was doing parts of the yeah which is true of just about every old horror and sci-fi movie he was just piecing them all together but yeah it definitely has that vibe going on. Too please child listen to me we are all in danger Percy is a mad beast, I know.

I know. I've seen the proof. He took Karen, my wife, murdered her, and murdered my child. And you let him live? I wait my time.

It shall be soon. Very soon. Until then, I must do his bidding. That is why my servant obeys him. Okay, we've gotten most of the main guys.

Can we talk about the two creepy servants? Were they not? Like, could you get two more creepy and opposite ends of the spectrum guys? They're so weird. Physically really weird.

Okay, I need someone to explain something to me. Okay, there's the scene. I think the servant pulls the knife on Bela Lugosi. And then Bela Lugosi walks up to him and takes the knife away or something? He's Bela Lugosi.

And is that also the scene where Bela Lugosi is like, you obey Karloff now. Or sorry, you obey whatever that guy's name was. It is the strangest scene in the world. He walks up to the servant, takes the knife away, and then tells him, you're not doing what I say anymore. You're doing what this other guy says, even though you just pulled a knife on me and.

I think he was pulling the knife because he was going to go take care of Karloff for him right then. Okay. And he said, no, not yet. Even though it was pointed at Fela Lugosi's face and like the dramatic music was swelling in that moment. Because the two roles are ambiguous at that point.

Like Dave was saying, it's like, I don't even know who I'm supposed to kill anymore. I'll kill whoever you tell me to. You, him, you know, whatever. But I think the intention was he was going to go kill Karloff at that moment. That went over my head.

But it's like, you know, bide our time. It's like, It's got 20 more minutes. Yeah, no, because we've got a little more movement. It did have that quality to it. Like, let's wait a while before we wrap this up.

This up we gotta get the feature length we've got these we've got these americans to talk to let's let's compliment each other to them for a while uh oh who's he oh he's one of the greatest architects in in austria who is he well he's one. Of the greatest psychologists you know and it's like it's like wow, for mortal enemies, you sure do talk each other up a lot. That's what I was thinking. They really are pleased with each other for people that want to kill each other. Was this the Aleister Crowley era also?

Just post-Crowley, so there are a lot of people who claim that's who Hallmark Posick was supposed to be. Yeah, it just kind of had that feel. That had been maybe 10 years previous. It's got a lot in common, though, with a lot of occult stories that are being written in that era. Like, I'm a big reader of Robert E.

Howard, and his horror stories have a lot of the same vibe, like two academics who really like each other and have a lot of buried, you know, buried vitriol against each other, sort of like. dealing with their stuff via all these occult and supernatural agents. That was a heavy theme in all the pulp magazines back then with Lovecraft and Howard and all those guys. So it was very much a part of pop culture that isn't there now. Which is amazing because it's so bleak and heavy-handed for such a prevalent pop cultural phenomenon at the time to have a blockbuster movie. And even other movies like The Ghoul, I think, with Karloff.

Which had a similar... tone to it. It's a neat movie. I was trying to. Remember what else he was doing. I think he did that in 32 or 33.

He went to Europe to make the ghoul. That was an English picture. Yes, it was. And he had that weird eyebrow makeup on. Seriously, his eyebrows were on fire throughout that film.

But yeah, all this stuff about academics and really intelligent cultured people taking out their buried subconscious urges and aggressions via Satanism on each other. which is, you know, the only way to go, I guess, if you're a really cultured European. When you're talking about the inspiration, did they also, the director also modeled Karloff after Fritz Lang? Is that what I heard? Maybe so, yeah. Because I think he'd worked with him.

Well, supposedly, I think they couldn't prove that, but they said that he had worked. With him on Metropolis and maybe M. That very, that stark, you know. Yeah. metropolis look. It really does.

Once again, completely out of nowhere for a universal film at that point. You realize that that studio, like a lot of other studios, but mostly that studio in particular was run by a bunch of expatriate Europeans. You're talking about the Lemleys. You're talking about people who really had just come from Europe. Murdao and Long were amongst them.

These themes were familiar to those filmmakers, but not to American audiences, which is, I think, why the audience gets placed in that position a lot of the time with the Americans. It's like you're discovering things that have been going on in Europe for a long time. And the Lemleys seem to thrive on that. All their movies always have those weird... You're not quite sure where these films are taking place.

You watch movies like Frankenstein, and you're like, okay, what country is this? Is this Germany? Where is this? They've got these stock Eastern European locations that they're trying to weave into the plot. That makes sense, too, because you think that that's coming out of a period.

I mean, Germany only got unified 50... you know, 60 years earlier, like this is prior to the breakup of what we call Eastern Europe. So it's back in those days when, well, sure, it's full of Polish people, but it's Germany. You know, sure, it's filled with all these people who call themselves Czechs or Bohemians or something like that, but it's Austria. You know, it was sort of vague national identity. Which is probably the understanding that the average American audience had.

Yeah, well, and Poe used to begin some of his stories with, like, it doesn't really. Matter where it was or when it was, because these things happened. That's almost how we see the Middle East now, too. It's so, you could just kind of show images, and you're like, sure, that's, it could be anywhere from Egypt to, and most of America is going to think Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Egypt. Hell, Turkey, and we're not going to even know the difference.

And by most of America, we mean the Midwest. Right. Which could be anywhere as long as it's not on the coast or the other coast. Fly over. It's all Midwest.

It's like Florida, East Coast, California. There is no Mideast. Texas has its own world. Oh, yeah. Well, Texas, yeah.

But, yeah, everywhere in the middle is just kind of in the middle. But that's also part of the way just our minds function. You show me a picture of a desert in, say, the Middle East. It's like, okay, sure, somewhere either Libya or Syria. Those places are anywhere near each other.

But when I think of a big flat expanse and you call it Texas, I'm like, yes, probably. That makes perfect sense. I've driven through North Texas enough to know, yes, giant flat expanse, even though it doesn't really cover Texas. I mean, Texas is a very huge and varied state. I'm told.

Speaking of geographical, has anyone seen in Bernie where they do a breakdown of all the different Texas regions? Oh, yeah, it's great. I don't. Bernie could be an entire show, but I just love that little moment. It applies to Texas, but it still applies to almost everybody with a rural, small town background.

But particularly Texas, it's great. Did you ever hear of Satanism, the worship of the devil, of evil? Appear to be the great modern priest of the ancient cult. At night, dark of the moon, the rites of Lucifer are celebrated. And if I'm not mistaken, he intends you to play a part in that ritual.

A very important part. It's funny how there's this period where horror is like a particularly strong genre. I guess like in contemporary. Movies like the. What's his name?

Like the Ripley's Game and Silence of the Lambs. has that kind of intellectual... He's almost like a connoisseur villain. It's almost like somehow his connoisseurship is tied to his evil. And he's always playing these kinds of intellectual games like his self-storage. I don't know that that's something.

Well, and then I. Guess there's kind of a similar thing. The interesting thing was some people tie the rise of satanic ritual abuse as a phenomenon to the end of the Cold War. Like there's just something we have to have an evil villain. And so after the end of the Cold War, people started reporting all this recovered memories of satanic ritual abuse.

And people confessed to it. Although later investigations showed that there's no possible way in 24 hours in a day they could have done the things they confessed to. It's just like a. It fulfilled a need. Yeah, there's never been any independent evidence that any of it ever actually happened.

But then people who believe. In the conspiracy... feel that. That proves it just how fast the conspiracy is oh you're. Just not very good at a species of hiding conspiracies. Clearly um that's what they rely on you know that is strange to me like i you know you research you know weird out there crimes from like the 60s the 70s the 80s i I remember that movie, Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer.

It was based around two real people. I forget who the actual killer was, but I actually know his sidekick or whatever was this guy, Otis. Otis Toole. And he was reportedly raised in Florida by Satanists. That's what he supposedly did.

I remember reading that and thinking... where do these people come from? Where are the Florida Satanists? Is there a commune? At what point did Satanism ever become that kind of phenomena? Where you go to Florida.

Yeah, where you go to Florida and they're there. And not only that, raising children. Instead of just living in an apartment complex, collecting Aleister Crowley. Books or something like that. Is there a Satan's guide to raising children?

No. There's a map. It's like Disney World's here, Satan Land here. How is Satan on spanking? Is he pro-spanking, or is he actually spare the rod and spoil the child, except as a positive?

Whenever I hear. These stories about Satanists on the news, I'm like, oh, you mean teenagers. You mean angst-riddled teenagers, because every Satanist I ever met was just some... Do you like to burn things? There's a couple of kids playing.

D & D. Yeah, they read Anne Hunlevey's book, and they're Satanists. The Church of Satan, such as it is, is far from that kind of an organization. It's basically just like any other church. It's about making money.

Sure. Two friends of mine run it right now, as it turns out. They used to edit a horror magazine, and now they're the priest and priestess of the Church of Satan. Sweet. They must know Marilyn Manson then pretty well.

Probably, yeah. It's Peggy Nadramian and Peter Gilmore. Okay. Gru Magazine back in the 80s. Yeah, it's very different than the way people read the book.

It's not based on Christianity and not based on anti-Christianity. It's just Anton LaVey's sort of free love belief. Yeah, but that's not the Anton LaVey stuff. All that's kind of a. 60s phenomena you know and.

But you know what I'm talking about is that like you know whenever you read any of those accounts of you know occult texts or occult groups in Europe you know or in the Americas it's always like a very fringe phenomenon amongst like a handful of intellectuals or something you know guys who basically spend a little bit too much time reading the Egyptian books of the dead think suddenly oh that connects to book of revelation and start you know drawing a picture but I guess I wonder with those guys who say that they're Satanist clans out there somewhere. Or that there were when they were growing up in the 50s or something. I'm like, how did that come about? How could that not be some kind of hallucination or fantasy?

It's just a very fringy, almost fundamentalist Satanism going on. Who are these people? You never are sure if you can buy any of that. You hear about real sort of revolutionary killers of the 50s, people like Ed Gein, people like that. They had a very different set of beliefs.

In Ed Gein's case, he lived alone, was kind of just an oddball character. He babysat the neighbors, kids, and could overall be trusted. Yeah, everyone called him Eddie, really liked him. But then at night he would lie down next to some blonde lady and read this little Satanism book. Satan's Digest.

That's what makes this so weird, though. He was just getting his refresher before the dark moon. I mean, you know. This is before all that stuff. Right.

Obviously, that stuff did exist. This would be a good idea. Yeah. You know, if you were the priest of a Satanist cult, you know, and you were that smart, do you really need to kind of brush up before everybody comes over? Okay, guys.

He was probably brushing up on his Latin. To go over the whole recitation. Yeah. I just. Speaking of which, by the way, I just realized, of course, we're in a church painted black.

Very quiet in here. No evidence that there's light outside. I forgot to tell you, after we finish this, the mass starts. We can throw the crucifix in here somewhere behind that screen. Trying to lure in some new people to get some sacrifices.

Welcome to the show. It is the most teenager goth-looking church. If you didn't know, this is a theater. This is like the teenager goth room. It is.

If I was going to make a B movie and they were going to bring them to some room to be sacrificed underground, this would totally be it. By the way, speaking of Latin and Ed Gein brushing up on his Latin, there is that weird moment in the film, to try to bring it back there, where Karloff is reading some sort of ritual or something like that. Yes. If I didn't have something against the Romans and I had studied Latin, I'm sure I would know what it was. Well, actually, it's nonsense.

I hoped it was nonsense. It's actually transcribed in this book that got both the Latin and the English translation. Excellent. And the English translation goes, With a grain of salt, the brave may fall but cannot yield. The wolf changes its skin but not its mind.

Great is truth and it shall prevail. That which I admit I do not know, I cannot lose. The loss that is lost is not lost at all. Bright lightning. Judge a tree by fruit, not leaves.

Every madman thinks everyone is crazy. He who repents is almost innocent. I kind of like this. It sounds good, rolling off the tongue, but it really makes no sense. It kind of sounds like a beatnik poem or something.

I feel like I should be snapping. I'm digging this. I'm deeply moved, and my subconscious is now awakened. Yeah. Well, then you're ready for the sacrifice.

Please step up. I think I understand it. It's about relationship. Oh, Satan, you're always saying that. It's my new album.

That's a weird little tie-in, though, the fact that because of his relationship, the director really didn't work much as his career went on. No. He was. sitting around with. What, the wife of one of the other big moguls in Hollywood? And because of that, everybody found out about it, and I guess some sort of solidarity in Hollywood, which I didn't know they did, yeah, they sort of blackballed him for, he ended up making a lot of B-movies because that's all they were going to give him at that point.

Yeah, yeah. It's a strange situation with him. Yeah, who was this director again? Edgar Ulmer. Edgar Ulmer, okay.

Who did later do, I think it was, was it DOA? I don't know. Or maybe it's Detour. I know there's sort of a. Yeah, I think it's that one.

It's Detour. Detour, yeah. Kind of a cult noir film. He kind of had to bounce back with that, but no other big film. That's about it, yeah.

I was going to say, this film, I mean, he's a talented filmmaker, I think. I mean, whatever the thing we've made fun of, this film is definitely like, it's got a power to it. I really did feel like towards the middle, even while things were getting crazier and weirder and I was having a harder time understanding... I was really feeling that sense. I guess it was because the Americans sort of pulled me in by proxy of just feeling the tension and the willpower of these two guys playing out in this really abstract setting.

That was one of the things that struck me. It was just how abstract a lot of what was going on was. I didn't understand what the girl under the glass was, but that striking image made a lot of sense as they're both just sitting there calmly discussing her and beauty and possession and all these things. Yeah, did we ever. figure out what their status was exactly. Like, as they were under glass, do we know?

I think she's dead. But is it like. Does. He have one or two women under glass? There's at least two.

Yeah. I think they're both literally dead and sort of... A lot of women under glass. That's what I was like, is it like a stuffed version? Is it like.

She's sort of hovering. Yeah, she's sort of there. It looks like with the hair, it was like in formaldehyde. Or something like that. Yeah.

I think they're trying to imply she's in a liquid environment, but she's not. Yeah. And. Which was really cool, though. It was very cool.

It's a striking visual. That's crazy. And again, I guess. It's a good look. Brian knows how to redecorate now.

I need to hang a woman on my wall. Usually I have them laying down, but now I'm going to try this floating thing. It's pretty cool. The new theory for the waterbed. Yeah so and then you've got the daughter showing up you know that that's for me the most shocking moment it's just like you know and then the the heroine finds out you're you're his daughter you see there's some shock registering at last with her something strange going on she's a.

Little human he has to kill her i wasn't super clear on that point either because hadn't we just like I don't know, pledged our undying love and talked about her importance in our life. And then he was like, oh, cat's out of the bag. All right, sorry, honey. But he had told her not to leave the room. She disobeyed.

She didn't listen. But then later they referenced her like maybe he was just punishing her. So I don't know. I never did pin down that either because then they. They do make reference to her almost like she's still alive at that point.

Maybe they just didn't know. That's part of the weird split in the movie. The first half of it, I felt like it was about these two guys and their long simmering conflict over someone who may or may not be alive and the vengeance they want to take on each other and how the Americans are going to play in it. And then the second part, Karloff has kind of just turned into a villain now. And now he's going to do this Black Mass thing.

And he's got these sacrifices. He's lined up, apparently, just to do one right after the other. It's unclear who all he plans to kill. And now we've got to stop them somehow. Why does the woman scream and faint at the Mass?

I mean, she obviously was there. I mean, really, it was a plot point. If she never screams and passes out... Everything else doesn't happen. And, you know, she's obviously been there before and came there under free will.

She looked like she was, you know, a participant that she was willingly going there. I just didn't understand that. And why did everybody rush to her? And then, hey, we're going to forget about these guys trying to get to. I don't know.

It just seemed like how are we going to get this to happen? Okay, we'll have somebody faint. Yeah, that's what it felt like to me. Like directing on the set. Thinking through the scenes as they go.

I don't know if you noticed, though, but women faint a lot. In movies? In this movie. I was going to say, could either of you verify this? Do they faint constantly?

Upon command? It was a nutritional problem back then. We're getting a B vitamin. Well, it's also because they feel like they're not hungry, but really they're very hungry. And then she's so hungry, bam, hits the ground.

She hasn't eaten in the past. At least 48 hours. Well, she was on her honeymoon, so her eating disorders were just through the roof. She was avoiding all food. I've got to fit in this dress.

Oh, man. Okay. I don't know. I still think, like, yeah, the whole Satanist angle gets thrown in, like, pretty late in the game. Yeah.

And you don't ever really have it totally explained. And it's still really interesting, but it's, I think, more fascinating that it appears in 1934. Well, that's good. More than anything, really. That's why.

It's like, well, we're going to try to get this in. We're going to try to get in the satanic element, but we can't really explain it too carefully. But they'll take it out. That's the case with a lot of things in the movie. When you're talking about Hayes, he's in bed, both of them lying down in bed together.

They're not really married. Mm-hmm. Wait, they're not married? They are married. I'm not talking about the Americans.

I'm talking about Karloff and the girl. Or he does rise up. It's hard to say if that's one bed or not. I think it is. When she's reading, they're in bed together as well.

She's lying there. She's the That's an odd relationship anyway. Wait, are they not married? I thought that they were also married. I don't think they're married.

I think he just takes her. I think he just takes her as his. I thought he referenced that she was his wife. Oh, okay, okay. Probably so they could get away with that.

But still, even. Well, that sounds okay, then. Even for 20 years later, though, they don't show two people in bed together lying down without at least one foot on the floor. One foot on the floor, yeah. Right, right.

Not until Lucy. comes through and starts changing things. And so that just seemed, you know, I was like, wow, they're getting not just the Satan stuff, they're getting a lot through. Well, this is right at that period where, you know, the haze was starting, the office was starting to take itself pretty seriously. Because before that, they got away with murder. Like, they did whatever they wanted before.

That, literally. If you look at the early 30s pictures, like, you know, Tarzan and his mate and things like that, where you've got nudity and all kinds of great stuff going on. Yeah. No, starting around 33, 34. Okay.

It started to kick in. So it really wasn't, okay. Because I thought by then. They were paying close attention to this movie, apparently. They'd heard.

Well, there's a lot to. Be, you know. Yeah. Apparently, they did shoot an ending where Karloff was skinned. That's what I was going to ask, because it seemed like they set it up to be more graphic.

In the script, at least, there's a sequence where he's skinned. Basically, he's just covered in gore. They're crawling across the floor to get the car off. Did they shoot that? I think they may have shot it.

Although I've got to say, as it was, even without showing anything, it's so great how you see Bela Lugosi walks over to the table and his hand passes until he finds the smallest implement he can and then walks over there. It's such a great moment. Even with the shadows, like just seeing like Karloff's hand writhing in the manacle, you know, and the blood dripping or whatever it is. It's a cool scene. Yeah.

So much happens in that last few minutes. Yeah. It's like, where was this for the last hour? Yeah. Yeah, it's like that yogurt with all the fruit on the bottom.

Someone needs to stir it up. It kind of bummed me out when they brought in the satanic ritual and everything because then suddenly we have all these more people in the scene They just show up out of nowhere. They're the Satanists, I guess. When their cue is up, they leave. That's what I was wondering.

Were they in the house somewhere? Were they in town? They were arriving. They said, we've got to prepare. The Satanists came by, but you were asleep.

They didn't want to wake you. They just kissed you on the forehead. The local satanic aristocracy. The well-dressed Satanists are here instead. I don't know who they are.

Well, I love how nobody can get to the place to pick up the Americans, but the Satanists. It's just short. Yeah, I know. Right there. They've got a Satanist four by four.

They've got it. They've got it. Satan's Bigfoot. I mean, it's... Light rail system for Satanists.

Go right up to the front door. You know, it bums me out, though. In every film where Satanists are involved that I've ever seen, I've always been really unimpressed when the Satanists actually get together. Think about that movie, The Ninth Gate. You remember that one with Johnny Depp?

Yeah. It's a film that I weirdly have an affection for. I think because it's about a rare book dealer. The book it's based on is pretty cool. I will believe that.

I believe that it's based on a cool book, even though it became a terrible film. But yeah, every time Satanists... Satanists are always a better threat. Like, ooh, there's a satanic church meeting somewhere. But then whenever the Satanists get together, they're always like, either run off at the earliest opportunity or they stand around and do extremely little.

Yeah, they're not a fun crowd. You'd think they would be more lively and engaging. They're kind of like that group when you finish a play and you walk out and you have to meet and greet everybody. They're like the Satanists are out there, awkwardly just saying hi. Oh, like, hi, yeah, I'm here to threaten you.

You know, I actually do have another appointment I need to. Run to after this, though. This is kind of a big day for me, so I'll just grab my coffee and go. My favorite Satanists in film were from, well, they were more paganists, I think, but it was from Dragnet. The People Against Goodness and Normalcy.

They were a lot of fun. I watched Dragnet far too much as a kid. I started to say, you may be the only one that favorably referenced Dragnet. Right. Come on, it was fantastic.

No, I don't remember that show barely at all, but I mean, People Against Goodness and Normalcy. This was the Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks movie. Oh, okay. That movie. Oh, not the.

I was like, really? Did the TV show veer that much in the direction of humor? They got pretty weird in the later days. It's just the facts, man. Yeah, draggy kids.

We own a. Copy of it. It's like The Devil's Reign, you know, where it's John Travolta and Ernest Borgnine. Satanists just burst into flame at the end. Yeah.

Satanists are always way more threatening when they're on their way. On their way here, you know, Oh, be, be wary. Like the Satanists will gather here any minute now. And then when they show up, it's just like a church congregation. Yeah.

Somebody brought the potato salad. And Satan's potato salad. There are churches, you. Know, that, that, that might make, make you more afraid than, than your average Satanist group, like the Westboro people or. Something like that.

Yeah. Quite a few actually. Yeah. Quite a few perhaps. Um, do you think that there's an overabundance of deviled eggs that, satanic potlucks that just seems a little too on the.

Air better cookies because i always remember sunday schools and churches always had those cookies that were not really good. Yeah they were like cardboard yeah yeah. Um yeah those lemon flavored things that are that's that's another that's another range of questions that could be explored in a in a comedy or something it's like well what are satanists like when they're just hanging out you know are they like Do they keep lamb's blood in their refrigerator, or do they keep high sea and Mountain Dew? They keep the purple stuff. Well, say what you will about the worship of the evil one, but it is ethos compared to nihilists.

At least they believe in something. It's better than those darn nihilists. A nihilist pigeon would be Pretty bleak. Annihilist gathering. They stand there and.

They're like, eh. They usually get together at Denny's, I think. I've been to Denny's on occasion late at night, and I've got to say, those are some bleak people. I might be one of them. Does that cover the black cat?

I was so disappointed. I thought, you know, Universal. You were disappointed. In the movie? No, no, no, no.

I thought it was going to be, because I started watching the first 15, 20 minutes. I thought, this is going to be a perfect one for the kids, you know, universally. It's not the right universal. We're going to ask some questions about that one. What's that?

They'll ask some questions about this. The one that we're not ready for. Yeah, I think Creature might be a little bit more long. That's pretty fun. Creature, Bride of Frankenstein.

The mummy ones were, they weren't too bad, really. But yeah, Black Cat kind of stands out. There's really no other film from that period that's like it at all. Yeah, Abbott and Costello never meet the Black Cat. At least not with that incredible overacting by Bela Lugosi when he sees it.

Like, oh no! Crashes into whatever is nearby to crash into. All right. I guess if that rounds out the black cat, we do have our crossover, so I guess one more time, tell them where to find out more about Wonderfest, Dave. Wonderfest.com, or we have a Facebook page as well, so you can check us out under Wonderfest.

I think it's Wonderfest USA. Or just go to my Facebook page, and you'll see lots of cross-references to it. That's on May 17th through the 19th, coming up in about three weeks. And thanks again to our friends at Dreamland Film Center here for letting us loiter around. So they are at LouisvilleFilmSociety.org.

They do have Flyover Film Fest coming up pretty soon, which is their sort of flagship, and. They should have a lot of stuff coming up this year. So, yep, check that out as well. Otherwise, that about does it. We will return next week.

Same geek time, same geek feed. Thanks for listening. On a lonely night All the lonely nights, I stand alone. Never out to love me, you're always gone. Cause you're hanging out, working the rules.

All the men have come, looking for you. You're a rebel now, don't give a damn. Always get up, win the game. I'm trying. You won't realize until it's too late.

Don't understand why you insist on ways of living that's. A dangerous lie. Die at the time you think of waiting. Living on the edge, not afraid to die. Your heartbeat will slow, but not at all.

No matter what you step on, you'll know you'll die. You're so together, boy, but just at a glance. You're doing it right, you're giving it a chance. It's a game of planning lies to get what you need. So full of promises that you never keep.

Don't you try it. We'll be right back. Thank you. Black Cat Black Cat Man, I don't understand the ways in which you're lying. I don't understand why you insist on being a man.

Such a dangerous lie. And I want to stay or you're going to die. I meant to them that their black church needs more emblems of the evil one. We need some blood red emblems on the walls. There's a red filter on the walls.

Hanging bodies? Floating woman, perhaps? God, I don't know. Sidekick? Fuck you!

Karloff does not deserve to smell my shit. That limey cocksucker can rot in hell for all I care. This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by The Oddity Studios, with opening music performed by The Empires. For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Talk hard!