October 6, 2020 • 33 mins
For three years, a monster terrified the backwater region of Gévaudan. From 1764 - 1767, people found the mutilated corpses, one by one, across the countryside. The press of the time, unable to cover political stories, brought the story of The Beast to France at large. A legend was born.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Yes
(00:30):
it finally happened. It is October one as we record this,
which in my mind means it's already Halloween. Hi and Ben,
Halloween is every day, I think for us, especially on
stuff they don't want you to know, the other show
that we hang out on. But yeah, I don't know
about you, but there's so many things about Halloween that
just do it for me. The holiday itself, obviously, I
(00:52):
think we are all fans of spooky stuff, but just
the weather change, you know, going from being in Georgia,
going from brutally hot and oppressive to this kind of
like very brief, beautiful grace period of you know, breezy
fall weather before it just gets obnoxiously cold. So yeah,
really big fan and big fan of the types of
episodes that we get to cover, uh for for this
(01:13):
particular season. Yeah, yeah, agreed. Uh Yeah, I love this
Ray Bradberry esque autumnal weather. I love the idea that
something spooky this way comes. Uh. We have decided to
dive into some spooky episodes this month. Maybe not a
spooky episodes, but we're gonna do our best. We're gonna
(01:34):
have some fun with some monsters with some creepy stuff,
and if there's anything that comes up that might not
be appropriate for the youngest people in the audience, will
give you a heads up at the top of the show.
With that being said, I think this is an all
ages one. I do want to say to your comment
about it always being Halloween, especially on stuff they don't
(01:55):
want you to know. I recently wrote a very pretentious
essay called always Halloween in America. I would love I
would love to send to you guys. It's my uninformed
pop culture, socio political critique. But no, where would we be? Uh?
You know you and I are two great monsters, but
(02:16):
where would we be as a show without our favorite
monster on the Ones and two? Super producer Casey Pegram Casey,
what are your thoughts on on Halloween? Pretty much everything
that's already been said, got it? Uh? I primarily love
the weather. I'm not like a huge Halloween guy. There
are years where I don't go out and and really
get in costume or do anything. But I never wear
(02:38):
a costume. For the record, that's just not the part
of it that I personally. I like seeing other people
wear awesome costumes and my daughter is a huge costume person.
Halloween is going to be a little sad for her
this year and for a lot of kids. Right, and
I think trick or treating is canceled, so you can
trick or treat in podcast form with us. There we go,
There we go. Uh, email our complaints apart and Jonathan
(03:00):
Strickland at iHeart radio dot com for your free candy.
Don't be nice about it demanded. He'll deliver it to
you directly. And he's creepy white van. Yes, Uh, don't
get in the van. We cannot stress that enough. Do
not get in the van. Learn from our mistakes. Halloween
is gonna be tough for a lot of kids, a
(03:20):
lot of people like us who love the holiday. It's
also gonna be tough for a lot of parents. But
one nice thing we can say about Halloween is, at
least this year, Uh, it looks like children have a
very good chance of not being chased by a real
life monster. It's a perfect segue. Uh, not the case
(03:43):
for folks in the Oh gosh, we're gonna have a
hell of a time today running French pronunciations by super
producer Casey Pegram. But I'm gonna give this one a
goo uh in the Gold region. Oh, I was close
Jef Casey on the case. It's funny because when we
(04:07):
were gearing up to record, I would have had to
try to get in front of that case you had
asked him, it's gonna come up because it is the
The titular beast in question is the Beast of Javad. Yeah,
okay cool. Yeah, And and that is a region in
the south of France, and what today is is called Okay,
(04:30):
I gotta. You may be tangentially familiar with this story. Uh,
dear listeners if you remember the absolutely bonkers French like
Kung Fu period Peace, The Brotherhood of the Wolf, Love,
I Adore It. It's got everything you want. That was
(04:51):
also right on the heels of like Crouching Tiger and
Whyfou Praise? That was so big, And they took this
and applied it to a peer a drama thriller about
this monster that was just you know, basically eating its
way across the French countryside. In this in this part
of France, it's it's a really cool movie. It's very strange.
(05:15):
There's a character that just inexplicably has this like segmented
razor whip that looks like it's made out of like
vertebrae or something, and it stretches out like a superhero
weapon of some kind. It's not explained with the physics
behind this thing at all. It's like the sword that
the character Ivy and Soul Caliber has. Sometimes it's a sword,
(05:37):
sometimes it's a segmented chain whip. Yeah. I love Brother
the Wolf. It spends most of without spoiling it, it's
a it's a great film. It spends most of his
time figuring out what it wants to be unsuccessfully. Uh,
maybe it's best described as like a period horror investigation
(05:57):
fantasy piece. I don't know. It's got some leepy hollow
in it with better fight scenes. Little Sherlock Holmes nous
to to. Vincent Cassel is in it, and he's fabulous
and everything he's in You've seen him in American films,
I'm sure as well. But yeah, I was really fascinated
by that, and it got me looking more into the story,
even back in two thousand one. God, we're old when
(06:18):
that came out. But it's very much based on a
real story. Yeah, it very much is. I also want
to give a shout out to the iconic Monica Bellucci,
who is in that film us respect respect. So this
is very loosely inspired by a very real and tragic
(06:39):
event that remains mysterious in the modern day. As you said, Nol,
this story takes place in Veldon. It is uh part
of southern France that during this time had its own
sketchy reputation. It was thought of as remote, you know,
a world away from Paris. Uh. People thought it was
(07:01):
kind of on the edge of the wilderness what we
would maybe think of as like hay seeds or you know,
like uh country folk that that are looked down upon
by the aristocracy or people that live in the big city. Yeah,
kind of a frontier vibe. You know, if you've ever
been to the hinter lens of Alaska or any wild place. Uh,
there was very much this perceived conflict between human civilization
(07:26):
and the natural world. People believed in monsters, they believed
in magic, picture Grimm Brothers, fairy tale kind of vibe.
That's that's what we've got. Uh, Yeah, that's what Smithsonian
Mad kind of described it as in this great article
that we got some really cool sources from and and
and pulled some research from UM. One of the sources
that's credited in the article is a book called Monsters
(07:49):
of the gobal Don the Making of a Beast, and
the writer behind that, uh, that book, J M. Smith,
a historian UM, described this region as such. It's fascinating,
it's powerful, it's scary, it's sublime. It was the perfect
place for a grim like fairy tale starring a possibly
supernatural creature. But for villagers under attack, reality was more
(08:10):
brutal than any book. And that's because France sucked in
this period. It's uh, yeah, it was not a fun
place to live unless you were literally ensconced in your
ivory tower, which most people were not. And and and still,
you know, the French Revolution was unbeknownst to them coming
along the way. People, of course, can't predict the future,
(08:33):
so folks in France were less worried about a revolution
they didn't see on the horizon and more worried about
how to recover from the Seven Years War, which it
was only like had only ended a year prior. Uh.
France had suffered so many defeats from the Prussians, from
the British as well the bulk of the overseas Empire
(08:55):
holdings were lost, the economy was in the loop, and
the beast comes into this socio political context. The beast
itself is a real creature. Uh. The first victim was
fourteen year old girl watching sheep. Her name was Jane Bolt,
(09:17):
and her death was you know, just the first documented one,
but there were more to come in throughout seventeen sixty
four victims of this creature were found throughout the area
with their throats torn out, their heads gnawed off. This
is not hyperbolee. This is what happened. National Geographic has
(09:39):
a great article on this as well. That's right. And
I would say that this, uh, this shepherd girl that
that that has mentioned here is probably the inspiration for
the cold open scene of Brotherhood of the Wolf, and
that's sort of what kicks off the mystery as they find,
you know, serial killer style, the remnants of this this
young woman, and that's what kicks off the investigation, and
(10:00):
that gets the heart of the of the story and
what propels the plot forward. There's a reason that this
is a story we're talking about today. Look, communication ad
you know, was much less efficient than it is in
the modern day, and the news from the region was
(10:22):
tightly controlled and censored by the king, and you forget
the region. Throughout France, newspapers had to be very careful
what they reported on because if they made Louis mad uh,
it could be as dangerous to them as getting their
throats s toorn out by a wolf in the woods,
if indeed a wolf it was, which we'll get to.
Because they couldn't report on a lot of political events
(10:44):
or current affairs of the state, newspapers needed to turn
to other things, other stories for content, and so they
turned to the stories of these mysterious attacks in Chevaudon.
A guy named France suab Morinus, who was the creator
and editor of the Corrire de Avonnon, used a type
(11:08):
of reporting that they called faith divers, which is stories
of well they're kind of like human interest stories, but
they're human interest stories of small town crime, kind of like, um,
if you guys remember here in Atlanta, for a long time,
we had a magazine called Creative Loofing, and every week
(11:28):
that it came out, it would publish a column called
The Blotterer, which is do you guys remember the Blotterer? Yeah,
I mean it's it's a salacious tabloid asque kind of
yellow journalism really is what it is an early example
of that what we would now consider true crime and
and what makes for a good true crime story. If
it bleeds, it leads, the more salacious, the better, which
(11:50):
this absolutely was. I mean it did not only did
it bleed, it the throat slashed and disemboweled and you know,
ripped off limbs. That did all the things to make
for a perfect Faith de Vere's type of story. And
people ate it up just like they do today. Right
this guy France Swab it's it's his reporting especially that
(12:14):
lifted the story of the beast from some kind of
isolated backwater tragedy to uh an issue of national concern.
So let's look at the reporting. So the first recorded
fatal attack occurred on June thirtieth, seventeen sixty four. We
mentioned this fourteen year old girl, the shepherd Jean Ballet,
(12:38):
was tending a flock of sheep and she was discovered,
you know, attacked. But our guy we mentioned earlier, J M. Smith,
in his book, he notes that she may not have
been the first victim, just the first victim reported at
the time, because two months before this fourteen year old dies,
there's another young woman who was tending cattle and she
(13:00):
was attacked by something, but she escaped because her cattle
defended her. And get this description. She said it was
like a wolf, yet not a wolf. Like a wolf, yes,
not a wolf. It's very eerie. It sounds like some
love crafty and kind of writing, you know, or like
something from Poe. Maybe I want to point out a
(13:21):
pug is also like a wolf, but not a wolf.
A pug. Yeah, pug is like a wolf. It's the same.
It would have been a lot cuter if these murders
had been, uh, you know, done by pugs. You never
see the pug coming. It's so cute. Then you reached
down and then it just devours you. And that's that's
terrifying in and of itself. But yeah, I mean this,
(13:43):
this beast was absolutely ravaging, uh this this town or
this this part of France, attacking partially eating women and children,
according to the report, But it didn't necessarily seem to
have a preference of gender. Uh. There were some men
that were attacked as well, but they were typically by themselves.
(14:03):
Um So I thought that maybe there was some speculation
that this was like some sort of jack the ripper situation.
I think I might have made that up. There was
have our speculation that it was maybe more than one
creature that was I think these were pretty clearly the
types of injuries that would only be possibly inflicted by, like,
you know, a wild animal. Yeah, yeah, A person doing
(14:23):
this at the time would have to do some very
clever trickery you know what I mean to to replicate
the mauling that was evident on the corpses. Yeah, you're
right now. So these attacks continue through summer, they continue
into autumn, like this beautiful weather we're having now, and
(14:45):
there were so many reports of the creature that everyone
in France was familiar with it in some way. You
didn't It got to the point where you didn't have
to be literate. You didn't have to read a newspaper.
You would have heard other people talking about it. And
we don't know how many of these were reports were
maybe exaggerated, going to the point about tabloid journalism, but
(15:05):
we do know that the good people of Gevildonald spring
into action, right. They were offering bounties. Hunters were teaming
up and combing through the countryside. Uh you know, they
were looking for this mysterious creature, but that often meant
that they were just culling anything they might they thought
might one day attack a person. Uh, and and their
(15:28):
site that they're like reported sightings of it getting away
I think October eight, same year, seventeen sixty four, the
beast is seen stalking as you described a lone person,
a male, and hunters followed the animal into the woods.
They managed to flush it out in the open. They
shot a bunch of musket fire at it. Of course, yes,
(15:50):
muskets are notoriously inaccurate. They must have hit it because
the beasts fell down. But then what did it do? Well,
it's obviously and you know, uh, immortal demon from hell.
So clearly it got back up and ran away. You
know everybody knows that, um did. Did you mention that
they were like bounty hunters that were after this thing, Ben, Yeah, yes,
(16:13):
some people put up bounties, which inspired a lot of
the hunters, I think, and that's certainly what inspired the
two main characters. Sorry I keep harping on it. That
does love this movie so much. In Brotherhood of the Wolf,
there the two these two like ninja guys that you know,
where these amazing like peaked hats like you'd see in like, uh,
you know, Washington Crossing the Potomac. It's it's very cool looking,
(16:34):
very stylized. They have these amazing scarves that cover like
just under their noses, and it's really cool costume design
that movie. And these two guys are the ones that
are actually after it, uh in a detective capacity, but
also in like a you know, sick bounty hunter kind
of badass kind of capacity. And I'll say this, it's
one of my favorite films. Actually, it's one of the
reasons I was so happy to get to talk about
(16:55):
this at length. Well, it's got some problematic stuff. It's
got the you know, the mysterious partner from the Native
American community. That's right, Yeah, I forgot about that. But
the characters are so oh gosh. I thought for a
time it might have been based on a video game.
I'm not gonna lie. I thought it might be like
(17:17):
a French Mortal Kombat or something, and I was too
scared to ask anybody whether that was correct. You're totally
ripe in and there's there's even a badass woman character
that gets into the action and reveals that she's also
an incredible Mortal Kombat and Ninja. Um. Sorry we keep
gushing about this movie. I think we're on the same
page here. Um. But it was one of those things too,
where like you see in a lot of killer movies
(17:40):
or monster movies, there's okay, we got it, it's it's dead,
and then the twist is and then the killing continues.
You know. So oftentimes, because of the bounty, there would
be these bounty hunters or hunters trying to make a
buck bringing in this thing. They would purport to be
the beast because they didn't know what kind of animal
it was. My just be a wolf of quite and
(18:01):
there was I think in the movie there's even one
person that brings in a particularly large and nasty looking wolf. Um,
and they do, i think closed the case briefly until
the killing. And and there's a conspiracy on the part
of the monarchy where they say, just give us something
so that we we can say we've solved the problems.
(18:23):
Let's maybe talk a little bit about the descriptions of
this creature. What did it look like, how did it behave?
Because what we're gonna find is that these descriptions don't
all match sometimes. I mean, it was typically described as
something that seemed wolf like, so seemed like a mammal,
(18:43):
but it was sometimes described as as large as a calf,
sometimes as large as a as a horse. I believe
reddish in color, had some sort of distinct coloration dark
coloration along at spine, and you know, went to great
lengths to try to make their case. And this was
the beast, and and and really you know, it took
(19:05):
to the next level. Some of them did by shoving
pieces of clothing, you know, into the stomachs of the
dead wolves with a stick or something like that. And
of course there's no like forensics at this time. You
can't match you know, blood samples from Abe's stomach to
the you know, the victim. So it would all just
be kind of like visual and confirmation that would be
(19:27):
where where it would end. Yeah, we do know a
couple of consistent things in the reporting. So it appeared
to be active in the evenings and in the mornings,
which means in the world of biology, it is a
crepuscular animal. It's active during the twilight hours when the
hunting is is perfect for it. It's an ambush hunter.
(19:48):
It appeared to stalk people, usually loan women, or children,
but also dudes as well, and it would seize these
people by the throat. When you looked at a body
of it victims, you would see a lot of wounds
were on the head and the limbs. And with the
decapitations you mentioned, uh, yeah, it is true that at
(20:10):
least sixteen people were reportedly found decapitate. That's coming to
us from history dot com. And already we have to
tip our hats to our tricorn hats to some of
the contemporaneous investigators of the day, because they were already
trying to guess what sort of real life, non supernatural
(20:32):
animal it might be. There's a guy named Lafonte who
wrote in a report that was pretty early in the
days of the beast Reign of Terror, where he said
that the beast has a snout that's kind of like
it calves and has very long hair, and to him
it meant that it could be a hyena, and like,
(20:52):
I think, along the way here, we're going to be
gathering these different possible culprits, right, possible susfects. But other
people had more exaggerated or more extreme descriptions of the beast.
Yeah he he, he actually described it looking more like
a leopard, or at least in the way its body
(21:13):
was long and Slender described it as having a breast
as wide as a horse, and also referred to that
red coloration with that black stripe. Should we spoil it
real quick? The movie what it ends up being, it's
cool because it obviously takes all of this into account
and then makes it the most ridiculous and extreme version
(21:34):
of all of this stuff. Yeah, okay, spoiler. In the
In the film, it's a juvenile lion wearing crazy armor. Yes,
of course, it looks like battle Cat from he Man
or something. You know, they articulated jaw, it's made out
a bone of some yeah that like moves exactly moves
with it, and like extra stuff around the clause and
(21:58):
like the you know, spines of spikes along its back,
and uh, it ends up being like there's a there's
a beast Master, a shadowy beast Master. And then the movie,
Oh god, you guys really have to see this, and
none of this that we're telling you was going to
spoil your enjoyment of the movie at all, because it's
just a bonker's romp of of of a film. And Ben,
(22:22):
there were even some reports that you know there there
was perhaps some occult occultishness foot here. Yes, uh, there
were multiple witnesses who claimed the beast had uncanny supernatural abilities,
that I could walk on its hind feet, that it
was bullet proof, that I have fire in its eyes,
(22:45):
and that, like we said earlier, it was very Jason Vorhees,
it just kept coming back from the dead. You know,
we can't blame people for believing this. They were terrified,
they may have known someone who died. They also were
very complimentary its leaping abilities, according to Smithsonian magazine. And yeah,
it it really became such a cause. I have the
(23:09):
over appreciation there of of people trying to make a
name for themselves, you know as being brave or maybe
some some disgraced soldiers that wanted to clean up their
reputation and and have sort of like a underdog, you know,
coming back kind of moment um there. You know, the
numbers kept going up. Officials were losing their minds. Aristocrats
(23:31):
were freaked out because they're like, well, what if it
comes into my palace and and uh and during my bathtime.
The mals me um Etienne Lafonte, who was a regional
government delegate and a gentleman captain by the name of
Jean Baptiste duomel Um were in charge of the infantry
in the region, and they decided it was time to
(23:53):
take this thing to the next level and essentially put
together a volunteer army, a militia. And we're not talking
just like a little search hunting party. We're talking about
like a full on, like battle mode. Yeah, thirty thousand people.
At one point. Dum All organized the guys based on
what he knew from his experience in the military, and
(24:16):
they also left poison bait. They tried to do some
I guess like sting operations. They had soldiers dresses peasant
women and walk around yeah hoping. I wonder who drew
the damn me. I hope no beasts are out tonight.
I wonder if if it was something where people thought
it was a bad job, or if there were dudes
(24:36):
who were like champion at the bit to volunteer and
they were like, this is my time. I mean, you know,
back in those days, wasn't the fashion pretty effect anyway,
with like powdered wigs and lacey doiley outfits and you know,
little little shoes and pantyhose, you know, yeah, like I
will dress as the peasant woman if I can keep
(24:56):
the costume afterwards, exactly. I think that's right. Then, I
think that's right. Um. But for for doom l in particular,
it was a way, like like I said at the top,
a way to redeem his honor after the war, because
he's described by the historian Smith that we mentioned as
having many signs of quote wounded masculinity quote from him
(25:19):
from his book. He had a highly sensitive regard for
his own honor and had some bad experiences in the war,
and looked at this challenge of the defeating the beast
as a way to redeem himself. Yep. And there were
there were some other redemptive arcs here, because we have
to remember, for a lot of the reading public, this
was playing out like an action film, you know, this
(25:41):
was an ongoing case, and the press would, uh, the
press eventually used its power to get King Louis himself
to to lend a hand in the search for the beast.
Because when they would describe how peasants escaped the beast,
the ones who survived, they always said, look at this
(26:02):
like heroic, noble person, especially children they're defending themselves. You know,
these good salt of the earth people. This is real France.
This is what we're here for, and this is the
this is what makes our country possible. Also a great
pr opportunity. Oh yeah, oh brother, you got it. And
(26:23):
so uh, there was one story that really got to Louis.
It was this guy named Jacques port Fame. He was
a young boy and he was hanging out with his pals,
his running crew. I know we all had one when
we were kids as cattle boys. Yes, yes, yes, there
were somewhere between eight to twelve. And they were watching
the cows, right, they were cow poking. I just is
(26:46):
that like cow tipping? You just I don't know. I
keep hearing I'm thinking of the phrase cow poke. But
you know what, we're working live. We were a fan
and we're a family show too, So let's let's not
explore the origins of that weird term. Yeah, right, at
this exact moment, let's say these these young uh, these
young cattlemen. On January twelfth, seventeen sixty five, they were
(27:09):
out there in the field doing their thing, hanging out,
taking care of the livestock. The beast attacked, but these
kids weren't you know, they weren't running solo. They were
ranging in a crew and they had pikes. So together,
through cooperation, they managed to fend the monster off, and
Jacques was portrayed as the protagonist, the hero of the story,
(27:32):
and people loved his courage so much that the king
heard about it and he thought, I don't know if
this is altruism. I don't know if he was really
touched or if it was like a political move, but
either way, he gave all the kids a reward, and
then he said, I'll pick you, Jacques, and you were
going to be educated. We're gonna make a learned man
(27:54):
out of you, and I'm gonna pay the tab. I'll
take care of all your tuition. Good job, go peasants.
Yeah you have you other lesser kids, just can you know,
wither away in the streets for all. Take the money
and and and of course you can imagine this was
used by the pro monarchy forces to be like, look
(28:15):
how much the king loves you. He's such a lovely guy.
He understands you, he's just like you. In fact, By
the way, then what's a pike? Is it just a
pointy stick? Isn't that basically what a pike is? You got,
It's a really long, whole weapon, typically has a spear
at the end or a pointed implement of some sort.
(28:36):
You always hear about heads on pikes when people are
made an example out of a display them outside the
castle gates on pikes exactly. And the publicity around these
children surviving the beast also inspired the royal court to
send out sanctioned royal hunters to find and eliminate this creature.
(28:59):
And by this point it's so weird to talk about
mass media in like seventeen hundreds, but by this point
people outside of France were following the stories too, people
across the Atlantic. People in Boston were like, did you
hear there's a new update on the Beast of I
know that Nolan I both sound like Lumier from Beauty
(29:21):
and the Beasts. It's our only frame of reference, Casey
shout out to you for your patients. Totally. Oh, how
do you say it? Male? It's a little strong perfect
pronunciation there, start leading into the Lumier. But that that
is appropriate because we have no Casey, uh learned that
(29:44):
We've we're just too excited about this story. To make
it one episode. There's too much cool stuff, agreed. Uh,
this story is gonna go some twisty and interesting places.
Definitely don't see Brotherhood of the Wolf until after you've
heard of this podcast, because then, yeah, I would, I
would wait, and I'm telling you're gonna love it. Gosh,
I can't just say I gotta watch it. I'm gonna
watch it this weekend. I haven't seen it. I think
(30:05):
I saw it once when it came out in theaters,
and I remember so much about it, but you obviously
been have a special fondness for it. An owner on
DVD and Andre reminding me of things that I kind
of forgot. So I'm gonna revisit that. By the way, Ben,
this is a crossover to another show that we do together.
Stuff they don't want you to know. You know, what
I watched yesterday was that I watched the movie Vibes
(30:25):
with Uh with Jeff Goldbloom and Side Lapper and Peter Falk,
and highly recommend that one to anyone as well if
you like a thing like Ghostbusters, sort of a goofy
supernatural like rom com. I was expecting it to be bad,
and I'm not saying it's good, but it's like good.
It has a vibe. Oh, it has some serious vibes.
(30:48):
And that's how you can watch that on Amazon Prime
for free. And I bet your Brotherhood of the What's
see where you can stream Brotherhood nowhere? Really I was
looking for it last night and um yeah, physical media
looks to be the only way right now. Gonna have
to find yourself a DVD copy or right to us
on on Instagram, Facebook, and maybe Ben Will will loan
out his copy for you. I would I would love to.
(31:09):
I think all three of us are. All three of
us are into the idea. There is already a waiting
list because we are going to send the DVD to
Casey so we can get some official evaluation there because
you have not seen it, Casey, no, I I very
much remember when this came out, and I meant to
see it back when it did come out, but I
never got around to it. And actually it looks like
(31:30):
on DVD there's like a director's cut, so uh, there's
some extra stuff in there that you may have not
seen it at all. Right, I love it? Okay, Well
I'm gonna have to get get ahold of that, and
um yeah, I think you'll you'll get a kick out
of the case because it is beautifully shot and and
the acting is great. It's it's a little like scenery
chewing at times, but it's just a real interesting hybrid
type movie that I don't think I've ever seen anything
(31:51):
quite like it. And we didn't ruin the film for you, Casey.
By the way, No, no, definitely not. Is that one
of those where like the plot matters well. As I'm reading,
as we're going through the story, I'm realizing they did
use a lot of the stuff from the real story.
But then they, you know, really judged it up, as
you say, Ben, like with some kung fu supernatural weirdness.
(32:17):
And it's worth every moment invested. So highly recommend you
check that out. Also highly recommend you check out our
Facebook group Ridiculous Historians, where you can get in on
the conversation about this and other episodes. All you gotta
do is name names, you know, like me or Ben
or Casey or or Alex Leaves. We composed our theme
that's the quist or anything to let us know that
you're a person that's aware of the show. Now, that
(32:39):
is a top notch course in the art of the segue, Well,
I am impressed. Yes, thanks as well to Christopher Hasciotis,
thanks to Eve's Jeff Coach, thanks to our our own
research bodyguard, Gabe Blues. Yep, and you know I'm suspecting Gabe.
I don't know if you're gonna listen to this one,
but I'm suspecting you as well. May have not seen
(33:01):
The Brotherhood of the Wolf because we didn't. We didn't
talk about it, so uh, let us know when your
birthday is next Surprised when you hear from us. We'll
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from my
(33:21):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Yes
(00:30):
it finally happened. It is October one as we record this,
which in my mind means it's already Halloween. Hi and Ben,
Halloween is every day, I think for us, especially on
stuff they don't want you to know, the other show
that we hang out on. But yeah, I don't know
about you, but there's so many things about Halloween that
just do it for me. The holiday itself, obviously, I
(00:52):
think we are all fans of spooky stuff, but just
the weather change, you know, going from being in Georgia,
going from brutally hot and oppressive to this kind of
like very brief, beautiful grace period of you know, breezy
fall weather before it just gets obnoxiously cold. So yeah,
really big fan and big fan of the types of
episodes that we get to cover, uh for for this
(01:13):
particular season. Yeah, yeah, agreed. Uh Yeah, I love this
Ray Bradberry esque autumnal weather. I love the idea that
something spooky this way comes. Uh. We have decided to
dive into some spooky episodes this month. Maybe not a
spooky episodes, but we're gonna do our best. We're gonna
(01:34):
have some fun with some monsters with some creepy stuff,
and if there's anything that comes up that might not
be appropriate for the youngest people in the audience, will
give you a heads up at the top of the show.
With that being said, I think this is an all
ages one. I do want to say to your comment
about it always being Halloween, especially on stuff they don't
(01:55):
want you to know. I recently wrote a very pretentious
essay called always Halloween in America. I would love I
would love to send to you guys. It's my uninformed
pop culture, socio political critique. But no, where would we be? Uh?
You know you and I are two great monsters, but
(02:16):
where would we be as a show without our favorite
monster on the Ones and two? Super producer Casey Pegram Casey,
what are your thoughts on on Halloween? Pretty much everything
that's already been said, got it? Uh? I primarily love
the weather. I'm not like a huge Halloween guy. There
are years where I don't go out and and really
get in costume or do anything. But I never wear
(02:38):
a costume. For the record, that's just not the part
of it that I personally. I like seeing other people
wear awesome costumes and my daughter is a huge costume person.
Halloween is going to be a little sad for her
this year and for a lot of kids. Right, and
I think trick or treating is canceled, so you can
trick or treat in podcast form with us. There we go,
There we go. Uh, email our complaints apart and Jonathan
(03:00):
Strickland at iHeart radio dot com for your free candy.
Don't be nice about it demanded. He'll deliver it to
you directly. And he's creepy white van. Yes, Uh, don't
get in the van. We cannot stress that enough. Do
not get in the van. Learn from our mistakes. Halloween
is gonna be tough for a lot of kids, a
(03:20):
lot of people like us who love the holiday. It's
also gonna be tough for a lot of parents. But
one nice thing we can say about Halloween is, at
least this year, Uh, it looks like children have a
very good chance of not being chased by a real
life monster. It's a perfect segue. Uh, not the case
(03:43):
for folks in the Oh gosh, we're gonna have a
hell of a time today running French pronunciations by super
producer Casey Pegram. But I'm gonna give this one a
goo uh in the Gold region. Oh, I was close
Jef Casey on the case. It's funny because when we
(04:07):
were gearing up to record, I would have had to
try to get in front of that case you had
asked him, it's gonna come up because it is the
The titular beast in question is the Beast of Javad. Yeah,
okay cool. Yeah, And and that is a region in
the south of France, and what today is is called Okay,
(04:30):
I gotta. You may be tangentially familiar with this story. Uh,
dear listeners if you remember the absolutely bonkers French like
Kung Fu period Peace, The Brotherhood of the Wolf, Love,
I Adore It. It's got everything you want. That was
(04:51):
also right on the heels of like Crouching Tiger and
Whyfou Praise? That was so big, And they took this
and applied it to a peer a drama thriller about
this monster that was just you know, basically eating its
way across the French countryside. In this in this part
of France, it's it's a really cool movie. It's very strange.
(05:15):
There's a character that just inexplicably has this like segmented
razor whip that looks like it's made out of like
vertebrae or something, and it stretches out like a superhero
weapon of some kind. It's not explained with the physics
behind this thing at all. It's like the sword that
the character Ivy and Soul Caliber has. Sometimes it's a sword,
(05:37):
sometimes it's a segmented chain whip. Yeah. I love Brother
the Wolf. It spends most of without spoiling it, it's
a it's a great film. It spends most of his
time figuring out what it wants to be unsuccessfully. Uh,
maybe it's best described as like a period horror investigation
(05:57):
fantasy piece. I don't know. It's got some leepy hollow
in it with better fight scenes. Little Sherlock Holmes nous
to to. Vincent Cassel is in it, and he's fabulous
and everything he's in You've seen him in American films,
I'm sure as well. But yeah, I was really fascinated
by that, and it got me looking more into the story,
even back in two thousand one. God, we're old when
(06:18):
that came out. But it's very much based on a
real story. Yeah, it very much is. I also want
to give a shout out to the iconic Monica Bellucci,
who is in that film us respect respect. So this
is very loosely inspired by a very real and tragic
(06:39):
event that remains mysterious in the modern day. As you said, Nol,
this story takes place in Veldon. It is uh part
of southern France that during this time had its own
sketchy reputation. It was thought of as remote, you know,
a world away from Paris. Uh. People thought it was
(07:01):
kind of on the edge of the wilderness what we
would maybe think of as like hay seeds or you know,
like uh country folk that that are looked down upon
by the aristocracy or people that live in the big city. Yeah,
kind of a frontier vibe. You know, if you've ever
been to the hinter lens of Alaska or any wild place. Uh,
there was very much this perceived conflict between human civilization
(07:26):
and the natural world. People believed in monsters, they believed
in magic, picture Grimm Brothers, fairy tale kind of vibe.
That's that's what we've got. Uh, Yeah, that's what Smithsonian
Mad kind of described it as in this great article
that we got some really cool sources from and and
and pulled some research from UM. One of the sources
that's credited in the article is a book called Monsters
(07:49):
of the gobal Don the Making of a Beast, and
the writer behind that, uh, that book, J M. Smith,
a historian UM, described this region as such. It's fascinating,
it's powerful, it's scary, it's sublime. It was the perfect
place for a grim like fairy tale starring a possibly
supernatural creature. But for villagers under attack, reality was more
(08:10):
brutal than any book. And that's because France sucked in
this period. It's uh, yeah, it was not a fun
place to live unless you were literally ensconced in your
ivory tower, which most people were not. And and and still,
you know, the French Revolution was unbeknownst to them coming
along the way. People, of course, can't predict the future,
(08:33):
so folks in France were less worried about a revolution
they didn't see on the horizon and more worried about
how to recover from the Seven Years War, which it
was only like had only ended a year prior. Uh.
France had suffered so many defeats from the Prussians, from
the British as well the bulk of the overseas Empire
(08:55):
holdings were lost, the economy was in the loop, and
the beast comes into this socio political context. The beast
itself is a real creature. Uh. The first victim was
fourteen year old girl watching sheep. Her name was Jane Bolt,
(09:17):
and her death was you know, just the first documented one,
but there were more to come in throughout seventeen sixty
four victims of this creature were found throughout the area
with their throats torn out, their heads gnawed off. This
is not hyperbolee. This is what happened. National Geographic has
(09:39):
a great article on this as well. That's right. And
I would say that this, uh, this shepherd girl that
that that has mentioned here is probably the inspiration for
the cold open scene of Brotherhood of the Wolf, and
that's sort of what kicks off the mystery as they find,
you know, serial killer style, the remnants of this this
young woman, and that's what kicks off the investigation, and
(10:00):
that gets the heart of the of the story and
what propels the plot forward. There's a reason that this
is a story we're talking about today. Look, communication ad
you know, was much less efficient than it is in
the modern day, and the news from the region was
(10:22):
tightly controlled and censored by the king, and you forget
the region. Throughout France, newspapers had to be very careful
what they reported on because if they made Louis mad uh,
it could be as dangerous to them as getting their
throats s toorn out by a wolf in the woods,
if indeed a wolf it was, which we'll get to.
Because they couldn't report on a lot of political events
(10:44):
or current affairs of the state, newspapers needed to turn
to other things, other stories for content, and so they
turned to the stories of these mysterious attacks in Chevaudon.
A guy named France suab Morinus, who was the creator
and editor of the Corrire de Avonnon, used a type
(11:08):
of reporting that they called faith divers, which is stories
of well they're kind of like human interest stories, but
they're human interest stories of small town crime, kind of like, um,
if you guys remember here in Atlanta, for a long time,
we had a magazine called Creative Loofing, and every week
(11:28):
that it came out, it would publish a column called
The Blotterer, which is do you guys remember the Blotterer? Yeah,
I mean it's it's a salacious tabloid asque kind of
yellow journalism really is what it is an early example
of that what we would now consider true crime and
and what makes for a good true crime story. If
it bleeds, it leads, the more salacious, the better, which
(11:50):
this absolutely was. I mean it did not only did
it bleed, it the throat slashed and disemboweled and you know,
ripped off limbs. That did all the things to make
for a perfect Faith de Vere's type of story. And
people ate it up just like they do today. Right
this guy France Swab it's it's his reporting especially that
(12:14):
lifted the story of the beast from some kind of
isolated backwater tragedy to uh an issue of national concern.
So let's look at the reporting. So the first recorded
fatal attack occurred on June thirtieth, seventeen sixty four. We
mentioned this fourteen year old girl, the shepherd Jean Ballet,
(12:38):
was tending a flock of sheep and she was discovered,
you know, attacked. But our guy we mentioned earlier, J M. Smith,
in his book, he notes that she may not have
been the first victim, just the first victim reported at
the time, because two months before this fourteen year old dies,
there's another young woman who was tending cattle and she
(13:00):
was attacked by something, but she escaped because her cattle
defended her. And get this description. She said it was
like a wolf, yet not a wolf. Like a wolf, yes,
not a wolf. It's very eerie. It sounds like some
love crafty and kind of writing, you know, or like
something from Poe. Maybe I want to point out a
(13:21):
pug is also like a wolf, but not a wolf.
A pug. Yeah, pug is like a wolf. It's the same.
It would have been a lot cuter if these murders
had been, uh, you know, done by pugs. You never
see the pug coming. It's so cute. Then you reached
down and then it just devours you. And that's that's
terrifying in and of itself. But yeah, I mean this,
(13:43):
this beast was absolutely ravaging, uh this this town or
this this part of France, attacking partially eating women and children,
according to the report, But it didn't necessarily seem to
have a preference of gender. Uh. There were some men
that were attacked as well, but they were typically by themselves.
(14:03):
Um So I thought that maybe there was some speculation
that this was like some sort of jack the ripper situation.
I think I might have made that up. There was
have our speculation that it was maybe more than one
creature that was I think these were pretty clearly the
types of injuries that would only be possibly inflicted by, like,
you know, a wild animal. Yeah, yeah, A person doing
(14:23):
this at the time would have to do some very
clever trickery you know what I mean to to replicate
the mauling that was evident on the corpses. Yeah, you're
right now. So these attacks continue through summer, they continue
into autumn, like this beautiful weather we're having now, and
(14:45):
there were so many reports of the creature that everyone
in France was familiar with it in some way. You
didn't It got to the point where you didn't have
to be literate. You didn't have to read a newspaper.
You would have heard other people talking about it. And
we don't know how many of these were reports were
maybe exaggerated, going to the point about tabloid journalism, but
(15:05):
we do know that the good people of Gevildonald spring
into action, right. They were offering bounties. Hunters were teaming
up and combing through the countryside. Uh you know, they
were looking for this mysterious creature, but that often meant
that they were just culling anything they might they thought
might one day attack a person. Uh, and and their
(15:28):
site that they're like reported sightings of it getting away
I think October eight, same year, seventeen sixty four, the
beast is seen stalking as you described a lone person,
a male, and hunters followed the animal into the woods.
They managed to flush it out in the open. They
shot a bunch of musket fire at it. Of course, yes,
(15:50):
muskets are notoriously inaccurate. They must have hit it because
the beasts fell down. But then what did it do? Well,
it's obviously and you know, uh, immortal demon from hell.
So clearly it got back up and ran away. You
know everybody knows that, um did. Did you mention that
they were like bounty hunters that were after this thing, Ben, Yeah, yes,
(16:13):
some people put up bounties, which inspired a lot of
the hunters, I think, and that's certainly what inspired the
two main characters. Sorry I keep harping on it. That
does love this movie so much. In Brotherhood of the Wolf,
there the two these two like ninja guys that you know,
where these amazing like peaked hats like you'd see in like, uh,
you know, Washington Crossing the Potomac. It's it's very cool looking,
(16:34):
very stylized. They have these amazing scarves that cover like
just under their noses, and it's really cool costume design
that movie. And these two guys are the ones that
are actually after it, uh in a detective capacity, but
also in like a you know, sick bounty hunter kind
of badass kind of capacity. And I'll say this, it's
one of my favorite films. Actually, it's one of the
reasons I was so happy to get to talk about
(16:55):
this at length. Well, it's got some problematic stuff. It's
got the you know, the mysterious partner from the Native
American community. That's right, Yeah, I forgot about that. But
the characters are so oh gosh. I thought for a
time it might have been based on a video game.
I'm not gonna lie. I thought it might be like
(17:17):
a French Mortal Kombat or something, and I was too
scared to ask anybody whether that was correct. You're totally
ripe in and there's there's even a badass woman character
that gets into the action and reveals that she's also
an incredible Mortal Kombat and Ninja. Um. Sorry we keep
gushing about this movie. I think we're on the same
page here. Um. But it was one of those things too,
where like you see in a lot of killer movies
(17:40):
or monster movies, there's okay, we got it, it's it's dead,
and then the twist is and then the killing continues.
You know. So oftentimes, because of the bounty, there would
be these bounty hunters or hunters trying to make a
buck bringing in this thing. They would purport to be
the beast because they didn't know what kind of animal
it was. My just be a wolf of quite and
(18:01):
there was I think in the movie there's even one
person that brings in a particularly large and nasty looking wolf. Um,
and they do, i think closed the case briefly until
the killing. And and there's a conspiracy on the part
of the monarchy where they say, just give us something
so that we we can say we've solved the problems.
(18:23):
Let's maybe talk a little bit about the descriptions of
this creature. What did it look like, how did it behave?
Because what we're gonna find is that these descriptions don't
all match sometimes. I mean, it was typically described as
something that seemed wolf like, so seemed like a mammal,
(18:43):
but it was sometimes described as as large as a calf,
sometimes as large as a as a horse. I believe
reddish in color, had some sort of distinct coloration dark
coloration along at spine, and you know, went to great
lengths to try to make their case. And this was
the beast, and and and really you know, it took
(19:05):
to the next level. Some of them did by shoving
pieces of clothing, you know, into the stomachs of the
dead wolves with a stick or something like that. And
of course there's no like forensics at this time. You
can't match you know, blood samples from Abe's stomach to
the you know, the victim. So it would all just
be kind of like visual and confirmation that would be
(19:27):
where where it would end. Yeah, we do know a
couple of consistent things in the reporting. So it appeared
to be active in the evenings and in the mornings,
which means in the world of biology, it is a
crepuscular animal. It's active during the twilight hours when the
hunting is is perfect for it. It's an ambush hunter.
(19:48):
It appeared to stalk people, usually loan women, or children,
but also dudes as well, and it would seize these
people by the throat. When you looked at a body
of it victims, you would see a lot of wounds
were on the head and the limbs. And with the
decapitations you mentioned, uh, yeah, it is true that at
(20:10):
least sixteen people were reportedly found decapitate. That's coming to
us from history dot com. And already we have to
tip our hats to our tricorn hats to some of
the contemporaneous investigators of the day, because they were already
trying to guess what sort of real life, non supernatural
(20:32):
animal it might be. There's a guy named Lafonte who
wrote in a report that was pretty early in the
days of the beast Reign of Terror, where he said
that the beast has a snout that's kind of like
it calves and has very long hair, and to him
it meant that it could be a hyena, and like,
(20:52):
I think, along the way here, we're going to be
gathering these different possible culprits, right, possible susfects. But other
people had more exaggerated or more extreme descriptions of the beast.
Yeah he he, he actually described it looking more like
a leopard, or at least in the way its body
(21:13):
was long and Slender described it as having a breast
as wide as a horse, and also referred to that
red coloration with that black stripe. Should we spoil it
real quick? The movie what it ends up being, it's
cool because it obviously takes all of this into account
and then makes it the most ridiculous and extreme version
(21:34):
of all of this stuff. Yeah, okay, spoiler. In the
In the film, it's a juvenile lion wearing crazy armor. Yes,
of course, it looks like battle Cat from he Man
or something. You know, they articulated jaw, it's made out
a bone of some yeah that like moves exactly moves
with it, and like extra stuff around the clause and
(21:58):
like the you know, spines of spikes along its back,
and uh, it ends up being like there's a there's
a beast Master, a shadowy beast Master. And then the movie,
Oh god, you guys really have to see this, and
none of this that we're telling you was going to
spoil your enjoyment of the movie at all, because it's
just a bonker's romp of of of a film. And Ben,
(22:22):
there were even some reports that you know there there
was perhaps some occult occultishness foot here. Yes, uh, there
were multiple witnesses who claimed the beast had uncanny supernatural abilities,
that I could walk on its hind feet, that it
was bullet proof, that I have fire in its eyes,
(22:45):
and that, like we said earlier, it was very Jason Vorhees,
it just kept coming back from the dead. You know,
we can't blame people for believing this. They were terrified,
they may have known someone who died. They also were
very complimentary its leaping abilities, according to Smithsonian magazine. And yeah,
it it really became such a cause. I have the
(23:09):
over appreciation there of of people trying to make a
name for themselves, you know as being brave or maybe
some some disgraced soldiers that wanted to clean up their
reputation and and have sort of like a underdog, you know,
coming back kind of moment um there. You know, the
numbers kept going up. Officials were losing their minds. Aristocrats
(23:31):
were freaked out because they're like, well, what if it
comes into my palace and and uh and during my bathtime.
The mals me um Etienne Lafonte, who was a regional
government delegate and a gentleman captain by the name of
Jean Baptiste duomel Um were in charge of the infantry
in the region, and they decided it was time to
(23:53):
take this thing to the next level and essentially put
together a volunteer army, a militia. And we're not talking
just like a little search hunting party. We're talking about
like a full on, like battle mode. Yeah, thirty thousand people.
At one point. Dum All organized the guys based on
what he knew from his experience in the military, and
(24:16):
they also left poison bait. They tried to do some
I guess like sting operations. They had soldiers dresses peasant
women and walk around yeah hoping. I wonder who drew
the damn me. I hope no beasts are out tonight.
I wonder if if it was something where people thought
it was a bad job, or if there were dudes
(24:36):
who were like champion at the bit to volunteer and
they were like, this is my time. I mean, you know,
back in those days, wasn't the fashion pretty effect anyway,
with like powdered wigs and lacey doiley outfits and you know,
little little shoes and pantyhose, you know, yeah, like I
will dress as the peasant woman if I can keep
(24:56):
the costume afterwards, exactly. I think that's right. Then, I
think that's right. Um. But for for doom l in particular,
it was a way, like like I said at the top,
a way to redeem his honor after the war, because
he's described by the historian Smith that we mentioned as
having many signs of quote wounded masculinity quote from him
(25:19):
from his book. He had a highly sensitive regard for
his own honor and had some bad experiences in the war,
and looked at this challenge of the defeating the beast
as a way to redeem himself. Yep. And there were
there were some other redemptive arcs here, because we have
to remember, for a lot of the reading public, this
was playing out like an action film, you know, this
(25:41):
was an ongoing case, and the press would, uh, the
press eventually used its power to get King Louis himself
to to lend a hand in the search for the beast.
Because when they would describe how peasants escaped the beast,
the ones who survived, they always said, look at this
(26:02):
like heroic, noble person, especially children they're defending themselves. You know,
these good salt of the earth people. This is real France.
This is what we're here for, and this is the
this is what makes our country possible. Also a great
pr opportunity. Oh yeah, oh brother, you got it. And
(26:23):
so uh, there was one story that really got to Louis.
It was this guy named Jacques port Fame. He was
a young boy and he was hanging out with his pals,
his running crew. I know we all had one when
we were kids as cattle boys. Yes, yes, yes, there
were somewhere between eight to twelve. And they were watching
the cows, right, they were cow poking. I just is
(26:46):
that like cow tipping? You just I don't know. I
keep hearing I'm thinking of the phrase cow poke. But
you know what, we're working live. We were a fan
and we're a family show too, So let's let's not
explore the origins of that weird term. Yeah, right, at
this exact moment, let's say these these young uh, these
young cattlemen. On January twelfth, seventeen sixty five, they were
(27:09):
out there in the field doing their thing, hanging out,
taking care of the livestock. The beast attacked, but these
kids weren't you know, they weren't running solo. They were
ranging in a crew and they had pikes. So together,
through cooperation, they managed to fend the monster off, and
Jacques was portrayed as the protagonist, the hero of the story,
(27:32):
and people loved his courage so much that the king
heard about it and he thought, I don't know if
this is altruism. I don't know if he was really
touched or if it was like a political move, but
either way, he gave all the kids a reward, and
then he said, I'll pick you, Jacques, and you were
going to be educated. We're gonna make a learned man
(27:54):
out of you, and I'm gonna pay the tab. I'll
take care of all your tuition. Good job, go peasants.
Yeah you have you other lesser kids, just can you know,
wither away in the streets for all. Take the money
and and and of course you can imagine this was
used by the pro monarchy forces to be like, look
(28:15):
how much the king loves you. He's such a lovely guy.
He understands you, he's just like you. In fact, By
the way, then what's a pike? Is it just a
pointy stick? Isn't that basically what a pike is? You got,
It's a really long, whole weapon, typically has a spear
at the end or a pointed implement of some sort.
(28:36):
You always hear about heads on pikes when people are
made an example out of a display them outside the
castle gates on pikes exactly. And the publicity around these
children surviving the beast also inspired the royal court to
send out sanctioned royal hunters to find and eliminate this creature.
(28:59):
And by this point it's so weird to talk about
mass media in like seventeen hundreds, but by this point
people outside of France were following the stories too, people
across the Atlantic. People in Boston were like, did you
hear there's a new update on the Beast of I
know that Nolan I both sound like Lumier from Beauty
(29:21):
and the Beasts. It's our only frame of reference, Casey
shout out to you for your patients. Totally. Oh, how
do you say it? Male? It's a little strong perfect
pronunciation there, start leading into the Lumier. But that that
is appropriate because we have no Casey, uh learned that
(29:44):
We've we're just too excited about this story. To make
it one episode. There's too much cool stuff, agreed. Uh,
this story is gonna go some twisty and interesting places.
Definitely don't see Brotherhood of the Wolf until after you've
heard of this podcast, because then, yeah, I would, I
would wait, and I'm telling you're gonna love it. Gosh,
I can't just say I gotta watch it. I'm gonna
watch it this weekend. I haven't seen it. I think
(30:05):
I saw it once when it came out in theaters,
and I remember so much about it, but you obviously
been have a special fondness for it. An owner on
DVD and Andre reminding me of things that I kind
of forgot. So I'm gonna revisit that. By the way, Ben,
this is a crossover to another show that we do together.
Stuff they don't want you to know. You know, what
I watched yesterday was that I watched the movie Vibes
(30:25):
with Uh with Jeff Goldbloom and Side Lapper and Peter Falk,
and highly recommend that one to anyone as well if
you like a thing like Ghostbusters, sort of a goofy
supernatural like rom com. I was expecting it to be bad,
and I'm not saying it's good, but it's like good.
It has a vibe. Oh, it has some serious vibes.
(30:48):
And that's how you can watch that on Amazon Prime
for free. And I bet your Brotherhood of the What's
see where you can stream Brotherhood nowhere? Really I was
looking for it last night and um yeah, physical media
looks to be the only way right now. Gonna have
to find yourself a DVD copy or right to us
on on Instagram, Facebook, and maybe Ben Will will loan
out his copy for you. I would I would love to.
(31:09):
I think all three of us are. All three of
us are into the idea. There is already a waiting
list because we are going to send the DVD to
Casey so we can get some official evaluation there because
you have not seen it, Casey, no, I I very
much remember when this came out, and I meant to
see it back when it did come out, but I
never got around to it. And actually it looks like
(31:30):
on DVD there's like a director's cut, so uh, there's
some extra stuff in there that you may have not
seen it at all. Right, I love it? Okay, Well
I'm gonna have to get get ahold of that, and
um yeah, I think you'll you'll get a kick out
of the case because it is beautifully shot and and
the acting is great. It's it's a little like scenery
chewing at times, but it's just a real interesting hybrid
type movie that I don't think I've ever seen anything
(31:51):
quite like it. And we didn't ruin the film for you, Casey.
By the way, No, no, definitely not. Is that one
of those where like the plot matters well. As I'm reading,
as we're going through the story, I'm realizing they did
use a lot of the stuff from the real story.
But then they, you know, really judged it up, as
you say, Ben, like with some kung fu supernatural weirdness.
(32:17):
And it's worth every moment invested. So highly recommend you
check that out. Also highly recommend you check out our
Facebook group Ridiculous Historians, where you can get in on
the conversation about this and other episodes. All you gotta
do is name names, you know, like me or Ben
or Casey or or Alex Leaves. We composed our theme
that's the quist or anything to let us know that
you're a person that's aware of the show. Now, that
(32:39):
is a top notch course in the art of the segue, Well,
I am impressed. Yes, thanks as well to Christopher Hasciotis,
thanks to Eve's Jeff Coach, thanks to our our own
research bodyguard, Gabe Blues. Yep, and you know I'm suspecting Gabe.
I don't know if you're gonna listen to this one,
but I'm suspecting you as well. May have not seen
(33:01):
The Brotherhood of the Wolf because we didn't. We didn't
talk about it, so uh, let us know when your
birthday is next Surprised when you hear from us. We'll
see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from my
(33:21):
Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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