November 13, 2023 • 31 mins
Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener mail.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
it is Monday, the day of each week that we
read back messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
email address. If you would like to make your own
contribution to the mail bag, why not reach out to
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Whatever you want to send is fine. We always appreciate
feedback to recent episodes, especially if you have something interesting
(00:35):
you would like to add to a topic we have
talked about on the show. But again, whatever you want
to send, just just throw it on our way contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com. All right, Rob,
we got a big, big haul today. We can get
through some of it here. Let's see. Maybe I will
kick things off with this message from Hugh about our
Vault episode on the invention of the gimbal.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
All right, let's have it.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Hugh says, Hello, Robert, Joe, and jj I hope you
and your loved ones are happy and healthy. I'm not
sure if your recent Vault episode covered this aspect, but
the gimbal serves another very important surface on sea going vessels,
and that is helping keep the crew fed. I think
this is adding to the fact that we talked about
some kinds of instruments in ships at sea that would
(01:28):
be mounted on gimbals.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Right, right, and illusions I believe to ancient devices that
seem to have been gimbals of one sort or another.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Right, But Hughes says, yes, gimbals are also used to
keep the crew fed. The email goes on to say
the cook tops and ovens on vessels are usually hung
on gimbals that swing perpendicularly to the vessel's center line,
with some sort of adjustable rail system to capture pots
and pans in the direction of travel. This makes the
(01:58):
job of dealing with hot liquids and such safer for
the galley crew while underway. Wishing you the best as always, Hugh. Well,
thank you, Hugh. That is an interesting fact and I
don't know if I would have considered that, but yeah,
that makes perfect.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Sense, absolutely, chef. All right, let's turn to some more
responses from our October episodes. This one is from Colin.
This was on Facebook. I believe probably the discussion module
responding to our episode on Necromancer Episodes on Necromancy, Hey
(02:39):
Joe and Rob and JJ writing in about the episodes
on the Necromantic Urge, specifically part two where you talk
about dream interpretation and the temples of Aslepios where this
was done in ancient Greece by trade. I'm a professional
actor mostly for the stage, and part of my education
in classical theater mentioned this. I'm going off memory here
(03:02):
as I'm currently at work on a national tour of
a show and separated from my notes, but from what
I remember, there was a temple to Aslepis underneath the
theater at Epidaurus, and apparently patients were put into a
dream like or suggestive state by the use of some
sort of snake venom I think, either ingested as a
potion or patients were bitten. Under controlled circumstances, the patient's
(03:26):
dreams were told to one of the temple attendants called therapons,
same word rout as words like therapy, which roughly means
ritual substitutes. If a dream was judged to be significant
enough that it would benefit ancient Greek society on the whole,
the therapons would then enact elements of the Dream in
(03:47):
a play at the theater upstairs, so that all patrons
attending the show could learn from it. Side note, Aslepius's
association with snakes is made more apparent with the presence
of them wrapped around the staff of Estilepius, which itself
is often confused with the medical symbol of the cadusius.
I'm trying madly to back up what I've written here
(04:09):
with references and citations, but I'm coming up a little dry.
Perhaps someone else in the discussion module who knows about
this can give us a hand with it. Otherwise, keep
up the excellent work. Chaps. Love the podcast as always,
especially when you managed to sneak in references to D
and D. I have no doubt that game was a
part of why I chose the performing arts as a job.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Colin ah barred to the core. Well, I'd never heard
of any of this, but this is interesting, especially the
idea about re enacting parts of the Dream in a
theatrical performance. I have to say, for some reason, I'd
be a little skeptical about the snake venom aspect, but
I don't know that could be true. I'd be interested
(04:52):
in following up on that and looking into it.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
You know that would be something though to think about
this in a modern context. What if you had to
you had to sign off the rights to any dream
contents you shared with your therapists because they might be
produced as a play.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Or how about when you go to therapy you have
to sign off on the contents of your dreams because
they will be used to train AI.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, you know, I guess if it helps pay for
one's therapy, I guess it would like if you could
do that instead, It's like, okay AI gets rights to
my dreams or Hollywood gets right first pass. Let's say
first pass on the contents of my dreams. But that
means I also don't have to pay We're going to
reduce rate on my therapy sessions. I don't know, I'd
(05:36):
have to consider it because most of these dreams are
real dogs. I mean, they're not going to really get
anywhere with this content.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yeah, I'm trying to imagine a Greek chorus saying it
was my high school, but it was not my high school,
and it was also my first apartment, and I was me,
but I was also Brad Dourif.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's most of my dreams these days are
kind of like that. Oh I did have a good one.
As long as we're talking about dreams, I've been meaning
to share this one with you. So one of our
bosses in this dream, I think you know which one,
but one of our bosses an individual we both like,
we both look up to excellent chat. But in the
(06:19):
dream he had written a book called how to Write,
and how to Write was being released as a candle
and we had to and I don't think the candle
produced sound, but somehow the book was being released in
candle form and we had to record ads promoting the
(06:41):
candle adaptation of how to Write.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
My god, I mean, it makes perfect dream logic. Though
I can see exactly why you dreamed that.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
It is one of those rare moments too in the
dream where I was like, this is what It's a candle,
but it's an adaptation of a book. How does that work?
It doesn't produce sound, but still you know it to dream,
so you go with it.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
The ad department is like, yeah, just go with it.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
So you heard it here first. How to Write now
available in all formats including candle.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
That's really good. Okay, we got a bunch of responses
to our anthology of horror episode from this year. Let's see,
maybe I'm going to do this one from longtime correspondent
Jim and New Jersey that has just packed with Star
Trek trivia. How about that? Yeah sounds good, okay, Jim
(07:33):
and New Jersey, says Robert Joe and JJ. Robert's Halloween
anthology choice reminded me of transporter technology in other stories,
especially its use in Star Trek. This is in response
to the the anthology segment Rob picked this year, which
was from the nineties Outer Limits, and it was a
parable about the use of a teleportation machine, but one
(07:56):
in which your body at the original the departure point
the teleportation has to be destroyed, and there were questions
about like is this really death? What is self identity
if you're recreated at the destination and so forth. Yeah, Jim,
talking about transporter episodes of Star Trek, says, here are
a few things I can recall, and I'm sure I
won't remember them all. Gene Roddenberry created it since a
(08:18):
few visual effects and glitter spinning in a tank of
water would have cheaper production values than having to use
the shuttle craft and the docking bay. That's interesting. You know,
it wouldn't be the first time that the material and
practical constraints of filmmaking led to what was in the
(08:38):
end an interesting plot device or idea.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah. I mean, now, it's almost impossible to imagine Star
Trek without teleportation, without people being beamed up and beamed down.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
But I can absolutely see how. Yeah, you would have
to have fewer sets than if you were like having
people take a ship down, up and down.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, just right from the ship to the cave environment
or the alien terrain that you've prepared on the other
portion of the set.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Jim says, while Kirk and crew could request being beamed
out of a bad situation, there was no emergency beam
out button on their communicators.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
It would make it too easy for them to get
out of a jam.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Also, Kirk never said the words beam me up, Scottie. Interesting.
It's kind of like Luke, I am your father you
and Darth Vader never says that.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, or it's elementary, my dear Watson. Though I don't
recall the details on that. It's probably been said in adaptations,
but if memory serves it's not ever said in the stories.
Don't quote me on that just in case.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
What's the actual Darth Vader quote? I think he says, No,
I am your father. I think you're right anyway, Star
Trek facts continue, Jim says in the Enemy within the
original series, there was a transporter incident when a crew
member returns from a planet with magnetic dust on his uniform.
Kirk beams up next and leaves the platform. Then, after
(10:04):
everyone leaves the transporter room, another Kirk materializes. The first
Kirk has all of Kirk's good traits, the second Kirk
has all of his bad traits. This was inspired by
Doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde. I feel like the straying
a little bit from hard science fiction, you know, saying
like that the physically separated, the moral quality is into
(10:25):
different beings. I don't know about that.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, you know, the settings were weird on those older
teleportation devices.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Yeah, but I bet it maybe for a good episode.
I've never seen that one. Let's see. Jim goes on
to say doctor McCoy hates the transporter quote. I signed
aboard this ship to practice medicine, not to have my
atoms scattered back and forth across space by this gadget.
I think sound reasoning doctor McCoy in Realm of Fear.
(10:53):
In the Next Generation, Lieutenant Barkley has an outright phobia
of the transporter. I have a vague memory that this
was the first time Star Trek showed the transporter process
from the point of view of the person being transported.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
That rings a bell.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I don't remember if I ever saw that one. In
Relics from the Next Generation, the Enterprise crew finds Scotty,
who has rigged the transporter to be a type of
suspended animation for the past seventy five years to keep
him quote alive while he awaits a rescue. Oh, that's interesting.
So he can like beam himself to well, I don't know,
(11:30):
just beam himself to nowhere, just in the middle of
a transport while he's waiting for somebody to come get
him physically.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yeah, it's a great way to have him serve as
a guest star on an episode. But I do remember
this episode. I actually referenced it in my interview with
the astrophysicist Adam Frank because this is the Dyson Sphere
episode of Star Trek the Next Generation, and I had
distinctly remember watching this episode for the first time when
(11:58):
I was probably in junior high, maybe a little or earlier,
but it was just such a mind blowing episode, you
know this. I don't think I'd ever been introduced to
the idea of a cosmic megastructure before, and it was
just amazing. Like this episode, which I haven't watched in
a very long time, but it's one of those episodes
that made me fall in love with Star Trek the
(12:19):
Next Generation and just blew my young mind.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Okay, one last bullet point here, Jim says in Second
Chances from the Next Generation, we learned that when Riker
had been rescued from a planet via the transporter eight
years previously, the transporter beam split. One version was rescued,
the other version bounced back to the original planet. There
have been two Rikers, and one has been stranded for
(12:43):
eight years. His personality is much more bitter than the
Riker we know, and for good reasons. I heard that
the food replicators are based on transporter technology. That means
that every cup of Picard's Earl Gray Hot is identical
to the one before. This begs the question Dartrek's transport
technology transport the original atoms or just transport the information
(13:06):
about those atoms the replicators, and several plotlines in the
show tend to suggest that it's the information and not
the atoms themselves. So what about this for the show?
Every time a landing crew is sent on a mission,
the transporter maintains a copy of what it sent, sort
of like what Scotty rigs up. Therefore, when one of
the Red Shirts buys the farm, they can just spin
(13:29):
up a new one from the transporter, much like saving
the state of a video game and then restarting it
once your character dies. Of course, this could work for
everyone on the landing party, but let's be serious, it's
only the Red Shirts who are in danger. I would
think that it would mess with a security officer's mind
to know that they could be dying repeatedly and then
resurrected without any memory of their deaths Jim in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
But then again, getting back to the basic premise of
think like a dinosaur and so forth, is like the
idea that that's what teleportation is, dying repeatedly and then
being resurrected without any memory of your death.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Well, anyway, thank you Jim for all the trek facts.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Good food for thought, you know, before we get any
listener mail about this. I do want to settle the
Darth Vader quote question. I had to look it up
just to make sure, but basically the whole exchange is
Vader says, if you only knew the power of the
dark Side, Obi Wan never told you what happened to
your father. Skywalker says he told me enough, He told
(14:30):
me you killed him. And then Vader says, no, I
am your father.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Okay, yeah, that's what I thought it was.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
It's better than Luke, I am your father. The actual
writing is better than the meme. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
That touches on a theme that's come up in many
episodes we've done this year, just coincidentally, not on purpose,
but the idea of false memories. This is another one
of those false memories we can have because lots of
people not only mistake the line for being Luke, I
am your father, it's like you can hear it in
your head. You remember the voice of James Earl Jones
(15:06):
saying Luke, I am your father, even though you never
actually heard that because it wasn't in the movie. And
so it's like another one of these cases where a
you know, like reading a phrase has given you a
false memory of like a sense impression of hearing words
spoken that were not actually spoken in exactly that order.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
But when reality is better than the memory, or even
if it's the same quality wise but different and like,
it almost kind of keeps the media fresher, you know,
because because you're going in there with a preconceived notion
that is then subverted and improved upon.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
That's a good point.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I agree. Yeah, It's one of the great things about
getting older is that you remember less, and so when
you reread your favorite book, you're like, oh man, this
is great. I don't remember any of this. Yeah, this
when comes to us from Mark, Mark says Hi, Robert
(16:01):
and Joe. At the beginning of the latest Anthology of
Horror episode, Robert said, this might be your last anthology episode.
I am writing to say, please don't let that be
the case. I genuinely look forward to the anthology episodes
every year. While they are similar to weird House cinema,
the medium of an anthology is so different from a film.
It's like comparing short stories to novels. Yes, they are
both written works, but there's something about the medium of
(16:23):
a shorter format that changes what the creators can do
with the story. Anthology shows are premise based, not character based,
and almost always have a satisfying or surprising twist. Also,
i'd say, on the whole, they tend to have darker,
more foreboding endings. Your anthology episode discussions are a glorious
buffet of supernatural concepts and twists. I love them. Weird
(16:43):
house cinema episodes seem to focus more on the elements
of the film, casting, dialogue, special effects, etc. And marveling
at the weirdness of the final product, which I also
enjoy very much. Please continue the anthology series, your fan, Mark, Ah, Well.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Thank you, Mark. Yes, I agree that there are things
that are very often just just different across the board
about anthology episodes versus movies. Anthology episodes tend to be often,
like you say, more premise based or more about philosophical ideas,
whereas you know, full length movies tend to be more
involved with the struggles of particular characters and more about plot.
(17:20):
But I would say the other big difference is that
you know, our anthology episodes we treat as core episodes
of the show. They're Tuesday Thursday outings, so we usually
use the anthology segment as a springboard to talk about
some kind of idea or topic raised in it, more
like we would in a regular core episode, whereas in
Weird House Cinema we're just talking about the movies.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah. Yeah, it can be hard to select something for
anthology of horror because you have to find that they
have to have to be this right, everything else to
line up just so. You want something that is genuinely enjoyable,
you know, that's fun to talk about, it's well made.
But also whatever that premise is, whatever that nugget is,
for the purposes of a core episode, there has to
(18:03):
be some way to spin that off into sort of
a core episode discussion. And there are just a lot
of things that don't match up. Like there's so many
great I love Tales from the Crypt, so many wonderful
episodes of Tales from the Crypt, but very few of them,
in my experience so far of going through them, actually
have something you can talk about in a core episode.
(18:26):
You know, there's only so much science or culture of
mythology you can necessarily squeeze out of a given one.
I mean, most of them are bad thing happens to
bad person, you know, and that's fine, that's what it is,
which is probably one of the reasons we often come
back to things like Outer Limits and Twilight Zone, as
those tend to be a little more sci fi, sometimes
(18:47):
a little more contemplative, where other shows like Night Gallery,
which is another one I love to death. Again, most
of those don't necessarily have something you can really spin off,
or at least for our purposes.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
But we'll see. I mean, if we can bring it
back for next year, maybe we will. I guess we
shouldn't promise anything.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Card subject to change.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
All right, you want to do some Weird House messages
before we wrap up?
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah, what do we have in the bag here? Oh?
Do we have some Critters email?
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Oh boy, yes, the crits are chompin'. Let's see. This
first message comes from Jeff. Jeff says greeting science humans.
In the Weird House Cinema episode on Critters, you briefly
discussed the origins of the quote suiting up scene. Yeah,
(19:37):
so this is the montage that's in like every Batman
movie where you get a series of rapid close up
shots of buckles fastening and things snapping into place, and
gear going into sheaths and stuff, and then you finally
zoom out and you see the full suit in its
assembled form. Obviously it's in all these Batman movies, but
(19:57):
it's in other movies too, and we saw that it
is in Critters, which predates all of the modern Batman movies.
I can't remember if there's a montage like this in
the the sixties Batman. I don't think so, but it's
certainly there from the eighty nine Tim Burton Batman on
it's in Critters from nineteen eighty six, and we were
asking how far back does this visual meme go. Jeff says,
(20:19):
I have no idea where the tradition began, but I
wanted to strongly recommend that all your listeners take a
moment to enjoy Bruce Campbell's epic workshed suit up in
Evil Dead Too. Just spectacular. There is no aspect of
this scene which is not perfect, So folks at home,
if you want to look up a video of this,
I'm sure there are multiple YouTube videos that clip it out.
(20:40):
But it's from the movie Evil Dead Too. It's it's
where the two surviving human characters who have not been
possessed by demons go to the workshed and Bruce Campbell
like builds a way to He's cut his own hand
off at this point in the movie, and he builds
a way to attach a chainsaw to his wrist and
(21:01):
puts like a little like hook on his suspenders so
he can, you know, pull the pull cord on the
chainsaw by just hooking, you know, looping it through the hook.
And then in his other hand, of course, he has
the boomstick.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, it's ridoculous, but it's pretty awesome.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Jeff says, it's unlikely that a dedicated weird house listener
would be unfamiliar with this classic scene, but do we
have the right to take that chance. I have to
assume Sam Raimi was riffing on previous suit up montages,
but it's difficult to imagine anyone topping that one. Steay groovy, Jeff, Jeff,
I agree, this is a great example, but I still
(21:36):
am no closer to understanding where this this meme comes from,
So I don't know the origin.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, I've been meaning to reach out to some folks,
maybe our friends at Videodrome or some of our coworkers
who were really versed in film history, because I was
looking around and I saw this sort of meme, this
this basic idea referred to as the lock and load montage.
I've seen it referred to as the gearing up montage.
(22:03):
I found some lists that show that it at least
goes back to the nineteen eighties, but in terms of
like what's the patient zero here, I'm not exactly sure yet.
I mean, I would guess it goes back at least
a decade earlier. And I and also it would have
to line up with certain trends in editing, because I mean,
(22:24):
it's not just a matter of close ups, right, it's
a matter of the editing, the way you're cutting things
together to show these various pieces coming together in the hole.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah, it tends to be rapid editing. It's a lot
of short quick shots.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah. So there are eras of filmmaking, or at least
the mainstream within those eras of filmmaking, where you're just
not going to probably see this kind of shot because
that's not the way they were assembling their scenes, though
at the same time you might have something akin to it.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Right, My thinking goes like this, it had to be
fairly widespread in movies because by like the nineties, some
of the uses of it in Batman are already satirical,
and I think it wouldn't. Like when it shows the
close up.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
Just of like the bat butt, you know, it's just
like Batman's butt cheeks, and that's clearly meant to be
funny as part of the montage, and I think it
wouldn't It wouldn't make sense to have a joke like
that unless it was a well established visual meme in
a serious way already.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah. Yeah, a lot of the times You're right, A
lot of the times that it's used, certainly more recently,
it is. It is very satirical. It's like, you know,
it's it's like an action style set up for a
less action character, like you know, maybe they're putting a
calculator into their pocket or they're into the other pocket,
that sort of thing. Yeah, So I if any of
(23:43):
you out there have some inside write in, we would
love to hear from you on this one. Yeah. What
what are the possible origins of the gearing up or
lock and load montage? Oh?
Speaker 3 (23:53):
I just realized a movie that does this extensively, probably
like you know, five or six times throughout the movie
at least, is Sean of the Dead Edgar VI. Yeah,
lots of satirical lock and loads there.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
But if you're talking about someone like, yeah, Edgar Wright
or Sam Raimi, like obviously, these are individuals that were
extremely well versed in various film editing styles and memes
and montages and so forth, so you know they they
knew what they were doing. It would be interesting to
know exactly what they were drawing from in some of
(24:26):
these cases. Because it can't I can say it can't
be Sam Raimi that invented it. He's referring to something else. Yeah,
there has. It has to go back further. I just
don't know how far back it goes again. If I
had to guess, if I had to put like five
bucks on it, I'd say some nineteen sixties biker movie
or something. All right, let's see. Oh, here's another one
(24:47):
on Critters. This one comes to us from Mark. Mark says, Hi,
Joe and Robert thoroughly enjoyed your weird House cinemon. I
recently rewatched Critters and was surprised to see how well
it held up. I think you failed to mention, however,
at the best moment of the entire Critters franchise. Well,
(25:09):
to be fair, we didn't discuss the entire Critters franchise.
We just talked about the first one.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
We failed to mention.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
But Mark does bring up a very memorable scene, he continues,
which is the giant critter ball in Critters Too. The
critter ball is an amazing and hilarious feat of practical effects.
This is back in the day before CGI, when if
your movie called for a giant ball of critters, you
went out and built a giant ball of critters.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
How deep do you think the critters went on? The
giant critter ball was just like a big like I
don't know what was the inside of the ball.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I mean, it would be insane to build critters all
the way down, but you'd have to have them a
certain amount of tritters partially, you know, the way down,
so that it would look all right.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Oh no, the core of the critter ball is going critical.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
So he continues. The best use of the critter ball
is when it runs over someone and reduces them to
bloody bones, instantly, terrifying and funny. It did make me
wonder if there are other animals that group together to
form balls for some reason. The closest thing I could
think of was a rat king, But I'm not sure
if those are even real good episode. Don't be afraid
(26:19):
to do another Gromlin episode in the future, Mark, So
I don't know where to even begin on that listener mail.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Yeah, we certainly could come back and do something more
on life forms that agglomerate. I mean, I just think
of one example would be army ants that not quite
a ball, but they will form a gigantic mass made
out of ants to protect the queen as she's moving along.
So it is just kind of a huge ant wad
(26:46):
with the Queen hidden somewhere inside.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah, fire ants forming a raft comes to mind. There
are various animals that kind of, you know, ban together
in a limited sense, and then there's also the discussion
of animals that coil up into balls or sort of
wheel shapes, and then the rare instances of ones that
may appear to roll. I think I've covered some of
(27:09):
this before in the past, but I don't have the
notes in front of me to be clear. Though, there's
nothing quite like a critter in the in the natural world.
That's why they had to create critters for movies. As
for the rat king, well, I mean that's also a
great topic that I believe I've covered in some form
in the past. I can't remember if it was on
(27:30):
the podcast or if it's something I wrote at some point,
but if memory serves like, the basic idea is rat kings,
the idea that you have so many rats in your
play ridden village that their tails have tangled together and
they can't become untangled. And then if you, like are
ripping up boards in a house and you see one,
you're horrified and realize that this is an omen of
(27:51):
great doom for your village. Like it's a cool and
grotesque idea, and I think I've read that it's maybe
not entirely beyond the realm of possibility, but also extremely
unlikely that this would happen.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
I haven't researched this, so I can't speak to it,
but I just did remember what the term for the
for the ant thing is, like the driver ants or
the army ants that formed these big wads of ants
like the critter ball.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
It's called a bivouac.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Was where the colony forms a bivouac that sort of
moves along with the progress of its march.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
That's right, And to be clear on the rat king,
there may be more recent research into this that has
turned up some strong evidence for the existence of a
rat King at one point or another. But as I recall,
it was rather dubious. But that may have changed. But yes,
for doing more Gromlin episodes, yeah, I'm totally down for that.
(28:48):
I'm down for Critters too, if we want to come
back and do that when at some point, like I said,
Critters two is one the one that I definitely remember
seeing when I was younger, and I remember enjoying it
quite a bit. It makes some interesting choices, as I recalled,
it might be fun to revisit. I don't remember exactly
how they were handled, though.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Is Critters two to Critters one kind of like Evil
Dead two to Evil Dead one. It's almost like a
comedy remake of the original with a bigger budget.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
I think so. It's definitely the bigger budget, you know,
because Critters was a success and they written It's one
of those situations where the studios like, yes, give us
more of this success, make us more of this movie,
and they obliged, and you know, you have some other element.
You have most of the I think most of the
same one up, maybe not most of the same cast.
Several members of the cast are back. David Towey is
(29:34):
on the script, so it has a lot of things
going for it as well. Definitely bigger and bolder.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
All right, should we wrap it up there for today?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, let's go ahead and wrap it up into one
big Critters esque ball and send it on down towards
the farmhouse.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
We've still got a bunch of things in the queue,
so we'll have to get to those next week.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
That's right in the meantime, right into us. We'd love
to hear from you regarding past, present, and future episodes
of Stuff to Blow your Mind, Artifact, Monster Fact, other
episodes of Listener Mail, and of course Weird House Cinema.
Any question or inquiry is fair game, so just write in. Also,
you can reach out to us in the Discussion module.
That's a group on Facebook that you can join. We
also have a presence in discord. If you want to
(30:15):
acces us to that, email us and we'll send you that.
And hey, if you use the social media, you can
follow us. Our accounts are active again and if you
are on Instagram, check us out. We are STBYM podcast
on Instagram. It's a newer account. The old one is
all locked up. We can't get into it, so help
us breathe life into the husk of the new Instagram
(30:38):
account for our podcast.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Stuffed to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener mail.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
it is Monday, the day of each week that we
read back messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
email address. If you would like to make your own
contribution to the mail bag, why not reach out to
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Whatever you want to send is fine. We always appreciate
feedback to recent episodes, especially if you have something interesting
(00:35):
you would like to add to a topic we have
talked about on the show. But again, whatever you want
to send, just just throw it on our way contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com. All right, Rob,
we got a big, big haul today. We can get
through some of it here. Let's see. Maybe I will
kick things off with this message from Hugh about our
Vault episode on the invention of the gimbal.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
All right, let's have it.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Hugh says, Hello, Robert, Joe, and jj I hope you
and your loved ones are happy and healthy. I'm not
sure if your recent Vault episode covered this aspect, but
the gimbal serves another very important surface on sea going vessels,
and that is helping keep the crew fed. I think
this is adding to the fact that we talked about
some kinds of instruments in ships at sea that would
(01:28):
be mounted on gimbals.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Right, right, and illusions I believe to ancient devices that
seem to have been gimbals of one sort or another.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Right, But Hughes says, yes, gimbals are also used to
keep the crew fed. The email goes on to say
the cook tops and ovens on vessels are usually hung
on gimbals that swing perpendicularly to the vessel's center line,
with some sort of adjustable rail system to capture pots
and pans in the direction of travel. This makes the
(01:58):
job of dealing with hot liquids and such safer for
the galley crew while underway. Wishing you the best as always, Hugh. Well,
thank you, Hugh. That is an interesting fact and I
don't know if I would have considered that, but yeah,
that makes perfect.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Sense, absolutely, chef. All right, let's turn to some more
responses from our October episodes. This one is from Colin.
This was on Facebook. I believe probably the discussion module
responding to our episode on Necromancer Episodes on Necromancy, Hey
(02:39):
Joe and Rob and JJ writing in about the episodes
on the Necromantic Urge, specifically part two where you talk
about dream interpretation and the temples of Aslepios where this
was done in ancient Greece by trade. I'm a professional
actor mostly for the stage, and part of my education
in classical theater mentioned this. I'm going off memory here
(03:02):
as I'm currently at work on a national tour of
a show and separated from my notes, but from what
I remember, there was a temple to Aslepis underneath the
theater at Epidaurus, and apparently patients were put into a
dream like or suggestive state by the use of some
sort of snake venom I think, either ingested as a
potion or patients were bitten. Under controlled circumstances, the patient's
(03:26):
dreams were told to one of the temple attendants called therapons,
same word rout as words like therapy, which roughly means
ritual substitutes. If a dream was judged to be significant
enough that it would benefit ancient Greek society on the whole,
the therapons would then enact elements of the Dream in
(03:47):
a play at the theater upstairs, so that all patrons
attending the show could learn from it. Side note, Aslepius's
association with snakes is made more apparent with the presence
of them wrapped around the staff of Estilepius, which itself
is often confused with the medical symbol of the cadusius.
I'm trying madly to back up what I've written here
(04:09):
with references and citations, but I'm coming up a little dry.
Perhaps someone else in the discussion module who knows about
this can give us a hand with it. Otherwise, keep
up the excellent work. Chaps. Love the podcast as always,
especially when you managed to sneak in references to D
and D. I have no doubt that game was a
part of why I chose the performing arts as a job.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Colin ah barred to the core. Well, I'd never heard
of any of this, but this is interesting, especially the
idea about re enacting parts of the Dream in a
theatrical performance. I have to say, for some reason, I'd
be a little skeptical about the snake venom aspect, but
I don't know that could be true. I'd be interested
(04:52):
in following up on that and looking into it.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
You know that would be something though to think about
this in a modern context. What if you had to
you had to sign off the rights to any dream
contents you shared with your therapists because they might be
produced as a play.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Or how about when you go to therapy you have
to sign off on the contents of your dreams because
they will be used to train AI.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Well, you know, I guess if it helps pay for
one's therapy, I guess it would like if you could
do that instead, It's like, okay AI gets rights to
my dreams or Hollywood gets right first pass. Let's say
first pass on the contents of my dreams. But that
means I also don't have to pay We're going to
reduce rate on my therapy sessions. I don't know, I'd
(05:36):
have to consider it because most of these dreams are
real dogs. I mean, they're not going to really get
anywhere with this content.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yeah, I'm trying to imagine a Greek chorus saying it
was my high school, but it was not my high school,
and it was also my first apartment, and I was me,
but I was also Brad Dourif.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's most of my dreams these days are
kind of like that. Oh I did have a good one.
As long as we're talking about dreams, I've been meaning
to share this one with you. So one of our
bosses in this dream, I think you know which one,
but one of our bosses an individual we both like,
we both look up to excellent chat. But in the
(06:19):
dream he had written a book called how to Write,
and how to Write was being released as a candle
and we had to and I don't think the candle
produced sound, but somehow the book was being released in
candle form and we had to record ads promoting the
(06:41):
candle adaptation of how to Write.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
My god, I mean, it makes perfect dream logic. Though
I can see exactly why you dreamed that.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
It is one of those rare moments too in the
dream where I was like, this is what It's a candle,
but it's an adaptation of a book. How does that work?
It doesn't produce sound, but still you know it to dream,
so you go with it.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
The ad department is like, yeah, just go with it.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
So you heard it here first. How to Write now
available in all formats including candle.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
That's really good. Okay, we got a bunch of responses
to our anthology of horror episode from this year. Let's see,
maybe I'm going to do this one from longtime correspondent
Jim and New Jersey that has just packed with Star
Trek trivia. How about that? Yeah sounds good, okay, Jim
(07:33):
and New Jersey, says Robert Joe and JJ. Robert's Halloween
anthology choice reminded me of transporter technology in other stories,
especially its use in Star Trek. This is in response
to the the anthology segment Rob picked this year, which
was from the nineties Outer Limits, and it was a
parable about the use of a teleportation machine, but one
(07:56):
in which your body at the original the departure point
the teleportation has to be destroyed, and there were questions
about like is this really death? What is self identity
if you're recreated at the destination and so forth. Yeah, Jim,
talking about transporter episodes of Star Trek, says, here are
a few things I can recall, and I'm sure I
won't remember them all. Gene Roddenberry created it since a
(08:18):
few visual effects and glitter spinning in a tank of
water would have cheaper production values than having to use
the shuttle craft and the docking bay. That's interesting. You know,
it wouldn't be the first time that the material and
practical constraints of filmmaking led to what was in the
(08:38):
end an interesting plot device or idea.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah. I mean, now, it's almost impossible to imagine Star
Trek without teleportation, without people being beamed up and beamed down.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
But I can absolutely see how. Yeah, you would have
to have fewer sets than if you were like having
people take a ship down, up and down.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, just right from the ship to the cave environment
or the alien terrain that you've prepared on the other
portion of the set.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Jim says, while Kirk and crew could request being beamed
out of a bad situation, there was no emergency beam
out button on their communicators.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
It would make it too easy for them to get
out of a jam.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Also, Kirk never said the words beam me up, Scottie. Interesting.
It's kind of like Luke, I am your father you
and Darth Vader never says that.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, or it's elementary, my dear Watson. Though I don't
recall the details on that. It's probably been said in adaptations,
but if memory serves it's not ever said in the stories.
Don't quote me on that just in case.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
What's the actual Darth Vader quote? I think he says, No,
I am your father. I think you're right anyway, Star
Trek facts continue, Jim says in the Enemy within the
original series, there was a transporter incident when a crew
member returns from a planet with magnetic dust on his uniform.
Kirk beams up next and leaves the platform. Then, after
(10:04):
everyone leaves the transporter room, another Kirk materializes. The first
Kirk has all of Kirk's good traits, the second Kirk
has all of his bad traits. This was inspired by
Doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde. I feel like the straying
a little bit from hard science fiction, you know, saying
like that the physically separated, the moral quality is into
(10:25):
different beings. I don't know about that.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, you know, the settings were weird on those older
teleportation devices.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Yeah, but I bet it maybe for a good episode.
I've never seen that one. Let's see. Jim goes on
to say doctor McCoy hates the transporter quote. I signed
aboard this ship to practice medicine, not to have my
atoms scattered back and forth across space by this gadget.
I think sound reasoning doctor McCoy in Realm of Fear.
(10:53):
In the Next Generation, Lieutenant Barkley has an outright phobia
of the transporter. I have a vague memory that this
was the first time Star Trek showed the transporter process
from the point of view of the person being transported.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
That rings a bell.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I don't remember if I ever saw that one. In
Relics from the Next Generation, the Enterprise crew finds Scotty,
who has rigged the transporter to be a type of
suspended animation for the past seventy five years to keep
him quote alive while he awaits a rescue. Oh, that's interesting.
So he can like beam himself to well, I don't know,
(11:30):
just beam himself to nowhere, just in the middle of
a transport while he's waiting for somebody to come get
him physically.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Yeah, it's a great way to have him serve as
a guest star on an episode. But I do remember
this episode. I actually referenced it in my interview with
the astrophysicist Adam Frank because this is the Dyson Sphere
episode of Star Trek the Next Generation, and I had
distinctly remember watching this episode for the first time when
(11:58):
I was probably in junior high, maybe a little or earlier,
but it was just such a mind blowing episode, you
know this. I don't think I'd ever been introduced to
the idea of a cosmic megastructure before, and it was
just amazing. Like this episode, which I haven't watched in
a very long time, but it's one of those episodes
that made me fall in love with Star Trek the
(12:19):
Next Generation and just blew my young mind.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
Okay, one last bullet point here, Jim says in Second
Chances from the Next Generation, we learned that when Riker
had been rescued from a planet via the transporter eight
years previously, the transporter beam split. One version was rescued,
the other version bounced back to the original planet. There
have been two Rikers, and one has been stranded for
(12:43):
eight years. His personality is much more bitter than the
Riker we know, and for good reasons. I heard that
the food replicators are based on transporter technology. That means
that every cup of Picard's Earl Gray Hot is identical
to the one before. This begs the question Dartrek's transport
technology transport the original atoms or just transport the information
(13:06):
about those atoms the replicators, and several plotlines in the
show tend to suggest that it's the information and not
the atoms themselves. So what about this for the show?
Every time a landing crew is sent on a mission,
the transporter maintains a copy of what it sent, sort
of like what Scotty rigs up. Therefore, when one of
the Red Shirts buys the farm, they can just spin
(13:29):
up a new one from the transporter, much like saving
the state of a video game and then restarting it
once your character dies. Of course, this could work for
everyone on the landing party, but let's be serious, it's
only the Red Shirts who are in danger. I would
think that it would mess with a security officer's mind
to know that they could be dying repeatedly and then
resurrected without any memory of their deaths Jim in New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
But then again, getting back to the basic premise of
think like a dinosaur and so forth, is like the
idea that that's what teleportation is, dying repeatedly and then
being resurrected without any memory of your death.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
Well, anyway, thank you Jim for all the trek facts.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Good food for thought, you know, before we get any
listener mail about this. I do want to settle the
Darth Vader quote question. I had to look it up
just to make sure, but basically the whole exchange is
Vader says, if you only knew the power of the
dark Side, Obi Wan never told you what happened to
your father. Skywalker says he told me enough, He told
(14:30):
me you killed him. And then Vader says, no, I
am your father.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Okay, yeah, that's what I thought it was.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
It's better than Luke, I am your father. The actual
writing is better than the meme. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
That touches on a theme that's come up in many
episodes we've done this year, just coincidentally, not on purpose,
but the idea of false memories. This is another one
of those false memories we can have because lots of
people not only mistake the line for being Luke, I
am your father, it's like you can hear it in
your head. You remember the voice of James Earl Jones
(15:06):
saying Luke, I am your father, even though you never
actually heard that because it wasn't in the movie. And
so it's like another one of these cases where a
you know, like reading a phrase has given you a
false memory of like a sense impression of hearing words
spoken that were not actually spoken in exactly that order.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
But when reality is better than the memory, or even
if it's the same quality wise but different and like,
it almost kind of keeps the media fresher, you know,
because because you're going in there with a preconceived notion
that is then subverted and improved upon.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
That's a good point.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
I agree. Yeah, It's one of the great things about
getting older is that you remember less, and so when
you reread your favorite book, you're like, oh man, this
is great. I don't remember any of this. Yeah, this
when comes to us from Mark, Mark says Hi, Robert
(16:01):
and Joe. At the beginning of the latest Anthology of
Horror episode, Robert said, this might be your last anthology episode.
I am writing to say, please don't let that be
the case. I genuinely look forward to the anthology episodes
every year. While they are similar to weird House cinema,
the medium of an anthology is so different from a film.
It's like comparing short stories to novels. Yes, they are
both written works, but there's something about the medium of
(16:23):
a shorter format that changes what the creators can do
with the story. Anthology shows are premise based, not character based,
and almost always have a satisfying or surprising twist. Also,
i'd say, on the whole, they tend to have darker,
more foreboding endings. Your anthology episode discussions are a glorious
buffet of supernatural concepts and twists. I love them. Weird
(16:43):
house cinema episodes seem to focus more on the elements
of the film, casting, dialogue, special effects, etc. And marveling
at the weirdness of the final product, which I also
enjoy very much. Please continue the anthology series, your fan, Mark, Ah, Well.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Thank you, Mark. Yes, I agree that there are things
that are very often just just different across the board
about anthology episodes versus movies. Anthology episodes tend to be often,
like you say, more premise based or more about philosophical ideas,
whereas you know, full length movies tend to be more
involved with the struggles of particular characters and more about plot.
(17:20):
But I would say the other big difference is that
you know, our anthology episodes we treat as core episodes
of the show. They're Tuesday Thursday outings, so we usually
use the anthology segment as a springboard to talk about
some kind of idea or topic raised in it, more
like we would in a regular core episode, whereas in
Weird House Cinema we're just talking about the movies.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah. Yeah, it can be hard to select something for
anthology of horror because you have to find that they
have to have to be this right, everything else to
line up just so. You want something that is genuinely enjoyable,
you know, that's fun to talk about, it's well made.
But also whatever that premise is, whatever that nugget is,
for the purposes of a core episode, there has to
(18:03):
be some way to spin that off into sort of
a core episode discussion. And there are just a lot
of things that don't match up. Like there's so many
great I love Tales from the Crypt, so many wonderful
episodes of Tales from the Crypt, but very few of them,
in my experience so far of going through them, actually
have something you can talk about in a core episode.
(18:26):
You know, there's only so much science or culture of
mythology you can necessarily squeeze out of a given one.
I mean, most of them are bad thing happens to
bad person, you know, and that's fine, that's what it is,
which is probably one of the reasons we often come
back to things like Outer Limits and Twilight Zone, as
those tend to be a little more sci fi, sometimes
(18:47):
a little more contemplative, where other shows like Night Gallery,
which is another one I love to death. Again, most
of those don't necessarily have something you can really spin off,
or at least for our purposes.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
But we'll see. I mean, if we can bring it
back for next year, maybe we will. I guess we
shouldn't promise anything.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Card subject to change.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
All right, you want to do some Weird House messages
before we wrap up?
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah, what do we have in the bag here? Oh?
Do we have some Critters email?
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Oh boy, yes, the crits are chompin'. Let's see. This
first message comes from Jeff. Jeff says greeting science humans.
In the Weird House Cinema episode on Critters, you briefly
discussed the origins of the quote suiting up scene. Yeah,
(19:37):
so this is the montage that's in like every Batman
movie where you get a series of rapid close up
shots of buckles fastening and things snapping into place, and
gear going into sheaths and stuff, and then you finally
zoom out and you see the full suit in its
assembled form. Obviously it's in all these Batman movies, but
(19:57):
it's in other movies too, and we saw that it
is in Critters, which predates all of the modern Batman movies.
I can't remember if there's a montage like this in
the the sixties Batman. I don't think so, but it's
certainly there from the eighty nine Tim Burton Batman on
it's in Critters from nineteen eighty six, and we were
asking how far back does this visual meme go. Jeff says,
(20:19):
I have no idea where the tradition began, but I
wanted to strongly recommend that all your listeners take a
moment to enjoy Bruce Campbell's epic workshed suit up in
Evil Dead Too. Just spectacular. There is no aspect of
this scene which is not perfect, So folks at home,
if you want to look up a video of this,
I'm sure there are multiple YouTube videos that clip it out.
(20:40):
But it's from the movie Evil Dead Too. It's it's
where the two surviving human characters who have not been
possessed by demons go to the workshed and Bruce Campbell
like builds a way to He's cut his own hand
off at this point in the movie, and he builds
a way to attach a chainsaw to his wrist and
(21:01):
puts like a little like hook on his suspenders so
he can, you know, pull the pull cord on the
chainsaw by just hooking, you know, looping it through the hook.
And then in his other hand, of course, he has
the boomstick.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, it's ridoculous, but it's pretty awesome.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Jeff says, it's unlikely that a dedicated weird house listener
would be unfamiliar with this classic scene, but do we
have the right to take that chance. I have to
assume Sam Raimi was riffing on previous suit up montages,
but it's difficult to imagine anyone topping that one. Steay groovy, Jeff, Jeff,
I agree, this is a great example, but I still
(21:36):
am no closer to understanding where this this meme comes from,
So I don't know the origin.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, I've been meaning to reach out to some folks,
maybe our friends at Videodrome or some of our coworkers
who were really versed in film history, because I was
looking around and I saw this sort of meme, this
this basic idea referred to as the lock and load montage.
I've seen it referred to as the gearing up montage.
(22:03):
I found some lists that show that it at least
goes back to the nineteen eighties, but in terms of
like what's the patient zero here, I'm not exactly sure yet.
I mean, I would guess it goes back at least
a decade earlier. And I and also it would have
to line up with certain trends in editing, because I mean,
(22:24):
it's not just a matter of close ups, right, it's
a matter of the editing, the way you're cutting things
together to show these various pieces coming together in the hole.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah, it tends to be rapid editing. It's a lot
of short quick shots.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah. So there are eras of filmmaking, or at least
the mainstream within those eras of filmmaking, where you're just
not going to probably see this kind of shot because
that's not the way they were assembling their scenes, though
at the same time you might have something akin to it.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Right, My thinking goes like this, it had to be
fairly widespread in movies because by like the nineties, some
of the uses of it in Batman are already satirical,
and I think it wouldn't. Like when it shows the
close up.
Speaker 4 (23:07):
Just of like the bat butt, you know, it's just
like Batman's butt cheeks, and that's clearly meant to be
funny as part of the montage, and I think it
wouldn't It wouldn't make sense to have a joke like
that unless it was a well established visual meme in
a serious way already.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah. Yeah, a lot of the times You're right, A
lot of the times that it's used, certainly more recently,
it is. It is very satirical. It's like, you know,
it's it's like an action style set up for a
less action character, like you know, maybe they're putting a
calculator into their pocket or they're into the other pocket,
that sort of thing. Yeah, So I if any of
(23:43):
you out there have some inside write in, we would
love to hear from you on this one. Yeah. What
what are the possible origins of the gearing up or
lock and load montage? Oh?
Speaker 3 (23:53):
I just realized a movie that does this extensively, probably
like you know, five or six times throughout the movie
at least, is Sean of the Dead Edgar VI. Yeah,
lots of satirical lock and loads there.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
But if you're talking about someone like, yeah, Edgar Wright
or Sam Raimi, like obviously, these are individuals that were
extremely well versed in various film editing styles and memes
and montages and so forth, so you know they they
knew what they were doing. It would be interesting to
know exactly what they were drawing from in some of
(24:26):
these cases. Because it can't I can say it can't
be Sam Raimi that invented it. He's referring to something else. Yeah,
there has. It has to go back further. I just
don't know how far back it goes again. If I
had to guess, if I had to put like five
bucks on it, I'd say some nineteen sixties biker movie
or something. All right, let's see. Oh, here's another one
(24:47):
on Critters. This one comes to us from Mark. Mark says, Hi,
Joe and Robert thoroughly enjoyed your weird House cinemon. I
recently rewatched Critters and was surprised to see how well
it held up. I think you failed to mention, however,
at the best moment of the entire Critters franchise. Well,
(25:09):
to be fair, we didn't discuss the entire Critters franchise.
We just talked about the first one.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
We failed to mention.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
But Mark does bring up a very memorable scene, he continues,
which is the giant critter ball in Critters Too. The
critter ball is an amazing and hilarious feat of practical effects.
This is back in the day before CGI, when if
your movie called for a giant ball of critters, you
went out and built a giant ball of critters.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
How deep do you think the critters went on? The
giant critter ball was just like a big like I
don't know what was the inside of the ball.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
I mean, it would be insane to build critters all
the way down, but you'd have to have them a
certain amount of tritters partially, you know, the way down,
so that it would look all right.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Oh no, the core of the critter ball is going critical.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
So he continues. The best use of the critter ball
is when it runs over someone and reduces them to
bloody bones, instantly, terrifying and funny. It did make me
wonder if there are other animals that group together to
form balls for some reason. The closest thing I could
think of was a rat king, But I'm not sure
if those are even real good episode. Don't be afraid
(26:19):
to do another Gromlin episode in the future, Mark, So
I don't know where to even begin on that listener mail.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Yeah, we certainly could come back and do something more
on life forms that agglomerate. I mean, I just think
of one example would be army ants that not quite
a ball, but they will form a gigantic mass made
out of ants to protect the queen as she's moving along.
So it is just kind of a huge ant wad
(26:46):
with the Queen hidden somewhere inside.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah, fire ants forming a raft comes to mind. There
are various animals that kind of, you know, ban together
in a limited sense, and then there's also the discussion
of animals that coil up into balls or sort of
wheel shapes, and then the rare instances of ones that
may appear to roll. I think I've covered some of
(27:09):
this before in the past, but I don't have the
notes in front of me to be clear. Though, there's
nothing quite like a critter in the in the natural world.
That's why they had to create critters for movies. As
for the rat king, well, I mean that's also a
great topic that I believe I've covered in some form
in the past. I can't remember if it was on
(27:30):
the podcast or if it's something I wrote at some point,
but if memory serves like, the basic idea is rat kings,
the idea that you have so many rats in your
play ridden village that their tails have tangled together and
they can't become untangled. And then if you, like are
ripping up boards in a house and you see one,
you're horrified and realize that this is an omen of
(27:51):
great doom for your village. Like it's a cool and
grotesque idea, and I think I've read that it's maybe
not entirely beyond the realm of possibility, but also extremely
unlikely that this would happen.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
I haven't researched this, so I can't speak to it,
but I just did remember what the term for the
for the ant thing is, like the driver ants or
the army ants that formed these big wads of ants
like the critter ball.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
It's called a bivouac.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Was where the colony forms a bivouac that sort of
moves along with the progress of its march.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
That's right, And to be clear on the rat king,
there may be more recent research into this that has
turned up some strong evidence for the existence of a
rat King at one point or another. But as I recall,
it was rather dubious. But that may have changed. But yes,
for doing more Gromlin episodes, yeah, I'm totally down for that.
(28:48):
I'm down for Critters too, if we want to come
back and do that when at some point, like I said,
Critters two is one the one that I definitely remember
seeing when I was younger, and I remember enjoying it
quite a bit. It makes some interesting choices, as I recalled,
it might be fun to revisit. I don't remember exactly
how they were handled, though.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Is Critters two to Critters one kind of like Evil
Dead two to Evil Dead one. It's almost like a
comedy remake of the original with a bigger budget.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
I think so. It's definitely the bigger budget, you know,
because Critters was a success and they written It's one
of those situations where the studios like, yes, give us
more of this success, make us more of this movie,
and they obliged, and you know, you have some other element.
You have most of the I think most of the
same one up, maybe not most of the same cast.
Several members of the cast are back. David Towey is
(29:34):
on the script, so it has a lot of things
going for it as well. Definitely bigger and bolder.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
All right, should we wrap it up there for today?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
Yeah, let's go ahead and wrap it up into one
big Critters esque ball and send it on down towards
the farmhouse.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
We've still got a bunch of things in the queue,
so we'll have to get to those next week.
Speaker 2 (29:53):
That's right in the meantime, right into us. We'd love
to hear from you regarding past, present, and future episodes
of Stuff to Blow your Mind, Artifact, Monster Fact, other
episodes of Listener Mail, and of course Weird House Cinema.
Any question or inquiry is fair game, so just write in. Also,
you can reach out to us in the Discussion module.
That's a group on Facebook that you can join. We
also have a presence in discord. If you want to
(30:15):
acces us to that, email us and we'll send you that.
And hey, if you use the social media, you can
follow us. Our accounts are active again and if you
are on Instagram, check us out. We are STBYM podcast
on Instagram. It's a newer account. The old one is
all locked up. We can't get into it, so help
us breathe life into the husk of the new Instagram
(30:38):
account for our podcast.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Stuffed to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.
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