The Monstrefact: The Creature From ‘The Viewing’

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the creature from “The Viewing,” the seventh episode of “Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and
this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from
Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on mythical creatures,
ideas and monsters in time. In this episode, I want

(00:25):
to discuss a creature from Guillermo Del Toro's Cabinet of
Curiosities of Fabulous Tales from the crypt Asque Horror anthology series.
In particular, I'll be discussing a creature from the viewing.
The episode directed by Panos Cosmatos, so fair warning spoilers follow.
In three two one. In the Viewing, an eccentric and

(00:51):
wealthy recluse played terrifically by veteran actor Peter Weller, invites
four strangers, each a stand out in their own field,
to his secluded home for a special viewing. As with
such Cosmatos films as Beyond the Black Rainbow and Mandy,
what follows is a beautifully rendered atmospheric slow burn, a

(01:13):
journey into the psychatronic. In short order, all of the
characters converge in a luxuriously trippy nine seventies din Weller's
Lionel Lasseter urges his guests to indulge in various brain
altering substances in order to prepare them for the viewing.
When the time finally arrives, Lasseter leads them into a

(01:37):
special chamber containing an alien monolith. In due course, the
monolith essentially hatches and an orange ooze emerges. It forms
a pair of feelers or antennae, which reached skyward. It
unleashes a terrifying psychic attack on those around it, and
then becomes fluid again, engulfing one of its victims and

(01:58):
rising back up as a lomeration of ooze covered humanoid
and twin tentacled slime creature. This monster then ventures out
into the world to better understand it, destroy it, or both.
Its motivations are suitably unknowable. Now, these are just the
major details regarding the episode. I can do nothing to

(02:20):
capture the visual and sonic weirdness of the piece. You're
gonna have to watch it for yourself. But of course,
the strange entity in this episode led me to wonder
how we might interpret it via natural world biology. Of course,
the fictitious creature in question is so utterly alien, so
amazingly fantastic, that we can't expect to find anything too
much like it, but at least a couple of ideas

(02:42):
emerge for starters. In terms of amorphous creatures developing feelers
or limbs when needed, we can look to the single
celled organisms make Leria glueberry. It makes its home and
wet soil and lives as slow moving life as an
amorphous amba, but when stressed, it grows a pair of flagella,

(03:04):
hair like arms or appendages that allow the creature to
swim around at greater speeds in something akin to a breaststroke.
According to biologist Lillian fritz Leyland, quoted in a two
thousand ten MPR article on the organism naturally in vague terms,
this reminds me of the environment induced changes in the
viewing slime creature, as well as the two feelers it manifests. Additionally,

(03:29):
the creatures change from hardened shell to liquid ooze to
shambling creature also reminds me of the amazing transformations that
occur inside it. Butterflies chrysalis, where the caterpillar essentially digests
itself with enzymes, where least digests everything except for the
imaginal discs dormant tissues essentially earmarked to develop into corresponding

(03:54):
parts of the adult organism, the imaginal disc or essentially
fed by the dissolved goop around them in the crystalis.
But most of the questions raised by the viewing have
nothing to do with real world biology. Instead, we're left
wondering why Lasseter insisted on augmented brain states and his
guests before viewing the monolith. Is this simply how he

(04:17):
entertains all his house guests, or did he have a
specific intention in mind here, something about presenting a psychic
alien entity with mental states that have been subjected to
the same specific changes. There's a lot to think about here.
We don't know for sure. The piece leaves us to
wonder and dream, which is one of the episodes. Many

(04:38):
rewards might of course be interested to hear your take
on the matter. Tune in for additional episodes of The
Monster Fact or The Artifact each week. As always, you
can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a

(05:03):
production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.