Weirdhouse Cinema: Absurd

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe kick off the Halloween season with the notorious low-budget 1981 Italian slasher film “Absurd,” directed by Joe D’Amato and starring George Eastman.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House
Cinema we are going to be talking about the nineteen
eighty one Italian slasher movie Absurd, directed by Joe Demato
and starring George Eastman. Now, Rob, I understand you wanted
to talk about how this movie typifies a movie subgenre,

(00:38):
maybe not defined within the movie itself, but the sort
of meta subgenre of the video nasty.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
That's right. We've referred to video nasties before on the show,
and those of you know what we're talking about, you know,
probably not in your head. And if you don't know
what a video nasty is, you might have just you know,
picked up on context and on. But basically, it's essentially
you can slang for films, usually low budget horror and
exploitation films that were highly controversial during the nineteen eighties
as they were able to enter the UK distribution market

(01:10):
through a loophole that allowed the distributors to avoid official classification,
part of a video gold rush that came with VHS technology.
At the time. This is the description given by David
Coreki's and David Slater in the twenty twenty three book
Cannibal Error, Anti Film Propaganda and the Video Nasties Panic

(01:32):
of the nineteen eighties.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
So this would be sort of an informal list of
films that what were not necessarily illegal, but were singled
out for being obscene or terrible or just worthy of
moral approbate, approbation in some way.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well you kind of get both things. There's like it
does become formalized, but then there's also kind of like
an informal list as well. So basically the short version
of how this went down as you had and again
this is a you're involving like new technology, new distribution patterns,
and also changes in you know, what the public wants,

(02:12):
and then public anxiety about obscenity. So basically you haven't
had an advocacy group called the National Viewers and Listeners Association,
and it made a big outcry about these these films
that we're making it into the UK on VHS, and
it led to just a whole saga of politics, moral panic,
censorship discussion, and the end result was the imposition of

(02:34):
state video censorship in the UK in nineteen eighty four
and the creation of a Director of Public Prosecutions DPP
list of films that would come to be known as
video nasties. Though I think this term also ends up
becoming especially outside of the UK and in just sort
of VHS horror exploitation film circles, it becomes something of

(02:56):
a you know, a loose term that is you for
various sort of grimy, low budget often euro films of
the time period.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Oh okay, So thus my confusion. So some of the
things referred to as video nasties were actually targeted by
the law in the UK and other things just sort
of informally get that title as a kind of descriptor
of what these movies tend to be.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Like, Yeah, because you definitely had a list, you had
like section one. Prosecuted films included actually a few different
films we've discussed on Weird House, nineteen eighty's Cannibal Apocalypse,
nineteen eighty one's The House by the Cemetery, and today's
film Absurd, which is also from nineteen eighty one as
His House by the Cemetery. Now, naturally there's some really

(03:43):
grimy exploitation fodder in that list as well, But there's
also plenty of stuff that I don't know. It's all subjective,
but it feels, at least to me, kind of tame
by today's standards. But naturally, the line between art and
obscenity is always going to be subjective to a certain extent,
and there's gonna be a point of disagree in figuring
out what is what. But apart from these official classifications

(04:05):
and uproars in the UK, the term video nasty again
kind of becomes kind of comes to be a badge
of honor for many horror films from this time period,
especially in later decades. By the time many of us
were looking these up in books like the Psychotronic Film Guide,
or buying bootleg VHS tapes off of eBay back in
the day, or learning about them online, you know, browsing

(04:27):
Internet movie data base, looking at various blogs forums, or
today venturing around on letterbox dot com. You know, it
adds that extra bit of intrigue to a title. This
is a video nasty, this is a curse tape. You know,
watch at your own risk.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Now that might lead you to wonder, okay, if this
is one of those films that was considered so bad
as to be you know, targeted by the law in
the UK. Is there like, what's it about? What goes on?
Is you know, is it a Texas chainsaw massacre kind
of thing? I think the best way to describe obs
third is that it must have been pitched as a

(05:03):
Halloween clone. Halloween came out in nineteen seventy eight, Is
that right? Yeah, just checked, it was seventy eight, So
this is a few years after that, and there were many,
many Halloween clones. Halloween was a big hit, and so
a lot of movies tried to copy it. In fact,
some of the big slasher franchises in the American market.

(05:23):
I think you could argue began as Halloween clones. One
might sing, one might point to like Friday the thirteenth,
and so forth. You know, it even picks like a
day of the Years as the title. But anyway, so
I think absurd. It was imagined as a kind of
Halloween clone, but much more gory and disgusting. Halloween is
actually fairly light on the blood and gore. You don't

(05:46):
see a lot of explicit consequences of violence in it.
It's more, you know, Halloween is much more focused on
the building of tension through proximity and terror and perspective
and all that kind of stuff. Absurd gets into a
lot more just gross, explicit sort of meat exercises, but
it has very similar plot dynamics. So both movies are

(06:08):
about a seemingly indestructible killer who escapes from a facility
of some kind and strikes out with random murders in
a nearby neighborhood. Well, actually no, in Absurd it's not
a nearby neighborhood for some reason. He goes to a
different country. But in both cases strikes out with random
murders in a neighborhood with no discernible motive.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Yeah, just random killings.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
Both movies follow babysitters as the sort of the victims
and protagonists in a way. Both movies have a kid
who refers to the killer as the Boogeyman. You remember
that's in Halloween, and they really emphasize that in Absurd
as well. And in both cases the killer is pursued
by a sort of eccentric, obsessive foreign cleric, and in

(06:55):
the case of Halloween that's Donald Pleasant, says Doctor Loomis
in this movie, it is a Greek priest. So you
can see a lot of similarities, but you can see
differences as well. And one that I think is interesting
is exactly what makes Halloween so so effective as horror

(07:16):
in a way is its restraint, the way in which
it really like takes its time, the way in which
you know, it plays with as I was saying, distance
and perspective, you know, showing things in the background of
shots instead of just going for immediate jump scares and
so forth. Absurd is the exact opposite. It does not
play with restraint. It plays to excess.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Though it does take its time in some of the sites.
That's true, yeah, but not necessarily in a good way.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
I mean, it'll like really take its time showing how
long a murder takes to complete. Yeah, but no, it
also does take its time. I mean, yeah, it does
have the killer lurking in the background sometimes as well,
so in some ways you've got that element going on.
It's kind of a Halloween clone, but with Italian excess sensibilities.

(08:03):
On the other hand, I would say this is an
Italian horror movie of the early nineteen eighties. And while
Absurd does earn a number of superlatives, I'm not trying
to put it down here. One thing I do think
it kind of makes it stand out is it does
not manage to be as visually exciting as a lot
of the Italian horror movies of this period that we love.

(08:24):
In fact, I would say it almost has a pointedly
intentionally drab, lifeless and colorless visual style. The sets all
seem to be various shades of white, brown, yellow, and tan.
There's not much, really any use of colored lighting that
I can recall. There aren't any beautiful vistas or stained

(08:45):
glass effects or anything like that. It is an almost
intentionally quite drab looking film.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah, I mean de Motto gets into he gets into
some creative territory with some of the shots, and he
makes I think he makes pretty good use of the
location in some scenes. But yeah, this is not a
movie you seek out for its rich colors or its
amazing production design. There's not even any monster makeup, just
no grimy gore. And I think most people who seek

(09:14):
it out aren't going to seek it out for its
reputation as a low budget video nasty and stick with
it for some of its well absurd choices. You know,
because despite its reputation. It's not the gorious film from
this time period, nor is it the most disturbing by
any stretch. It's worth noting, especially with Dematto here, that

(09:34):
there's no nudity in this film at all, virtually no
sexual content of any kind. So it's amazingly tame on
that side of the exploitation scales, I would say. Yeah. Also,
despite the American title, it's worth noting that it's I
don't know, you could make a strong argument that this
film is not really absurd. It's not a surrealistic film,

(09:58):
it's not psychedel But again, I think three things help
it to stand out from a lot of the other
slot films of the time period. It's got a fun score,
there are some weird choices that are made, I think
some deliberately and some just via the speed of the production.
And then you've got the screen presence, near constant screen
presence of George Eastman.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Which alone puts this film in a kind of rare category.
I mean, everybody, even if you don't know anything about
like these Italian exploitation movies and you don't know who
George Eastman is, I think if you see a movie
with George Eastman in it. You're gonna remember him. You're
gonna be like, who was that guy?

Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yeah? Yeah, A lot of times it's a small role.
He's come up in films before. He pops up, for instance,
in The Hands of Steel that we watched a while back,
and here he gets a chance to shine.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
Now, regarding the question you said, the movie is not
even that absurd, I was wondering if maybe the absurd
title refers not to the more common usage like you
were saying there, comparing it to something that is psychedelic
or surreal. Maybe we often use the word just to
mean like weird, illogical, or unreasonable. I was wondering if

(11:09):
it is not that usage of absurd, but the philosophical
usage a lah absurdism, the core tenets of which are
that the universe is meaningless and our lives are meaningless,
and that much of the struggle of human life and
so many of our conflicts and contradictions arise because people
are trying to find the meaning in meaningless things.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
All right, all right, I hear what you're laying down.

Speaker 3 (11:34):
Well, yeah, so I think the movie Absurd is quite
The plot is quite compatible with the view that life
is meaningless. You know, the attacks are completely random. And
I wonder if George Eastman's problem as a character is
that he is engaged in a futile search for the
meaning of life, and that search involves power drills and
bandsaws and so forth.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
It is interesting that he does not have a signature weapon.
He just makes use of what is immediately around him
and doesn't carry anything with him.

Speaker 3 (12:03):
It's usually powered mechanisms, isn't it Not in every case,
but that's kind of strange. He likes like a he
likes a weapon you can plug into the wall.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Yeah, and he'll drag you through the house to get
to it. It's not just a matter of like what's
immediately around me. It's like did I see an oven earlier? Yeah,
there's got to be a kitchen around here somewhere. We'll
spend five minutes searching for it.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
So if we haven't warned you enough already, do be
warned that this movie does have some really gross violence
in it. So if you're going to watch it, be prepared.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, And I also, I don't want to oversell this
movie like sometimes, you know, I'm big on really championing
a film and saying like there's this is a hidden gym,
or there's some there are some diamonds in this one.
This is a film that a lot of people don't like.
Even we're into into horror, you know, we'll give it
maybe like mediocre reviews. So if you're on the fence

(12:53):
about seeing absurd there's a very strong chance you're not
going to like it. So fair warning. This might be
a case where you just want to hear us talk
about it. But if if you're into this sort of thing, well,
you know, dive in because there's there is some absurdity.
There is some weirdness here that I thought was pretty fun.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
Speaking of the absurdity and the weirdness, just a few
things I want to call out at the beginnings, these
these strange contradictions in the movie, where there are things
where I don't even know how to characterize them really
because they contain contradictions. One of them is the sets
in this film which have this They are simultaneously opulent

(13:34):
and squalid, do you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
Yeah, yeah, Like the one of the key, the key
set in the film, the key location is this obvious
Italian villa, you know, and it's clearly has old bone
spacious interiors, but the way that the space is decorated
at times feels very sparse and slapped together. And it's

(13:58):
also we'll get back to this more, but this is
essentially presented to us as an American home where Americans
live and are ready for some American football. And i've
this with suits of armor inside that. Yes, yes, so
it's it's a weird missmash And I think this is
ultimately one of its charms, you know, you know, at
least watching it as an American, you know, it is

(14:21):
seeing the sort of mismatch of things.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
Another thing, what is going on with people's accents in
this movie. The babysitter is a great example. She seems
to go from I've heard I hear English accent at
some point, like a very a very formal kind of
received pronunciation accent. Sometimes I hear Irish, sometimes I hear Italian,
sometimes I hear American. It is all over the place.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Well, you have to remember Absurd as a prestige picture
with an international cast, so you know it was you know,
it's not, but it was conceived and produced not so
much for native Italian audiences, but to be shipped out
to various international markets, each of their own particular and
shifting censorship standards, And so we have a predominantly Italian cast,
but with some like UK and I guess, and I

(15:09):
guess largely UK talent thrown in there as well as
this American setting, though again everything was filmed in Italy. Okay.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
I was just thinking before we get to the elevator pitch,
I was thinking of like three different ways of categorizing
mad slasher villains in movies like this. One is the
question we already addressed of is there a motive or not?
Sometimes the motive of the slasher is like revenge or something,
and other times there is no motive. This is a
case of no motive, firmly on the random violence into

(15:39):
the scale.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah. Yeah, this is on the Halloween end of the spectrum,
as opposed to say the burning or Nightmare on Elm Street,
where there is some symbolans of vengeance bound up in
the motives of the killer.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
Yeah, or the original Friday the thirteenth.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, that's right. I kind of forget
because he kind of becomes just a mindless killing machine
and the franchise later on, certainly by the time he
takes Manhattan.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Yeah, exactly. Okay, that's criteria number one. Criterion number two
is the form, the form and costuming of the slasher villain.
Do they wear a mask or are they physically altered
in some way this case, no, he's just Georgie Sman. No,
no makeup, no mask, no nothing. He's just a guy.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
I mean an interesting looking guy, but just a guy.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah. For much of it, Like he's just wearing like
jeans and a shirt. Like, he's just wearing like and
I'd assume he's just normal clothes. Okay.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
Third distinction I would make is is this mad slasher
the beneficiary of any kind of supernatural intervention or magic?
And in this case, I would say, once again, no,
this is a super powered slasher. But it's not like
in the later Halloween sequels where we discover that Michael
Myers is some kind of like reincarnated Celtic deity or something. No,

(16:57):
he's just a guy, except we get a science fiction
explanation for why he is so strong and why bullets
do not stop him. It's it's because he was the
result of some experiment in a lab or. I think
they say there was a contamination. They don't get deep
into the explanation. But he is a product of science,
not magic.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah. Yeah, The explanation is a little garble. There's some
contradictions there we'll get into, but essentially it's like a
weapons X program. He has a mutant healing factor. It's
explicitly stated. He's kind of like the Italian or I
guess the Greek saber tooth here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
So I feel like all three of these distinctions push
it more into the philosophical absurdism side of the scale, right,
that he is just a man like he's not physically
represented in any unusual way, that his motives are non existent,
it's just random, and that there is no magic or

(17:55):
supernatural intervention of any kind. He's just a product of
a science experiment gone wrong.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Well, building on that and in lieu of an actual
elevator pitch, I'm going to read a quote from Albert
Camu the myth of Sisyphus. Thus, I draw from the
absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and
my passion. Bravo wow, I mean it is revolting. So,

(18:22):
and I think we're gonna we're gonna skip trailer audio
on this one. In part because the trailer is just
music and screaming. I believe, oh yeah, I would be
inclined to include it if we had a narrator saying absurd,
but they don't.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
I'm going to go on record here and say, even
for horror movies, I do not like trailers that are
just full of screaming. Not a fan. I like a
narrator or at least some clips of dialogue and ominous music.
This is the screaming. Save it for the climax of
the film. I'm I'm not interested in hearing just three
minutes of screaming to preview a movie.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
Absolutely all right. So if at this point you're like, okay,
and I do actually want to watch Absurd before finishing
this episode, well, then more power to you. Now. The
thing is Absurd has circulated under various titles and with
various cuts for a long time. The region free severin
Films BLU ray is hard to beat, though, featuring both

(19:16):
the original Italian cut that comes in at eighty eight
minutes and the uncensored US cut, which comes in at
ninety four minutes. The discs also features a handful of
informative interviews which I'll refer back to, and it has
the whole the entire score on CD as a bonus disc. Now,
if you are not into the physical media, you don't
have access to it, don't have time, and so forth.

(19:36):
You can also stream the US cut and it has
the box art for the Severeign release, so I guess
it's connected to that. You can stream it on TOV currently,
at least in the United States. I own the disc.
It's great. I think once I'm done with it, I'm
going to be donating it to Videodrome here in Atlanta,
so if you're local, you can rent the disc there.

(20:04):
All right, let's get into the folks who made this film,
starting at the top with the director, the producer, and
the cinematographer. It's Joe Tomato, who lived nineteen thirty six
through nineteen ninety nine, a truly legendary name in the
realm of Italian exploitation and trash cinema. We have mentioned
him numerous times on the show, often in connection to
other actors who are working in eurocinema or in Italian cinema,

(20:28):
sometimes also for things that he did besides directing. For instance,
he was at least one of the producers on troll Too.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
Was he involved at all in Shocking Dark?

Speaker 2 (20:37):
You know, I don't think he was, but we will
have a Shocking Dark connection here in just a bit. Okay. So,
Joe Tomato is one of the many monikers that he
used for his directorial work over the years. It's just
the one that seemed to stick the most. But his
birth name was Artista day Masa Chesi. We're going to
keep referring to him as Joe Tomato though. So Joe

(21:00):
Tomano did everything in film at one point or another,
in part because, you know, based on an interview, the
interviews that I've seen with him, in interviews with George Eastman,
who worked with him multiple times, he's a guy who
loves cinema and you know, love the craft of cinema. Anyway,
I think he often said that he was not an
artist and did not see himself as an artist, but
he clearly, like you know it, was really into the

(21:22):
craft of making films and all. But also he was
notoriously cheap and was generally operating on a shoe string budget.
You know, make it fast, make it cheap. Eastman has
pointed out in interviews that like if they could do
it with one take. They would do it with one take,
you know. And he wasn't the type of director to
instruct the actors at all. So if it was a

(21:43):
good actor, you know, you might get a good performance.
If they were green, it was going to be as
green as it came out, you know. It just wasn't
his thing, Eastman says, And to instruct and build upon
the performance.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
One take, that's what I love that. That's like the
ed would rule, right, you know, why do it again
when it's perfect?

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yeah? Yeah, And we've got to We've got to crank
this out, you know. Yea. So yeah. These were the
defining qualities of his work, you know, is that he
really loved the craft. He wanted to do everything, and
he wanted to do it cheap. But he was also
said to be pretty easy going, humorous about his productions,
gave collaborators room to do their thing, but would, as

(22:21):
Eastman put it, far, rather do ten cheap films than
one film with a bigger budget. De Motto himself for Variety,
Yeah yeah, I mean demto himself would say, like the
pay is the same, Why would I do that one
big film and put all that work into it. I'll
just do ten cheap films and it'll be the same
for me at the end of the day. Wow. Now
he's been observed that this this also really held him

(22:42):
back because he thinks that Dematto could have had more
success if he'd specialized as a producer and as a
cinematographer and like let other people direct. But he kept
on directing, and when the demand for Italian genre films
went south, he worked on what was internationally marketable, and
that's something to keep mine with a lot of these
films like this, this film in particular, it was not

(23:04):
really made for Italian audiences. I think it did, you know,
show in theaters very briefly. It was mostly to be
shipped out to other markets in various cuts, And when
the demand for those sorts of films went away, it meant,
you know, he had to turn to other things that
were internationally marketable, which meant mostly adult films. But during
his prime he shot pretty much everything, like every type

(23:26):
of B movie anyway, from you know, from gladiator flicks
to post apocalyptic gladiator flicks. And there's a lot of
garbage in there, to be sure, But if the various
video nasties and cult classics worth mentioning. Here you have
the likes of seventy three's Death Smiles and a Murderer
seventy nine Beyond the Darkness. Oh and also there's a

(23:47):
tour the Fighting Eagle that one. I believe that that
or one of the a tour films was featured on
the Mystery Science Theater three thousand, twenty twenty Texas. Gladiators
and Endgame from eighty three also very Emmanuel films in
the erotic genre. In nineteen eighty he collaborated with George
Eastman on the film and Throwpophagus, the predecessor to this film,

(24:11):
and it was enough of a hit internationally that they
came back for a kind of spiritual sequel, spiritual successor,
and that is this film absurd.

Speaker 3 (24:20):
That is one I've heard warnings about, even from people
who are like hardened low budget gory horror movie fans.
They're like, that one is disgusting.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
Yeah, it's it's gross, it's you know, it's it's shot
in grease. That it's very really grimy. So it does
have Eastman as the villain, as the cannibalistic monster, though
in that film he has like a bald cap and
some monster makeup on, and that film famously ends with

(24:51):
the monster being like partially disemboweled, and then Eastman's character
pulls out his own guts and takes a big bite
out of them and dies. So that's that's the kind
of film it is. And it had various titles as
where like like the Grim Reaper.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
And so forth, and they're like, for absurd, what if
you take the ending of that movie and start there exactly?

Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yeah, that's essentially what they do. We have a fun,
fun callback to that disemboweling sequence, all right. Yeah, getting
to the star, we lveray talked about him a little bit,
but Georgie'sman born nineteen forty two still with us as
of this recording. Not only does he play our central
monster who this is one of those films where this
character has both a first and last name in the credits,

(25:32):
which is ridiculous. Mikos Stinopolis. Never is I think either
name referred to?

Speaker 3 (25:39):
No, they do?

Speaker 2 (25:40):
They do? Do they? When they refer to Mikos Stanopolis,
where the.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
Detective is, oh, I can't wait to talk about him.
But the detective is interviewing the Greek priest who you
don't know was a priest at this point, and they're
talking about the killer. They say his name is whatever,
Mikos or Nicos, Stenopolis, whichever it is, and so they
say his last name. But it's not the only time
we have a slasher movie villain with the first and

(26:05):
last name. I admit it also did sound funny here,
But then I thought, wait a minute, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees,
Freddy Krueger, we know their first and last names. Why
does it feel weird here? I'm not sure, but it
did feel really funny when we got his whole name.
It just seems like a character who should not have
a name or something, or you wouldn't know what his
name was. They would just call him the being or something.

(26:27):
And yeah, it also I think is especially funny because
it's George Eastman, and something about the way George Eastman
looks in this movie is corrupted by knowing that he
has a full name. Does that make any sense?

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah? Yeah, so obviously the name George Eastman is also
a moniker. This is the stage name, one of many
stage names about ultimately the one that's stuck for Luigi Montefiori,
and he is but He's always going to be George Eastman.
This is the name that's going to be written in
b movie lore forever. And you just have to see

(27:08):
him to know what we're talking about. He pops up
in a lot of things, Spaghetti western, certainly at first,
horror films, post apocalyptic pictures. At least in his prime
he was he was at least six ' six, but
I've also seen him promoted as six ' nine. It's
sometimes hard to tell and show business how tall someone
actually is, but very tall. Man looks very tall on

(27:30):
the screen, lean but muscular, you know, handsome guy. But
also there's like a fairal you know, like in quality.
You know, there's a lean and hungry look to him
that he's that allows him to like naturally lean into
villain and heavy rolls.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
He does not look trustworthy. He has a face that
looks like a like a predatory mammal kind of wolfin.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, yeah, so you know that's what you get Oodlezov
in this film. But he was in a lot of stuff.
We already mentioned eighty six's Hand of Steel, Hands of Steel.
He was also in let's see nineteen ninety The Bronx Warriors.
Then there's twenty nineteen, after the fall of New York
Blast Fighter Rabid Dogs. He had attended film school and

(28:19):
his acting credits go back at least in nineteen sixty six,
but he also wrote screenplays, and if I remember correctly
from past interviews I've watched, he was sometimes asked to
work over bad scripts and make them like at least
less bad. And De Motto and Eastman first worked together
on Cormac of the Mounties from nineteen seventy five. This

(28:40):
is a film where the lead actor apparently rejected the
existing screenplay, but it was but after they had already
set the shooting schedule for the picture based on the
old script, and so Eastman had to be brought in
to write a brand new script to please the lead
but also appease the shooting schedule that was already agreed upon,
and it ended up at least working to some degree.

(29:03):
So this led to an extended writer director partnership on
various exploitation films, some of them really grimy in various countries,
including the aforementioned Greek cannibal film, in which Eastman starred
and also was the writer. And yeah, that was enough
of a success. They came back and made this film.
Eastman went on to direct the nineteen ninety film Metamorphosis,

(29:24):
but quit acting around the same time to focus on
his screenwriting, and apparently enjoyed a fair amount of success
writing for higher budget Italian television projects. He also had
a couple of There are also a couple of non
exploitation acting credits worth mentioning in his filmography. He played
the minotaur in nineteen sixty nine's Fellini Satirricon, and he
plays the giant Goliath in the nineteen eighty five Biblical

(29:47):
epic King David, starring Richard gear.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
Hmm, I wonder if they reused because David's got a
Chopcali It's head off. I wonder if they reused the
head prop from absurd in.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
That I don't know. I was wondering whatever happened to
the head prop from here, Like, I hope somebody has it.
It could go for a pretty penny on the open,
you know, exploitation fan cinema market.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
So we already mentioned earlier that this is a slasher
movie villain who does not wear a mask or any
special makeup. He's just a guy. And I think it
was before we started recording that we were talking about
actors who can actors who can pull this off where
just their their unmodified look is enough to be a

(30:32):
movie monster. You know, you got Tour Johnson, And of
course sometimes they would give him like contacts in his
eyes or something, but you know, mostly unmodified look can
be a monster. You got Tour, you got George Eastman.
I know there are other people like this, but I,
you know, I sometimes I kind of wonder, like, what
did that feel like for these actors like tor and that,

(30:53):
Like I can be a movie monster without changing the
way I look.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
It's interesting, you know. One, this is a a very
strange comparison to make because we're talking about just an
entirely different stratosphere of acting ability. But I also can't
help but think of Anthony Hopkins in the Silence of
the Lambs. You know, they definitely, you know, they definitely
use makeup on him, but it's not monster makeup, and

(31:19):
a whole lot of it. Of course, hinges on Hopkins'
fabulous performance in that film. Yeah, he is a tremendous actor,
but he is just he is a monster, and you
buy it completely in that film with minimal I would
say as far as monster makeup goes minimal makeup effects
to make it come of the life.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
I also realized there's a fairly i think famous image
of George Eastman doing this absolutely satanic grin as he
like looks down at something, and that comes from this movie,
in the scene where he is putting a bandsaw to
illicit use.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
Yeah, he doesn't maintain this energy throughout the entire performance,
but in key moments it really pops. Yeah. All right,
let's get into the church and state elements of the picture,
because we got it. We already mentioned the claret who
is chasing after our killer, and then of course we
also have to have some local law enforcement. The priest

(32:15):
who's discredited as father is played by Edmund Perdome, who
of nineteen twenty six through two thousand and nine English
born Italian actor with extensive stage credits on Broadway and
in the Royal Shakespeare Theater. Apparently, he had a leading
role in the nineteen fifty four twentieth century Fox epic
The Egyptian and was also in fifty three's Julius Caesar.

(32:36):
He worked steadily in various Italian and euro genre pictures,
including Pieces twenty nineteen. After the Fall of New York,
a tour night Child from seventy five, and in nineteen
eighty four he directed and starred in the British horror
film Don't Open Till Christmas.

Speaker 3 (32:54):
I think what they were going for with this guy
in Absurd is Greek Gregory Peck. Yeah, so he's playing
a Greek priest character. And certainly I think there are
elements of Doctor Loomis from Halloween in the here too,
but I think they're also trying to get a bit
of the the Gregory Peck vibe from the Omen and

(33:15):
it helps that Edmund Purdham looks a decent amount like
Gregory Peck.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
Yeah, yeah, he does. And this is I think probably
the best actor in the picture. I don't know how
much evidence of that we see. I don't see if
this is not a picture that really asked much of
the actors present, But you know, he does bring a
silent dignity to his scenes as much as is as
possible in a Joe Tomato picture. And in interviews, Eastman

(33:41):
spoke highly of him, saying that you know, they were
surprised they were able to get him for the picture,
for a picture like this, and they pointed out that
he's one of those actors that took his craft so
so seriously and was so professional that you know, he
was just super professional on set, even in a low
budget genre piece like this. Like we've heard similar things
about like say Peter Cushing for example.

Speaker 3 (34:02):
Yeah, yeah, almost nobody in this movie has really given
much of a chance to actually act. He may get
the most opportunity of anyone. There are other actors who
get the idea that if they had a role to
do something with, they might be quite good. I kind
of felt that about Hanya Kochansky, but she who plays
the mom in the family. But again, you know, this

(34:25):
is not a movie that's written for dramatic performances, right.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
Right, Oh yeah, the law end of the spectrum here.
Charles Burromo plays Sergeant Ben Engelman. He lived nineteen thirty
three through two thousand and seven. Scottish actor who worked extensively,
if not exclusively, in Italian cinema and in Italy based productions.
He also did English voice dubbing. He does appear in

(34:51):
Lady Hawk as insane prisoner.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
I thought this guy was and this sort of is
a class of actor, if you know what I mean.
Rob the kind of actor who reminds you of about
fifteen other different actors, you know, who keeps giving you
notes of like, oh here, he's kind of reminding me
of so and so. I would say the two most
prominent likenesses for me were Robin Williams and Darren McGavin.

(35:15):
But like a haggard Robin Williams.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah, I think that works. Yeah, Yeah, he is very haggard.
He's one of the stereotypical horror film police chief type
character who is just really tired, but also only devoted
to clearing cases. That's all he cares about.

Speaker 3 (35:33):
Yeah, that's right, though I think he's also prone to
taking it too personal.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
If you know what you mean. Yeah. Now you mentioned
Hanya Kochanski playing the mom. She plays Carol Bennett. So
the Bennetts are like the key threatened family in the picture. Yeah.
So she plays Carol Bennett, the mom and her two
of her real life children play the daughter Katya and

(35:57):
the son Willie. So it's really interesting when I was
looking into this. So she is a former like Croatian singer,
model and actress, just a handful of credits, but she
was married at one point to American actor who worked
extensively in europroductions. William Berger. We talked about him in

(36:18):
our discussion of the nineteen eighty three Hercules film. He
plays King Minos in that. And so the two kids
in this, one of them is is Burger's biological son
with Kochanski, and the other child, the older child, he
was her stepfather. So yeah, the children Katya Berger and

(36:41):
Kazimir Berger. Katya born nineteen sixty six, Kazimir born nineteen
seventy four. And as I was looking, I saw that, okay,
she's apparently a singer. Maybe I can find some information
about her singing career. So I was doing some searches
on her name and I ended up running across something
on the UK's National Portrait Gallery. And it turns out

(37:03):
there are a series of nude portraits that photographs that
were taken by Russian born fine art photographer Idakar, who
have nineteen oh eight through nineteen seventy four. And in
these photos, which you know, very tasteful, you know, art photography,
here we have Hanya and she is pregnant with her son, Kasimir,

(37:26):
the boy in this film at the time, and in
one of the pictures Katya is also present.

Speaker 3 (37:31):
I would not have expected absurd to have, you know,
like one degree connections to fine art photography.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah. And then on Getty Images, I found some images
from the opening of a presentation of these images, and
here we are. There's Hanya and her son Kazimir from
twenty eleven. So here's the little boy from this picture
as a grown man.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
Well, this is so sweet. Mother and son here pictured
in twenty eleven. They both look very proud stand by
the photos. I guess this is it some kind of
gallery showing or something. Yeah, yeah, so that's great. But
I have to say this is the case always pretty
much in Italian movies of this period, if they have
a child character, the dubbing is so creepy. And the

(38:18):
same thing here, the dubbing of this kid's voice, the
son Willie, the character in the movie, it's so unwholesome.
I don't know how to explain. I don't know in
this case if it was dubbed by an adult. It
may have actually been dubbed by a child voice actor.
I don't know if it was Casimir himself. But why
is it that the dubbed voices of children in these

(38:38):
movies just always sounds so wrong?

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Yeah, I mean I think they are often done by
like adult women, as is the case of the House
by the Cemetery, so similar vibe here. Also generally, you know,
with child actors in general, I mean there's sometimes a
certain there's they are children. Yeah, sometimes there's just kind
of a wild element too. So you know, you have
a kid in this picture, you're maybe getting one or

(39:02):
two takes and then you're having somebody dub the voice.
So the boy does feel a little bit almost fair
all at times in this picture.

Speaker 3 (39:10):
Yeah, I want to watch the game. Oh we haven't
even talked about the game yet.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
They can't wait to get to the case about the game.
The dad, Ian Bennett is played by not William Berger,
but an actor by the name of William of Ian Dandy.
And yeah, he just had some minor parts in a
few different Italian productions and did some English language translation
on some pictures.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
So the actor is named Ian, the character is named Ian,
but in this movie he is referred to by at
least one other character as Ion.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
All right, three victims to profile here really quickly. I'll
try and streamline these a bit. We have Annie Bella
playing Emily, the nurse she lived nineteen fifty six through
twenty twenty four French actress with a at the time
distinctive shortcut blonde hair style that work and a lot
of Italian erotic and exploitation films before I believe if

(40:05):
I'm reading correctly, earned a degree and ended up going
into social work. Her films include nineteen eighty's House on
the Edge of the Park in nineteen seventy six Is
Black Velvet. Then we also have Peggy the Babysitter, played
by Cindy Leadbetter, American model and actress whose credits include
seventy eight, Star Crash, nineteen eighty four's Rats, Night of Terror,
and The Adventures of Hercules.

Speaker 3 (40:26):
Wait, was was George Eastman in Star Crash? If not?
Why not? They could have used him?

Speaker 2 (40:32):
I know, yeah, if he's not in there, a missed opportunity.
And then finally, I'm not going to go into the
depth lines. We'll come back to this guy when we
look at one of his pictures. But Mikaelay Suave born
nineteen fifty seven plays a biker in this, a biker
who is brutally murdered by George Eaestman. This is the
man who would go on to direct such films as

(40:52):
nineteen eighty nine's The Church and nineteen ninety four Cemetery Man.
At this time, he was just an up and coming
a young man who just wanted to be involved in films.
And if you were, if you had this kind of
enthusiasm and you didn't mind not being paid, Joe Tomato
was here for you. And so Joe Tomato is one
of several different directors that he worked with early on,

(41:16):
including others included like Dario Argento and the Burgo Bava,
And of course he'd also gone to work some with
Terry Gilliam. So just kind of a fun little ultimately
a cameo. We get to see Suave and his motorbike
in this picture.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
He's one of a gang of motorcycling youths that feel
almost quite lightly directed.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Yes, all right, and then finally the music here is.
It's another score by Carlo Maria Cordillo born nineteen fifty two.
We talked about him recently because he did the score
for Shocking Dark.

Speaker 3 (41:49):
Ah. Okay, there you go.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Yeah, So I'm not going to go into the full
profile on him, but I will say that the I
think the score for Absurd is a lot of fun,
you got some synth, you got some prog rock elements.
You can find the track Absurd on streaming currently. This
one starts off with kind of like a wonderful, atmospheric
kind of vibe and you know it very ambient, but

(42:12):
then you know, get some organs thrown in there before
transitioning into this heavy, overly dramatic prog rock build towards
obvious on screen violence.

Speaker 3 (42:23):
The use of music in the movie is occasionally funny
because of the way it pairs this soft, melancholy melody
with George Eastman just wandering around at night looking for victims. Yeah,
Like it makes it almost kind of like, oh the sadness,
he's so lonely.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
The sever in Blu Ray, as I mentioned, includes the
whole score as a CD bonus disc, and then the
excellent Death Waltz Record Company put the score out on
a beautiful double vinyl back in twenty fifteen, with this
really grotesque and beautiful bit of cover art by Wes
ben Scotter, combining two of the grisliest moments in the film.

(43:05):
Oh You're right.

Speaker 3 (43:06):
So here we have George Eastman with his guts hanging
out and he his intestines are spelling the word absurd.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
Beautiful. Wait beautiful?

Speaker 3 (43:14):
Did we look at the I think Severn Films also
puts out a sticker of George Eastman with his guts
hanging out, but in the sticker they're spelling chow.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Also brilliant. Also brilliant.

Speaker 3 (43:34):
All right, you ready to talk about the plot, let's
do it. So after the credits we get a montage
of different opening images. First of all, we see some
action inside a house. There is a young woman tracing
out circles on drafting paper with a compass tool. So
she you know, she's got one of those, it's like
the spike and the pencil attaches, so she's she's making
perfect circles on paper. But she's actually lying in a

(43:58):
hospital bed, and so she what she's drawing on is
like this pad that sort of set up over her
hospital bed. And she's in a room in a large house,
restrained to the cot with straps and some kind of
brace around her neck, jaw and chin. I guess we
could go ahead and mention the house and the other
people present.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
So this is sort of.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
The house the villa that we were alluding to earlier.
That is big full of open spaces. I think is
supposed to be an American home, but it's this strange,
huge Italian mansion with suits of armor and roaring fireplaces
and stuff, but also just weird, as I said, kind
of squalid touches.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Like the.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
Dad's liquor collection we see later is like up on
a mantle over a fireplace, and it just looks like
a dorm room stash. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (44:51):
Yeah, I was like, I haven't seen this before. Am
I supposed to be doing it like this? Should I
have a mantle for my liquor bottles?

Speaker 3 (44:57):
So anyway, the girl in the hospital is named Katya.
She is in traction to treat a spinal disorder. Her
mother is Carol, her little brother is Willie, and their
babysitter is Peggy. Now, meanwhile, somewhere else outdoors, someone is
running in the woods. Why that's George Eastman running through

(45:19):
the woods. He's looking massive, shaggy, covered in sweat. He's
got the beard, long hair and with the beard in
the mop like haircut, he looks kind of like a
giant seventies era beetle or maybe one of the begs.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Do you see that? Yeah, he looks like like the
scariest dude in the disco.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
Yeah, yeah, killer Beji, And he is being chased through
the forest by an older man in a black trench coat.
They're going to play up a mid story reveal that
the guy chasing George Eastman is actually done Dundune a priest.
They show that by ripping open his coat and revealing
the clerical collar. But I got that he was a

(45:59):
priest from the very first time we saw him. I
don't know, He's like he's dressed in all black and
his collar is hidden. There's like, you know, coming up
his neck. This was never in doubt for me. Did
you feel the same?

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Yeah? And plus he also he doesn't pull out a
gun or anything, right, So yeah, he doesn't seem like
he's law enforcement. Why are you chasing an adman?

Speaker 3 (46:16):
Yeah? So, but also the priest, he sort of he
clutches at his chest as he runs, so it's like
he's not cut out. He's not cut out for this. Now,
back at the house, the mom comes into Kachia's room
and sees her drawing circles upon circles with her compass
and encourages her to do something else. It's like, oh, Katya,
you're you're making drawing hundreds of circles? Again, wouldn't you

(46:38):
rather watch television or something? And I was wondering, does
this ever pay off in any way or do we
get any kind of explanation about it? I know there
is a payoff with the compass tool, like a something
is done with that later, But I mean the drawing
circles part. Is there a reason she's drawing hundreds of
circles on top of each other? Or do the circle

(47:01):
patterns ever connect to anything?

Speaker 2 (47:03):
No? I don't think. I don't think the circles actually do.
It made me think about that moment in The Simpsons
about kids being obsessed with spirographs or how they should
be obsessed with spier graphs and they're not anymore. Oh yeah,
but yeah, this doesn't quite come I guess it kind of.
I guess the idea is maybe it connects to other
moments and other films where children drawing things does connect
into the plot. But I kind of liked it as

(47:26):
texture even if it doesn't go anywhere.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well it just made me think, wait
a minute, is Katya is she into geometry or is
she obsessed with I don't know. I don't know why
she's doing this. She likes circus, I guess so, well,
who doesn't.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
One of the best.

Speaker 3 (47:43):
I agree. Back outside, the chase is still happening, but
eventually the crypto priest chases George Eastman onto the wrought
iron gate surrounding a big mansion, and this is the
house with the people we just saw inside it. George
Eastman seems to be frantic escape. I don't exactly know
why he's running from the priest because, as we come

(48:04):
to see, he's basically invulnerable, so he should I don't know.
It seems like he would be doing the chasing, not
the running away. But he runs away. He climbs the gate,
but he falls and ends up impaling his midsection on
the cold iron spikes of this gate. After this, George
Eastman what we see inside the house and there's a
knock on the door and the little boy goes. He's

(48:28):
like hanging out with his babysitter. I think they're eating breakfast.
And it's sort of confusing because in this interior shot
we see out the window and it's pitch black outside,
totally dark, but it was just daylight when we were
so it doesn't match. But anyway, the little boy goes
to answer the door, opens it up, and oh no,
here's George Eastman standing here with his intestines hanging out

(48:50):
of his stomach.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
Yeah, with eyes wide, Yeah, sweaty. It's wonderful. This is
our shocking callback to the disembowment scene at the end
of the previous film. That is again just this is
just a spiritual successor. I don't think we're to connect
these characters in any other real sense.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
Now, after this, we go to a surgery scene, a
long surgery scene, one of multiple and George Eastman is
on a hospital. He's on a hospital bed being operated on.
His intestines are still hanging out. And this scene is
an interesting mix of what feels realistic and what does not.

(49:33):
So it's a full surgical setup that has a lot
of authentic looking props and apparatus. But then whenever they
show a close up of the surgical action, which they're
going to show quite a few, the doctors and nurses
just appear to be like poking and tossing the guts
around like they're moving food in a frying pan.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
Yeah, they're essentially just pushing around pig flesh and calentestines
here on Georgie Sman's stomach, I believe. So wow. Yeah,
it is a mix of of something that looks real
and is reel and in some respects, but yeah, it's
also like fake.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
Oh and Eastman wakes up during the procedure and they
get him to go back to sleep. I think they,
you know, give him give him higher dose.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
Meanwhile, elsewhere and now it's nighttime. So this is one
of those movies just cuts back and forth between day
and night all the time. Uh, it's nighttime and we
see bikers harassing an old man named Shaughnessy. There's this
old man like wandering in the middle of the street,
swigging from a giant green bottle. These these young bikers
circle around him and yell at him and then motor away,

(50:38):
and then the cops come. Have a turn. A police
car pulls up and we first meet our police detective
Sergeant Engelman. Engleman, leaning out of a car window, says,
if I catch you drunk just once more, I'm gonna
have to lock you up. And Shaughnessy, in a quite
unconvincing way, says, I'm not drunk, and then takes a

(50:59):
big swig of his green bottle. But before this situation
can resolve, Ingleman gets a call on the radio that
there is a badly wounded man at the hospital, so
he has to go check that out. This leads back
to more surgery. I hope you like this, there's plenty
of it. And then after the surgery is done, one
of the nurses who is assisting with the procedure talks

(51:19):
to the doctor. This is Emily, who we will meet
again later in the movie because she moonlights as a
home care nurse for the main family, taking care of
Kacia and helping with her attraction. Emily and the doctor
talk about this dude they were operating on. It's one
of those I've never seen anything like it conversations. Apparently
the issue is that quote his blood coagulated while I

(51:43):
was in the middle of operating on him. So yeah,
I don't know. His blood's clotten up really fast.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
Yeah, there's a lot of mumbo jumbo as they're describing
what's up with his mutant healing factor. But it's either
this scene or a subsequent scene where the doctor gives
us the official medical diagnosis of absurd.

Speaker 3 (52:02):
That's right, now next, we have a scene where Sergeant
Engleman is interviewing He's back at the house and he's
interviewing Carol the mom about the guts incident at her
home earlier. He's smoking a cigarette in her living room
with Willie on the couch next to him and gruffly
explaining his guts were all destroyed. They don't think he'll
pull through with the kids right there, and the mom

(52:25):
says she thinks that he was a thief intent on
robbing the house. Engleman doesn't seem sold on that, but
she also explains their plans.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
For the night.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
This is, oh boy, this is exciting. She and her
husband are going to go to a neighbor's house to
watch the game, the first of many references, and we
get evil glares from Willie during this conversation. But they're
going to Yeah, they're going to go over to the
forest's house to watch the game. And they don't say
here that they're going to eat spaghetti and watch the game,

(52:54):
but that is the plan.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
Oh yes, Oh my god. This is one of my
favorite elements of the film. And we get this scene
later on of Americans in this American home, which is
actually an Italian villa, watching American football, actual American football
on the telly and chowing down on spaghetti. And it's
either one of these things that is like a fun

(53:17):
little bit of humor that he's been in the motto
slid into the picture, or it's a complete accident it
just happenstance. In either case, it's amazing. I am not
really a football watcher a football fan, but if there
was the prospect of absurd style spaghetti and football parties,
I would be interested. Oh.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
Absolutely, this is an amazing party. It takes place in
this another weird interior. There's a couch that Ian ends
up sitting on later when he's brooding about the fact
that he ran over George Eastman with his car and
didn't tell anybody.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:53):
He's sitting there brooding on this couch. That is the
pattern on the couch. It's more ornate than any picture
frame in the louver. And they're just all wolfing down
spaghetti with these plates. They're standing around holding plates of
spaghetti in their hands, not sitting at a table watching

(54:14):
football and shoveling the spaghetti. It's so good. Anyway, that's later.
The next thing that happens in the movie is that
the police find the priest, right, so you got Engleman
finds the priest who was chasing Eastman at the beginning.
He's wandering along a dark road in the night, and
Engleman pulls up and questions him. The priest, who we're

(54:35):
not supposed to know as a priest yet, claims his
car broke down, and Engleman says, it's a good thing
you ran into me. Everyone else is watching the game tonight, oh,
and he says it's Rams versus Steelers. Is that a
good game? I don't know. Is that an especially compelling game?

Speaker 2 (54:54):
I don't know in the early eighties, I don't know.
Football fans let us know.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
So next, Engleman goes to the hospital and he finds
Greek Drakmas in George Eastman's pants. They just bring him
Eastman's pants and he's going through the pockets and he's
like Drakmas and he connects that to the dude he
just ran into who was Greek as well. It's all
coming together now, and don't know what it means, but
he thinks this is significant. So Engelman is talking to

(55:21):
a nurse and he asks to see Eastman he can't,
not until he's recovered, and then he asks the nurse
for a description, to which she replies, he's huge, not
my type at all. What that's some writing. And then
also there's an incredibly awkward flirting scene between the cop

(55:44):
and the nurse some inappropriate comments. He hands back George
Eastman's pants and then leaves.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
Yeah, yeah, I love the handling of the pants. Here,
these gross pants that were worn by this psychopath here
that maybe they've been longered, hopefully they've been lunder.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
So the nurse goes back to the operating room where
Eastman is still on the table, and like another nurse
comes in to check on Eastman and he says, they
indicate his blood is reproducing itself at triple the normal rate. Wow,
that's that's a lot of blood.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (56:17):
Exactly, And then you know it's safe somehow. Now the
Greek guy, the other Greek guy is here at the hospital,
and he makes his way to the room that the
cop wasn't allowed to go to, and he's looking in
through a window in the door at Eastman and Eastman
wakes up, sees the dude and starts raging and has
to be restrained by hospital staff until they can get

(56:39):
him sedated, and this leads to two simultaneous scenes. One
of them is the scene where Sergeant Engleman gets the
Greek priest into a room and he interviews him about
what's going on. He's like, so you decided to come
to the hospital to get your car fixed?

Speaker 2 (56:55):
Is that it?

Speaker 3 (56:56):
What are you up to, mister? Are you responsible for
the wounds? He's got some great delivery in here, and
so the beginning of the explanation is coming out here.
But meanwhile there is nurse murder going on.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
Yeah, this is a grizzly sequence, quite disturbing, with the
shirtless Eastman emerging from the table here with the white
sheet following off of him, grabs a surgical drill and
uses it to slowly drill through the nurse's head, killing her,
skewering her brain with a drill coming out on the
other side of the head. Right.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
So the cops hear the commotion, they come running, but
by the time they get there, the east Man is
already gone, and instead there's just like a nurse hanging
out dead with a drill through her head. So here
we get the first of many scenes of George Eastman
just wandering through this village in the dark, and he's
back in his original clothes somehow, so he got his
jeans and Charity's not in his hospital scrubs anymore. He

(57:54):
walks the streets and we get this melancholy music, and
there's more interrogation between the police and the Greek priest.
So Engelman tries to intimidate him by he does this
whole routine with I'm just a dumb small town cop.
You better make me understand, and the priest explains. First
of all, he says there is a reality we do

(58:15):
not see that. This does not really satisfy the cop,
and so eventually they call in the doctor who operated
on George Eastman to help explain. So we get a
scene of the doctor putting up putting up X rays
of George Eastman's brain and saying it's extraordinary. I've never
seen such an extensive cerebral mass.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
And yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
So we learn his name is Nico Stenopolis or Miko Stonopolis,
whichever it is, and he is functionally immortal. His body
can regenerate dead cells, and his blood coagulates quickly to
heal any wounds. We also this is the scene where
the cop rips open the priest's coat to reveal his
priestly collar. But the priest says, I serve God with

(59:02):
biochemistry more than with rights and sermons. And apparently George
Eastman escaped from his laboratory quote after the contamination, so
they organized a great hunt, and that's how we got
to where we are now. But the one piece of evidence,
the one piece of useful information that the priest has

(59:22):
is it is his brain that is his weak point.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
Yeah, this of course makes very little sense because like
we're looking at scans at the brain and was like, oh,
look at that cerebral mass, Like his brain is doing stuff,
his brain's healing or he's healed wrong. But the brain
is also the weak point. He destroyed the brain, you
destroy the creature, which of course is true of everything.

Speaker 3 (59:44):
All right, well, this reduces very much to ramiro zombie logic.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
Yeah no.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
And also the priest says he is a creature of evil.
The spark of God was smothered the moment the devil
took possession of him. I think this is just metaphorical though,
because there's no indication of devil magic in the movie.
It's more like saying when I did these experiments on
him and he was contaminated, that also the devil took

(01:00:09):
possession of him.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
Yeah. Yeah, also probably you know, a less effective shadow
of some of the dialogue that we get in in
Halloween from.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
Loomis Yes, exactly. The evil has escaped, so we get
more of the Eastman walk about the slow music, and
eventually this leads up to him wandering into I believe,

(01:00:41):
an abattoir where there is a guy here who's some
kind of night janitor at the slaughterhouse, cleaning the floors,
and Eastman first tries to attack him with a butcher knife,
but then this slaughterhouse janitor runs and retrieves a gun
from his apron at work and tries to shoot Eastman

(01:01:02):
but that doesn't work, and then there's a long set
up to Eastman like putting this guy on a big
butcher block, and then he's like, yep, gonna get you
with the band saw right through the top of the head,
and he does.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Yeah, eventually does. This is a scene that manages to
be boring and gross at the same time, but we
do get that iconic smile.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
Oh I just made a connection. It's the Aphex Twin
album cover. It's the George Eastman smile is quite similar.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
Oh yeah, he loves his work. Then the next thing
we get, of course, is that the biker murder that
I think we alluded to earlier. And then so this
is when one one of the biker gang members gets
killed by Eastman. And then pretty much right away we
get the hit and run out of nowhere where the

(01:01:49):
dad accidentally clips Eastman with his car and just keep throwing.

Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
So eventually the dad is going to come back to
the house that Ian or Eon will come back, and
he's preoccupied by the fact that he did a hit
and run on east Man, and that leads to the
scene where he goes to his liquor collection on the mantle.
But eventually the mom and the dad are going to
go out to the friend's house to watch the game
and have spaghetti, and so that leaves the kids home

(01:02:17):
alone with first the babysitter and later the nurse, who
will huge surprise, become the next victims of east Man.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
Yeah, because Georgie Spen is for some reason drawn back
to this house. There's no lot reason for him to
come back here, but he's back here to get inside
and do murders, and I mean then and again. That's
pretty much what the rest of the film consists of.
Let's see some one fun little There's a scene where
the boy is watching television. There's some really boring looking
like living room dialogue scene that he really wants to watch,

(01:02:50):
and the babysitter likes is done. You're done, and he
gets a little upset.

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
I thought the boy wanted to watch the game.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
Oh, really wants to watch the game. Is at some
point watching some drama on TV and it's actually tame
scenes from a really grimy nineteen eighty Dematto film, which
is not a family movie. So I guess this is
another sort of in joke from Dematto.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
So it's not an explicit scene that we're watching, but
the joke is that this is from a Demato porn film.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
Yes, let's see from there. Yeah, we get so basically,
we're gonna get a babysitter murder, and we're then we're
gonna get the nurse murder. The babysitter murder is one
of these what's that sound outside? Oh, the dog got outside. Peggy,
the babysitter goes outside and gets a pickax to the head.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
Now, this is one of those movies that would absolutely
grotesquely violate the Gene Siskel test for movies, which is
he could not stand movies that ever depicted children being
in danger. For the second half of this whole movie,
just children are constantly in danger. Fortunately, neither of the
kids in the movie are ever harmed. They both make

(01:03:58):
it to the end, but it's just George Eastman running
around the house ominously threatening both of them and killing
babysitters and nurses until the end.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Well, yeah, I mean de Cisco's the whole thing was like,
it's a cheap trick. Yeah, and yes, of course, yeah,
de Motto is going to use cheap tricks. He's cheap. Yeah,
so yeah, it's it's it would be a solid criticism
of this film.

Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
But the kids get away. Who does not escape is Emily,
the nurse we met earlier. There's a weird scene of
she's like wandering in the woods on the what she
has an encounter with somebody in the woods on the way. Oh,
it's with Shaughnessy, the drunk guy.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Ye. Yes, he's like you drop this back there.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
But anyway, so she wait do I actually I don't
remember now does anything happen to Shaughnessy. Does he get
killed by Eastman?

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
If he does, I don't remember it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:49):
I don't remember it either. If he doesn't, that would
be an unusual choice for a film of this kind.
I mean, the old drunk man wandering around singing in
the dark. Is the is your classic you know murder
victim in these slasher movies.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
Yeah, it seems like the sort of thing that might
have been in the script, but they didn't have time
to film it, or gotten left on the cunning room
floor for some reason because you needed more surgery scenes.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
So anyway, there is a there's a whole setup to
another big murder scene where Eastman kills Emily, the nurse.
This scene, this scene is so gross and dumb.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Yeah, it takes forever, and it had it's it generally
walks that line between just padded tedium and legitimate shock,
like it's it's disturbing, but also it's like, man, we're
still doing this. Let's let's get it over with here. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
This, So the short version is that Eastman decides to
cook her in the oven while she's still alive, but
she somehow survives this process. And then comes back and
saves the kid from from Eastman. She like she's all
burned up as she runs out and saves the kid,
and then Eastman, I guess, kills her a second time.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
Yeah, because you can't just stab him in the neck
and expect to seal the deal. You've got to destroy
the brain.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
But the final showdown is between Katcha who has been
in traction in this hospital bed and an Eastman who
finally you know, he comes in there. He's still raging,
but we get a great payoff with the compass tool,
right because she jams it into George Eastman's eyes, and
then we get the blinded cyclops sequence.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
That's right, yeah, yeah, and this, you know, I have
to say, I feel like this big sequence here is
actually quite tense because you end up with the scenario
where the playing field has been largely leveled, though George
Eastman's killer is still very much an overwhelming threat. So

(01:06:47):
he's were like in the living room, this big, expansive
Italian villa living room with a suit of armor and
all the furniture, and he is blinded, you know, bloody
eye sockets, and he's listening for her and grasping around
at the slightest sound, and she is on her feet now,
but is you know, not one hundred percent like she's
been in traction this whole time. And she is trying

(01:07:11):
to stay out of his grasp but get away from him.
And he's hurting her by sound. Yeah, he's hunting her
by sound in some very tense moments.

Speaker 3 (01:07:19):
And she she does clever things like turning on music
really loud.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
But also inevitably trips, inevitably makes an accidental sound and
he gets closer.

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
Okay, but then the payoff, if you want to know
the very ending, uh you know, spoiler alert, is they
somehow they like fall into this suit of armor that
has a battle axe and caughtya she gets the battle out.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
Oh wait wait, but first the father shows up.

Speaker 3 (01:07:44):
Oh that's right, yes, well the parents arrive.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
Yeah yeah, well yeah, and the priest. The priest does
a run in and bites it when he tries to
start the killer.

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
So Eastman, well it's like the ending of Halloween, except
if Michael Myers killed Donald Pleasance.

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
Yeah. Yes, So the.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
Priest shows up and he saves her momentarily, and he
is killed by George Eastman. But then while that's going on.
She retrieves the battle axe from the suit of armor
and then goes to work on him. We don't see
exactly what happened until her parents arrive home. And her
parents arrive home with the cops, and Willie's there and

(01:08:23):
everybody's there, and Katya's standing in the doorway, and we
pull back to reveal that she is holding the severed
head of Eastman.

Speaker 2 (01:08:31):
Yes, yes, she holds it up. And this is just
this is great, this is just grade a shlock as young,
bloodied Katya healed by violence here lifts up the decapitated,
overtly fake head of the blinded monster and then we
close and that's the end of absurd.

Speaker 3 (01:08:48):
So now I've got to know if that had problem,
I mean, it would be a shame, a historical filmmaking shame.
If that head prop was not reused in the biblical
film where he plays Goliath, it had.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Be Yeah, I hope. I mean, if not that film,
surely it shows up in another film. Because they've gone
to the trouble to make it. There's gonna be some
other film where you might want to cut Eastman's head
off or just reuse it. I mean, there are examples of,
you know, from other I think there was a whole
kind of a minor stink on Game of Thrones at
some point, right, because they were reusing heads or something.

(01:09:24):
And then sometimes, yeah, sometimes head cast get reused for
different things. I mean, actually, we go back to John
Carpenter's Halloween and we have a pretty classic example of
the reuse of head molds. Right.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
Oh, do you mean that it's a Shatner mask.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:39):
Yeah, Michael Myers wears a Captain Kirk mask spray painted white,
which is you can't unsee it once you see it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
Yeah, but it's become iconic. Mm hmm. All right, so
there you have it. Absurd I think probably the only
Joe Tomato film we're going to do on Weird House.
But I'm sure George Eastman will pop up again in
some form or another, but there probably won't be as
much George Eastman as there was in this picture. All right, Well,
we'll close it out there, but we'd love to hear

(01:10:07):
from everyone out there. If you have thoughts on Absurd
or other, or the video nasties of phenomena in general,
write in. We would love to hear from you. Just
a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
a science and culture podcasts with core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious
concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird
House Cinema. And you can get the full list of

(01:10:29):
films that we've covered on Weird House Cinema if you
look us up on letterbox dot com. That's l E
T E r boxd dot com our handle there is
weird House. You can find the whole list there. And yeah,
with this episode, we're kind of launching into the Halloween season.
Halloween is always a big, big month for us, a
little month and some change often, so look you can

(01:10:51):
look forward in the month ahead to a lot of
seasonally appropriate core episodes, short form episodes, and of course
Weird House Cinema selections.

Speaker 3 (01:11:00):
Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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 (01:11:20):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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