Weirdhouse Cinema: Blue Sunshine

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:14):
And this is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
This week we're discussing a film that's really been on
the Weird House Cinema list pretty much from the get go,
and that is Blue Sunshine, a weird independent thriller and
kind of secret Christmas movie from nineteen seventy seven that
melds sensationalized media ideas about psychedelics with chilling horror and
a biting critique of post sixties anxiety and hippie disillusionment.

(00:41):
It's also, in my opinion, just as cutting today. I mean,
it has its goofy moments to be cleared. We'll get
into those which are quite enjoyable, but the terror and
the anxiety in the picture absolutely holds up, as does
I think. It's vision of a world in which to
invoke under s Thompson, the wave of optimism and progress
as seemingly crashed and fallen back, given way to a

(01:03):
world that seems to be spinning on, untethered from our will,
enraptured by commercialism, and at the same time we find
ourselves taking in more con Man dreams of a better tomorrow,
perhaps delusions not that dissimilar to the same things that
we saw as revelations a mere decade ago. And at
the same time, I think it's also a film about

(01:25):
the journey out of youth into middle age, out of hope,
into well, maybe uncertainty.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
I would say that this is the paranoid horror spin
on the Big Chill. Yeah, but I totally agree with
what you said about the duality of this movie. I
would put it in the Suspiria zone, comparing it to
the Dario Argento film Syspiria, in that it is both
extremely effective as intended as horror, Like there is some

(01:54):
of the scary stuff in this movie is terrifying. It
is it is so so strong, But it is also
extremely unintentionally funny in the same way that you have
both of these things in Suspiria. So in Suspiria you
have great you know, the witch looming out the window
and the darkness and and those great scenes of terror

(02:16):
creeping down the hall as the music swells. You know,
it's great stuff. But then you've also got the bat
that looks like a pair of rolled up socks and
the hilarious line deliveries. That's all there. Similar kind of
thing here, the kind of paranoia and anxiety that this
movie creates about a the kind of time bomb of unwellness,

(02:37):
like the idea that you have done something to your
body and your mind already years ago, and there's no
way to go back and fix it, and now it
is just it is just mounting in its takeover of
your psyche. It's a truly terrifying atmosphere that's created there.
And at the same time, there is a lot of

(02:58):
wig stuff in this movies, like people trying to grab
wigs off people's heads and like bald guys running around
beating people up in the disco, and it's like truly
a banquet of many different kinds of movie pleasure all
packed into one.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, there's more than one scene where the protagonist is
clearly trying to decide whether he should try and snatch
that wig or not snatch somebody's hair and see if
it's a wig, which is just, yeah, kind of inherently goofy.
But you can't take it away from the film because
like a lot of the stuff that works so extremely
well is tied into that concept. Yeah, and yeah, I
agree on the central paranoia of the piece, something that

(03:37):
I mean clearly speaks to anyone who is growing older.
You know, you don't have to have ever consumed an
illicit drug of any kind to have those kind of
concerns about, you know, should I have you know, smoked,
should I have you know, did I drink too much alcohol?
That I do something unhealthy, that I make some sort
of choices in my life that are going to come

(03:57):
back to me, and so forth. And then it does
tie in, of course, really well then with the experience
of anyone who has engaged in any of these substances.
So it works in both ways.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
That's right. It's a kind of Cronenbergian escalation of that
normal wellness concern where you worry like, oh, is the
fact that I used to smoke or used to drink
too much or something? Is that going to come back
and bite me? These worries about our health, except turn
that from a general worry about health into a worry
about your sanity, you know, a worry that it will
come back and it will turn you into a homicidal maniac.

(04:31):
Something you did ten years ago that you can't undo.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, because that's the basic premises. We'll get into the
idea that there is a strain of LSD called Blue
Sunshine that ten years ago, what sixty seven, I think,
I think the year before the summer I Love people
took it, but it has been like a ticking time bomb,
and now ten years later it is starting to transform

(04:56):
people suddenly rapidly into homicidal maniacs, you know, changing their
DNA perhaps even you know, adjusting the chromosomes and so forth.
And yeah, it's like these are people who were ten
years removed from the person they were when they took
those drugs to begin with.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah. Yeah, Now there's another thing I wanted to talk
about that really stuck out to me on this viewing
of Blue Sunshine. This is not the first time I've
seen the movie. My friend Ben showed this to me
years and years ago. I might have even been in
high school or maybe early in college when he screened
this for me at his house, you know, And I
was really shocked by it then, and it stuck with

(05:35):
me for years. I think you and I literally talked
about doing Blue Sunshine ever since the first week we
were making Weird House Cinema. It was like one of
the first movies on our list.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yeah, I mean it is a hugely popular, you know,
cult status weird film. So yeah, yeah, it's it's been
on the list since the beginning. I don't know, it
just seemed too soon somehow, like we haven't earned it yet.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
But anyway, So there was a thing I was going
to get into, which is an interesting distinction I noticed,
which separates it from most of the other movies I
would think of as psychedelic films. There is almost no
psychedelic imagery or journeying into the mind or the perception
of people on psychedelics within Blue Sunshine. So there are

(06:22):
a lot of characters that are clearly having bad psychedelic
experiences in the movie, but we don't see from their perspective.
We only see them from the outside behaving erratically. And
this is really unique. I mean, I think about all
these other sixties drug movies, psychedelic movies, they all employ

(06:43):
some kind of like weird imagery to show the psychedelic
perspective of hallucinations, or they employ camera techniques to show
visual you know, they do double exposures and weird kind
of special effects to create that psychedelic viewpoint. This movie
has really none of that. It's a movie about the
dark side of extraordinary experiences within the mind, which, in

(07:06):
its own perspective, the perspective of the camera is committed
to an almost entirely material meat space picture. Do you
know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 2 (07:16):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean because I mean, cinematically, the
psychedelic look was well established by this point, you know,
and we've all seen I think a lot of most
of the listeners to Weird House Cinema have seen films
that have psychedelic elements, you know, swirling colors, you know,
some sort of groovy in camera technique, or you know,

(07:37):
even some other kind of like special effect. A lot
of this stuff was already well established. In fact, the
Blu Ray that I used to watch Blue Sunshine this
is the film centric Blu Ray edition. As an extra
amid some other really cool extras, it features an eighteen
minute nineteen sixty seven anti drug documentary titled LSD Insight

(08:00):
or Insanity, and it's terrific, and it contains plenty of
cliche and even quite inventive psychedelic sequences, you know, like
swirling colors, people like blurring in and out of existence,
strange things happening in the mirror.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
I didn't get a chance to watch this in full,
but you shared it with me and I saw the beginning,
which was really great because it does not begin like
showing you people taking tabs of acid and saying like
the menace that threatens your mind. Instead, it begins by
showing a bunch of high schoolers and the narrators like
teenagers love to express themselves, even the boys. Yeah, it's

(08:39):
about like clothes and hairstyles. And I was just like,
how are we going to get to the acid from this?
But of course it goes on to like you know,
show parties. And there's one screen cap I pulled here
in our chat that's just like a lady with a
lighter in front of her face that says, why be
lame baby?

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, LSD insider insanity. It's it's in full on YouTube,
so you can find it out there. But but yeah,
with this film with Blue Sunshine, it seems to make
a conscious decision to avoid many of the trappings of
cinematic psychedelia for whatever reason, you know, be it budgetary
or I think I would be inclined to think it

(09:19):
is just like an absolute creative choice here. It absolutely works.
I mean, these are all characters for whom the world
of psychedelic experience was previously like you know, out there,
and now at this point in their lives, it is
very much like receding inside them. You know, they have
the memories of those days. It's part of who they were,

(09:41):
maybe only a small part of who they are now,
and only you know, slightly connected to this world they're
living in. It's like an echo and therefore, I don't know,
it kind of makes sense that we don't see it
as much. All right. My elevator pitch for this one
is pretty simple. It's maybe you took too much acid. Yeah,
a right. Let's go ahead and listen to a little
bit of the trailer audio here.

Speaker 4 (10:09):
The nightmare has begun. Blue Sunshine, Blue Sunshine, It could

(10:50):
happen to you.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
And we'll come back to discuss some of the marketing
materials here, Becau, because the marketing materials for Blue Sunshine
certainly ratcheted up the drug exploitation elements of the picture,
and you can argue to what extent those elements are
actually present in the film itself.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
Were they trying to blair which this thing a little
bit kind of making it like this is real. Blue
Sunshine is a real phenomenon.

Speaker 2 (11:18):
I think so because if you look at there's one
poster in particular that I think is just ridiculous and
it says like, bigger than the title of the film,
you have warning if you were one of the millions
who took hallucinogens in the late nineteen sixties, you may
be a human time bomb about to explode into a
bloody nightmare of uncontrollable killing. Think back, did you ever

(11:39):
hear the words blue Sunshine? Try to remember? Your life
may depend on it. So, I mean, clearly they're getting
in there.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
I'm of mixed feelings about that because on one hand,
I feel like that's very strong marketing and it emphasizes
the effectiveness of the movie, but also like to put
that on the poster where it's not as clear that
this is like a thick contrive it. So that's just
kind of mean.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Yeah, like it doesn't like this poster you have to
really scan down to see like the R rating. Otherwise,
even the credits don't look like they're not like laid
out like typical credits, so yeah, it looks like, oh,
it's just a PSA about about the blue asset.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
To be clear to anybody listening, this is a fictional
thing in the movie. There's no such thing as Blue
Sunshine that made people's hair fall out and kill everybody.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, yeah, all right, if you want to watch Blue
Sunshine for yourself, Lucky for you. Numerous special editions of
this film have come out. It's one of those where
I feel like they keep coming out with new ones.
I watched it on the film Centric Blu ray rented
from Atlanta's own Video Drum. Sign Apps Films also put
out a great looking Blu ray set with some really
cool custom sleeves. I think. I think Video Drum also

(12:49):
has this copy as well, and I'm sure it's streamable. Yeah,
I watched.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
I watched it streaming.

Speaker 4 (12:55):
Cool.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
All right, Well, let's get into the people involved here,
starting at the top with Jeff Lieberman. He's the director,
he's the writer. He also voices the parrot, which is
pretty great.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
You know, we had a parrot in our last weird
house cinema movie, remember, Oh did we? It was the
rainbow wig guy in Rock and Roll.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yes, of course, Oh yes, a humanoid parrot that's.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Right, Yes, who was selling tickets.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yes, yeah so. Jeff Liberman born nineteen forty seven American
film director and writer, best known for a trio of
thrillers that have each gained different levels of cult movie status.
The first in this trio was nineteen seventy six. Is Squirm,
a movie about killer earthworms that many of us know

(13:45):
best from Mystery Science Theater three thousand. This is the
Now You're Gonna Be the worm Face movie?

Speaker 3 (13:50):
Do I recall that the Mystery Science Theater edit of
this movie significantly sanitizes the film?

Speaker 2 (13:56):
Yes? Yeah, this is one, and I have to admit
I haven't watched it in full uncut. I love this
MST three K episode, but I really owe it to
Squirm to watch the full cut that has all of
the like grotesque makeup effects by the legendary Rick Baker,
lots of worm face action in there that I really
need to I really need to watch the full uncut picture.

(14:18):
So that Squirm. Then came this picture Blue Sunshine, and
then in nineteen eighty one he gave us Just Before Dawn,
that's a you know, backwood slasher starring George Kennedy. So
those are kind of the big ones. He also did
a nineteen eighty eight film titled Remote Control. That looks
pretty entertaining. We might have to come back to that one.
He also worked on the screenplay for The never Ending

(14:39):
Story three in nineteen ninety four. I don't think that's
that's a good one, but I'm gonna mention it just
because it connects to the never Ending Story.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
Maybe it's like The Exorcist, where the second one's bad
with the third one's good. Again.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
I have my doubts. But in the late seventies, Jeff
Lieberman was that he was a young director with a vision.
That's the way A actor Robert Walden, who will come
back to in a minute, described him in an interview
that's one of the extras on the disc that I watched.
It described him as a young, really kind of egotistical director,
but with a firm, uncompromising vision for the cinematic world

(15:13):
in the story he wanted to create. He knew exactly
what he wanted to tell here, and he said in interviews.
Lieberman has that he didn't see Blue Sunshine at all
as an anti drug film. He himself had experiences with
LSD that I don't know the way he was describing them.
Some of the extras they sounded on the whole positive. He's,

(15:34):
you know, admittedly he's a weird dude, and he talks
about how LSD made him realize that he was so
weird and he was always going to be a little
removed from normal, mondane society. But but yeah, he said
that one of the things he set out to do
with Blue Sunshine was to use the anti drug paranoia
and propagon propaganda present in the media as a kind

(15:57):
of science fiction skeleton upon which to build his story,
which so he compares it ultimately to the bad science
of radioactive mutation in atomic D movies of the fifties.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
Oh that's interesting because I was kind of wondering about
this while we were thinking about Jeff Lieberman. Here I
realized a point of comparison and a film with I
think you could argue similar themes. Is Penos Cosmotos is
Beyond the Black Rainbow.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
Yes, I'm certain that Blue Sunshine was a major influence.
I'm Beyond the Black Rainbow, and you know, in some
of its themes of you know, post sixties disillusionment and
also like mega tripping bald psychopaths.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
Yeah, I mean it's a point of view I can
sympathize with, even though I don't have an overall negative
view of psychedelics, and I'm not sure that I would
suspect that penos Cosmatos does, and as you say, Lieberman
apparently did not either. But I think it's kind of
interesting to explore the dark, arker side of thing, because

(17:01):
darker side of this thing, because you do end up
with these people who are kind of psychedelic evangelists, you know,
these people like Timothy Leary who became famous for preaching
the virtues of taking psychedelics and saying, you know, all
the good things that it would do for your for
your mind, And I don't know. I think I have
a more balanced view on it, which takes the idea

(17:23):
of mind expansion somewhat seriously. But of course your mind
can expand in good or bad ways, and you know,
without the right kind of without the right kind of
guidance and framing of a psychedelic experience, you can imagine
it could make you a worse person. It just sort
of like opens up possibilities of personal change.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, we did a whole series on
psychedelics years back. Those episodes should be available in the
archives stuffed about your mind. And yeah, one of the
things that we stress there is that, yeah, but bad
trips do happen, and psychedelic experiences in general tend to
have they tend to not be just like the rosy, colorful,

(18:04):
cinematic psychedelic experience that you see in like some of
these psychedelic films. So it's yeah, and then on top
of that, without getting you know, super into you know,
the science and history of psychedelics like it does not,
they don't, they tend not, they don't work well with
everyone's brain chemistry, and some people absolutely should not take them.

(18:25):
So yeah, all of all of those caveats very much
in place here.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
Yeah, and so I think there is an interesting cultural
role for films like this as a kind of not
that you should take Blue Sunshine seriously as like a
scenario that would actually unfold, but because on one hand,
you do have psychedelic evangelists who are out there, I
think over selling the unalloyed virtues of psychedelics just like, oh,

(18:50):
it's perfect, it's it's all good, everybody should do it.
On the other hand, it's you know, you can get
a balance, you can get some people spinning out these
these overly negative scenarios and showing the kind of the
side of disillusionment and destruction.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
And then also in the same way that like really rosy,
you know, tinted psychedelic sequences in films are very entertaining.
Dark psychedelia is also very entertaining, and so yeah, I
think we need both just as filmgoers. All right, let's
get into the cast here, starting at the top with
the character Jerry Zipken. We're gonna be talking about Jerry
Zipkin quite a bit here, played by Zalman King, who

(19:25):
lived nineteen forty two through twenty twelve.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Just let me compare two things, the experience of watching
Blue Sunshine versus how everybody seems to write and talk
about him, which is like, this is the handsomest, sexiest
guy who has ever lived. I'm not trying to insult him.
I mean, like, yeah, it's a good looking guy and
all that, but his vibe in the movie is weird.

(19:49):
I don't know, maybe it's just the character he's playing
in Blue Sunshine, but he does not come off like
a hunk of burn in love in this movie, even
though he is rather lovey dovey in some scenes. Mostly
he comes off as a weird, obsessed guy who is
on a different frequency than everybody else.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, and is on the run from authority throughout most
of the pictures. So uh so, Yeah, but yeah, when
you hear when you hear people talk about him, like again,
coming back to that Robert Walden interview on the Blu Ray, Yeah,
he talks about how just like effortlessly charming and sexy
Zaman King was and how you know, how how well
he worked with with female co stars, and but at

(20:29):
the same time he also talks about just like and
and I think this is something we do see in
his performance, about how intense and stripped down his performances
at times, Like he's definitely like manic and freaking out
at times. But then there are there are a lot
of scenes where you know often talk about, you know,
performances where it's all in the eyes and you can
see the gears turning behind the eyes, and we definitely

(20:50):
get that from King in.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
This There are scenes where it seems like he should
be saying more, but he's just totally silent. And then
there are other scenes where he's suddenly screaming and I
don't understand why.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, I mean he's having a rough time. Yeah, but yeah, so.
Zalman King, actor turned director and producer. His acting credits
go back to the mid sixties. He even pops up
in a sixty five episode of The Munsters playing some
sort of like bearded hipster or something.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
Is he like an egor character?

Speaker 2 (21:19):
I don't know, he's like I think he's credited as
like bearded dude or something. But he did a lot
of TV westerns and the like, but his film career
took off more in the nineteen seventies. He's probably best
known for acting in Well This There's nineteen seventy six
is the Passover plot. He's also in nineteen eighty one's
Galaxy of Terror. He also shows up in a film

(21:40):
I watched in the last couple of years, nineteen eighty
two's Endangered Species. That's a tight little cattle mutilation film
by Alan Rudolph. It's only a very small Zalman King,
Zaman King performance, very small part. But he was a
producer on that picture.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
That's not the one we watched, No, the one we
watched that had.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
We watched The Return, The Return, Oh yeah, that was
The Return Leans into the other Worldly causes of cattle mutilation,
whereas I don't want to spoil anything, but I just
say in Dangered Species, it's more of like a straight
up real world thriller.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
Oh, I just looked it up. Yeah, this was the
Martin Landau Jan, Michael Vincent and Sybil Shepherd.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, that's the one we watched.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
Yeah, yeah, the Return and Vincent Chiavelli.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Yeah, that episode
is of Weird Hoouse Cinemas in the archives.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
Now.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
The first place I heard of Zalmon King though, was
this is during the nineteen nineties. He had an erotic
drama anthology series titled Red Shoe Diaries, and I think
it was sometimes marketed as Zalman King's Red Shoe Diaries.
And I don't know where I was hearing ads for it,
because I don't think I ever watched it. But it
was a showtime series, so maybe it was on on

(22:54):
a showtime preview, maybe it was in syndication. I'm not sure,
but the name Zalmon King it captured my young attention,
and indeed Zaman King made a name for himself directing
and producing motion pictures of a sensual and erotic nature.
These include nineteen eighty eight's Two Moon Junction, eighty nine's
Wild Orchid, nineteen ninety two's Red Shoe Diaries, which inspired

(23:16):
the series, and nineteen ninety five's Delta of Venus. Of these,
I've only seen Delta of Venus, but as I recall,
it's been a long time, but it was a beautifully
shot piece inspired by the works of an I nin
So I'm no expert on this genre, but I'd say
you might roughly classify it as fairly high minded erotica.

(23:36):
He also produced Nine and a Half Weeks.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
I was just trying to think why I'd heard of
Red Shoe Diaries, but I looked it up and David
Ducoveney was in this, So there you go.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
That's a why is that the movie or the TV series?

Speaker 3 (23:48):
Let's see it is the anthology series.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Okay, there you go.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Oh wait, how is it? How does it star David
Ducoveney If it's in anthology, Maybe he's just in the
first episode.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
Maybe he's like the crip Keeper, he's the sexy crypt keeper.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
Yeah, David Dukovny, Why don't you love me?

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah? All right, Moving on through the rest of the cast,
Deborah Winters plays Alicia Sweeney. This is Zipken's romantic interest.
Winters was born in nineteen fifty three. Prior to this,
she'd done several films, including nineteen seventies The People next Door,
seventy one's Cotch, seventy three's Class of forty four. Other
film credits include nineteen eighty sevens The Outing and nineteen

(24:27):
seventy sevens Tarantula's The Deadly Cargo.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
Oh, I gotta look that up. We're covering that. I
don't even know. I don't know anything, but it's going
on the list.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Her last film was the nineteen ninety two TV movie
Behind the Mask. She was also on TV's Gemini Man
starring Den Murphy, but is not in the MST three
K movie cut of Gemini Man that was titled Writing
with Death. I'd say Winters is good in this. I
don't think I've seen her in anything else, but like
pretty much everyone in Blue Sunshine, she gives a believable

(24:59):
performance with the caveat a caveat here about when characters
actually freak out and become homicidal maniacs, but in terms
of like just normal human interactions, when people were playing
like regular characters. Everyone's really good in this and her
character is a character with agency and intuition.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
She is good. Though I don't know if you agree
with this. I would say the tone of her performance
is different from everybody else in the movie. I would
say everybody else is playing it a little bit straighter,
and she is playing it a little bit whimsical. Do
you know what I'm talking about? Like she is treating
this movie slightly more like a comedy than everybody else.

(25:44):
For everybody else it's zero, She's on like fifteen or
twenty percent.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, I mean it's yeah. It is kind of like
she is in a sitcom or not a sitcom maybe,
but let's say like a lighthearted TV drama titled Blue Sunshine,
whereas everyone else is in the gritty nineteen seventies thriller.

Speaker 3 (26:03):
Like she has a little bit of a like roll
your eyes and look at the camera energy and all
everybody else's wigs are coming off and they're attacking strangers.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, but she's in a lot of scenes with Zalman King,
so it could just be like it's that natural charisma,
just like lightning the mood. Maybe a little too much,
all right, Next up, we have Mark Goddard playing Edward Fleming.
This is our sixties psychedelic guru turned seventies politician.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
I was thinking of this guy as what if the
Richard Lynch character from God told me to left Gurudam
and decided to run for office.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yeah, yeah, I think we mentioned panoscos Modos already, But
the character from his film Mandy Jeremiah Sand I think
is kind of an extrapolation in some ways of this character,
at least the the hints we have about who this
character was prior to the nineteen seventies. Because that's one

(27:05):
of the interesting things about this character, Edward Fleming. There's
so much implied about who he was, and we don't
get to see any of it aside from a single image,
like a single photograph, and that photograph carries a lot
of weight, like it really forces we imagine so much
just from that one little thing, and it ultimately delivers

(27:25):
more than a dozen flashbacks would have. So Mark Goddard
lived nineteen thirty six through twenty twenty three, perhaps best
remembered by many anyway as Major Don West on the
original Lost in Space series. He was like the military dude.
He has a cameo as a general in the nineteen
ninety eight film adaptation of Lost in Space, which, because

(27:46):
I recall, is pretty weird in its own right.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
With the one with Joey from Friends in it.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, but even more importantly, it had Gary Oldman as
Doctor Smith and he like eventually mutates into a giant
spider thing. Yeah, all right, it's good, or at least
that good. It's good. I bet that's what I remember.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
I recall. I don't know why I recall that, being
in the early days of DVD players, that being just
like a DVD you saw everywhere. They must have made
more copies of it than anything else.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Yeah, it felt very sleek in advance for the time,
as I recall. So anyway, God it was mostly a
TV actor who appeared on such westerns and mystery series
as Johnny Ringo, The Detectives, and of course Lost in Space.
His other film credits include nineteen eighty three Strange Invaders
in nineteen seventy four's Death Squad. All right, Next, we
have this character, doctor David Bloom, played by Robert Walden,

(28:42):
who I've mentioned already. Born in nineteen forty three, He's
our stressed out surgeon and friend of ZIPKNS. Robert Walden
was nominated for three Primetime Emmys for his work on
what seems to I don't know. I'd never heard of
this before, so it feels like maybe a kind of
forgotten successful TV series titled Lou Grant which in seventy
seven through eighty two. Did you know about this series?

Speaker 3 (29:02):
This is a spinoff of Mary Tyler Moore. Luke Grant
is Mary Tyler Moore's boss.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
There you go ed Asner, right, yeah, yeah, oh, okay,
well this is yeah, this is the ed Asner spinoff series.
I've never seen anything from this series, but apparently it
was popular and Robert Walden must have been good on it,
and I totally believe it based on his work here
in Blue Sunshine, because again, there are a lot of
solid performances in this picture, but Walden's was the one

(29:27):
that instantly jumped out of me as being like a
very lived in portrayal, you know.

Speaker 3 (29:32):
Yeah, and you really do feel for this character because
the movie plants these seeds of worry in its opening scenes.
Like the opening the credits of the movie keep intercutting
with these vignettes of characters having mounting tension and headaches.
And stress as the camera Kinnel like zooms in on
their face and really implies there's something wrong with their brain.

(29:53):
And this character gets that treatment, and we see other
characters in these vignettes have psychotic episod and then you
get to know more of this character because he's a
good friend of the protagonist and you really worry for him.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Yeah, as he explains in the extras that he'd been
hard up for work for a period there in the
mid seventies, but then his performance in nineteen seventy six
is All the President's Men really stirred things back up again,
and he started getting all these different scripts and inquiries.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
Who was he? And All the President's Men?

Speaker 2 (30:28):
You know, I've never seen All the President's Men, but
he's like, you know, fourth or fifth down, So it's
you know, a sizeable supporting role. Li I'm to assume.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
Oh I just looked it up. He played one of
Nixon's lawyers.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Okay, yeah, yeah, So All the President's Men comes out
is a big enough hit that he starts getting all
these scripts and he starts saying yes to everything, including
Blue Sunshine, and in his career really you know, picks
up from there from that point on out, certainly because
of All the President's Men. Maybe not some much Blue Sunshine,

(31:00):
but he's great in this. In His many film credits
include nineteen seventies Bloody Mama, seventy Two's Rage, and two
Pictures of Note from seventy seven, Capricorn one and Audrey Rose.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
I liked Robert Waldon in Blue Sunshine and Rob you
should see All the President's Men.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Yeah, I should. It's a classic, you know, great cast
and all. But yeah, I'll have to put it on
the list. It's not one we can ever do for
Weird House. So sometimes it's hard for me to get
around to these films that are that are not weird.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
Yeah, non fiction, political journalism, thriller, that's not really our
that's not really our zone on the show. But it
is really good.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
If it was all the presidents were wolves now. But yeah,
let's see, alright, you know, we got to have a
police inspector. We got to have a detective in a
film like this, and that's Detective Clay played by Charles Siebert,
who lived nineteen thirty eight through twenty twenty two. Basically
established character actor of the seventies and nineties, was in
a bunch of stuff, including seventy eights Coma, seventy nine's
Justice for All. Did a lot of TV, like a

(31:57):
lot of episodes of Trapper John MD, and he directed
some Trapper John MD, which led to a lot of
other TV directorial work. He directed episodes of such shows
Silk Stockings, Mortal Kombat Conquest, and both Hercules and.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
Zena Mortal Kombat Conquest.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
Yeah, somebody had to direct them. You've got to have
somebody direct these shows, so, you know, hats off to
the folks who step up and you take one for
the team.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
I don't really recall anything about him in Blue Sunshine.
He's sort of a functional character. He's there to facilitate
the plot mechanics.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
That's right now. The next character is far more impressive,
and that is the character of Wendy Fleming. This is
the the X of the politician Fleming that we already mentioned,
played by Ann Cooper. Yeah, great role.

Speaker 3 (32:48):
This is such a pitiable movie character like you spend
I don't know, a good quarter of the runtime just
feeling excruciatingly bad for Wendy.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
Yeah, she's damned, there's no doubt about it. And you
pretty much know that from the get go, because she's
on the cover. She's on the poster for pretty much
any any poster, any box for a blue Sunshine you
might pick up. You know, we see like the woman
with the bald head and the and the intense eyes
and so forth. So you have a sense that something

(33:20):
bad is coming. And I think she's pretty great in
the role. Again, a doomed, doomed role, doomed character, but
quite a quite a fine performance in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 2 (33:32):
Now, this is Anne Cooper without an E, not to
be confused with Anne Cooper with an E, who was
also active at the same time and pops up in
some you know, some genre pictures as well. Our Anne
here was a regular in the short lived Blue Thunder
TV series in nineteen eighty four, which also featured Dana Carvey.
This was a spin off of the nineteen eighty three

(33:54):
Dan O'Bannon pinned helicopter movie. I have never seen the
TV series, but I I love Blue Thunder when I
was a kid.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
Wait, I don't know what it's a helicopter TV show?

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Yes, so Blue Thunder the movie is about a like essentially,
the police start using like a super super copter to
go after criminals and a lot of helicopter Shenanigans ensue.
It is not a kid's movie, but I somehow saw
this one when I was a bit young.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
Do the criminals have helicopters too? Otherwise it seems kind
of unfair.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
The criminals don't have a helicopter. But eventually Malcolm McDowell
is in a small helicopter and there's like a big
helicopter like dogfight. So I loved it when I was young.
I have no idea how it stacks up today. All right,
Let's see another one more like main cast actor to
mention here, and that is Ray Young, who plays Wayne Mulligan,

(34:53):
Big Wayne Mulligan. Ray Young lived nineteen forty through nineteen
ninety nine. He was a six foot six actor active
in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, a lot of TV,
but some rather fun credits. His first credited role is Mango,
the hunchback in sixty nine's Blood of Dracula's Castle starring
John Carradine, and he was also in Five Bloody Graves

(35:14):
the same year. Subsequent film roles include parts in seventy
three's Coffee, eighty six is Hunter's Blood and on TV.
His credits include everything from Bewitch, Bonanza, and Gun Smoke
to Quantum Leap and Star Trek Deep Space nine, and
he played Bigfoot in sixteen episodes of The Croft Super Show.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
The premise of this character is so simple and yet
so effective. So the scenario is people, without warning are
are randomly like going berserk and attacking everyone around them.
And one of the guys in the mix just happens
to be gigantic. Yeah yeah, and sot you just wonder like,

(35:52):
uh oh.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah, yeah, this guy goes off. It's not good for
anybody because when they go off, one of the details
is that they're they also have super strength. I mean
not too in a degree where it's like magical and
unrealistic perhaps, but like really strong. Yeah, all right, this
is just a bit roll. I have to mention this.
I realize I don't need to mention every like model

(36:14):
turned actress who pops up in a bit part in
a genre picture. But there's a campaign girl she's credited
as Campaign Girl that pops up late in the picture,
and she's played by Marcy Hanson born nineteen fifty two,
model turned actress, mostly in TV shows through about nineteen
eighty five. But of note, she was the Playboy Playmate
of the Month for October nineteen seventy eight. That's the

(36:35):
month I was born, so she is essentially my zodiac sign.
She is not on the cover of this Playboy though,
because and I've never I've never even looked at this Playboy.
But you're familiar with it. You probably are picturing this
is the one that had Dolly Parton on the cover.
Oh don't she has, you know, the bunny ears and
all that's apparently this edition of Playboy magazine.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
Hats off to you, Dolly.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
Yeah, this is just a quick bit of trivia. But
Sandy King John Carpenter's frequent producer and script supervisor. The
two were married in nineteen ninety. She was script supervisor
on this picture.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
Interesting crossover. Didn't expect that.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
And then finally getting to the music. The music here
is a score by Charles Gross, who was born nineteen
thirty four, apparently still with American composer who worked in film, TV, cartoons,
in industrial films. His biggest film scores were probably eighty
nine's Turn in Hooch and nineteen nineties Air America, two
films that I assume are not really sought after by

(37:37):
vinyl soundtrack and score collectors, but clearly big pictures. Other
scores of his from this time period include nineteen seventy
five's Have a Nice Weekend and the nineteen seventy eight
TV movie Siege. I can't speak to any of those
other scores, but his work on Blue Sunshine, I think
is excellent and it's a huge part of the film's
effectively creepy.

Speaker 3 (37:58):
Aur I absolutely agree the music is highly effective. I
don't know exactly what the creative process was here, but
I was just imagining that I don't know, the director
came to the composer and said, this is the feeling
I want to go for, you know, paranoia, that there's
something wrong with you and that it could suddenly erupt
and take over your mind. And then the composer came

(38:19):
back with this and it was just bingo, exactly exactly
what the movie needs. And so there's like this opening
song that we get when we first have the credits
of the film, where you're like looking at the full
moon and the black sky and you hear these eerie,
hollow rhythms playing on a marimba, and then there is
this lead that comes in. That's kind of a dissonant,

(38:42):
high droning sound. It's a little bit electronic but also
hard to place. And it's just this feeling of something
inside you getting worse and worse. It is the ultimate
I got the bad acid sound. I was trying to
think of what to compare it to. The instrumentation of
this main pair of noia trac kind of reminds me
of the feeling of do you know this song Claphands

(39:04):
by Tom Waits.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
I don't know this one though.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
Oh it's a great song, but similar kind of paranoid,
bad acid feeling.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
Oh wow, Yeah, it's this score. It plays with a
little bit with what I think of as the nineteen
seventies night gallery jazz sound. You know, it's it's got
unsettling bits of discordant percussion. There are those synth flourishes,
and there's there's at least one dose of sleigh bells
in the mix. I don't know if you noticed the
sleigh bells, but I'm pretty sure we hear sleigh bells

(39:33):
at one point. Christmas movie, Yeah, I gotta have slagh
bells if it takes place at Christmas. But more to
the point, yeah, the score I think really captures a
feeling of an order falling apart into a disorder, the
illusion of sanity into madness and hope into I don't know,
the status quo.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
The score, by the way, is available on disc, at
least as part of the film Centric Blu ray, So
when I got it from Videodrome, I was able to
pop the CD in to the player in my I
guess ancient automobile and play a little bit of the
Blue Sunshine score as I drove around town. And We're
going a bit long here, but I'm just gonna mention
in passing that there are also vocal tracks on the

(40:14):
soundtrack that are performed by the Humane Society for the
Preservation of Good Music. They include such tracks as Disco Blue,
this is going to be in our disco sequence late
in the picture, and then there's also a track called
Blue Sunshine.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
Do they have lyrics about Acid?

Speaker 2 (40:30):
I didn't have time to really get into the lyrics
of Disco Blue, but I don't know. Maybe they're about Acid.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
I think it was in our Flash Gordon episode that
we were talking about that rare thing of movies with
soundtracks made for the film that have lyrics about the
plot of the film. You know, Flash Gordon has that
with the Queen songs, but they're saying otherwise. It seems
fairly rare in a non musical movie, but it would
be hilarious. Of Blue Sunshine is another example.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
I think it may be. Yeah, I don't remember the
track Blue Sunshine, but I do remember disco blit.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
Wait, is that what plays in the disco scene?

Speaker 2 (41:05):
It is?

Speaker 5 (41:05):
Yeah, yeah, Well, folks were about to get into the plot,
and you should know that this all leads up to
a disco horror climax.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
Yeah, fittingly, fittingly so.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
The action of the movie opens in a hospital in
the hallway in a hospital, and into frame comes the
first of the major characters. We meet doctor David Bloom,
played by Robert Walton, and when we meet him, he
does not look so good. He's got his white coat
hanging open. He looks disheveled, pale, with circles under his eyes.
He is a doctor, but it looks like he has

(41:47):
not had a good night's sleep in weeks. He stops
at a water fountain to throw back a couple of
pills before going on to visit one of his patients,
and one thing I will note is it seems I
can't say exactly how, but somehow to fit into the
same kind of theme as like not ever showing us
the psychedelic experience, not having any of the flashbacks. We

(42:10):
see a lot of characters taking drugs in the movie,
but they're not psychedelic drugs. They're like throwing back pills
to stop some kind of pain or distress.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, yeah, some sort of prescription pharmaceuticals or over the
counter medicine. We're not always entirely sure.

Speaker 3 (42:28):
Yeah, So anyway, he takes his pills. Then he goes
to visit a patient who's an older woman lying in
a hospital bed, and even she notices that he looks exhausted.
She asks him, doctor, aren't you eating? And he tries
to put her fears to rest. He says, you know,
sometimes there's just a little too much aggravation in his job,
and he's so he's trying to assure her, but on

(42:49):
his way out of the room, she stops him and
she says, with some desperation, Doc, are you gonna have
to cut me up again? And it kind of seems
like the question is just too much for him, Like
his bedside manner collapses, like he can't just keep being positive,
and he says, we'll see, and then we see there's

(43:10):
some kind of pressure building in him. His gaze goes
sharp and far off, like he just had a horrible thought.
And then this high pitched, droning sound returns from the
soundtrack at the beginning, and we zoom on his face
and he begins to furiously rub his temples with his fingers,
trying to make the pain stop, and we cut to black.
And this is a theme we'll see with a number

(43:31):
of characters through the movie, this kind of like zoom
in on the face as they look pained and distressed
and it's like something is happening in their brain.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
Now here we return to what we saw before this scene,
which was the full moon and the night sky kind
of engorged, pale full moon set against the dark background
with this eerie music playing, and here we see the
title Blue Sunshine. Now, the next vignette like this that
we get is where we meet Wendy Fleming played by
Ann Cooper and with and she is babysitting a couple

(44:02):
of kids. They're sitting on the seventies est of couches.
It is a I think the way you describe this
is a green, brown, orange, and baby blue vertical chevron
pattern with one of those nobbly upholstery types used to
see on these couches. I don't know what the material
is called, but my family had an old couch like

(44:23):
this when I was growing up, where like the I
don't know, the thread on the upholstery is not of
an even thickness, so it's all kind of nubby.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
Yeah. Yeah, there's an Instagram account I really love called
Daughter of the Seventies. It has a lot of like
images of nineteen seventies decor and food and advertisements and
if you dig that vibe, blue Sunshine is for you.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
Yeah, the seventies nests will not stop. We will have
to observe several things as we go on. But so,
Wendy is babysitting a couple of kids and they're simultaneously
watching TV and reading a book about Rapunzel. So there's
a kind of chaos, and the boy keeps randomly shrieking,
which is bothering Wendy. She has a terrible headache. And
then suddenly they notice that what's playing on TV is

(45:06):
a campaign ad for a politician named Ed Fleming who
is running for Congress, and we learn that Ed is
Wendy's husband, but they are separated. They're estranged, and the
kids know that Ed is her husband. They ask is
he going to be president someday? She says maybe. They say,
can we come to visit in the White House? And

(45:28):
she gets a little quiet and says she doesn't think so,
because she and mister Fleming are married, but they're not
living together right now. And we just get the sense
that Wendy is not at peace with this arrangement, like
she's not happy right.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Yeah, these kids are a lot.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
So she goes on reading the Rapunzel book, and when
they get to the part about Rapunzel letting down her
hair so the prince can climb it to the top
of the tower, the little girl on the couch reaches up,
takes hold of a lock of Wendy's long, dark hair
and pulls. However, the hair comes out in her hands.
She says, like, look what I did. And then Wendy,

(46:03):
with horror, examines the lock of hair that has come
out of her head. She looks disturbed and afraid. Then
we cut to the night again, the moon, the dark sky,
the creepy music, the credits, we get a third vignette.
It's a scene in a kitchen. A woman named Barbara
is talking to a male friend, a next door neighbor

(46:23):
about her husband, who is a policeman. The husband has
apparently been drinking heavily their marriage is strained. The woman
says that he's been having nightmares, he talks in his sleep,
and his hair is falling out, and she's finding ways
to blame herself. You know, am I doing something wrong?
Where she says, maybe it's the stress of his job.
He is a police officer. But the male friend, who

(46:44):
I think is also supposed to be a cop, dismisses this.
He says, look, you know, I'm losing a few hairs myself.
You can't blame yourself. It's not your fault. And they're
talking about it. But suddenly the husband is there standing
in the doorway. So this is one of the first
times where this scene is like tonally at odds because

(47:05):
the content of the scene is very tense and scary
and puts you on edge. But then the way the
husband is dressed when he shows up is very funny.
I don't know if it would have looked funny in
the seventies. Probably not, but it's very nineteen seventy seven outfit.
He's wearing like a thigh length black jacket pants hiked

(47:26):
up I think past his navel, tucked in blood red
polo shirt with gigantic seventies collar like the collar tips
are going out almost to his shoulders. And he's just
standing in the doorway staring with the sourst expression in
the history of our species.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
And then he gets weirder.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
That's right, because suddenly a macaw flies into the kitchen,
lands on his shoulder while he is still doing the
unmovable sour puss, and then the macaw says hello, Johnny,
and then it says, h bosonshine blue sunshine. What's that?
But here we get another one of those Scanner's style

(48:06):
zoom ins on Johnny's eyes and forehead, while the sharp
notes from the soundtrack just start stabbing. And then we
go back to the moon and the credits. And this
is where I want to emphasize again, I got a
hand it to the filmmakers the fashion choices and weird
maccaw antics acide, the movie so far is building such
an incredible atmosphere of unsafety and human malfunction. The plot

(48:31):
hasn't even really been articulated yet. There's not a word
about LSD. But these little dip ins with different characters,
all showing some kind of stress and disorder mounting inside
of them in intensity, they collectively add up to a
feeling already bordering on panic. There is something wrong with
these people. There is something wrong with the world, something

(48:53):
wrong with us that we don't understand. And it's this feeling,
it's this terror that we're at the edge of a
toe loss of control.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (49:02):
Now next, we're actually about to meet our protagonists. So
we go to a house party. It's a house party
in a very seventies house, big cozy, a frame, logs
roasting in the fireplace, shag carpets to infinity, very you know,
wood paneling everywhere, liquor bottles all over the kitchen counter.
I should have checked if there was j and B.

(49:23):
I don't know. I don't know if they had Jane B.
But there's like, you know, they're cool guys sitting backwards
on chairs or sitting up on the back of the couch,
and it's kind of like the feeling of the scene
is like that orson Wells Poll mess on Commercial, but
younger and hipper and more bohemian.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
Yeah, it's it's an interesting vibe. And the fireplace looks
looks great a little Netflix, Where is my blue Sunshine fireplace? Yes,
you're wasting time on the squid game in which the
fireplace is too small. I watched it last night. Fireplace
is too small. Give us like a large blue Sunshine
nineteen seventies fireplace.

Speaker 3 (49:59):
Wait this point or after all the murders take place.

Speaker 2 (50:03):
But I think I would prefer before the murders. Yeah,
that's more the vibe I want in my living room.
But I'll take what I can get.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
Okay. So here we get to Zelman King playing our
protagonist Jerry Zipkin, and he is huddled up in an
intimate corner of the room talking to Deborah Winters playing
the character Alicia Sweeney. They're here on a date together
and they're acting very lovey dovey. It's a lot of
kind of cuddling and kissing and oh I love you.
By the way, here I want to note Jerry's master work,

(50:33):
Christmas Sweater. Yes, it plays a bit against type in
terms of color scheme, though it's weird. I was noticing
something about the photography in the movie. I had totally
different ideas of what color this sweater was depending on
the scene. Like there's one scene where he's outside and
it looks it looks like deep blue, like royal blue

(50:53):
and white, and then there's another scene where it looks
more kind of purple and red. So I'm not sure
which is the truer color, but at least in terms
of the earlier color scheme, we see the blue and
white Christmas sweater. That's interesting because it's like, you know,
it should be red and green, shouldn't it if it's
Christmas sweater? But he can't be stopped. He's like he's
a rebel in all aesthetics. And the main imagery on

(51:15):
the Christmas sweater is prancing pairs of reindeer with enormous,
almost irish elk sized antlers. So anyway, we get Zalman
king here wearing this, you know, making a statement kind
of copy uniform Christmas sweater, and he's having this sweet
little conversation in the corner with his date Alicia, and

(51:36):
suddenly their attention is diverted from each other by who
is that over in the corner of the other corner
of the room. That's Brian James morphing into Rodin.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
That's right, playing the character Tony, who we only see
in this scene. Brian James lived nineteen forty five through
nineteen ninety nine. Veteran character actor that I think most
of you probably know best from his role as Leon
and really Scott's Blade Runner. He was also the one
of the generals in the Fifth Element Unforgettable Mug.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
This guy, Yeah, good character actor. He's the guy who
you see him really flound during in the Void Comptest
in Blade Letter, in this my mother, I'll tell you
about my mother.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
That's the one in this though, Tony is either the
only guy in the social group who is still taking
LSD or is the guy in the social group who
took way too much LSD. Yeah, it's an interesting choice. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
So he starts like raising up his arms as if
he's flapping his wings and making monster sounds, and then
runs around the room in monster mode, and the other
characters are like, hey, remember Rodan, somebody's like the artist, No,
the monster. Anyway, After the Rodane attack, the friends all
decide to pose for a picture. But before that they
convince one of the guys at the party a dude. Now,

(52:52):
this is confusing because they really do call this guy
different name yes sometimes that I was so confused. They
call him both Frankie and Franny, and they call him
Frankie more often early, but then they keep calling him
Franny when they refer back to him for the rest
of the movie. So I think I'm gonna say Franny
instead of Frankie because that name usage persists more.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
Yeah, and I believe that's how he's listed in like
IMDb and all on the credits for the movie.

Speaker 3 (53:21):
Yeah, So they ask him to sing a song like
he used to. This guy's he's sort of a life
of the party type. He's a cool guy. Again. The
seventies noss of his clothing is overwhelming. He's wearing what
looks like a brown vulure sport jacket over a purple
and white plaid shirt with a huge black tie hanging
down to the crotch of his pants, and he starts

(53:43):
singing an old standard from the fifties called just in Time,
which has some interesting lyrics. It's I don't know who
originally did this song. It sounds like it could be
a you know, Frank Sinatra type singer song, but I
don't think it was Sinatra, but that sort of thing.
And the lyrics include things like my time was running low,
the losing dice were tossed, my bridges all were crossed,

(54:05):
nowhere to go? Now you're here, and now I know
just where I'm going. Yeah, going, You're going to a
bad place.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
It's interesting the juxtaposition between Tony's acid antics and then
this song. It kind of like fits into this theme
you see throughout the movie where the characters are I think,
to varying degrees, maybe a little embarrassed by their psychedelic
experiences and sort of the culture of the sixties, and

(54:36):
so it's almost like a gut reaction to Tony still
doing his thing and being like a little embarrassing. Is like,
let's do an old standard, Let's do the kind of
music that our parents liked, you know. And so they
start belding this fifties number, you know.

Speaker 3 (54:51):
Yeah. So while Frannie is singing the song, he starts
dancing with one of the women at the party, and
then he goes to dip her and I think her date.
This guy is not happy about this, and he reaches
out and grabs Franny by the hair, which is already
a weird thing to do. But suddenly, to everyone's shock,
Franny's hair all comes off at once in the guy's hand,

(55:14):
leaving Franny completely bald except for a few patches, and
the tone of the scene changes in an instant. Franny
suddenly looks wild and deranged. The music starts skittering with
these tense violins, and Franny bolts out the front door
of the house into the night.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah, and at first everyone's just like WHOA, that was
super weird and random, right, But then like it does
kick in that everybody here is friends to some degree,
and they sort of decide, well, we should go look
for him that dude needs help.

Speaker 3 (55:42):
Well, I think it's mainly Jerry that decides to go
look for him. People get weirded out and the party
kind of breaks up in multiple directions. So, like several
of the friends, including Jerry's date Alisha that's Debbor Winters,
they get into a car to head into town. She's
saying like, I need some honey, honey, you'll help me feel.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
Better, and Tony, I guess, just flies off into the night.
We never see Tony again.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
Yeah, oh, yeah, that's right. Where does Tony go? I
don't know. He does not stay behind to become one
of the murder victims, but he also maybe he goes
to town. I don't know. Maybe Tony needs some honey,
he needs Rodane food. But anyway, so a few more
stay behind at the house and Jerry alone decides to
go look around outside for Franny to make sure he's okay.

(56:25):
He takes a flashlight goes out walking in the trees. Meanwhile,
back at the house, a few guests are hanging around
the fire smoking cigarettes, talking about what happened. They can't
figure out if it was a prank or not. Franny's
the kind of guy who does pull pranks, but I

(56:48):
don't know. It was so strange. Then there's a knock
at the door. One of them goes to answer, and uh, oh,
here he is again. It's Franny. Bald, pale, with a manic,
crazed look in his eyes. He bursts through the threshold
and commences a homicidal rampage, and it is a shocking scene.
He murders the other guests of the party, one of

(57:10):
them at least by like throwing her into the fireplace.
It is horrible.

Speaker 2 (57:14):
Yeah, it's horrifying. This is not the fireplace I want
in my living room. Netflix.

Speaker 3 (57:20):
So meanwhile, Jerry's out walking in the woods and he
finds Franny's hair hanging from a tree branch, and I
recall it, so I have more perspective on this now.
I think this is supposed to be a wig. But
I remember the first time I saw the movie, I
was really confused, like, is it that his real hair
all fell off at once and is still in a

(57:40):
single mass like this, or within the movie, is it
supposed to be a wig with the idea that like,
his hair's been falling out and he's been wearing a
wig to hide it. I think it's the latter.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
Yeah, Yeah, because this seems to be a common feature
in the film, is that people are losing their hair
to the Blue Sunshine syndrome. They are obtaining wig We
see wigs for sale in some of the scenes late
in the picture, and it almost becomes this kind of
metaphor for like the mask of normal life that one

(58:11):
imposes upon themself to despite the trauma that's going on
inside you.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
Yeah. So here Jerry hears a scream coming from the house,
so he goes running back to the house and he
finds the three remaining guests all murdered and they're like
burning in the fireplace. Again. It's a horrible scene. So
he's in shock from this and he's like sort of
just wandering around, like what's going on, and suddenly Franny
pops out from behind a curtain and attacks him. They

(58:40):
begin to fight. This scuffle leads them outside outside in
front of the house and then into the street, where
Franny is hit by a passing truck and we do
get a jump scare when the truckers like go to
check on him, he like pops up again, but then
falls down and dies. Jerry goes back up to the
house and just kind of sits in front of front
of the fireplace, and one of the truckers jumps to conclusions,

(59:05):
gets a revolver out of his glovebox and follows Jerry
up to the house, where he confronts him shoots him
in the arm. It's clear the trucker thinks Jerry is
responsible for all these murders, and then Jerry, in a
strange acting moment, issues this grating, full volume proclamation that
I didn't kill anybody, and then he escapes in his car.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
Not looking good. Jerry not looking good, and.

Speaker 3 (59:28):
Then it's clear that when the cops arrive later, they
come to the same conclusion as the trucker. They're obviously
as Almon King did all of this. There's a scene
where a detective is interviewing Alicia outside the house. She's
back here now, and she is adamant that Jerry is
not responsible, but the detective is adamant that he is.
Just wanted to note this movie does have I think
the inspector here is Inspector Clay, just like Plann nine

(59:52):
from Outer Space. That's to worst character.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
Oh man, that can't be an accident. That's got to
be intentional.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
Then we get a scene with the cops talking to
each other where they explain their theories. One of them
says that Zipkin is erratic as hell. He graduated from
Cornell top of his class, and now he hasn't got
a pot to piss in. He must have had ten
jobs for in the last five years. He quit his
last one because the firm wouldn't hire enough women. And
this really gets the partner's attention. And I thought he

(01:00:20):
was going to say something sexist here, but instead he says,
and then he barbecues three of them in a fireplace.
It seems counterintuitive to the cops, and yet they are
not deterred. He is their prime suspect. Anyway, Jerry's now
on the run from the cops. He shows up at
the hospital looking for his friend David, the doctor, very
stressed out doctor who he met earlier. So he's got

(01:00:42):
an obvious, bloody gunshot wound in his arm, but he
he's like dabbing it and carrying this dirty, bloody rag
walks into the hospital and the reception is a receptionist
is like, oh, yeah, the doctor will see you his
offices down the hall. Just go on in. Like what
doctors work like that in the seventies or is this

(01:01:02):
just movie magic?

Speaker 4 (01:01:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
No, no, it's just a little more laid back, right.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
And I like how when David looks at the wound,
the first thing he says is like, hmm, not too bad.
The inflection is almost kind of like nice, good job.
Jerry tries to lie and tell him he was accidentally
shot by a hunter, but David is like, Jerry, I
have to report all gunshot wounds. I can't, you know,
just forget about this. So they have an argument because

(01:01:29):
David knows that he's lying. He's hiding something. And after
David leaves the room, there's a part where Jerry notices
a bunch of hair on the floor. His doctor buddy
seems to be shedding, and there's ominous music here. When
Jerry asks about this, Bloom shrugs it off. He's just
like as stress of the job. But in this conversation
he casually drops a mention of past drug use. He's like,

(01:01:50):
you know, I don't party like I used to. Now.
There's a scene where we meet up with Windy again,
who the lady who was babysitting earlier, and she's getting
her hair shampooed in the sink by another lady. I
was not quite sure if this is her friend or
her hairstylist. I think it's a friend.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Yeah, I wasn't sure if this was the kid's parents
or what. But at any rate, it's not essential.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
So they're trying to figure out why her hair is
falling out. The other lady speculates that it could be
because Wendy isn't quote getting any This is a true
health fact, she read in Cosmo. It affects your bioorrhythms,
she said.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
And it's kind of ridiculous, but they play it well.
They play it well.

Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
But Wendy confesses that she's having persistent headaches and terrible
nightmares whenever she sleeps. She's frightened that something is really
wrong with her. And once again the fear in this
scene is palpable, and you really feel bad for Wendy,
Wendy and David both. I've already said this, but I
really just do want to emphasize that in a kind
of an exploitation thriller movie like this, and you wouldn't

(01:02:50):
necessarily expect to feel a lot of empathy, like a
lot of emotional sympathy for the characters and their struggles,
but in this movie, you really really do, or at
least I did. Like Wendy and David, you are feeling
so bad for and so worried for.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Now, ultimately, in this conversation Wendy's friend here she links
Wendy's stress and her nightmares and everything to her separation
from her husband, because again, Wendy doesn't really seem to
be at peace with this situation. She hasn't recovered from it.
And then there's a great cut coming up, where Wendy's like,
how can I put Eddie in the past when his
gorgeous face is plastered all over the city, you know,

(01:03:28):
because he's running for office, so there are the posters everywhere.
Then we cut straight to a campaign poster, a defaced
ed fleming for Congress poster stuck up to the back
of a bus station where somebody has wided out his
eyes and half of his hair and drawn fangs and
a snake tongue coming out of his lips so he
looks like a clownish reptilian grindle. And the slogan on

(01:03:51):
top of the sign is here is the Future.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
I was thinking about this, and I wonder if the
subplot of the political campaign in this movie was all
inspired by Taxi Driver, which came out the year before.
I can't be sure there, but I don't know. I
felt some similarities.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Yeah, yeah, it might be there, just sort of in
terms of basic structure, different purpose, and different characters obviously,
but yeah, he might be onto something there. I'm just
going to add that all of this was shot in
la so anytime we're outdoors in this picture, we do
get these authentic scenes of nineteen seventies Los Angeles. Be

(01:04:28):
it something like MacArthur Park or you know, various the
Arthur J. Will Memorial Fountain and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
Yeah, a lot of beautiful, notable public spaces in this movie.
You see a lot of parks and pedestrian overpasses and
interesting little plazas and stuff. Anyway, in this scene, we
get Jerry, who is still on the run from police,
meeting up with Alicia. She does believe he's innocent, but
she thinks maybe he should turn himself in anyway because

(01:04:56):
running makes him look guilty. And I like that, Jerry.
I feel like this is not a thing that would
normally make the protagonist on the run from police say
but I like that. His response is I can't go
to jail, even for one day. I'll go bananas. It's
a different kind of response. It's like, okay, know thyself,
I cannot do the time, even until I make bail.

(01:05:17):
Just can't do it. I feel like the more normal
protagonist there would have said like, I've got to get
to the bottom of who the real killer is or something.
I don't know, something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It kind of feels like
one of those lines you throw in when you realize,
you know, I really need to put something in here
to explain why he's doing this, And you know, maybe
it's a little bit throwaway, but it establishes, okay, there
is a reason.

Speaker 3 (01:05:37):
So they argue about what could have made Franny act
the way he did, and while they're having this conversation,
they just happen to stumble across a guy reading a newspaper.
The paper is a copy of the National Informer, which
has this shocking photo and then the headline that says
Glendale detective goes mad. It kills wife, children, neighbor, then

(01:05:58):
kill self, even neighbors dog not spared. Night of terror.
So we look at this and we're like, oh, wait
a minute, we know who that is. That is the
guy from the opening vignette who was wearing the cherry
red shirt with the mild wide collar and the macaw
on his shoulder, yelling blue sunshine, something terrible happened.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
This is hilarious because I just love the idea that
this newspaper is running a photograph of a corpse. Yes,
front page partially above the fold, it's mostly below the fold,
but still, like, when is you ever see something this grotesque,
but at the same time, maybe it does kind of
work because like maybe that's blue Sunshine is theorizing like

(01:06:42):
this is where the world is. You would run this
on the front page of your newspaper.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
This is the bleak, broken world we live in.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
So Jerry and Alicia see the photo and they noticed
that the murderer is hairless, looking exactly like Franny. They
don't know this guy, but they're like, what another bald
murder rampage. That's so Jerry buys a copy of the
paper at a newsstand starts reading it as he like
drifts away up an escalator, while Alicia yells at him

(01:07:10):
not to leave her behind. She's like, I want to
go on the lamb with you and help you figure
this out. He ignores her and reads the story. I
want to say, this is a case of there are
several moments like this in the movie where I feel
like Alicia is trying to be helpful and Jerry is
just not. He's not being very nice.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
No, no, and again he's having a hard time.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
But still, anyway, it's obvious what the next move is.
In order to prove his innocence, Jerry himself has to
solve the case. He's got to figure out what's going on,
that's right. Yeah, So the first stop is he wants
to go to the scene of the crime reported in
the paper. I guess the paper just like gives out
the address where the crimes occur. So Jerry goes and
he talks to the neighbor lady who's suspicious of reporters.

(01:07:53):
He has to assure her he is not one. This
character actress here seemed very familiar to me. I was like,
I know her from something.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
Oh yeah, this is Alice Ghostly, who lived nineteen twenty
three through two thousand and seven. Very familiar character actress.
Her film credits alone include nineteen sixty twos To Kill
a Mockingbird, sixty seven's The Graduate, seventy eight's Grease, and
just loads of other stuff. She was on forty eight
episodes of Designing Women on TV. So, yeah, this is
a very familiar face, even if you can't line it

(01:08:24):
up with a particular title like you've seen her before.

Speaker 3 (01:08:26):
So she starts filling Jerry in with mostly she's just
recounting a lot of the grizzly details of the crime,
like explaining all of the fatal injuries, though strangely, she
explains that in years past, Johnny was always so gentle
and kind, he was the nicest guy. What could have
changed in him? Jerry breaks into the house and one

(01:08:48):
of the funny things here is that there is a
framed photo of Johnny in full copy uniform by himself,
sitting on the mantle. Just seems like an odd thing
to have in your house.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
Yeah, you know, need an establishing shot, right.

Speaker 3 (01:09:02):
Yeah, there's a oh my god. He goes up to
the stairs where there is like a white tape outline
of a body, you know, like in a crime scene,
but it's on top of the stairs which are completely
covered in orange shag carpet.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
Yeah, it's pretty glorious.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
Not just carpeted stairs, orange shag carpet stairs. Go Valls.
So anyway, he's like looking, Jerry's looking at the crime scene,
and somehow here he like viscerally relives the crime. Strange
thing is this is the closest the movie ever comes
to anything that feels like a sharing of a psychedelic perspective.

(01:09:41):
It's like he's hallucinating that he's there during the crime.
Except we get the feeling that Jerry is not on
drugs and probably never did any drugs, and so I
don't know. That's kind of odd. It's almost like they're
implying he's psychic. But this never comes back again in
the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
I feel like Jerry did some drugs. I don't know. Oh, okay,
I mean he didn't do Blue Sunshine, but I bet
I think he did a little something.

Speaker 3 (01:10:05):
Oh maybe they never talk about it. Yeah, but maybe
he just has the shining. Also, there's a bird scare here.
There's like, oh, here's something in the closet, and he
opens it up and the McCaw flies out. But the
macaw says, hello, Johnny. And then what was the other
thing the bird said in the earlier scene? It says
blue sunshine. M Now this rattles something in Jerry's brain.

(01:10:27):
He's like, blue sunshine. Where have I heard those words before?
So he goes and breaks into another dwelling. He goes
to Franny's house. I think this is Franny's photo studio.
And he goes and he looks around and there are
pictures on the wall of Jerry and Franny and other
friends of theirs. And then he comes to one photo.
He's one he's seen before. And it's the one he's

(01:10:49):
looking for. Why who is that in the photo? It
is aspiring congressman Ed Fleming, who we've seen several times
now in his campaign commercials and posters, except here he's
a bit younger, and he is dressed up like some
kind of new age spiritual guru with long blonde Richard
Lynch hair, wearing shell beads in a kind of double

(01:11:09):
exposure shot with rays of light emanating from his face.
And then the title of this photo is on a
label underneath. It's called Blue Sunshine.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
Yeah, and this is the this is the image that
implies so much about Fleming's past, and again it's it's
better than a dozen flashbacks, Like yeah, your mind goes there.
Just by seeing this image.

Speaker 3 (01:11:31):
The plot thickened. So time to go to a campaign event.
We go to an Ed flaming campaign event where we
meet several other major characters. Fleming himself, who is who
is handsome, charismatic and assertive, but also we're going to
get the sense that he is maybe an untrustworthy, unsavory guy.
He's a guy who you know, he's he's a glad hander.

(01:11:53):
He he's very charming in person, but he's probably a
liar and a cheat and maybe other things.

Speaker 2 (01:12:01):
But at the same time, I think it's important to
stress that Fleming doesn't come off as like sometimes you
have a political character in a film like this and
it's like this guy is a is a clear danger
to everything. It's more like he's kind of a standard politician,
like he's as bad as all the other political candidates

(01:12:21):
out there. And we also get the impression, I mean,
perhaps just because it's California, that like he's probably a
progressive candidate. You know, they never say for sure, but
you know, you get the impression. It's like this guy
like on paper, he's probably not that bad, but like
he is part of the political machine.

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
He doesn't come off as frighteningly power hungry, like like
Greg Stillson in the Dead Zone or something.

Speaker 2 (01:12:45):
Yeah, I was just thinking of the Dead Zone. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
Instead, it's more just kind of like he's a maybe untrustworthy,
narcissistic guy who's slightly ambitious and is advancing to a
political career.

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
Yeah. But it's interesting because we already have that Juxapa
is with that photograph, so we know who he used
to be and maybe who he used to be isn't
that far removed from who he is now? You know,
selling a dream, selling an idea and is there anything
at the heart of it now?

Speaker 3 (01:13:12):
We also in the scene meet Wayne Mulligan, who is
Fleming's bodyguard on the campaign, a former college football player
who decided he like walks up to Alicia here at
the campaign scene and I think he's trying to like
get a date here, and he's like, hey, I used
to play football. He's huge and imposing. You look at
this guy and you think, wow, be really bad if

(01:13:33):
he like lost his marbles and started running around punching people.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
Anyway, Jerry gets a minute aside to talk to Fleming.
He comes to the campaign trailer and asks to meet him,
and Fleming does meet him. He asks him whether he
knew Franny, and Fleming says he did, yeah, years ago.
They went to college together. They were both at Stanford
at the same time. And Jerry informs Fleming of Franny's death.
And this conversation is interrupted by the way by one

(01:13:59):
of the staffers yelling like, mister Fleming, I have the
puppet people on the phone. This will make more sense
later because there is a campaign event that includes a
Puppet Show. Yeah, okay, but at the moment, I'm like,
what is the puppet people? Are we in, mister big territory?
Here is this attacking the puppet people? Yeah, like the

(01:14:20):
puppet people in that movie get control of a telephone
and they're like, we gotta call Ed Fleming. He can
help us.

Speaker 2 (01:14:26):
Yeah, yeah, likely we do get some payoff on this
later on.

Speaker 3 (01:14:29):
Yeah. Anyway, in this conversation, Jerry asks Fleming if he
has ever heard the words blue sunshine, and Fleming denies it,
but he is obviously lying. What is he hiding? Anyway,
Mulligan comes in to break up the conversation, and suddenly
Jerry has to flee because Alicia's police tale is here.
She's being followed by police everywhere she goes. They spot

(01:14:50):
Jerry and it turns into a car chase. Jerry gets
away in this car chase because he has a vehicle
with four wheel drive and the cops don't. He like
goes up a hillside yep. Anyway, Jerry and Alicia meet

(01:15:10):
up later to compare notes, and Alicia has learned some stuff.
She learned stuff from Mulligan. When they were talking. She
found out that Franny Fleming and the red shirt guy
who did the horrible crime. They all graduated from Stanford
together ten years ago at the same time. And then
Jerry realizes his doctor friend David also graduated from Stanford

(01:15:31):
ten years ago and his hair has been falling out too,
and oh boy. Here we cut to a very suspenseful
scene where David is like in the operating room getting
ready for surgery, and we're all like, oh no, oh no,
we know what's coming next. But it's a bit of
a fake out because he gets through that. He does
have like a tense moment in the surgery where he's

(01:15:51):
like yelling at his subordinates to get him instruments and stuff,
but it does not turn into it does not go
where you think it's going, right, So after this, Jerry
has a confrontation with David where Jerry tries to yank
David's hair out. This is a strange scene, but it
stays on and Jerry explains his theory to his friend.
He's trying to make sense of all this, but he's like, hey,

(01:16:12):
you went to Stanford with these three guys, and David
fills in some more information. He's like, yeah, we did
all go to college together. When we were there Ed Fleming,
who's now running for Congress. He was a drug dealer.
He was everybody's connection for all things narcotic and psychedelic.
And David stresses, He's like, I don't want to get
Fleming in trouble. I don't want this coming out about

(01:16:34):
him because it could ruin his political career. And I
was just thinking, man, any movie about politics from more
than I don't know, eight years ago feels so quaint
now because they're all like, wow, if we found out
something that reflected poorly on this politician's character, they could
never be elected.

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
Yeah, yeah, for real. But it makes sense here. It's
like he says he's donated to the campaign. He's still
to some degree, you know, connected to this guy. There
were friends at one point, so you know he's not
looking to stir up some trouble.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
Yeah. And once again, the movie does not signal anything
unusual about Fleming's political agenda. He just seems like a
regular politician. They also don't make it clear like what
his you know, like left right orientation is, or what
party he's with. He's just sort of like politician.

Speaker 2 (01:17:22):
But he we do get the idea that he is
he is selling the dream, you know, we see that
on the campaign posters. He is selling the future.

Speaker 3 (01:17:30):
Anyway, After a lot of hmming and hauling in this conversation,
David does come around. He's like, wait a minute, yes,
I have heard of Blue Sunshine. That was the name
of a particular batch of acid that Fleming was selling
ten years ago. And there's a scary moment where David
reveals he bought some, but then he's like, I never
took it, so he bought some. He got scared because

(01:17:53):
he's like, he ultimately decided they were making this in
chemistry labs. You never knew what was in it. You
might have gotten a bad batch. He might have gotten
one that wasn't what it was supposed to be, so
instead of taking it, he sold it to somebody else.
He got rid of it. And Jerry asks him, He's like, okay,
in your opinion as a doctor, could it be that
there was something different about this batch, something wrong with

(01:18:14):
it that would become like a time bomb in your body,
causing you to lose all of your hair and then
turn into a homicidal madman. Exactly ten years later, David
says it's unlikely, but not impossible. Therefore, by movie logic,
it is proven. Yes, but how could Jerry prove this
to the police. Well, David says, you know, you would

(01:18:35):
need to get a blood sample from one of the
effective affected individuals while they're still alive to show the
quote chromosomal damage. This is very like, Okay, we're coming
to a lot of conclusions very fast. But they scheme together.
They're like, Okay, if one of these Blue Sunshine time
bombs is on a rampage, he will have super strength,

(01:18:55):
so you'll need a powerful tranquilizer to sedate him and
then the blood samp can be taken. So now you've
got a plan. So next scene, we have another Fleming
campaign event. Both Jerry and Alicia meet there and we
meet Wayne Mulligan again. Remember that's Fleming's huge OAF bodyguard,
and he sees Alicia across the crowd and follows her.

(01:19:16):
She's like, oh, yeah, I'm just out window shopping and
he goes, oh, you like shopping, Well, let me buy
you whatever you want with my campaign expense account. We
get some sense there's some corruption in the campaign here,
but he keeps trying to hit on her, and they're
like standing on the sidewalk, and as they're talking, a
large truck whizzes by and honks its horn, and this

(01:19:39):
freaks Mulligan out. First, the gust of wind from the
truck rises up, and Mulligan grabs hold of his hair,
almost as if he doesn't want it to blow away.
Uh oh, and then he yells at the truck as
though the sound of the horn were inflicting pain upon him. Anyway,
after this outburst, he invites Alicia to their next campaign

(01:19:59):
event because that's going to be the following night at
quote Shoppers World. Shoppers World is a mall. Oh yeah, baby,
We're going to a nineteen seventy seven mall. And it
gets better because Mulligan says there's a disco tech at
the mall called Big Daddy's Meet Me at the Bar. Also,
did I mention in the scene Alicia is wearing a

(01:20:20):
black cowboy hat and a red turtle deck.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
Oh yeah, she looks fabulous. Yeah, but but yeah, I
love that. This also sets our trajectory. This movie is
going to end in a disco tech and a shopping
mall almost like and I'm not a disco hater. I
love some disco, but.

Speaker 3 (01:20:36):
This movie might be disco hate.

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):
Yeah, yeah, this might be some disco hate, like presenting
the idea that like, like American culture dies in the
disco and in the shopping mall, you know, like this
is the this is the perfect place for Blue Sunshine
to reach its conclusion.

Speaker 3 (01:20:50):
Okay, next scene, we're back with poor Wendy Fleming and
the kids she's babysitting. They're watching cartoons on TV, and
Wendy's in the kitchen, and oh boy, one of my
favorite things in the movies, we get a peek inside
the cabinet to see some bona fide nineteen seventy seven food.
I see some Quaker oats, I think some kidney beans,
Campbell's canned soup. You can't quite read the label, but

(01:21:12):
let's just say it's cream of celery or maybe split
pea with ham. But then finally, what we definitely see
is a can of Hormel canned to Molly's.

Speaker 2 (01:21:22):
I think I remember this.

Speaker 3 (01:21:23):
Yeah, also a vial of pills stored in the same
cabinet as the food, which also seems very seventy seven. Yeah.
So the mother of the two kids is hanging out
at first, and she's like about to leave them there
with Wendy and go back home for a bit when
Jerry Zipken knocks at the door, So the other lady
looks out the peep hole and she sees him and
she's like, hmm, not bad, what a hunk. So they

(01:21:46):
let Jerry in, you know, she goes off. He introduces
himself as a friend of Eddie, and Jerry and Wendy
exchanged some niceties, but eventually, once they're out of ear
shot of the kids, he gets to the point he says,
did you ever hear of Blue Sunshine? And she plays coy,
pretends she doesn't know. She's like, are you trying to
score from Eddie? Almost implying that he still deals drugs,

(01:22:11):
But she gets very defensive of her estranged husband, accusing
Jerry of trying to damage his political career. Jerry's like,
I don't care about that. That's not what it is.
I'm just trying to find out everybody who may have
received this batch of acid, and she gets very upset
and kicks Jerry out of her apartment. But uh oh.
After Jerry leaves, Wendy is very stressed out. She's breathing heavily.

(01:22:33):
The kids start chanting that the kids are chanting we
want ice cream, we want ice cream, and then screaming
we want hot dogs, we want hot dogs. I think
we can all see where this is going. Wendy starts
to have a blue sunshine freak out.

Speaker 2 (01:22:48):
Yeah, and this is a terrifying sequence. This apelds up.

Speaker 3 (01:22:52):
The level of menace is off the charts. She starts
like frantically chewing up all her pills. Then her eyes
roll back in her head of thing at the mouth.
Then she pulls her wig off to reveal a totally
bald head, so creepy, and then she looks at the
kitchen knives and this is so it's horrible. She's here
with the kids. But just as Jerry is leaving the building,

(01:23:14):
something doesn't quite feel right to him, and he decides
to go back. And then there's a kind of this
is against tone because this scene in the apartment above
is so creepy and awful. But then, like Jerry is,
it's taking too long for him to get back up
there because they are like older people taking forever in
the elevator. Yes, and so we're intercutting between that funny

(01:23:35):
thing and the elevator with bald windy like walking up
behind the kids with a knife. This movie absolutely does
not pass the Gene Siskel test. It has scenes of
a maniac chasing little children around with a knife. Of course,
you know, Ciskel didn't like any movie where kids were
shown in peril. This is some explicit horrifying children in peril.

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
Yeah, because the way they play it, too, is so believable,
because it's like the kids don't understand what's happening. They
think it is a game, and then they're getting a
little upset about the game, and yeah, it's rough.

Speaker 3 (01:24:08):
Fortunately the children are unharmed. Jerry gets back bursts in
in time to stop her, and then Jerry and Wendy
wrestle for the knife until finally Wendy is thrown from
the park apartment balcony. In the struggle, she falls to
her death, leaving Jerry standing there holding a bloody knife.
And then by the time people get there, it just
looks like Jerry has murdered again. Jerry is really bad

(01:24:32):
about doing things that make him look guilty when he
is not a murderer. Like the neighbor comes in and
sees him and starts screaming, and his reaction is not
like no, no, you don't understand. Instead, he runs up
to her and puts a bloody hand over her mouth
and yells at her to be quiet.

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
I also have to throw in this sequence where Wendy
goes out the window and falls to her death. Very
well executed. We've all seen films where someone falls from
a height and it's not believable. This is very well
done and is quite believable. Nobody's chunking a mannequin out
of a window for this sequence.

Speaker 3 (01:25:06):
Okay. We get a few more scenes where just some
information is shared between characters. Fleming finds out about the
death of his wife, and he finds out from the
police that they think Jerry Zipken is responsible for the murder.
We get a scene of Jerry meeting again with David.
They meet in the park where Jerry is getting the
tranquilizers that he's going to use, but David is dressed

(01:25:28):
up like a drug dealer. He's wearing like shades in
a long coat. I think there's supposed to be some
irony here. And in the scene, David mentions another guy
he remembered taking the Blue Sunshine, a football player named
Wayne Mulligan. All he wanted was acid, acid, acid.

Speaker 2 (01:25:43):
Oh man, he didn't even care if it was blue
or not.

Speaker 3 (01:25:45):
Also another random scene of Jerry being mean for no reason.
He steals money from a guy with drug addiction for
no particular reason.

Speaker 2 (01:25:53):
Is this the guy who's like coming up in close
talking to him on the bench.

Speaker 3 (01:25:56):
Yeah, the guys like I need you to go over
there and buy some for me. Takes his money and
then he just leaves.

Speaker 2 (01:26:02):
There is a really creepy bald guy who comes up
and stares at him in this scene. And it's fun
detail is that Jeff Lieberman says that they were filming
and this dude just walked up and they were like,
get a release in that dude's hands. We got to
get him to sign a release. We've got to have
him in the picture. But this is just a guy
who wandered up.

Speaker 3 (01:26:21):
Also a scene around here where Alicia is talking to
the detective who's been following her and she's like, look,
Jerry's innocent and I can prove it. She comes up
with the scheme. All we got to do is get
this guy Wayne Mulligan and have him tested. Have him test.
Oh yeah, I have him tested for Blue Sunshine. But
there's also a scene there's like a gun store scene

(01:26:42):
of Jerry buying a hand pumped pellet gun to shoot
the Tranquilizer dart, and I thought this scene is interesting
because Jerry learns a litany to defeat the villain. It's
like he's practicing a magic spell that has rhyming lines.
The last line is about how to operate the pellet
gun with the darts, but the last line of the

(01:27:04):
litany is because if you jerk, it won't work.

Speaker 2 (01:27:08):
Yeah, it's a full mantra that he learns here from
the dude at the gun store, and it's very effect.
It's kind of ridiculous in its own way, which I
think you're about to touch on, but you know, I
don't know. You get a feel for the weapon that
is clearly going to be pivotal in the finale of
the picture, and and we have this weird, almost you know,
semi magical litany that he's going to recite. So I

(01:27:31):
dig it.

Speaker 3 (01:27:32):
So as a story element, it really works. But there
are also ridiculous things about this scene, like the gun
store has a practice range inside the store where there's
a target on the wall that they're shooting at, but
it's just the target is just down the middle of
the store from where they are, like where customers are browsing.
There's like he like raises his gun to aim at

(01:27:54):
the target. There's just some cop shopping in the store
leans in front of the target. What.

Speaker 2 (01:27:59):
Yeah, this is not a good gun layout, gun storm layer.
I mean, I don't know what good gun store layout is,
but it's not this. Also, this sequence always makes this
Noggs makes me think of terminator. You know just what
you see here pel.

Speaker 3 (01:28:10):
Yeah, yeah, a phase plasma rifle with forty watt range.
They do not have it. It's just dark gun here. Okay,
but we're headed up to the climax. So we had
two shoppers World for the campaign event. Slash Disco Tech,
Acid freak Out. Fleming and Mulligan are going to be
there for the campaign event, or Mulligan's going to be there,
I guess to go on a date with Alisha. Jerry's

(01:28:31):
going to be there with his tranquilizer gun. Alicia will
be there to entrap Mulligan so he can be caught
at the cops and then quote tested on Alisha's say. So, well,
why the cops are going along with this, I don't know,
But she's convinced them, so good job, Alisha. Also puppets.
Here we get to the puppets. What is the deal
with this puppet show co headlining with the fleming campaign event?

(01:28:53):
It makes me think of in Spinal Tap though, when
the puppet show gets top billing over Spinal Tap at
the at the carnival.

Speaker 2 (01:29:00):
I guess they just wanted something that's, you know, non political.
He was he stressed that earlier. It's like they can't
do political material, just some sort of feel good, feel
good stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:29:10):
Yeah, so the puppets are singing that song just in
time that Fran was singing earlier. We also get some
pre rampage taste of the disco tech. Everybody's dancing, there's
there are you know, of course you're flashing disco lights,
but the color tone of the disco tech is very red.

Speaker 2 (01:29:27):
Yeah. I just I wanted to be there. It's like
I kept thinking, like if I walked up to that bar,
what kind of just horrible drink could I order? You
know what, what crappy nineteen seventies cocktail could I order
and just absolutely love it? Because of the.

Speaker 3 (01:29:39):
Setting, Yeah, you might think there would be some tiki
drinks here but instead she goes up and orders a
martini with two olives. Sidebar on martinis and movies, you know,
every time somebody orders a martini in a movie, unless
it's like the James Bond order, they order a dry martini,
It's like, what, where's the appreciation for a nice wet
martini in the movie?

Speaker 2 (01:30:00):
Yeah? I don't know. I guess maybe it just photographs better,
you tell the visual difference. I don't know. I mean,
maybe to fill it with water and olives and you're
good to go anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:30:12):
Mulligan's here, but he looks like he's not doing so good.
He is sweating, skittish. He starts yelling at the music
for being too loud. So it seems like you're not
getting off on the right foot for this date, Wayne,
and then he tells Alicia that he's going to the
men's room to freshen up. So meanwhile, Jerry arrives at
the mall and we see him like loading up his

(01:30:34):
trank darts in the parking lot. And at the disco,
the police lieutenant arrives and meets with Alicia. She has
apparently gotten somewhat drunk by this time. This is another
one of these things where I feel like she's acting
a bit more like this is a comedy. Yeah, Like
she's had several drinks by the time the police arrive,
and she's like she tells him that Mulligan's been in
the bathroom for a long time, Like I don't know

(01:30:56):
what he's doing in there, but like, why is she
having any drinks when the gold there's a mission?

Speaker 2 (01:31:01):
Yeah, you're on a mission here. The mission was it
to have three cocktails?

Speaker 3 (01:31:06):
Yes, So we go inside the bathroom with the police,
go in there and Mulligan is having an episode a
blue Sunshine attack is imminent. They try to interrogate Mulligan,
but suddenly his wig comes off, and this is apparently
the trigger. He like slams the cop against the bathroom
stall and knocks him out, and then runs out of
the bathroom and just goes on a rampage inside the disco.

(01:31:29):
So a big chunk of what's left in the movie
is just Mulligan rampaging in the disco.

Speaker 2 (01:31:34):
At one point he gorilla presses a girl and throws
her across the dance floor.

Speaker 3 (01:31:39):
Yes, he's running around just beating everybody up. And they're
probably the most famous line from the movie is like
Jerry sees all these people running out of the disco
while he's in the mall, and he's like, what's going on?
And this man turns to Jerry and says, there's a
bald maniac in there and he's going batch. Gerry runs

(01:32:00):
in to rescue Alicia from the disco where she's At
one point, she gets trapped inside the DJ's box, so
like she's in this glass box with all of the
music equipment, and Mulligan is outside, like beating on the
windows trying to get to her. But she outsmarts him
because she realizes she can turn the music all the
way up to like drive him, you know, to like

(01:32:22):
drive him away. So she kind of outsmarts him there.
He runs away out of the disco, and then Jerry
has to chase him with the darts. And so the
final showdown is kind of a cat and mouse game
inside a department store, and we get this scene where
Zipken knows Mulligan is approaching him. He recites the litany
of the pellet gun. He's like, squeeze, don't jerk. If

(01:32:44):
you jerk, it won't work, almost like the magic spell
to defeat the Warlock. And then as Mulligan looms boom
dart to the neck, he nails it and we cut
to epilogue text.

Speaker 2 (01:32:55):
Oh man, well we sort of it's really beautiful. I thought,
like we have fire. Like he's downed the giant. He's
down the maniac Mulligan. Here, he's sitting next to him,
dark gun in hand, and we begin to pan back
right and we begin to see more details of the
shopping mall, and we hear Fleming's campaign speech and he's

(01:33:17):
talking about making America good again, and he's throwing out
all these lines about the future, selling the future to everyone,
and it's like it's really haunting. And then we get
the epilogue text, which I would argue is maybe what
wasn't completely necessary. I feel like we already had a
really firm landing here, but they lean in just a

(01:33:39):
little bit more into the drugs politation element. Right as
we close out.

Speaker 3 (01:33:42):
The epilogue text feels more like the movie poster. It
says Wayne Mulligan was tested. Remember they were going to
test him. He was tested and found to have extensive
chromosomic aberrations and is confined at Alhambra State Sanitarium. A
special task force. The United States Federal Drug Administration reports

(01:34:03):
that two hundred and fifty five doses of Blue Sunshine
manufactured in September nineteen sixty seven are still unaccounted for.
And they ended the sentence with a preposition, well.

Speaker 2 (01:34:19):
Have to. I'm glad they didn't go full animal House
on the epilogue here and tell you what every character did,
because I love the ambiguity, Like, we don't know what
happens with Fleming. Was the campaign successful? You know? What
does he go on to do? We don't know how
it shakes out with other people who took Blue Sunshine.
So I think the epilogue was unnecessary. But what they

(01:34:41):
added here is still creepy in its own right.

Speaker 3 (01:34:43):
Fleming comes to power on a campaign promise of blue
Sunshine for every spine in America.

Speaker 2 (01:34:49):
Yeah like that, that would be too much, But yeah,
I like the ambiguity of it, though. I like where
we landed.

Speaker 3 (01:34:55):
So that's Blue Sunshine. If you've got a stomach for
exploitation horror, I think it's a really really fine example.
And again, once again want to emphasize what I said
earlier works on multiple levels. It is both super effective
as horror, incredibly creepy and paranoid and also one of
the funniest movies I've watched in a while.

Speaker 2 (01:35:16):
Yeah, and with I think some very strong social commentary
that stands the test of time. So strong recommendation for
this one. If this is your your deal at all,
and if you're looking for an off kilter Christmas movie,
here you have it. Merry Christmas, Blue Sunshine. I need
a Blue Sunshine ornament now, but I'll have to look
end of that.

Speaker 3 (01:35:37):
I'm trying to think what the ornament would.

Speaker 2 (01:35:39):
Be bald ahead of course. Oh yeah, it's gotta be windy.

Speaker 3 (01:35:44):
I wonder if you can just get a copy of
Jerry's Christmas sweater from Blue Sunshine. That'd be a deep cut.

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
That'd be a deep cut. A VHS box art would
also be really cool. I have a little VHS box
art ornament of chopping mall on the tree. I also
have a phantasm sphere, which you gave me last year.

Speaker 3 (01:36:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:36:02):
So it's it's it's heavy and it's sharp. I think
this is all made by Mondo.

Speaker 3 (01:36:07):
Oh I didn't mean for it to be threatening in
your home, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:36:11):
It's it's we're all safe around sharbarbicks now, so we're good,
but all.

Speaker 3 (01:36:16):
Is impacted baby.

Speaker 2 (01:36:17):
Yeah, all right, We're gonna go and close out this episode.
This one of them, maybe a bit of a long one,
but you know, we had to go into all the
details here. It's Blue Sunshine after all. We'll remind you
that The Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
science and culture podcast, with core episodes in the feed
on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Wednesdays we do a
short form episode and on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema.
That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and

(01:36:39):
talk about a strange film like this one. And if
you want a full list of the movies we've covered
over the years, go to letterbox dot com. You'll find
us there as weird House. That's our user and we
have a list there of all the films we've covered
so far, and sometimes sometimes there's a glimpse at what's
coming up next.

Speaker 3 (01:36:55):
Huge things. 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 (01:37:15):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Stuff To Blow Your Mind News

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Robert Lamb

Joe McCormick

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

Monster: BTK

Dateline NBC

The Bobby Bones Show

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Weirdhouse Cinema: Blue Sunshine