Weirdhouse Cinema: Dark City, Part 1

In this two-part Weirdhouse Cinema exploration, Rob and Joe dive into Noirvember with 1998’s “Dark City,” directed by Alex Proyas and starring Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Richard O'Brien, and Ian Richardson.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
It's officially November. So hey, let's bust out air Vember
selection for today's episode. But on the other hand, we're
also still digging our Halloween vibes, so I thought it
would be appropriate to pick something that gives us a
little bit of both categories. I want you wanted an
October the thirty eighth selection here that keeps the Halloween

(00:38):
vibe going strong with some creepiness and darkness, but also
let's get into that different sort of darkness with a
little bit of or neo noir, or in this case,
a little bit of sci fi noir.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
That's right. So today I'm Weird House. We're going to
be talking about the nineteen ninety eight sci fi noir
film Dark City, directed by Alex Proyis Rob. I'm excited
for today because this was one of my absolute favorite
movies when I was in school, but coming into this episode,
I hadn't seen it in a long time, so I've

(01:13):
been very excited to revisit it, to see how well
it holds up to see if it's as good as
I remember, how you know, how my reaction to it
might have changed over time, and I think we'll have
some interesting things to talk about. But yeah, this used
to be one of my like, I don't know, top
five movies when I was eighteen years old, and I
still think, I guess to spoil my reaction might not

(01:35):
be quite there for me yet, but I still think
it's pretty great.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah. I have a similar history with this film and
similar attitudes towards it today, Like when it came out,
and I don't think I did not see it in
the theater, No, I would have seen it on home video,
probably on DVD by that point. This film did come
out during the heyday of DVDs and DVD special editions. Yeah,

(02:00):
remember just falling in love with it, thinking it was just,
you know, absolutely perfect, And for a good decade or
decade and a half after that, I would continually hold
it up as one of my favorite films. You know,
had the I had it on DVD, watched it multiple times,
and so it was. It was also an interesting experience
to revisit it, you know, at this point where I'd

(02:22):
forgotten enough about it, or at least my memories had
been altered.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
This is funny that we're in such a similar place
with this movie.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah, it was fun to go
back and yeah, like yourself. I think for the most part,
I still love plenty of things about Dark City. It's
still a terrific flick that I easily recommend to anyone.
But you know, there with the passing of time, you know,
maybe I have a few notes here and there on
some things that maybe didn't hold up as well, or

(02:50):
perhaps you know, things that I'm just like, wow, that
was great, but I wanted more of that. So we'll
get into it.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Just to note, we don't usually do this with Weird
House Cinema. We have a couple of times in the past.
This is going to be one of our rare two
parters for a Weird House episode because Rob and I
started talking about Dark City and turns out we had
a lot to say. So this will be part one
of our exploration of this movie. As always on Weird House,
we're going to talk about the plot in pretty granular detail.

(03:16):
It will be a deep spoiler laden so if you
want to see this movie, unspoiled, which I would recommend
probably best to pause here and go watch it before
listening any further. If you've managed to never see Dark City,
in a way, lucky you getting to see it for
the first time. But this is a movie that really
in particular benefits from a cold viewing, So if it's possible,

(03:37):
I'd say watch it without reading or knowing anything going in. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Absolutely, And if you want to stop now and go
and acquire it, well, it is widely available. There is
an Aero Dark City limited edition four KUHD release out
right now that looks especially nice if you're looking for
some physical media, but you can find it just about anywhere.
As I mentioned, this film came out during the initial
big DVD boom, so there have been a wealth of

(04:02):
extras and commentary tracks, including a track by one of
the film's biggest critical champions of the time, and that's
Roger Ebert, who again not only gave it a glowing review,
but sat down and did an entire commentary track for
the film, which I believe I listened to, but it's
been so long I've forgotten a lot of Ebert's finer

(04:23):
points about it. But in short, he really liked it.
So while we're talking about the different releases of the film,
it's probably worth including a note on the different cuts
or versions of it available. The first version I saw
of Dark City was the original theatrical release on home
video in the early two thousands, and I loved it

(04:44):
based on that experience. But the version that I'm going
to be talking about for today's episode is actually the
two thousand and eight director's cut, which most fans seem
to prefer. One of the key differences people point out
is that it leaves out some unnecessary opening narration from
Keifer Sutherland's character, which, from what I recall, does indeed

(05:08):
spoil huge surprises in the movie for no particular reason.
And actually, the friend of mine who first showed me
Dark City, even though we watched the theatrical cut, he
muted the opening narration when he showed it to me.
Oh wow, you had somebody looking out for you.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Really, Yeah, this's my friend Ben, He's taking good care
of me.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
But this was the version, of course, that I grew
up loving as well, and I don't know at the time,
nobody muted it for me, so I just got the
spoiler right there at the beginning and just accepted it
is like, well, they know what they're doing.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
I don't know this, this could be totally wrong, but
the decision to include that opening monologue feels like a
misguided attempt to address complaints of test audiences.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
I believe that is the case. I think I've read
that and that's the reason that the narrator is missing
from the director's cut. Yeah, and as is often the case,
you know, the director's cut also has it doesn't I
don't think it has a tremendous amount of extra content.
I know there's like one scene in particular with Jennifer
Connelly's character, but we don't have a complete side by

(06:16):
side breakdown of how the two different versions differ, though.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
But there definitely is extra stuff. I know the director's
cut is several minutes longer. Yeah, and there are a
few little subplots I think where there is extra dialogue,
there will be dialogue exchanges where there are more lines
between the characters and a scene than I remember being there.
There are just generally scenes that are a little bit longer.
There's one subplot I think about about a little girl

(06:43):
who witnesses a murder, and I don't think that was
in the theatrical cut.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's a lot easier when you're
dealing with grimier pictures, because then you pretty much always
know what's cut is just more gore and more nudity.
That's not the case here. The content that was added
back for the director's cut tends to be a little
more nuanced.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
I think we were talking about this a bit off, Mike,
But one question I guess is how much the extra
stuff in the director's cut does mess with the pacing
of the film. I do still think that the director's
cut has a pretty excellent pace, but the movie did
not feel quite as tightly wound as I remember. That
was one of the really I mean, there's a lot

(07:25):
that's great about this movie, but one of the real
lasting impressions that the theatrical cut originally made on me
was its pacing. I thought that it was about as
perfectly paced a movie as I had ever seen it.
Just the way the story unfolded felt like a perfectly
tuned machine. It was just fast, lean, perfectly efficient in storytelling,

(07:49):
with constant forward momentum. Somehow, on watching the director's cut,
it felt a little bit looser than that. To me.
Maybe that's partially just different judgment now than I'm older,
But many of the scenes I think are actually longer.
So it's not like I think the director's cut is
badly paced, but it might lose that like perfect pacing edge.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Interesting. Yeah, I thought it was. In my viewing. I
thought it still moved along at a pretty crisp pace.
But I wonder too how much of that is just
how I went into the picture because or at least
this viewing of it, because going into it, I think
I was And I watched it with my wife she
was like, hey, I want to rewatch Dark City. I
haven't seen it forever as well, so I'm sometimes a

(08:33):
little extra nervous if someone else is watching it with me.
I guess my two but my two main concerns were
it's a director's cut, is it going to feel bloated?
And then number two, I'm revisiting a film that in
the past I've loved so much. What if I don't
love it anymore? You know, what if it feels old
or tired and rough around the edges or something to

(08:54):
that effect. I mean, I've had that experience with films.
And then also, yeah, what if what if my wife
is bored with it, and so I was kind of
prepared for any of those eventualities, and none of them occurred.
I mean for the most part. I mean, as we'll discuss,
there are a few things that I have different thoughts
on today, but for the most part, I still loved it.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
I definitely really loved some movies when I was eighteen
that are not as good as Dark City.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
Yeah, I would venture to guess that Hell Raiser two
doesn't hold up as well as it used to for
my case. Now, without going into spoilers, I want to
mention that Dark City, if you're not familiar with it,
or even if you are, it'll just serves to remind
you that it's very much a reality, isn't what you think?

(09:40):
It is? Film of the late nineties and early two thousands.
It's one of the best of these films, alongside The Matrix,
which came out the following year and actually reuses some
of the same rooftop sets.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
Oh well, I can see that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah. Some other films that you could easily compare to
these too would be what Gatica from ninety seven, so
kind of a precursor existence from ninety nine the Cronenberg
film and The Thirteenth Floor from nineteen ninety nine, But
there are many other films that feature different elements of
this sort of subgenre of you know, reality isn't what

(10:18):
you think it is, either because there's some sort of
active simulation going on, or there is indeed something else,
a little more subtle, something in our worldview or in
our culture that has to be poked through.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
I just had to check because I've never seen The
Thirteenth Floor, but I was wondering, is that the movie
that's a remake of World on Wire, the Fastbender movie
from the seventies. I don't know if I'm saying his
name correctly, the German director Rander Werner. Fastbender is how
it's spelled, anyway. I just originally I watched the original
mini series World on Wire this past year, and I

(10:51):
thought it was excellent and really interesting, and then realized
that there was like a late nineties remake of that.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
Oh wow, Well, maybe that's what we need to look
at the next time. We need a little dose of
nineties or reality poking.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Oh okay, my impression, maybe this is totally unfair. My
impression is that Thirteenth Floor is not considered a very
good adaptation of the source material. Okay, all right, by
the way, if you get a chance, World on Wire
is pretty great.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Okay, it's a it's a mini series.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, the original German mini series. Yes, that was based
on the novel. I don't remember the name of it,
but you're exactly right that at least does have this
this plot of like, what is reality? Is the world
we live in? Real? Am I a butterfly dreaming? I'm
a man? That kind of thing?

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah? Yeah, And this becomes a pretty important part of
a number of cinematic experiments of the day. I mean
you see elements of it in films like Fight.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
Club as well.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
But you know, in general, you have a basic scenario,
right where your protagonist comes to see through the illusion
of the mundane world and in grasping this revelation finds
that power to overcome this illusion and or the power
behind that illusion. Nothing new about this story structure, of course,
It's essentially the story of the historical Buddha Sidharta Goatoma

(12:08):
you know begun. You know, where he realizes that you
know that there's a fallacy. There's an allusion to the
sort of world that we live in value and seeing
through that and discovering the truth, finding this revelation and
in that revelation of power.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah, Plato's Cave and all that sort of thing too. Yeah,
the facade of reality is an illusion. There is some
deeper thing happening behind it, and you have to understand
what that is.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, and you know, coming back to the time period
in our lives in which you and I both watched
this film, and a lot of people out there enjoyed
this film, and and also with younger listeners, maybe you
you discovered this film later and it filled the same
slot for you. But yeah, I do feel like this
sort of tale often really resonates strongly with that age range,

(12:54):
that feeling of waking up, seeing through the illusion and
finding the note and or power to combat it. You know,
we could be cynical and point to any number of
flawed or even harmful ideologies one might pick up during
this phase of one's life, but it's also just part
of growing up and figuring out who you are.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah, I think you're exactly right. The what's really real
type story, It can resonate at any age, but it
is like a heat seeking missile to the mind of
the early adult, you know, the you know when you're
eighteen to twenty years old, which is exactly when I
discovered this movie and thought it was the best movie
I'd ever seen. Yeh, yeah, and so it's you know,

(13:34):
I still like that kind of story now, but it
had a power to me then, and I think often
does have a power when you're at that age.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, you can. This is a film in which, once
our protagonist fully finds his power, he's able to float
up off the ground and move things with his mind.
And that's kind of the feeling of making these breakthroughs
and revelations at that age and at that point in
one's life.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
Then, and at least in my experience, then you realize, oh,
I didn't actually know anything at all, And hopefully the
general pace one keeps through one's life is yeah, you
keep learning new things, you keep realizing that you didn't
have it all figured out, and then you keep learning
and growing as a person and floating off the ground
and eventually moving things with your mind.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
No, it's what you're saying is interesting because I think
there is a smug, self satisfied way to have the
socratic admission of ignorance, you know, like, oh, I've admitted
that I know nothing in reality might not be what
I think it is, and I'm so much smarter than
you for saying that.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, but it's also it's interesting to think about this
in light of Highlander. Okay, Highlander. You know the quickening
in the first film, like he wins and achieves perfection.
That's kind of what we'll get in this picture. That's
kind that's basically what we get in the matrix. The
first one is a standalone film. The idea that you
can just level up your character or completely at age

(15:02):
twenty something and then you're good, You've got it all,
figure it out.

Speaker 3 (15:06):
And then Queen plays. Yeah. In fact, I do want
to talk about what the ending of this movie means,
but I guess we'll save it for when we get
there in the plot section? Should we also save this?
I sort of wrote up a list of the general
things that held up as well as I remembered them,
or about as well as I remembered them, and the

(15:27):
things that did not. Do you want to talk about
that now or save that for later.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
Let's go ahead and hit some thoughts about like the
general texture of the film, particularly the look of the film.
Oh and then maybe we'll get a little more detailed
when we talk about individual performers.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
Okay, cool, Well, So, one thing that I think still
holds up quite well is the plot. Not necessarily every
single element of the story, but in terms of plot mechanics,
how the mystery is plotted, how information is revealed, the
dreaming up of the situation of the movie, I think
that's still just top notch. This movie is a super

(16:04):
intriguing mystery from the very first moments that pulls you along.
You just gotta know what happens next. And I think
it by and large has very enjoyable characters and dialogue
moment to moment.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Yeah, yeah, just some amazing world building here as well,
And yeah, I agree all this holds up for my money.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
Also, I think most of the cast is pretty great.
I love the on screen presence of rufus sewell of
Jennifer Connelly, of William Hurt, and definitely of Richard O'Brien.
I don't want to be too critical because you know,
no offense to him. It might not have might have
been direction instead of his decisions. Key for Sutherland's weird,

(16:43):
gasping performance might not be for everybody here. I don't know.
I've heard that polarize people before.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
I will share my thoughts on this performance in just
a minute of.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
Doing Okay, oh wow, wait a minute, are you doing
Peter Lorrie?

Speaker 2 (16:58):
There? I I'm doing what I think key for Southern.
So I'll go ahead and talk about this just a
little bit. Yeah, so with key for Sutherland's performance here,
there was a time where I would have probably told
you this was my favorite key for Sutherland role, and
that might still actually be true. I love it when actors,

(17:19):
especially ones we don't necessarily think of as character actors
or villain actors or weird actors, make weird choices. And
there's some weird choices made that this performance. It's still captivating,
But on my rewatch, I increasingly felt like I was
watching Sutherland do kind of a one dimensional impersonation of
Ronald Lacey doing an impersonation of Peter Lorie.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
WHOA, Yeah, that's that's a good read. I see those layers. Yeah,
it almost feels to me more like a skit performance
than a movie performance.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
Yeah, and we would maybe notice it less if we
didn't see this character so frequently. Yeah, and you know,
I don't know. I don't know his screen time in
the director's cut versus the original. Is it possibly the
case that we just see a little bit too much
and hear a little bit too much from this character
in the director's cut.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
I still think this is a major character, and he
still had a lot of screen time in the theatrical,
So I don't know.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
Yeah. So another thing that I think really really holds
up is the setting and the set design. This is
just marvelous. I think this is something also that Ebert
really loved about the movie. But it is a wonderful
blend of different visual style. Soe The look in the
movie is part nineteen forties film noir, with a lonely city,

(18:41):
always in the dark, where people meet whispering in these
isolated pools of artificial light. Very much a feeling like
Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, you know what I'm talking about. But
another layer on top of that, I would say is
characterized more by a German expressionist unreality in the architecture,
these tall, looming buildings with bizarre sharp angles, often few

(19:05):
or no windows. You'll see in this movie a skyscraper
that doesn't have any windows on it, or maybe it's
like one window and then you will have also this
layered city effect reminiscent of Fritzlanan's Metropolis, where the world
is stacked up vertically upon itself and life seems to
take place in this endless series of tunnels and stairwells,

(19:29):
all supported by this unholy machinery underneath. I just love
the setting.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, yeah, this absolutely still held up for me. It
felt like shades of Irving Norman. Definitely strong noir vibes
to it, and everything illuminated in a sickly absente lighting,
but not too much, like, not so strongly that you're like,
WHOA hold off in the gels there, buddy. Like it
felt like just the right amount of surreal lighting in

(19:56):
this surreal environment.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
I like the weird color palette of the Yeah, so
the movie is very dark. The title doesn't lie. It
is a dark city, so there's a lot of shadow,
but there are scenes that have lighting themes, sometimes of green,
sometimes of yellow, sometimes of blue.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
Another visual element that I think holds up amazingly is
the costumes and makeup, especially the design of the villains
in the film The Strangers. I love the strangers in
their human form. I'll offer a caveat on other elements
of the strangers in a minute, but in their human
form they look awesome. The black hats, this mountainous, kind

(20:36):
of bulky image of the fur lined collars on their coats,
the wonderful costume design, and they look so mysterious.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
Yeah, I was thinking about it. There is. It's essentially
a three part cocktail, equal parts German expressionist Nosferatu, hell razor,
cinebite and bomb worshiping mutants from beneath the planet of
the Apes, and it all comes together perfectly, like in
a way, I would argue that, like, I mean, I
don't know, I don't want to say anything against nos Faratu,

(21:05):
but it's almost like by combining these three elements you
create something even more visually striking than the ingredients.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
You know.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
It's just a perfect balance of influences here.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yeah, Okay, So that's some of the main thoughts I
had about things that I think hold up really well.
I may be forgetting some other real virtues of the film,
but yeah, for the most part, that's like the big
stuff that I think still works great. Some elements also,
I think did not hold up quite as well as
I remembered, you might be critical of some aspects of

(21:36):
the story. While the story as a plot, as like
an executed plot, works so well and it's got a
really imaginative central idea and situation, there are elements of
the human storytelling that might feel kind of skin deep,
you know that sometimes some of the characters are kind
of just moved around by pieces and don't feel you

(22:00):
can feel you're kind of scraping the bottom suddenly.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah, but it is this is such a weird film
to think about those those limitations in because the characters
within the context of the story, the characters are moved
around as pieces, yeah, and are kind of shallow because
they're you know, we're coming up against the limitations of
their memory and yeah. So it's not quite a dull
person movie or anything to that effect, but we are

(22:26):
dealing with We're not dealing with real world human characters here,
And I think there's no there's no there are no
characters in this that are real world human beings, as
we'll come to discover.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
You could argue, yeah, the characterization is a result of
the weird situation of the story. Yeah, some things that
I think definitely don't hold up great. So some of
the special effects there is cgi in this movie that
is quite rough in my opinion. I would particularly call
out the reveal of the creature designs and some of

(23:00):
the tuning scenes not looking great to me.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Yeah, I think most of these effects felt really great
at the time, but have just not aged well again
because watching it in twenty twenty five, it's we've just
seen the technology evolve so much. I was just begging
for just one practical effect shot of the alien creatures,
but I don't think we ever got one. There's one

(23:26):
shot where we kind of zoom in on a character's eyeball,
and that one that one looked alright to me, But
there are some others that are pretty rough, yeah, by
today's standards.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
Also, I'm gonna say the weakest thing about the film
is the credits font. It's they used the font from
You Wouldn't Steal a Car.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Yeah, I was kind of strike the fonts. Felt it
threw me like I was thrown off for a second
as well, where I was like, are these the original fonts?
Did they have to replace? It? Is this like of
a last minute change? I don't know. I mean clearly. Yeah,
nothing has changed, but yeah, it it felt weird to
me as well.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
I also have some thoughts about the final showdown at
the end of the movie, but maybe we'll save that
for the end of the plot section.

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah, all right, Well, elevator pitch for this one, I
honestly couldn't come up with anything, because I think Dark City,
at least for me, is one of those films that
you generally use as a reference point, some sort of
an elevator pitch, Like if you were to say, Okay,
it's Dark City, but with machine guns and latex pants,
that sort of thing, that's what the matrix is. Yeah, yeah,
in some respects it is. But then how do you

(24:31):
describe Dark City? I don't know that there's probably a
comparison that could be made to an older film, but
for the most part, it does feel like this. It
still feels like this to me, like it was at
the time a very fresh cinematic experiment that succeeded and
influenced so many things and retains a strong place in
everyone's memory. Yeah, all right, normally we would play the trailer,

(24:53):
but you know, I'm gonna if you're cool that Joe,
I think we're just going to skip it because I
revisited the theatrical trailer for this film and it's terrible,
especially for our audio format. It shows a lot of
neat sequences from the film, which is great if you're
if you're watching the trailer with your eyeballs, but otherwise
it's just music images and a weird font over that

(25:16):
that footage, and the music is not that great. I
don't know what the music is. It just feels weird.
It feels kind of like you're playing in Enigma track
over scenes from from Dark City. I had to check
multiple times to make sure I was actually watching a
legitimate trailer for this uh, major theatrical release and not
some sort of like third rate fan made trailer from

(25:37):
subsequent decades. But I think it is just really a
lackluster trailer. This is like tuning scenes set to techno.
Yeah kind of, but yeah, not in an effective way.
So go watch it if you if you wish, But
we're not gonna air any of the limited audio here.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
All right, do you want to talk about the connections?

Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah, let's get into it, all right. Let's start at
the top then with director Alex Proyas, who also has
a story in screenplay credit here. He was born in
nineteen sixty three. Australian director of Greek descent who directed
music videos in the nineteen eighties for such groups as
in Excess, Yes and Alphaville. They also made some short

(26:26):
films before directing his first feature length movie, nineteen eighty
nine's Spirits of the Air Grimlins of the Clouds, an
independent Australian post apocalyptic sci fi tale. He of course
followed this up with nineteen ninety four's The Crow, a crow,
a comic book movie starring Brandon Lee, Ernie Hudson, and
Michael Wincutt that made just a huge impact at the

(26:49):
time and is another film that I think retains its
cult following.

Speaker 3 (26:54):
I have only seen The Crow once. I think did
not make nearly as big an impression on me as
Dark City did, but I remember the vibes around it.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
It was.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
It was a sort of generational touchstone in a way.
Am I wrong about that?

Speaker 2 (27:10):
No? No, I think it's absolutely correct. It was the
goth superhero movie that the mid nineties needed. It had
a really awesome soundtrack that everyone around my age was
required to own on CD. And the end, of course,
you know the tragic death of the film star during
production also I think ended up adding to its mystique.

(27:31):
You know, it was and we had you know, Brandon
Lee died during the filming of the motion picture. And
you know, it's weird to reflect on this because while
I had the CD, I don't think, like yourself, I
don't think I watched the film more than once, so
I can't say that I was like a diehard Crow fan.
I remember loving the soundtrack. It had like the Cure
nine inch nails, Roland's Band Rage against the Machine. And

(27:55):
then there was this added weird feeling associated with the
tragic death of Lee during the production in ninety three.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
I mean, he didn't just die while they were making
the movie. He was killed on set by an accident.
Yeah it was.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, it was a tragic accident in the filming of
the movie. But then like, yeah, this came out. The
film came out in ninety four. That was the year
that Kurt Cobain died. And then there were there were
other like mainstream actors that I was familiar with at
the time that it died. John Candy died that year,

(28:28):
while Julia died that year, and Peter Cushing died that year,
and so I don't know, it just kind of all
amounted to like this kind of like I'm not saying
this was the universal feeling for everyone concerning The Crow,
but you know it was maybe it kind of added
to its kind of like gothic allure, you know, especially
for people who were at least a little bit goth

(28:51):
in the mid in the mid and late nineties.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
I can see that. Yeah, you know, I was never
personally a goth in terms of style, but I guess
maybe partially goth in terms of media sensibilities. So I
saw The Crow as like part of my It was like,
this is my media zone. This movie is in there,
even though I only saw it one time and definitely
had that CD. I bought like a very scratched, you know,

(29:16):
ninety two cent copy of that CD from my hometown
used book in CD store and I wore that thing
out listening to that in my car.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Yeah. Yeah, it was a good one. So The Crow
was both a critical and commercial hit at the time,
and so this was great for Preis and Dark City
was his follow up, a slightly more expensive and significantly
more ambitious, dark sci fi noar tale about memory and identity,

(29:45):
and while ultimately not the commercial hit that The Crow was,
Dark City certainly enthralled various critics, as we've alluded to,
and quickly earned its place as a cult favorite. And
so it's yeah, I think it's a film that that
people were just drawn to, attached to, and they've never
let go off. So he followed up Dark City with
two thousand and two's comedy drama Garage Days two thousand

(30:07):
and fours I Robot starring Will Smith.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
I never saw that.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
I saw it exactly once, and I don't remember much
of it other than I didn't really like the way
the robots looked.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
Yeah, I remember that from the trailer. Let's see.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Then he did two thousand and nine's The Knowing starring
Nicholas Cage.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
Oh, I have seen that.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
Oh I didn't see that one. Is it not great?

Speaker 3 (30:31):
No offense? No, but yeah, my review is thumbs not up.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
And then twenty sixteen's Gods of Egypt, which I also
didn't see. I understand there was mixed mixed response to
that one as well. Yeah, and he has an upcoming film,
a sci fi film titled r u Are, based on
the nineteen twenty play by check writer Carol Koppek, which
this is the play that originally gave us the word.

(31:01):
So he's gone back to it to robots again. We'll
see how that comes together. He's also continued to direct
short films, including twenty twenty one's Mask of the Evil Apparition,
which is apparently set in the Dark City universe, and
there's been chatter in recent years about him bringing Dark
City back as some sort of a TV series or

(31:21):
limited mini series, an idea that I would have found
blasphemous twenty years ago, but now, after rewatching the film,
I'm kind of like, yeah, I could see the potential
there if it was done right, I kind of I would.
I would want I would watch it if we're well made.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Oh who would that be for? Is they're saying, would
that be? Would that be Netflix or somebody else? I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
I don't know if there is a particular studio attached,
or is a studio or streaming network attached, but it
would probably that would be my bet. Yeah, it would
probably be some sort of an Apple, Netflix or Pulu thing,
all right. Other screenplay credits we have Lim Dabbs born
nineteen fifty eight, English screenwriter, otherwise best known for work
on the screenplay for nineteen ninety nine's The Limeey, but

(32:03):
he also wrote nineteen eighty nine's Hider in the House,
in which Gary Busey lives in the walls of Mimi
Rogers and Michael McCain's house. Yes, yes, yes, this is
a movie. I wasn't even aware that it had a
theatrical release. I think I saw it on the Sci
Fi Channel when I was a kid and weirdly liked

(32:25):
it and was very excited to recently see an updated
Blu ray edition of it at Video Drome, and I like,
I had to send you a photograph of.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
It on the shelf. Oh, I love to get in
that text. Yeah, that was great. When did Hyder in
the House become an in joke on our show? I
feel like we've been talking about it for ten years.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
I don't know. It's like, was it as ridiculous a
premise at the time as it seemed in after the fact.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (32:52):
I think it's more the title than the premise. The
way the title expresses the premise is so flat, flatly descriptive.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Yeah, as I remember, like, the basic idea is imagine
if you will. Gary Busey is a contractor, and before
you move into your house, he builds secret compartments in
your walls, an attic and makes himself a living space
in there, and he's secretly living there, like a living
ghost in your house, watching you, creeping on you, but
also sort of looking after you. I don't remember how

(33:25):
things really go with the plot, but that's the basic vibe.

Speaker 3 (33:27):
He's like an elf. He's Harry Potter under the stairs,
but it's Gary Busey.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
Yeah, but it's again, almost any character Gary Busey plays,
you know that it's not. He's not lawful good. There's
some chaos energy there. So I don't think it's a
recommended experience to have Gary Busey living in your walls.
You want to do something about that. If you suspect
there is a Gary Busey in there.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
Yeah, you got to call up that Gary Busey removal service.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yeah, yeah, you do get it taken care of professionally,
all right. We also, of course, have davees Goyer on
the screenplay here, born nineteen sixty five. We previously talked
about him in our episode on Blade, so we won't
get into much detail here. But easily one of the
biggest and most successful screenwriters working today, especially as far
as dark genre offerings and superheroes go. I continue to

(34:16):
really enjoy his Foundation series on Apple. All right, let's
get into the cast. Our protagonist John Murdoch is played
by Rufus Sewell born nineteen sixty seven, English actor of stage,
screen and TV, who's been I think a pretty consistent
face in TV and film since the mid nineties. That's
when he appeared in both this and nineteen ninety six

(34:37):
is Hamlet.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
Oh yeah, I barely remember this. This is Kenneth Brandaugh's
Hamlet with where Sewell plays Fort and bra Yes, correct, Yeah,
I only saw that one time, a long time ago.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah, but yeah. Sewell spend in so many things and
continues to be in them like his subsequent credits included
Let's See two thousand's Blessed the Child two thousand and
one and Night's Tale two thousand and one. Mermaid or
possibly two thousand and two, I don't remember, but it
was around this time a Mermaid horror movie titled She
Creature that I distinctly remember watching on DVD. It is

(35:11):
very much kind of a B movie creature feature but
one that I remember enjoying at the time. Let's see.
He was in two thousand and five is The Legend
of Zorro, two thousand and six is The Illusionist, two
thousand and eight's John Adams. He was in twenty twelve's
Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
I just remember, Yeah. In John Adams he plays Hamilton,
doesn't he Yeah?

Speaker 2 (35:32):
And in Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer, which I didn't see,
he plays a character named Adams. So I don't know
if he plays John Adams in that or not.

Speaker 3 (35:40):
That wouldn't make sense.

Speaker 2 (35:42):
What would make sense in Abraham Lincoln Vampire Slayer. It's possible.
Why not? Maybe he's a vampire like alone. Maybe I
don't know, that's the Maybe that's the plot. It's like
other it's like founding fathers that come back as vampires
during the day of Abraham Lincoln. Oh, I see, Okay,
I have no idea. I'm completely making things up here.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
But anyway.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
He went on to be in twenty fourteen's Hercules. This
is the one with the Rock. He was in Gods
of Egypt TV's The Man in the High Castle, And
let's see twenty twenty one's Old, the movie about people
getting aged by the sun. The Beach that makes You Old,
The Beach that makes You Old.

Speaker 3 (36:20):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
And then also he has at least a guest starring
role in TV's The Sandman. He's come to excel and
supporting in villain roles. Though I was reading that he
has mentioned not enjoying playing villains all that much and
wanted to get away from it.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
But I don't know.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
I feel like he's really good at it, so why
distance yourself? But we've talked about that before the performance.
Rudgor Howard was another one who was like, I don't
want to play villains anymore.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
So I guess I remember him in a bad movie
that I watched with my friends in college. I was
gonna say he was a villain, but maybe he was
a good guy in it. I actually don't recall. It
was a movie called Extreme Ops that was a like
B action movie about no boarders and people who do
extreme sports and they go to a place to film

(37:04):
some snowboarding but they get taken hostage by terrorists.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
Oh wow, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:09):
I could imagine him playing either role there, and I
think that's one of the reasons he works so well
in Dark City. Is that this is a character that
we're uncertain of at first. Is he a killer?

Speaker 3 (37:20):
Is he a hero?

Speaker 2 (37:21):
Is he somewhere in between? Like? What do we feel
about this guy in this?

Speaker 3 (37:25):
You know very much?

Speaker 2 (37:26):
I think a great actor for the heavy noir vibes
of especially the early goings.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
Of this movie. Yeah. Yeah, he's got a great presence here.
I like him a lot.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Now, speaking of presents, William hurt Is in this playing
inspector Frank Bumstead are sort of world weary, tired but
dedicated homicide detective. Well it hurts one of those actors,
Like an actor of Hurts caliber and presence just works
seamlessly in a picture like this. You can just pour
him in and he'll fill all the necessary spaces.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
Gravita. Yeah, he's great here. And in fact, one thing
I've read about the making of this movie was that
in original versions of the story, like, the story changed
a lot as the as the creators were working through it.
And in an earlier version of the story it was
really going to be centered around this detective. He was

(38:20):
going to be the main character sort of discovering what's
going on with the other characters. Over time, it shifted
to make rufus Sewell's character the protagonist.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
Oh yeah, that's interesting because you can you can imagine that,
of course, the detective at the center of a noir tale,
like that's that's perfect. I mean, that's that's and that's
exactly the sort of character he plays here. You know,
the smoking, drinking again, you know, world weary but dedicated
to the job.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
Though even though he's gruff in his demeanor, he ultimately
I think comes off as more lawful good in the
end than your standard cynical, amoral noir detective.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Yeah, I think that's true. Yeah. William Hurd, of course,
he lived nineteen fifty through twenty twenty two, a four
time Academy Award nominated actor, known for lead or main
roles in such films as nineteen eighties Altered States eighty
one's Body Heat, eighty three's The Big Chill two thousand
and one's AI two thousand and five Is a History
of Violence. And also a lot of folks will recognize

(39:21):
him from his role as Thaddeus Ross in the MCU
that character. After his death, he was that character's recast,
with Harrison Ford playing the role. All Right, we mentioned
him already, but we have key for Sutherland playing doctor
Daniel Schreiber born nineteen sixty six, multiple Emmy nominated actor
for his role on the TV series twenty four, and

(39:43):
of course, son of the late Donald Sutherland. He had
a knack for playing dangerous youths in the mid nineteen eighties,
popping up in both nineteen eighty six's Stand By Me
as a gang member bully character if I remember correctly,
and nineteen eighty seven's The Lost Boys as a vampire.
Subsequent credits included nineteen eighty eight's Young Guns, nineteen nineties

(40:05):
Flat Liners, ninety two's Twin Peaks, fire Walk with Me,
a Few Good Men in ninety two ninety three's The
Three Musketeers. It really felt for a while like you
couldn't throw a stick without hitting a Keefer Sutherland movie.
And I think he's continued to stay pretty busy.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah, I don't know if I've seen Keefer Sutherland and
anything recently. Maybe he's just he's just working in a
different part of the media than I'm expressed.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
I think that's probably the case. Two other films of his,
of no, there was two thousand and eight Mirrors, a
horror movie, and then twenty eleven's Melancholia. So, yeah, is
he good in this? Is he bad in this? I
don't know. I guess you know. Folks can disagree, but
he is memorable. Yes, yeah, and I would I would
stress I don't think he's bad at it at all.

(40:49):
I would not say this is a bad performance.

Speaker 3 (40:51):
I just.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
Revisiting the film. I found the performance slash character a
little less convincing. All right, Jennifer Connolly is in this,
and she plays Emma Murdoch. This is the at least

(41:15):
at first, we're to believe that the estranged wife of
John Murdoch rufus Sewle's character. Born nineteen seventy, Oscar Award
winning actress whose credits as a child actress again date
back to nineteen eighty two episode of Rawdall's anthology series
Tales of the Unexpected, and she was also in the

(41:37):
music video for Duran Durand's Union of the Snake in
nineteen eighty three. We previously talked about her at length
in our episode on Labyrinth.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
Yeah, that's right now.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
I'm interested to hear your take on this, Joe, because
I've really loved Connolly in various projects over the years.
Including the recent TV series Snowpiercer, which I thought really
showcased her acting abilities. But I had a harder time
with her character in Dark City. On my rewatch. It's
certainly not that Connolly is bad, but her character feels

(42:10):
like so underdefined in many ways and just and granted again,
you could make a case that there are plot related
reasons for this with her character in pretty much every
other character in the film, but I found that I
really lacked an understanding of who Emma is aside from
what she stands for in her husband's mind and memory.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
Yeah, I think i'd agree with that. I mean, I
think she is interesting in that she and the detective
are in that they're the only two major characters as
far as I recall that we actually get to see
being subjected to the thing that happens to all of
the human characters in this movie. You know, so the

(42:50):
protagonist is, for reasons we'll explain, exempted from it, at
least within the run time of the film, and Keifer
Sutherland's character is not part of this system. So you know,
there is a thing that happens in the story where
characters are you know, they sort of have their identities
regularly erased, and she is one of the two characters

(43:10):
that that is happening to we come to understand that
is happening to. So, like you're alluding to, that could
explain a kind of feeling of shallowness that we might
get with Jennifer Connolly's character or with William Hurtz. But
I think it especially comes through with Jennifer Connolly's character,
maybe because of the way she's also emotionally characterized. I mean,

(43:34):
she's very meek and soft spoken most of the time,
and so I think that could contribute in some ways
to a feeling of a lack of substance.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Yeah, and I guess too. And I also just am
so used to seeing her or at least the roles
that I think of when I think of Jennifer Connolly,
I think of roles in which her character has a
lot more agency, you know, like whether you're talking about
something like snow Piercer or you know, have certainly a
more experienced Jennifer Connelly playing that role, or even Labyrinth,

(44:03):
where you know she's much younger. But but Sarah in
Labyrinth is a character who is is very much about
expressing her agency and trying to take control of her
life and figure out her way through a complex, magical world.

Speaker 3 (44:18):
Yeah. So again, I mean the character of Emma does
take agency in some scenes in this film, and she
like she knocks a gun out of a CoP's hands
so her husband can escape. And but yeah, I do
agree overall that there is a feeling of something missing.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Yeah, and this is probably one of those moments where
I'm like, yeah, give me the mini series, because I
would love to see a character like this explored more.
I have to, you know, acknowledge again, limitations based for
the character, based on the sorts of characters that exist
in this universe, Limitations based on the time and the
pacing of the film. And again I just want stress.
YEAHM not throwing any shade on Jennifer Connelly at all,

(44:57):
you know, fine actress, And if anything, it's because I
know that I can just imagine the sorts of scenes
that we might get if this movie were like five
hours long, which it's thankfully not. All right, shall we
talk about the strangers?

Speaker 3 (45:12):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (45:12):
All right? As we mentioned earlier, we have Richard O'Brien
playing a mister hand who is he's not the leader,
But then again they don't really have leaders, but then
they also sort of have a leader depending on how
you look at but he is at the very least.
I think the stranger that gets the most screen time

(45:32):
that seems to be is the one that has the
most interactions with our characters and is very much at
the forefront. Richard O'Brien born nineteen forty two, and he
is of course the master vine behind the Rocky Horror
Picture Show, in which he also played riff Raff. And
we've previously mentioned him on the show before because he

(45:53):
had minor roles in both Flash Gordon and two Thousands
Dungeons and Dragons. I have to say say, the outside
of his most iconic role in Rocky Horror and his
prominent role in its follow up Shock Treatment from nineteen
eighty one, it's really hard for me to think of
a film in which he's played as central a role
as that of mister Hand.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
I think this role was written with him in mind
and they were happy they could get him.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
Yeah, yeah, And and he does an amazing job. Like
it's an absolutely mesmerizing performance. It's just like he's like
a It's like he's like a lizard in human skin.
It's it's almost you get the feeling that it's like
they hired Richard O'Brien and he finally plays himself on
the screen. You know, it's like it feels it's such

(46:40):
an otherworldly, weird performance, but one that feels just so
natural and not forced at all. And maybe that's one
of the things about comparing this performance to Keifer Sutherlin's performance,
like there's an authentic weirdness here, and I don't necessarily
get as much an authentic weird feeling from the character

(47:01):
of the doctor, but mister Hand just I relish him
every time he is on the screen.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
There's a great way that he speaks in an unbelievably
creepy voice in scenes where he's blending in and not
threatening people. So the scene where he's on the waterfront
and he talks to himma and he's like, I met
my wife here. She's like, oh, this is where I

(47:27):
met my husband, and he goes small world. It's just
I love it.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
He's tremendous. Yeah, outside of the credits already mentioned, you know,
he's been in a number of things over the years,
often like smaller roles, but they include let's see eighty
five's Revolution, nineteen ninety seven Spice World. I had a
lot of notable folks in it, and I think a
number of actors who have subsequently like said, like, yeah,
I did that because my daughter or granddaughter insisted that

(47:54):
I take the role, and I have no regrets.

Speaker 3 (47:57):
Nice And let's see Eily Jones and Batman Forever.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah, that sort of thing, you know, or oh, what's
his name? We played Skeletor in Masters of the Universe
Frank Langella. Yeah, yeah, I believe it was a similar
case with that where he like did it for his
kids or grandkids. So you know, sometimes that is what
is necessary to get a memorable, weird performance out of someone.
But yeah, O'Brien was also in ninety eights Ever After,

(48:21):
a Cinderella Story, and he's also in two thousand and
one's Elvira's Haunted Hills. I believe that title is a
breast reference.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
Yep, all right.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
We also have let's see a couple of other strangers
of note. We have Ian Richardson playing mister Book, who
is in some ways positioned as the head stranger and not.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
In some ways. I mean, like he definitely is. He's
presented as the leader and the elder of them. Even
though they talk about how they kind of are not
individuals but they are at the same time. It's kind
of strange.

Speaker 2 (48:58):
Yeah, well, they's strangers, that's what they.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
I mean. I actually I have thoughts about that. I mean,
I wonder if there is something implied about them not
realizing ways in which they are individuals.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
Yeah, this will be fun to get into when we
get into the plot, because because, yeah, the idea is
that the strangers, these beings have a have a group intelligence,
a communal intelligence. They are a single mind and they
don't understand it's been striving to understand human individuality and

(49:32):
human consciousness and human memory because they all have a
collective memory. And the film does it does a great
job with this, but in a I mean, there's a
there's a cleverness in not saying too much about a thing,
because I think every time I've watched Dark City, I
end up just thinking about like, what does it mean?
What were they truly looking for? And so forth, and

(49:54):
raises a lot of questions.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
I agree. I like the premise, and you know, I
feel like I've mentioned this on the show a lot lately.
I often prefer it when things are under explained rather
than over explained. I like it when there's still some
mystery about how things work.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
I think that would be the danger of a five
hour mini series based on Dark City, is that we
would thoroughly answer all questions.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
But I like the possibility that. So they do talk
about how they don't have individual memories, they only have
collective memories, and in a way they share a collective mind.
But then we see them acting as individuals. So maybe
that there's some way in which they don't even understand
that they already have the capacity to be individuals, or

(50:37):
like they are individual but don't feel like it or something.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Yeah, that's a great read on it. Like one way
I was thinking about it, it's like they've they discuss
how they use human corpses as vessels. They kind of
like take a human body that used to be an
individual one of them, what they occupy it, they inhabit it,
and then they sort of try to fake it till
they make it. They kind of try and force individuality

(51:02):
upon themselves by taking on an individual human form and
then taking on a name, like there's a there. They
all have names like mister Hand, mister Book, which feels
authentically like a like a like a clunky version of
trying to grasp onto an identity for yourself. But they
don't fully understand what they're trying to do.

Speaker 3 (51:22):
They're names children would make up for their toys.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Yeah, all right, So whether he is the head Stranger
or just or something else. Ian Richardson plays mister Book.
He lived nineteen thirty four through two thousand and seven.
Classically trained British actor, best remembered for roles in eighty
five's Brazil, two thousand and one Is from Hell, and
of course the original nineteen ninety British mini series House

(51:46):
of Cards, which earned him a BAFTA. This is, of
course the series. The Netflix later remade it, of course,
but it hit the line where it's like, you might
very well say so, but I couldn't possibly comment. So
it's a very witty, a moral character. His film and
TV credits go back to nineteen sixty three. He played

(52:08):
Sherlock Holmes twice in a pair of films, The Sign
of Four and The Hound of the Baskerville's, both released
in nineteen eighty three. And I have to distress, when
I was a kid, we had this version of The
Hound of the Baskervills on VHS, and I remember watching
it multiple times. It had really haunting theme music and

(52:29):
it co starred both Brian Blessed and Ronald Lacey.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
Wow, but wait a minute, I have to note, is
this is reading about this? How you got to that
song you sent me earlier this week that was set
to the tune of Black Sabbaths paranoid But it's like
German people singing about the plot of The Hound of Baskerville's.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
No I wish it was. That was just Instagram. That
was just Instagram nonsense, where sometimes Instagram nonsense really leads
to an alarming and fabulous discovery. Most of the time
it does it, but sometimes it does.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
See.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
Ian Richardson also voiced death in two thousand and six
is The Hogfather based on the novel by Terry Pratchett,
And that one's actually on my short list. That might
very well be a Christmas selection later this year. We'll see,
we'll see, but any rate, Yeah, Ian Richardson, fabulous voice,
commanding presence here as mister book. There are various other

(53:18):
strangers of varying degrees of importance. Sometimes their whole rooms
full of strangers, like staring down like it's an operating theater.

Speaker 3 (53:27):
There's a baby stranger, stranger junor.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
Who bites people like he's terrifying. But then we also
have a more stoic middleman sort of stranger, and this
is mister Wall played by Bruce Spence born in nineteen
forty five.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
Is this the guy who says no mo mister quick,
mister quick dead?

Speaker 2 (53:48):
Yes? Yes, okay, yeah, the fabulous Bruce Spence, New Zealand
born Australian character actor with a memorable drawn face and
kind of haunted appearance. His credits go back to the
areas seventies, but he's he at least I think was
best known to international audiences for his roles in the
second and third Mad Max films. So he plays the

(54:11):
the Gyro captain in Mad Max two, and he plays Jedediah,
the pilot in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. I haven't seen
either of these films in a long time. I kind
of in my recollection thought this was the same character,
but maybe he's playing different characters.

Speaker 3 (54:26):
I don't recall.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
He plays the Mouth of Sauron in the extended edition
of Peter Jackson's Return of the King.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
Oh the guy with the teeth.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
Yes, yeah, And he also plays the guy with the
teeth in two thousand and five's Revenge of the Sith.
There's like an alien character that shows up on the
planet where Obi Wan is pursuing General Grievous, and he
Bruce Spence appears as as a frightening alien creature in
that as well. He also had a role in The
Matrix Revolutions in two thousand and three. But yeah, another

(54:57):
guy that always has a fun presence and just about
it anything he's said, let's see two two more. As
just a quick aside, I'll mention that playing Doctor Streever's assistant.
We have David Wynham born nineteen sixty five. Very small
part here, but he'd later go on to play Feramir
in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy, and
he was one of the muscle men in three hundred.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
Okay, but yeah, I remember he's great as Faramir.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think he'd booked up all
the way in this one.

Speaker 3 (55:26):
We don't need Ferimir to be a to be bulky.
He's the you know, he's got courage and wits.

Speaker 2 (55:31):
That's right. And then we do have an important character.
We'll come back to Walynski, a former detective, a disturbed
former detective, and he's played by Colin Friels born nineteen
fifty two Scottish born Australian actor, best known for his
roles in Dark Man in nineteen ninety and the television
series Water Rats. He was also in a critically acclaimed

(55:53):
Australian comedy film titled Malcolm in nineteen eighty six. Going
behind the scenes. You know can't mention every by, I
do want to call out that the cinematographer on this
film was Darius Wolski born nineteen fifty six, Academy Award
nominated cinematographer who's worked on a slew of stylish and
just visually arresting films over the years. He'd worked on

(56:14):
ninety four as the Crow, and he would later work
on multiple Ridley Scott films, including twenty twelve's Prometheus, twenty
seventeen's Alien Covenant and twenty twenty three is Napoleon And Finally.
The score for this film is by Trevor Jones born
nineteen forty nine, English composer who scores for The Dark,
Crystal and Labyrinth, or among some of my favorites. His

(56:36):
score here is very effective, but I don't know it's
I don't have much to say about it other than
it seems to do the job quite nicely. But I'm
also not rushing to get it on vinyl.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
I would say it's not a highly melodic score. It's
a very mood and pace oriented score. So the score
helps propel the action when it needs momentum, the score
helps set the mood when when a different mood is
called for. It's very effective as a cinema score, but
it doesn't really strike me as all that memorable on

(57:08):
its own regard. It's complementary of the film.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
Yeah, it's kind of I I guess it's kind of
like the big blocks of architecture moving around in the
background and reforming the city around you, without you, the
inhabitant of Dark City, realizing what's happening.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
All right, This is the place where we would normally
start to talk about the plot in detail. I think
what it makes sense to do in this episode, since
we're splitting this into two parts, is maybe we will
begin by talking about the opening scene, the very set
up to the movie that puts the plot hook in
you and then in the next episode we can talk

(57:52):
in more detail about the rest of the plot. And
then I don't know, I offer some more analysis of
the film. What do you think about that?

Speaker 2 (57:59):
Rob?

Speaker 3 (58:00):
Good to me. Okay, so let's put the let's put
the hook in. So again, the opening of the movie
I think is really strong, so I want to discuss
it in some detail. And then again, this is the
director's cut, so we're not going to be talking about
the opening narration that was in the theatrical version. The
film begins with the vision of the night sky, so

(58:20):
you get a star field and the dusty smudge of
a galaxy, and we then we pan down, way down
down until you see the tops of buildings in a city,
and then we keep going on down. The city is
going to be the setting for the film, but here
you get a sense of the impossible verticality of the city.
We go down, down, down, in between the tall buildings,

(58:43):
past skybridges carrying auto traffic, where we see these headlights
cutting through the dark, and then further down until we
come level to a man in spectacles wearing a trench
coat and a felt Homburg hat. Generally in this movie,
the clothing style people wear is mid century, maybe nineteen
forties or nineteen fifties. This man is key for Sutherland

(59:07):
as the character we will later learn is named doctor Shreeber.
He walks with a limp. He approaches the camera and
he stands bathed in this gross green light. Then he
takes out his pocket watch. It is almost midnight. The
seconds tick down until the watch strikes twelve, but suddenly
it stops. No more ticking, and Doctor Shreeber looks up,

(59:28):
apparently not surprised by his watch stopping this way, and
then he hobbles off. We now move somewhere else, closing
on a tall building with a Neon sign reading hotel.
This is one of those tall buildings that only seems
to have one window, And I think, do I recall
correctly that the window is round? Yes?

Speaker 2 (59:46):
Yeah, like a like a I don't know.

Speaker 3 (59:49):
What do you call those windows on a ship? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
Nowadays we would just be like, oh, that's a data
center or something. Yeah, but yeah, here's supposed to be more. Well,
we're equally ominously.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
It was full of HVAC for the subway or something.
But yeah, inside, suddenly we are in a bathroom covered
with emerald green tile I love the look of this.
It's gross and beautiful at the same time, Like it
looks awful but it looks great. And the room is
illuminated only by a single pendent lamp dangling from the

(01:00:23):
middle of the ceiling on a long cord and it's
swinging back and forth. And in the bathtub, a man
lies naked in the water, unconscious. We see blood dripping
from a tiny puncture wound in the middle of his forehead.
This is rufus Sewell. Suddenly the man wakes up. He's
afraid and confused, doesn't seem to know where he is

(01:00:44):
or how he got there.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
Again, I love the colors here, everything like it feels
a little shabby, but I feel like he probably smells
really nice. I don't know why. Maybe that's been part
because the bathwater is purple and it just makes me
almost haste ube. So I kept thinking, Oh, man, before
he lost consciousness and maybe had his memories augmented or
messed with, he was just enjoying a nice ube soak

(01:01:09):
in the tub.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
I should know what that is. What is ube looks like.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
A purple yam, and so it's a flavoring that you
often find in like ice creams, little Asian desserts and
so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
Oh, actually, I didn't know about that. I'll have to
seek that out.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Yeah, I believe it originates in the Philippines, I think.
But yeah, a lot of like Filipino bakery goods have
ube in them and they are delicious.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
So we follow the man as he gets out of
the tub and investigates the hotel room for clues. He
looks at his wound in the mirror. He dresses quickly
and some clothes left folded on a chair, and he
leaves the bathroom. As he does so, he slips on
a puddle and knocks over a fish bowl, which shatters
on the floor. The fish bowl had a single gold

(01:01:57):
fish in it. Now it's flopping on the hardwood. The
man picks up the fish and carries it gently to
the bath, where he places it in the tub. And
in this room, the man looks around for more clues.
He finds several changes of clothes, a suitcase bearing the
initials KH, and a postcard for a place called shell Beach.

(01:02:17):
And when he sees the postcard, this triggers a sudden,
hazy memory, but a very interesting visual way of a
visual and sonic way of rendering these hazy memories, because
usually you think of a hazy memory in a film
as something with a soft focus that you kind of
are looking at through fog, maybe playing in slow motion.

(01:02:39):
This is exactly the opposite. It plays in his mind
in something that feels like fast forward. It goes like
doo doo, doo doo, and like you're seeing things happen quickly,
and a sound of a kind of a rushing soundtrack
being sped through.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
First of all, I really love the bit with the
fish and we get a nice the peel of the
shot is like looking up through the water which suddenly
is less purple. But I'm not gonna not pick But then, yeah,
the way the memories are visually depicted in this film
and these kind of like fast forward flashes. Obviously nothing
in cinema can truly capture the way our memories work.

(01:03:20):
And at the same time, the way we think our
memories work are influenced by the way we watch movies,
so there's a weird feedback loop there. But in a way,
I feel like this depiction of memories, even if this
is supposed to be like a depiction of hazy messed
with memories. It feels in ways more in keeping with
the way our memories work, where it's just kind of

(01:03:41):
like a fast forward barrage of images that don't actually
have as much narrative structure to them or dialogue to them,
but they just kind of hit us in flashes.

Speaker 3 (01:03:51):
Yeah, I know exactly what you're saying. There are obviously
different ways that memories can feel, but this is a
real way that I think it gets a real way
that memories can be in the mind, that it's something
that kind of flashes forward at you, not something that
you have playing in slow motion where you can dwell
on every detail of it. Instead, it's like it's like, hey,

(01:04:12):
remember this and then it's gone, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
Yeah, instead of like a dissolve to a five minute
fiveback sequence and then back into reality.

Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
Yeah. So what is the image that he sees in
this kind of fast forward memory. It's of a child
running out onto the porch of a beach house in
the sunlight, looking out over the water. And note that
a lot of the memories in this movie take place
in the day and suddenly you see bright sunlight, you're outside,
you see the ocean and the sun and the waves

(01:04:43):
and the sand and nothing in the present of the
movie is like that. It's always just dark, wet, dingy city.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Which you don't really necessarily pick up on at first
because you know it's an hour film, right, It's like
everything is at night, like presumably it's daytime sometime, but
we're always he active at night, in the same way
that TV shows that take place in like Toronto seem
to only take place in the summer, like it's also
winter there, but we just never see it in some
of these shows, it seems.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
Yeah. So then the phone rings, the man answers, and
on the other end it is key for Sutherland is
doctor Shruber. He's calling from a payphone. He says, you're confused,
aren't you frightened? I can help you. I am a doctor.
Now you must listen to me. You have lost your memory.
There was an experiment, something went wrong. Your memory was erased.
Do you understand me? And I love how he's just

(01:05:35):
throwing all this at the guy. The man protests, He's like, no,
I don't understand what is going on, and doctor Schrueber says,
you must listen to me. There are people coming for
you even as we speak. You must not let them
find you. You must leave.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
Now, it's kind of hard to ignore that this is
pretty much the exact setup in The Matrix as well,
when Orpheus calls Neo at his office job and tells
him that he needs to run from the weird strangers
that are about to attempt at brehend him.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
That's a good point. Which movie came first?

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
This movie came first, City came first by just a year,
I believe that.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
Being said, I'm not saying it's copying, but it is
very similar, right.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
And to be clear, the Matrix has its own spin
on this particular encounter because ultimately Neo is not up
to the challengel. He doesn't listen to the voice or
doesn't follow through on the instructions completely, and he gets
apprehended by the strange agents and the Matrix.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
That's right, but the man here does not. So the
man lets the phone receiver fall to the floor. Then
his eye catches something at the other end of the room,
on the floor beyond the bed. He slowly walks over
to see it, and when he comes around the foot
of the bed, he realizes it is a dead body,
the body of a woman lying exposed on the floor

(01:06:48):
mutilated with bloody spirals cut into her skin. He reacts
with horror, and as he passes the night stand he
bumps into it and a blood stained knife falls to
the floor. So somebody's been cutting spirals on people in here,
possibly him.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
Yeah, not a good look for this guy. Yeah, So
he flees the murder scene.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
That's right. So he's terrified. He runs for the door,
leaves the hotel room, taking the suitcase with him, and
just as he comes out into the hall, we can
see down at the other end of the door to
the elevator shaft. The elevator is arriving at this floor.
There are dark figures we can see inside it through
the glass, the beldings, and the man runs and makes
it around the corner out of view, heading for the stairwell.

(01:07:31):
Just as the doors of the elevator open and then
out of the elevator come three tall, dark, thin figures
in black hats and long coats, and the music swells
as they make their way down the hall. The man
goes down to the lobby, where he discovers that everyone,
all the guests and the hotel staff are asleep. They're unconscious,

(01:07:52):
but many of them sitting upright unconscious and they can't
be awoken. He like accidentally knocks somebody over and they're
still asleep. Then suddenly the clocks start moving again and
everybody wakes up. The clerk at the front desk calls
out to him, seemingly unaware that he was ever asleep,
and he calls the protagonist mister Murdoch. This is the
first indication that the protagonist has of his own name.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
So he calls hey, mister Murdoch, and he tells him
several several things.

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:08:20):
He says, the three weeks that he prepaid for at
the hotel are up, so he's been there three weeks.
And he says the automat called to say that they
found his lost wallet and he could go there to
pick it up.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
We will get an automat scene.

Speaker 3 (01:08:33):
Oh love, love, love the automat scene. It's I love it. Yeah,
I just think of that sometimes in the many years
since I watched this movie last, I would sometimes just
think of the automat. Yes. Also funny that this is
the kind of hotel that decides your stay is up
at midnight on the last day you paid for Like

(01:08:56):
that's when you got to get out of your room.
Check out time is midnight.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
Yeah, that's that's a bit weird. Yeah, usually it's more
like like ten am or something or eleven am, not midnight.

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
But that would work perfectly for the way time works
in the city.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Yeah, they don't know any better.

Speaker 3 (01:09:11):
So after Murdoch leaves the hotel, he throws his suitcase
in the water in a canal running through the city,
and then we part ways with him to follow the
hotel clerk as he goes up to Murdoch's room to
turn it over. Inside, he finds the strangers, the men
in black who came out of the elevator. I think
there are four of them here in this scene, and

(01:09:31):
we see them up close for the first time. There
are of almost comically different sizes. One is a child,
one is extremely tall, a couple others in between, and
what they have in common is that they are all thin, pale,
bald male and all dressed the same in long black

(01:09:51):
coats with huge fur collars, wearing black fedoras. And as
we talked about earlier, the strangers all call each other
by name, and that those names are all mister something,
with the something being a one syllable English word names
like mister Hand, mister Book, mister Sleep, mister Quick, mister Rain,

(01:10:12):
and mister Wall. Mister Hand played by Richard O'Brien seems
to be the leader of this group. When the clerk
comes into the room, mister Hand is investigating an object
on the floor of the bathroom and it is an
ornate brass syringe with the glass tube inside shattered on
the tile of the bathroom floor.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:10:32):
And then there's another detail we notice in the scene.
The strangers when they move around, they carefully, almost daintily,
try to avoid and step around the puddles on the floor,
making a weird chittering noise at them with their teeth.
The strangers seese the clerk when he comes into the
room and they hold him up against a wall and

(01:10:52):
mister Hand demands to know where mister Murdoch has gone.
The clerk tells him he just left just a few
minutes ago. Then the strains wave a hand over the
clerk's face and say sleep now, and the man falls asleep.
So I think maybe I'm going to stop it there,
but like, it's a hell of an opening. It really
really hooks you, Like what is going on?

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
Yeah, we we have this lead character that's shrouded in mystery.
He may or may not be a killer. They are
strange characters with seemingly supernatural powers that are pursuing him
through this dark, brooding noir city. So yeah, absolutely heck
of an opening. And again this is without the narration

(01:11:35):
that spoils a good deal about what these strangers are.

Speaker 3 (01:11:39):
Yeah, and also, apart from the supernatural elements, like the
fact that these strangers look so weird and they can
make people fall asleep, and the fact that everybody goes
to sleep and then wakes up at midnight that time
seems to stop. It's just a great setup for a
mundane detective mystery as well. I love it, you know.
So there's amnesia, waking up with the dead body, and

(01:12:00):
then the clues. You know, I've been here for three
weeks and and your wallet is at the automat. I
don't know why. The clue your wallet is at the
automat is just like the most enticing lead but that
I love that. That's like, it doesn't get much better
than that. Got to go to the automat to get
my next clue.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
Yeah, and I think that is key. We in a
very simple sort of structural way we already know about.
We have tangible clues that our character can follow up on,
and we the viewer are anticipating.

Speaker 3 (01:12:31):
And it's an automat, which is it is an out, outdated,
antiquated and visually interesting type of business.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
Yeah, yeah, So I look forward to talking about the
automat scene. Maybe maybe we'll even pull in a little
bit of historical information about the automat, because I think
it's pretty fascinating.

Speaker 3 (01:12:50):
Yeah, I don't want to oversell it. There's actually nothing
all that interesting story wise about the Automat. I just
love that there is an automat, and I love the
way it looks.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):
Yeah, it's it's a terrific antiquated sort of setting to
exist in this unreal city, and I don't know, it
may tie in thematically to some of what's going on.
I think it does.

Speaker 3 (01:13:07):
Actually do we have to cut part one here, though, I.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
Think we should at this point. We should ask everyone
to sleep, and we will now rearrange things behind the
scenes and we will pick up in a rare part
two episode of Weird House Cinema. We try not to
split our film discussions up into two episodes, but occasionally
there's a film where we have a good bit more
to say, and especially if it's a more well known film,

(01:13:32):
we feel like, all right, well, there's a little more
license to do, say a Highlander two part one in two,
or a Dune part one in part two, or in
this case, Dark City part one and part two.

Speaker 3 (01:13:43):
I'm still burned we didn't do two parts on Empire
of the Dark.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
A case could be made, yes, all right, yeah, we'll
go and close it out here, but just a reminder
that Stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a science
and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
but on Fridays we set aside most serious concer learns
to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
If you are on letterbox dot com, go over there
check out our profile. We are weird House there and

(01:14:09):
we have a nice list of all the movies we've
covered over the years, and sometimes there is a peek
ahead at what's coming out next.

Speaker 3 (01:14:16):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future or just to say hello.
You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:14:37):
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.