Weirdhouse Cinema: Dead Mountaineer's Hotel

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1979 Estonian sci-fi thriller “Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel,” based on the novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. 

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Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
So it's time to check another country off of the
Weird House Cinema list. You know, we can imagine our
global map and we're putting pins in the different countries
that we've visited via the cinematic output of said nation.
This time we're going to Estonia and sorry, France, we'll
get to you eventually.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
Today we're going to be talking about the nineteen seventy
nine Estonian Soviet sci fi detective film Dead Mountaineers Hotel,
directed by Grigory Kromanov, based on a story by the
brothers Boris and Arkadi Strugatsky, who also wrote the source
material for another one of my favorite weird Soviet films,

(01:01):
which is Tarkovsky's Stalker. In fact, that movie was released
the same year as this movie. Both came out in
nineteen seventy nine, so a big year for the brothers Strugatsky.
I had never seen Dead Mountaineers Hotel before this past week.
I was attracted to it after I saw some very
intriguing stills online featuring weird sets full of mirrors and

(01:25):
some very striking shot composition with interesting use of color.
And then I read reviews characterizing this movie as a
bizarre but generally quite well liked Eastern European film noir
with subversive science fiction themes and several heaping spoonfuls of
what is going on? So this sort of pull toward

(01:48):
the film was amplified when I went to Videodrome and
I saw the employees there had posted a recommendation on
this film, so I decided I had to get it
check it out. So it was Estonian sci Fi detective
week for me, and you know, despite all of that preparation,
I was still incredibly surprised by this film. I'll do

(02:09):
a short synopsis of the setup the first third of
the movie. It is about a police inspector named Glebski
working in some country in capitalist western Europe. But did
they ever specify what country it is? I think it's unnamed.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
I think it is unnamed. Yah, it's just miscellaneous European country,
which which is sometimes my favorite country to go to
in cinema.

Speaker 4 (02:32):
Right, So he's a policeman working somewhere further west in Europe,
in some alpine region, and he is called to a
remote ski lodge up in the mountains known as the
Dead Mountaineers Hotel. But once he arrives, it seems he
was summoned on a false alarm. The other guests at
the hotel behave very strangely and something is not what

(02:55):
it seems. Then suddenly there is at the same time
an avalanche cutting the guests off from the rest of
the world, and a murder, putting Inspector Globsky sort of
taking him out of vacation mode and putting him back
into on duty mode.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, because initially he's like, well, it took me so
long to get up here, and it's a little misty out.
I'm clearly going to have to spend the night here
and drink some wine exactly. But then yeah, back on duty.
When the murder occurs.

Speaker 4 (03:20):
I'm gonna have to dance to some really good Estonian
proud rock.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
M hm.

Speaker 4 (03:25):
Now at this point, I think we're gonna have to
go ahead and deal with something, which is that this
film has major surprises that develop across its run time,
and it would be rob I think you'd agree basically
impossible for us to talk about this movie without spoiling
its big twists.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Right right, And we were talking about this a little
bit off Mike beforehand. This is not a film that
is so dependent upon the twist that you cannot enjoy it.
In fact, you might enjoy it a little bit more
knowing the sort of territory it we'll get into.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
I read a blog post somewhere online where the writer
was reviewing the film and said that they thought that
it actually worked better if you went in already knowing
what the twist would be. I'm not sure about that,
but that could be the case. I went in already
knowing the twist and still greatly enjoyed the movie. But
if you suspect that might not be the case for

(04:20):
you, You want your chance to duck out and not know
what happens later in the Film's here's your here's your moment.
Let's do some some spoiler avoidance, walk out music.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Flee and terror from the revelations to come.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Your mind is not ready.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Your mind is not ready.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Your mind is okay.

Speaker 4 (04:36):
But here you are with us to know what happens
later in the film. But you know part of the
difficulty is that even the genre designation of the movie
spoils the twist because it is called like a neo
noir or detective science fiction film, and there is nothing
science fiction about the movie until the twist is revealed,

(04:57):
which is that, well, one part of the twist is
not necessary early sci fi. It's more sort of crime
thriller themed, and that is that some of the hotel
guests are secretly gangsters and or terrorists. I wasn't quite
sure exactly what kind of criminal this is supposed to be.
But then beyond that, some other hotel guests are robots,
and yet other guests are aliens.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah. Yeah, And I have to add, like, knowing that
we selected this for weird house cinema, you might already
suspect that there will be something speculative in the plot.
But I also have to highlight that the movie is
weird enough in its texture and its tone that I
think we could have covered it even had it not
involved robots and aliens.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
Oh yeah, because people have pointed this out about especially
like the sets and the music created very otherworldly atmosphere
before any technically speculative plot elements are introduced, like this
is a ski resort in the mountains, but it feels
like a set from Blade Runner.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah. Yeah, And then the score is very abstract and tronic.
We'll get into that in a bit too, But all
of this sort of you know, sets the board, and
by the time aliens and robots come around, I have
a feeling that even if you didn't know they were
going to occur, they it would not feel completely out
of left field. You would be like, oh, well, yeah,
of course. I mean, a number of human beings have

(06:17):
to be robots and aliens. That's where I am in
my worldview after experiencing this much of the film.

Speaker 4 (06:24):
I mean, a lot of the characters are acting incredibly weird,
and so it seems something would have to be up
to explain the way they behave right, and the films
I would say the film's themes don't fully come into
focus until the final act, when, after the revelation of
the presence of aliens and robots, the policeman Glebski is

(06:46):
put in a position to think independently given new information,
even unprecedented information, and he has to choose whether to
blindly charge ahead, deferring his individual judgment and performing his
official duties or to think for himself and act as
a human being. And we see Glebsky really struggling with

(07:07):
this choice. He feels very strongly pulled to just act
out his official duties as a policeman, even if they
don't really make sense in the scenario, and it would
spell disaster for visitors from another world.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah. Yeah, So the making of retrospective feature at on
the Blu Ray edition that we both watched more than
that in a minute. It shed some interesting light on
the production. So, first of all, just a bit of
background since we're dealing with Estonian cinema here. At the
time Dead Mountaineers Hotel was made, Estonia was the Estonian

(07:42):
Soviet Socialist Republic. This is essentially what it was known
as nineteen forty through nineteen forty one, and then nineteen
forty four through around nineteen ninety one, though asterix by
that date I'll explain in a second. And while Estonia
had its own distinct film, TV and theater scenes, it
seems to have to a large extent been a shared

(08:03):
ecosystem with Moscow based film production. At the time you had,
you know, you seem to have a very Soviet film
bureaucracy in place governing the production of this film and
other films that were occurring throughout the than Soviet Union.
For instance, composer sim Gruenberg talks about composing music for
the film on the train back to Moscow, where he

(08:24):
then would record in the same studio that like later
in the day, another composer was going to be using
to score nineteen seventy nine Stalker, a Soviet Russian production
that we just referenced.

Speaker 4 (08:35):
Oh okay, yeah, and so given this context, one thing
that I've read about the film that makes it kind
of interesting is that, despite its the weirdness, and I
would argue subversiveness of the final product, this is a
film that was made under, from what I understand, a
heavy hand of censorship.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, the film was seemingly the product of
very bureaucratic film production process. In some ways, it does
seems like it held it back, and we'll discuss examples
of that. But it also meant that it seems like
they had everything lined up when they were about to shoot,
Like when they actually went out there, it was a
pretty well oiled machine. To a large extent, very streamline production.

(09:22):
But yeah, it seems like it maybe did limit and
in case in other cases almost limited the creativity of
the project as well.

Speaker 4 (09:31):
I was reading about the making of the film in
a piece by an Estonian film critic named Carlo Funk.
It was an article published by the Estonian Film Institute,
and Funk was sort of writing about how there were
certain things you could do if you wanted to tell
a certain kind of story under this environment, that you

(09:52):
could have more leeway with your storytelling. For example, setting
it in the West rather than setting it like in
Estonia or something allowed more freedom allegedly to depict characters
as sort of like flawed and conflicted in their official duties.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Because you could you would essentially be saying like, this
is the kind of potential depravity that can be going
on elsewhere, but not within these borders. Right, Just a
quick cap on the note about Estonia. Estonia became the
I believe, the first of the then Soviet controlled countries
to declare independence from Moscow and the Soviet Union, and

(10:29):
by nineteen ninety one, I believe the sixth of September
nineteen ninety one, the Soviet Union recognized Estonian independence. Now
key to all of this, of course, is the hotel,
the Dead Mountaineers Hotel, which we'll get into. We'll talk
a lot about this hotel. And you know, it's film.
So you have exteriors and interiors at this place, and

(10:51):
I think if you know anything about about filmmaking at all,
you know that these don't have to necessarily match up.
Sometimes the place where a film is shot the interior,
we are also using the exteriors of of set location.
Sometimes you'll have the have exterior shots for a particular
place in your film, and the inside of that place

(11:12):
you're utilizing via another location or perhaps sets.

Speaker 3 (11:15):
Right.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
So in this film, we have the exterior of the hotel,
which does have its own kind of character. It has
this kind of like boxy look that I quite like.
It doesn't look completely rustic. It has sort of a
modern flare to it.

Speaker 4 (11:29):
Yeah, it is an asymmetrical architecture that does look like
I don't know, some modern homes you would see that
are like a you know, a rectangle rising up here
and a slanted roof there. And it's not just like
your standard sort of boxy resort hotel shape right right.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
And of course it is very remote and surrounded by
all of these snowy mountains and all very captivating. But
instead of using this location or some other kind of
like ski lodge location for the interiors, and instead of
engaging in perhaps the kind of expected rustic or perhaps
well worn interiors of an actual remote ski lodge, they said, no, no, no,

(12:12):
this is a science fiction film. This film deals with
futuristic ideas. We need to have a futuristic set, and
so they ended up building out these sets. And what
we have is this highly stylized like black and mirrored interior.
There's neon and the featurette on the disc describes this

(12:33):
as all being very much in line with Estonian hyperrealism
of the time period.

Speaker 4 (12:39):
I don't know exactly what that is, but it's hyper something.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
It's yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:44):
It doesn't feel like a real hotel like it doesn't.
It does not at all suggest hospitality. Instead, it is
an environment that suggests mystery and doubt. And yet despite this,
it does still have some of the features that can
make a hotel or resort an exciting location for a

(13:05):
mystery story, like the maze like nature of hallways, and
a hotel like that you never really understand, like what
part of the building you're in or which direction you're facing.
You're just going around corners, and this movie does. The
sets do have that feeling. There's a kind of like
confusing layout of the place, and it almost suggests that
it's like not physically plausible.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yeah, and it sounds like the set itself had this
kind of like maze like quality. They were talking about
like there being lots of places that crew members could
sort of hide and you know, have a drink or
snack and so forth. And it was apparently quite a
struggle to get everybody to be quiet for the for
the shoot. But yeah, it was a pretty elaborate build.
It wasn't cheap. And on the other end, and certainly
I have to stress that it does not feel like

(13:50):
a set in that it feels like a real place,
Like even though we are getting into this hyper realistic
idea of what a remote ski lodge could be, it
totally works within the context of the film. And you're
never like, oh, look at this set, unless you know,
unless I guess you're engaging in the film, you know,
outside of the film's context. But it's hard to imagine

(14:11):
this film having the same impact or the same flavor
at all if it were set in a more traditional
or rustic ski lodge setting, you know, that kind of
like well worn, perhaps not as easily maintained environment that
some of us may have experienced in one form or
an other in remote locations. It just I can't help

(14:33):
but suspect that if that had been the case with
this movie, even if it still had the terrific score,
the terrific performances and this weird plot, this film might
have been more easily forgotten and it wouldn't stand out
as this kind of shining gem of Estonian film from
this time period.

Speaker 4 (14:51):
When you read people talking about this movie, they will
end up saying a lot of things, but often the
first thing they say is something about the striking vision
nature of it.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah. Absolutely, And we'll keep touching on more specific examples
of that as we go. I'll also point out that
the featurett described this as being part of the first
and only, at least at the time that this featurette
was produced, wave of Estonian science fiction of the mid
and late nineteen seventies. So there's like this brief blip
where suddenly, and we'll touch on why someone this might

(15:21):
have been the case where suddenly Estonian cinema was more
concerned with science fiction and then it kind of dies off.
Though just looking around a little bit, it looks like
it looks like in recent years we have seen more
Estonian science fiction come out. So it's not like, you know,
Estonian creatives completely abandoned the idea of science fiction. It's

(15:42):
more a question of, like what was being funded, what
was being produced, especially during this time period in which,
like we already we discussed like there were a lot
of bolts in place on what sort of films would
see the light of day.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
Okay, what's your elevator pitch for the movie?

Speaker 2 (15:59):
It's sample a ski lodge madness Estonian style.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
In a world where the ski lodge is full of robots.
One man will be a cop and not think too
much about it.

Speaker 2 (16:13):
Oh, I don't know. There's a lot of thinking. There's
a lot of contemplative characters in this. Well, let's go
ahead in here, just a little bit of the trailer audio.
This is from the I believe, the the Estonian trailer,
So we're not going to play all of it, but
maybe just a little bit to give you some flavor
Milli luma. All right, Now, before we go into the

(16:47):
rest of the episode. Let's talk about where you can
watch this movie as well, especially if you want to
watch it before listening to us talk about all the
details of the plot. I can't speak for other regions,
but currently over here it looks like the only way
to stream it legit is perhaps via cultpick dot com
looks like they have it. I'm not familiar with cultpick,
but it pops up on letterbox as being a place

(17:09):
you can stream it. We watched it on the all
region Blu ray from Camera Obscura, which also features an
optional German dub. It has English subs and an interesting
making up documentary that I've referred to already and I
may refer to again.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yeah, this was a good disc I liked it.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Yeah, yeah, I had no problem playing it on an Xbox,
for example, which sometimes isn't the case with international Blu
rays and so forth. All right, let's get into the
people who made this film, starting at the top with
the director Grigory Kromanov, who lived nineteen twenty six through
nineteen eighty four Estonian director and occasionally actor, best known

(17:51):
internationally for this film, which was also his last of
six films. I believe this was his only genre film.
Other films included the nineteen sixty nine nineteen seventy historic
drama also described sometimes as a swashbuckler, The Last Relic.

Speaker 4 (18:06):
Yeah, that's how I've seen it, described as sort of
historical adventure.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
Yeah, and then the screenplay. The screenplay is credited to
Arkadi and Boris Strugatsky, who also wrote the novel upon
which it is based. So they adapted their own novel here.
Okay Arkati lived nineteen twenty five through nineteen ninety one
and Boris lived nineteen thirty three through twenty twelve, so

(18:31):
they were Soviet Russian science fiction authors and brothers who
collaborated throughout their careers. Their best known novel is nineteen
seventy two's Roadside Picnic, which Tarkovski adapted into the nineteen
seventy nine film Stalker, which we already mentioned here. This
movie is based on the nineteen seventy novel Dead Mountaineers Hotel,

(18:51):
a detective story that veers increasingly into weird territory. Both
of these books, by the way, are widely available in
English translation. I think you can even get audio books
of them, so you know they're they're they're they're available
out there, along with other works of theirs. And by
the way, in two thousand and nine, the novel Dead
Mountaineer's Hotel was adapted into a point and click mystery

(19:14):
video game. While I sent you the trailer for this
and we were looking at this.

Speaker 4 (19:17):
Earlier, yeah, I watched this trailer for the game. I
would not have imagined this would this adaptation would take place.
That was a surprise for me. But you know, it
got me thinking about how oh Man, back in the day,
I really did enjoy some of those those point and
click adventure games like you know, The King's Quest and

(19:38):
Maniac Mansion and things like that.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
This could be a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
Yeah, yeah, and given the source material, I guess it
could be. Like I wonder, I wonder, what's if you
had a video game that was not only adapted from
the source material, but based on this particular cinematic vision
of said book, Like what would it look like? What
kind of choices would you have when you pointed and
clicked on characters? You know, would you always have the

(20:05):
option to drink and or smoke?

Speaker 4 (20:10):
Hold on, I'm just thinking, was there at some point
a Blade Runner point and click adventure game.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
That sounds right. I never played any of the Blade
Runner video games, but there certainly were some video games,
I think some PC game of note. I mean it
is a it seems like a genre of video game
that is well adapted to you know, detective stories are
all right. So we have our inspector here, Inspector Peter Glebski,

(20:38):
played by oldest Poopsies who lived nineteen thirty seven through
to the year two thousand. Yeah, this is one rugged detective. Like,
we get a lot of close ups of this guy's
face and it's perfect. It is the perfect like hard
boiled detective's face. The lines, the almost like geologic texture

(21:01):
to his face, you know, the depths of his eyes.
Everything you want out of a noir detective who's having
troubled thoughts. This is the guy for you.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah, he uh.

Speaker 4 (21:10):
I mean we talk about square jaws on this show.
Sometimes this is a jaw that is like fractally square.
I'm trying to think what actor I'm more familiar with
to compare him to. He's almost got a kind of
Jack Palance energy, you know.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yeah, he reminded me a bit too of Sean Bean.
He has just facial features and also the kind of
like stern, distant eyed characters that that Bean has sometimes played.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
Oh yeah, I can see that because he does there
is a weariness about him. He has he very well
does that thing that's familiar to us from a lot
of movies now of the uh the police detective who's
just sort of worn out and tired of it all.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Yeah, and he's so ripe he's about to fall off
the tree. I think maybe that's what that line means.
This the line, Well, we'll come.

Speaker 4 (21:59):
Back to yea what that means, but that could be Yeah,
I accept that interpretation.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
Yeah. Okay, So this is easily this actor's best known
film internationally, but he was active in TV and film
of the region from the late seventies through the late nineties,
and he was a Latvian actor. Okay, so again, absolutely
strong presence in the film. You know, a nice central
performance and physical performance to base everything on.

Speaker 4 (22:25):
I read somewhere online somebody saying that the casting in
this movie has almost the sensibility of like a caricaturist,
that the cast is really selected for extremely distinctive looks. Yeah,
and I would say that's the case of the next
actor and character. We're going to talk about the hotel manager.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Alex Snavar, that's right, played by Yuri Jarvitt, lived nineteen
nineteen through nineteen ninety five, playing the owner, the weird
owner of the hotel, weird owner of a weird Hotel.
Estonian actor who was also in the Last Relic and
played the lead in a nineteen seventy adaptation of King Lear,

(23:08):
which I think is it's fitting given that he has
a very haunted look at times in this production, and
he is most famously in Tarkovsky's nineteen seventy two science
fiction film Solaris. I believe he actually had third billing
in that.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
Okay, I don't remember exactly, but I think he's one
of the scientists on the base.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
He's a doctor character.

Speaker 4 (23:30):
Yeah, yeah, this guy. What I'm about to say might
feel like it doesn't make any sense, but stick with me.
I would almost describe his energy as sweet, cuddly Kinsky.
Like if you could imagine a mirror image, like suck
all the like evil and poison out of klaus Kinski
and make like a sweet, nice version of him, That's

(23:53):
what this guy makes me think of.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Yeah, I can see that. I can definitely see that
all right. The next character is Simone Simonet. He's our
wall crawling physicist played by Limbeth Peterson born nineteen fifty three,
Estonian actor and once more, this is probably the actor's
best known film internationally.

Speaker 4 (24:13):
This guy's got a very nervous kind of high strong
energy and you really don't know what his deal is
for most of the movie.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
But I liked him, all right.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
And the next character is Hinkus, Oh boy, this is
the only name that has ever attributed to him, played
by Mick Mickeverer, who lived nineteen thirty seven through two
thousand and six. Estonian actor whose credits include some of
the expected sort of dramas you would imagine, because again
there are a lot of more traditional dramas, less speculative
work that you've seen a lot of these actors work

(24:45):
during this time period, but also another key player in
the short lived Estonian sci fi wave as well as
some Russian science fiction. He appears in the Russian nineteen
eighty seven film The End of Eternity, based on the
work of Isaac Asimov, as well as the bonkers looking
Estonian Indiana Jones esque sci fi adventure The Curse of

(25:06):
Snake Valley from nineteen eighty eight.

Speaker 4 (25:08):
You sent me a link to this one. It looked
I gotta see this.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Yeah, this one looked it. It looks less great. Yeah,
respects like it looks. It looks like it's more like
bonkers and kind of like B cinema in its flavor,
but also looks just irresistible. So if I, if I,
if you said, okay, you have to do another Estonian
film next week, it would it would have to be

(25:33):
the Curse of the Snake Valley. I'm not sure how
widely available this one is.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Though, Yeah, I've got to see it.

Speaker 4 (25:39):
At some point. I don't know if we'll talk about it,
but I've got to see it.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Nick of her Is is quite great in this and
has numerous places where he really gets to shine.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yes, yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Next, we have a couple of Moses to consider. There's
mister Moses and there's miss Missus Moss. Huh okay, And
if I'll start with mister Moses played by Carlos Cerberus
nineteen fourteen through two thousand and nine, Latvian born actor
who played Gloucester in that King Lear adaptation that I
referenced earlier. And then we have Irena Crazati born nineteen

(26:12):
fifty two as Missus Moses, Lithuanian actress best known for
this film. But she really gets to run wild with
a kind of weird performance here.

Speaker 3 (26:22):
Oh does she ever? Yeah, she was one of my favorites.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Like her. Her character's fashion sense in general demeanor is
basically that of a post zul Dana from Ghostbusters.

Speaker 3 (26:36):
I would say, yes, and she really loves daredevil cops.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
Yes, ex you're a cop, you must be a daredevil.
Next we have Lurevic played by Sulev Luik, who lived
nineteen fifty four through nineteen ninety seven, Estonian actor. Again.
This was this was his first film, but he worked
up until his untimely death in nineteen ninety seven. His
other credits include nineteen ninety three's Tier Up The Prints
of Darkness, a horror film concerning a cursed ring in

(27:03):
the days before the outbreak of the Second World War.
And that one, by the way, is from the director
of Cursive Snake.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
Valley sounds thematically loaded. Yeah, this actor brings an intriguing
sort of doomed mime energy.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
Yes, it does, and I believe by the time we
really sing a lot from him. I'm like, this dude's
a robot. There's no way this suit's not a robot
or an alien or both.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
Wait, but he's actually not a robot.

Speaker 4 (27:31):
He's an alien. The other guy's a robot.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah, but I feel like the line between robot and
alien is kind of gray in this film, especially since
we never get to see alien faces or like robot interiors.
You know what I'm saying, Like, this is not that
kind of film. It could have leaned into that a
little bit and I would have totally would have been
okay with it, but it doesn't need it.

Speaker 4 (27:55):
Agreed, But yeah, you are correct that even though this
guy is said to be an organic alien, he does
behave like the robots. But speaking of robots, this this
ski lodge also has like hot robots.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
That's right. The first character is this guy Oloff, played
by tit Harm born nineteen forty six, acclaimed Estonian ballet
dancer turned actor who also went on to be a
ballet master, ballet manager, ballet choreographer. Like, this is a
guy that's actually pretty big in the Estonian ballet scene,

(28:30):
and I think probably well known internationally if you were
like into ballet. This is his best known film. He
did some acting here and there, and we do get
to see him dance, and he's good. You can easily
knowing that he's a dancer and watching him move you're like, yes,
this checks out. But he does mention in the extras
that the set was really cramped and so they didn't

(28:52):
give him a lot of space to work with. So
he's having to figure out how to move his body
in a space that is not enabling him to do much.

Speaker 4 (29:02):
His dancing choices, though, are intriguing and a lot of fun,
because he's essentially doing ballet ish kinds of moves to
the sounds of Estonian prog rock.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting to think about these limitations. You know,
all right, you're a famous ballet dancer. We want you
to dance, but this is the space you get to
do it in. And I'm also guessing they might not
have even had the finished music. They'll be like, we
don't know what you're dancing to yet, but just go
ahead and do it. Do it in a way that's

(29:35):
not going to harm your reputation.

Speaker 4 (29:37):
Imagine you're an intergalactic robot dancing to King Crimson.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah he pulls it off though, all Right, so that's Oloff,
and Oloff is kind of running around with this character Brune.
Brune is played by Lithuanian actress Najoel Oslet born nineteen
fifty four. I don't have much to add about her career,
but but she's very good in this And again, this

(30:02):
is a film that generally lets a lot of its
actors play a range of different emotions, you know, from
just sort of detached modern living to like a robot
or alien level of detachment, and also getting into fear
and horror as well.

Speaker 4 (30:17):
Yeah, the character of Bruin hides behind sunglasses for most
of the runtime, but then later reveals her emotions and
they're quite interesting.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yeah. And then finally we have this character Coled Kesa
I believe, and she's like the housekeeper, the housekeeper, and
so she's mostly in the background in a lot of
these scenes. But she's played by Karen Rad who lived
nineteen forty two through twenty fourteen, an Estonian theater director

(30:47):
and actor. And then the music, this is a This
was again the music in this film. The score is
just exceptionally effective. And this is the work of Svin
Gruenberg born nineteen fifty six.

Speaker 4 (31:03):
We've summoned the spirit of spin a number of times.
Now we have to explain who he is.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, So the score here is it's contemplative, it's suggestively
astral in its vibes. It's an electronic score, definitely a
synth score by Estonian synth master Svinn Grunberg, whose career
has also taken him into the realms of prog rock
and also Tibetan Buddhism. Prior to watching this film, I

(31:32):
listened to his nineteen eighty one album Hingus or Breath,
which is widely available on music streaming platforms. So this
is not somebody whose work is like super hard to find.
He really made a name for himself and it is.
And yeah, Hingus is quite a wonderful collection of ambient
electronic tracks, and it's kind of in keeping with the

(31:54):
music we see here. His work is typically abstract and experimental.
He's well worth looking up if you're into this sort
of sort of sound like I am. You know, a
lot of a lot of ambient DNA in his work.
And and Dead Mountaineer at the hotel, his music plays
again a huge role in establishing the atmosphere both inside
of this strange hotel and its mini twists and mirrors,

(32:18):
but also when we're we're contemplating the exteriors, when we're
like looking up at the mountains and these just like
haunting pure blue skies and these like gleaning snow banks
and so forth. Yeah, the score here is just highly effective.

Speaker 4 (32:37):
Yeah, it's a great example of musical compositions that somehow,
without even having lyrics, sound like the themes you're trying
to get the audience to think of. So there is
a sort of recurring synthesizer theme that sounds, and so
it'll be it'll happen when you're like panning up over
the mountaintops and seeing the snow drifts and the glaciers,

(33:00):
and it will sound like ice in a way, almost
like snow or like kind of a freezing process, ice crackling.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
It has a kind of high drone.

Speaker 4 (33:10):
But then also as the camera sort of pans to
include the sky, it morphs to suggest cosmic themes. And yeah,
it's really h as you say, Yeah, it evokes the
themes with the sounds quite well.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
Yeah, And so it's it's interesting, like you know, went
into this having a taste for his music, then you know,
really appreciating the score itself, and then knowing about how
other aspects of the production we were, you know, so
planned in advanced and all, it was kind of surprising
to read then on Deepbaltic dot com this is a
culture blog centering in on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, that

(33:50):
Gruenberg was kind of a last minute replacement in this
production for esteemed Estonian composer Arvaux part and as a result,
and since no work had appe cparently been done on
it yet, he had a great deal of freedom. So
it's like everything was already late, like none of the
music had been turned in. They needed music. He didn't
have much time, but it also meant that he got

(34:11):
to really open up and try whatever he wanted.

Speaker 4 (34:14):
I read in one of those articles I was looking at,
I think it was the one by Carlo Funk from
the Estonian Film Institute, saying something about Soviet censors being
concerned that the movie was trying to trying to get
some slip, some pink floyd in there.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Yeah. I read this on the Deep Baltic article as well.
The author here writes, quote, the tiny budget only allotted
him a few precious moments with an ems Synth one
hundred in Moscow, and even then what he created almost
got barred by Soviet censors who are convinced that Ball
was a lesser known track by Pink Floyd Ball, I guess,

(34:53):
being one of the titles of one of the tracks
on the score.

Speaker 4 (34:56):
I wonder if that's the sort of proggy sounding track
that tit haar when everyone are dancing.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
To, I guess. So, yeah, I kept looking around to
try and find it. Why, I would love to see
the score and or soundtrack, you know, featured as a release.
I don't think it's released anywhere. I couldn't find any
evidence of it. So I also couldn't find a listing
of what tracks were actually called. But yeah, this might
be that prog rock dance number that everybody's grooving out to.

(35:23):
And it is a great number, all right. One in
that note, let's start get into the plot here.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
All right.

Speaker 4 (35:37):
So the opening shot is ridges and peaks of the
High Alps covered in snow, and there is eerie music.
This synthesizer music that we were talking about already sounds
kind of like drops and wheezes panning from one side
to the other, and we see the lonely mountaintops and
very cold feeling sunlight. And we zoom in on a

(35:59):
snow road winding through the rocks, and a car comes
around the corner, and here begins the voiceover.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
This is a man's voice. It's gruff, weary.

Speaker 4 (36:08):
This is the voice of Glebsky, the detective, And he
tells us I was on a call driving to a
mountain lodge called the Dead Mountaineers Hotel. It was quite
a difficult drive. Many years have passed now, but on
dull shifts or during sleepless nights, I often recall what happened,
and even now I cannot decide whether I was right

(36:29):
or not. And as he narrates, we see him driving
through the mountains and here one thing that.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
I really like is that there are.

Speaker 4 (36:39):
Some shots that include the sun facing directly into the camera.
And this is obviously this is not something you would
normally do, you know, when you're shooting outside, as aim
the camera right at the sun. But it works here
and it happens throughout the movie. These shots with the
camera just like blasting the or sorry, with the sun

(37:01):
just blasting the camera lens. They capture the way the
sun sometimes feels when you're on a snowy mountaintop where
the sunlight seems colder and weirder, and it lacks that
quality of gentle warmth that you might get on like
a nice sunny day at sea level. Instead, it feels
like just a bombardment, a blasting source of pale, hostile radiation.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
Yeah. Yeah, it really makes this whole landscape feel alien
and otherworldly, quite fittingly.

Speaker 4 (37:32):
So there's also another shot, Rob. I don't know if
you noticed at the beginning here, but I liked it
a lot. There's like a framing of a gap in
a giant rock face that suggests gates or a gateway.
And when we see this mountain gate, the soundtrack suddenly
explodes with heavy synth and an emerging beat, and the
narration goes on to say, what's strange is I can

(37:54):
tell no one how it actually happened, not my wife,
my friends, or the authority. Only I know the whole truth.
So we start with this idea already that Glebsky is
isolated in his knowledge of what we're about to see unfold.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
Yeah, luckily he's going to tell us. So that's right,
let's have it.

Speaker 4 (38:15):
So as Glebski approaches the hotel in his car. The
narration dies away and instead we just get the ambient
sounds of the car ride, the sedan bumping and jostling
over uneven mountain road, and there's a tiny voice chattering
on the radio. It sounds like it's speaking French, so
made me wonder if this is supposed to if it's

(38:36):
suggesting this is taking place in France, or I guess
also in Switzerland, where parts of Switzerland they speak French. Anyway,
Glebsky arrives. He walks the snow covered path to the entrance.
He's dressed in a brown leather trench coat, and I
have to say, I think he looks very cool.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Yeah yeah, Like I said, this guy's perfect, and he's
the costuming's great. He is our weary detective who just
had a grueling drive up into the mountains on indeed
some very snow covered and terrifying looking roads. Now he
has to look into some sort of perhaps a murder.
I just look at this man a drink.

Speaker 4 (39:14):
I just look at this guy, and I think, you
know what, He's gonna end up taking it too personal.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
I think, oh, yeah, you know he will.

Speaker 4 (39:21):
Oh And during this moment, interesting thing like we look
up in the sky, we see hang gliders.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
We see them swooping.

Speaker 4 (39:28):
Around, sometimes apparently upside down, though it's possible that I
guess the film is just upside down, and it suggests like,
are these hang gliders watching him approach the hotel?

Speaker 2 (39:41):
Yeah, I think they are. I think that the footage
is inverted here to make it feel all the more haunting. Also,
this is this is We'll find out later that this
is Olof and Brun up there in the sky, turing around.
I have questions about how they got up there, but
I don't know. We can just take it for granted
that they knew how to do it. But yeah, it's
an excellent weird sequence very early in the film here,

(40:04):
especially as it is combined with the music to create
this kind of horror of the empty blue sky field.
Then I know I've personally long connected with since I
was a child, you know, there being something about like
a perfect blue sky that feels kind of overwhelming and
a little uncanny. So a very creepy moment at least
for me.

Speaker 3 (40:23):
Totally.

Speaker 4 (40:23):
Yes, So Glebsky goes inside the lobby of the hotel
is empty, it's cavernous.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
His footsteps echoed.

Speaker 4 (40:30):
This doesn't feel like what you'd think of when you
think a mountain ski lodge, which you know, you'd think cozy,
roaring fire.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
I don't know that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (40:40):
No, this place feels cavernous and dank, and it's just
a vibe like Rabbi attached a screenshot from the lobby
that we can talk about here. There are sickly green
tones over the white marble tile. There is black darkness
in the recesses of the room. In the middle of

(41:01):
the lobby, there is a prominent portrait. It's a man
with shaggy hair wearing sunglasses with what looks like a
neon orange tube light tracing the outline of the top
of his head, suggesting a sort of tech noir halo.
And the inspector stops to examine the portrait, and again,
something about this place feels not quite like a hotel.

(41:23):
It feels like some other kind of place.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
Yeah, it really feels like this could be a corporate
headquarters from an early Cronenberg film.

Speaker 4 (41:32):
Yeah, but something you pointed this out in the in
the notes, Rob, there's something about the portrait of the
mountaineer here, because we will find out that the face
we see in this portrait is the titular dead Mountaineer
of the Dead Mountaineer's Hotel.

Speaker 3 (41:49):
It's it suggests.

Speaker 4 (41:51):
Not just like a portrait, but something almost kind of
like religious or there's like a it's like a shrine
or something.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yeah, yeah, totally so.

Speaker 4 (42:02):
Glebsky's wandering around in this weird lobby and suddenly somebody
starts to speak from the shadows behind him. It's a
man's voice, and he says, speaking of the portrait, that's
the mountaineer. He was caught in an avalanche. He was
carried five hundred meters to his death. And there's a
reverse shot and we see the man speaking, and again

(42:22):
this is just like what is going on? I guess
this is the front desk of the hotel, but it
could not be less hospitable. There's an old man in
sort of a black turtleneck standing in the shadows in
front of a window shutter. He looks like count or lock.
And there's a cherry red lamp in the foreground. Something
about it gives it suggests blood. And then also there

(42:45):
is a Saint Bernard panting in the right of the frame.
Just a dog sitting there like, what's a leaking.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
Enormous yeah, enormous dog which turns out to be a
real sweetheart. But you know, initially it's just like that
dog's huge.

Speaker 4 (42:57):
Yes, and this man who looks like maybe he just
drank someone's blood. He introduces himself as Alex Snavar, owner
of the hotel as well as the valley and the
surrounding mountains. That's what he says, And I was like, wait,
you can own a mountain. I guess he can, but
you know, he actually the same thing happens with Alex
Snavar that happens with the dog, because Snavar looks kind

(43:20):
of threatening at first, but he will turn out to
be a sweetheart. Yeah, we learned that the Saint Bernard
is named Lel, and he goes to sit underneath the
portrait of the mountaineer. Snavar explains that the dog was
the mountaineer's faithful companion before the accident, so the accident
can have happened all that long ago, and Lel now

(43:41):
likes to sit and gaze at the image of his
old friend. So Glebsky, of course, he wants to know
why he was summoned to the hotel. Somebody called the
police and here he is. But Snavar has no answers.
He claims he never called them. It must have been
a guest. So Glebsky he rings up his captain and
tells him, you know, it's too late to return through
the mountain fog. He's gonna have to stay the night

(44:02):
at this resort hotel, and he's gonna have to try
some of the hotel's famous Adelweiss vine.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Yeah. So, like we were saying earlier, he's kind of
going into vacation mode. It's like, all right, false alarm,
but I've at least got the night.

Speaker 4 (44:16):
No taking it too personal for me tonight, I'm gonna relax. Oh,
and I like how well the Saint Bernard is the
bell hop here at the hotel, Like snave Bar tells
the dog Glebsky's room number, and the dog picks up
his bag and his big slobbery mouth and takes it
to the room.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yep, So we see.

Speaker 4 (44:35):
The inspector settling in Outside his window, he sees a
shadow in the snow. It looks like the silhouette of
someone on the roof of the hotel, drinking and throwing
bottles over the edge. So here we start to get
glimpses of the other guests. Those two people hang gliding
from earlier. They come in after they finish their hang gliding,

(44:56):
and we learned that these are ol Off and Bruin
is the man played by the dancer tit Harm and
Bruin is the woman. And then also up on the
roof there is a man in a fur coat admiring
the mountains. He's in like a sort of lawn chair,
and we meet him and learn that his name Ishnkas

(45:18):
And I wanted to add a note about this. You know,
there's that Spinn Greenberg album called Hingus, which, as you said,
is Estonian for breath. So I'm wondering if this is
actually different or if it's basically suggesting that this character's
name is breath.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
I don't know, but yeah, it's a you can't help
him make that connection.

Speaker 4 (45:40):
And it would be thematically appropriate because Hinkus tells Glebski
that he is here at the hotel because he has
tuberculosis and the doctors have told him that he must
breathe fresh mountain air in order to recover. Now Here
comes a funny moment next because Glebsky hears the dinner
bell and so on the way down to dinner with
all the other guests, he encounters a man jing himself

(46:00):
between the walls up near the ceiling and the staircase,
and the guy hops down and introduces himself. He says,
I'm Simone Simene, commander of the cyber Forces. But then
he says he's a he's a physicist actually, and this
is his first vacation in four years. He says, Project
Midas heard of it top secret. Then why would you

(46:23):
have heard of it? But Simone Cimine says that he
came here to climb the mountain, but there's too much snow,
so he can't climb the mountain, so he climbs the
walls instead. He says that the doctors prescribed him sensory pleasures.
Now at the dinner table, here Snaevar introduces Glebsky to

(46:43):
the other guests. There is a young lady in an
orange top wearing huge, weird sunglasses. This is the woman Brune.
Next to her is this handsome young man in a
blue shirt and an orange ascot with a shaggy mulletish haircut.
This is Olaf again brunan oll Off for the hang gliders,
and they seem to be an item. They're kind of

(47:04):
just smooching and cuddling at the dinner table. We also
meet missus Moses, a woman in a lavender outfit with
a first hole, curly hair and sort of frightening makeup.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Yeah again roughly post zule Dana and Ghostbusters. That's her
fashion vibe.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
That's exactly right right on the nose.

Speaker 4 (47:25):
And so Glebski comes in and she's like, she says,
I love policeman, heroes, daredevils.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
Are you a daredevil inspector?

Speaker 4 (47:32):
And he's like, nope, just just regular And she says, no, no, no,
any man who looks like you must be a daredevil.
And the next here comes mister Moses. He's sort of
a boring, seeming older man with gray hair and a
gray card. Again, he almost kind of blends into the background.
It's like you're not really supposed to notice him. Yeah,

(47:56):
And then there's also the housekeeper at the hotel here,
this is Kaisa. So everybody settles in and the hotel
manager is like, anyway, as I was saying before you arrived,
I am in total agreement with mister Eric von Danikin,
aliens have repeatedly visited Earth, and I was I could
not believe what we were in for here was. I
did not know we would get an Eric von Danikin

(48:18):
reference in the movie.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
This is in the real world.

Speaker 4 (48:21):
The author of the book Chariots of the Gods.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
Yeah, with the with the question mark yeah, which.

Speaker 4 (48:29):
Is a famous book alleging on the basis of incredibly
poor evidence and reasoning that aliens have repeatedly visited Earth
in the in the past and are responsible for I
don't remember exactly what he connects it to, probably the
various ancient stories and monuments and stuff.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Yeah, the whole alien astronaut hypothesis situation, which which we
recorded a few episodes of stuff to blow your mind
about a few years.

Speaker 4 (48:53):
Back, analyzing from a from a skeptical perspective, and then
we talking about like Carl Sagan's point of view on
like if aliens had visited Earth, what kind of evidence
you would actually expect to see and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (49:07):
So yeah, so Snavevar He's like, I love Eric Vondanakin.
Aliens have been here, I know it. And Simon the
physicist is like Fontanakin is a Charlatan, no way, and
Stavar rebukes him, basically saying that his opinion doesn't count
because he is a scientist and thus biased. Uh, And
he says that the question of aliens is one of poetry.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
I kind of like that. I feel like we would
be better off if all alien conspiracy theorists were so
honest and self reflective where they were like, you know,
this isn't a fact based thing. This is about This
is about feelings, This is about art, you know. Yeah,
like I know, this doesn't actually connect with reality. This
is about like a mythic understanding of the world or something.

Speaker 4 (49:49):
Right, Yeah, this is I'm talking about this for fun,
because it's you know, it's it's interesting and exciting to
my emotions, not because you know, I'm insisting that the
evidence is a must be real.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
Yeah. But already we get a little flavor here of Yeah,
there's like, on one hand, the logical, on the other hand,
something that seems illogical but also might conform to a
different reality or different expectations of reality.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:16):
So they ask the police inspector's opinion, and Glebsky identifies
himself as a rationalist and I guess that means he
agrees with Simone, he doubts Eric Vondanakin. So later, some
time passes and there are a few different scenes of
the guests hanging out together. One is some kind of
Billiard's game. I assume this is not, unfortunately snooker. The

(50:37):
Billiard's game featured in what was it called Billy the
Kid in the Green Bays Vampire, a previous weird house pick.
I don't could you recognize what game they're playing?

Speaker 3 (50:46):
Round?

Speaker 2 (50:47):
I don't have a good eye for these related games. Yeah,
it looked like they were playing with all white balls
at one point. I don't know if that means anything.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
Yeah, I don't know what all white balls means.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
Yeah, pool enthusiasts can write let us know.

Speaker 4 (51:01):
But they have this conversation about whether or not the
inspector is going to turn Olof into food. But then
interesting thing is that like Olof is so good at
the game that it's like not any fun because he
just like sneaks. He sinks every shot with absolute precision.
So Oloff is like the ultimate Billiard's hustler here.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
Yeah, and then he's like I'm out.

Speaker 4 (51:25):
Yeah, So it'd be great to see him go up
against the Green Bays Vampire Alan Armstrong.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
Yeah, that would have been a logical sequel, right, Green
Bays Vampire versus a robot versus tit harm Yeah yeah.

Speaker 4 (51:40):
Okay, So later that night we get the scene where
this is the dancing scene we've referred to a few
times where everybody's like dancing to heavy prog rock. Oloff
and Brun are dancing with these jerky whipping movements with
their arms going out. Mister Moses is playing chess with
somebody I wasn't sure who, and then Glebsky talking to
snave Oar is he has questions. He's like, who is

(52:02):
this mister Moses, and Snaevar says he's registered as a
traveling businessman, but I have no idea where he's traveling.
The road ends here. The only way is back.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
It's a great little party. We gonna say, like, I
kind of want to go to this party. Always have
some cool dancing, great music, and if you don't want
to dance, well, you know, have yourself a drink and
play some chess. You've got activities for everyone.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
Extroverts and introverts are welcome.

Speaker 4 (52:28):
Yeah yeah, yeah, So Glebsky dances with Missus Moses here again,
she's she seems very into him. She's got like a
big white feather in her hat or on her head.
He seems kind of hypnotized. I wasn't sure what this
was supposed to mean. Did you get the same impression
that Glebsky's like sort of out of his mind here?

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Yeah? I mean I assumed he was drunk. That was
where I was at in it.

Speaker 3 (52:52):
That would make sense, because.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
He did say he wanted to have that wine, and
he had this point. He's just like, I'm off the clock.
You know, there's no no crime to investigate here. I
might as well have a good time.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
Yeah, And so basically everybody at the hotel's partying except
for Hankus. They say he's still up on the roof.
He just doesn't come down to party. He's on the
roof all the time. And there was somewhere in here
there's a shot I really like, this creepy shot of
a big evergreen tree back lit by the moon.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (53:20):
So Glebsky was dancing with miss and Moses, but then
Simone comes in for his dance. He's like, hey, you
want to dance? With with a cyber commander of cyber forces,
and so she dances with Simon A and Globsky, admitting
in the narration that he was drunk, he steps away
from the party. He goes outside for some night air,
and then he discovers that someone he doesn't know who

(53:41):
has slipped an anonymous note into his pocket. He opens
the note to read it on this snowy pathway lit
by these globe shaped lamps, and the note is cut
and pasted with letters from a magazine, like those ransom
notes in the movies, and it reads, Hinkus is part
of a criminal organization. He is a dangerous terrorist called

(54:03):
owl owl w L.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
That's fitting creepy night bird with you know, various supernatural
connotations in different cultures.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
Yeah, this this struck me as funny when I was watching,
just because my daughter is currently obsessed with owls. She
loves to tell us what an owl says. It says
who who?

Speaker 2 (54:22):
Oh, that's correct.

Speaker 4 (54:24):
But anyway, the note goes on to say a murder
is planned.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
Do something.

Speaker 4 (54:30):
So Glebski is troubled by this, and he looks up
on the roof to see the outline of Hinkas still
in the chair up there, and he calls out to him.
He yells hing OUs, hing goose. But unfortunately this shout
seems to trigger something. There is some kind of rumbling
in the snow covered peaks above this. This was an

(54:51):
unfortunate Hincus and the ominous like, there's this ominous droning sound.
Matt to this pad underneath everything that begins here, and
Hinkas from the roof does not respond. So Glebski runs
up there, and when he arrives, he finds that the
silhouette in the chair that he believed to be Hinkas
is actually just Hinkas's coat stuffed with balls of snow.

(55:14):
It's like a decoy snowman. So where is Hinkus? Well,
the rumbling which started after Glebsky's shout begins to reach
a sort of peak of intensity, and then the hotel
guests see out the windows an avalanche coming down the
mountain side.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Oh man, So first he's Ferris buellerd Byhnkas here and
then we get the avalanche. And I have to point
out they apparently induced avalanches for the sequences we see
in the film. They weren't relying on stock footage or anything. Yeah, no,
I don't know the full details. They may have aligned
that with like planned induced avalanches that were done for

(55:53):
safety reasons.

Speaker 4 (55:55):
Yeah, oh yeah, it looked totally real. I was like,
these aren't special effects.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
Yeah, these are terrifying because at least later in the picture,
I can't remember this sequence so much, but later in
the picture where we get one where it's you know,
it's coming right at the camera and like that's a
lot of snow, that's a lot of mass coming at you.

Speaker 3 (56:10):
Totally agree. Yeah, very effective shots.

Speaker 4 (56:14):
So when the avalanche happens, the power goes out at first,
and we will discover that the avalanche has blocked the
road and trapped them on the hotel grounds. It has
also knocked out the telephone lines, and according to Snavar
in a later scene, it will probably be days before
the authorities can clear the road and they can leave.
So Glebsky's sort of on the case. He's trying to
figure out what's going on. He investigates Hnkas's room and

(56:36):
finds it empty. He searches through Hankas's belongings and finds
a small pistol in his suitcase, and then Glebsky narrates though,
that this is not the weapon of a career criminal.
He thinks somebody must be trying to set Hankas up.

Speaker 3 (56:51):
But who.

Speaker 4 (56:54):
Next thing, Snavar and Kaisa brings someone in from outside
the hotel, someone who appears to be unconscious. Globsky goes
to help, and they're like, who is this. We don't
know what's wrong? Possibly hypothermia, And they're like, get brandy,
gotta have liquor.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
Yeah, this is one of those movies where hard spirits
are essentially potions of healing, you know what. They're two called,
get him some liquor, Oh, the injured liquor, the delirium,
unconscious and whatever it is, surely hard spirits can solve
the problem.

Speaker 4 (57:29):
I mean, I don't know why Hinkus is not just
taking cotton candy flavored vodka for his for his tuberculosis.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
You know.

Speaker 4 (57:37):
Anyway, so Snaevar guesses maybe this is a friend of
Hincus because he heard Hinkus dictating a telegram earlier telling
someone to come quickly to join him at the hotel.
Sohnkus has summoned someone.

Speaker 3 (57:50):
Earlier in the day, and we don't.

Speaker 4 (57:52):
Know who, but maybe this is who he called. Anyway,
they give the guy some brandy and get him to
say a couple of words, but all he can say
is the name of Oloff.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (58:10):
Remember, Oloff's already a guest here at the hotel. This
is the dancer guy. So they go to check out
Oloff's room. But when they get there, uh oh, they
find him lying out on the floor, pale, motionless.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
Dead.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Oloff is dead, all right, So now we really have
a murder story going on here. It's time for our
inspector to get back on the clock. He's got some
work to do.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (58:35):
In fact, Oloff is not just dead, like, his head
is twisted around unnaturally. It's kind of the Exorcist going
on here. So of course Gleb's key concludes what strength
the killer must have had, and we see him like
lie down on the floor and try to mimic like
twisting his head around. But they also see that Oloff's

(58:56):
hand was stretching out toward the handle of a suitcase,
so it's like he was reaching for the suitcase when
he died. In another room, they find Hinkas finally, but
he is found tied to a bed. He says he
was attacked by someone and he does not know who,
and then the weird behavior just continues. We encounter Simone.

(59:18):
Simone Simone, a physicist. He's running around in his tidy whiteies,
trying to hide behind a sheet that he's like holding
up with his hands. That's not gonna work, buddy, and
we get a confession from him. Missus Moses is dead.
He swears he didn't kill her. He says that he
went into her room and she was already lying cold

(59:38):
on the floor when he went in there. The wait, no,
not lying cold on the floor, she was standing upright,
but cold and dead. And then her wig fell off,
revealing a bald head. Things are getting stranger.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
Yeah, yeah, we're getting kind of a Blue Sunshine vibe
going on in this one scene.

Speaker 3 (59:56):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (59:57):
Yeah, maybe she took the Blue Sunshine app and now
she's ready to activate. But then they go to Missus
Moses's room to check this out, and she's not dead.
She's in there, alive, reading a book. She's fine. She
smiles at them. So something really weird is afoot now.
And Glebsky is starting to get frustrated because I think

(01:00:18):
when it was just a murder, he was sort of
like he was like, okay, I'm on the case, but
now everything's so weird. He's like, I don't know what's
going on, and I don't like it. So back in
Simone's rooms, Simon a showers, he tries to sober up,
and Glebsky shows him a strange contraption that he found
with Olaf. It's this weird device inside the suitcase that
Oloff had been reaching for. It has this soft pulsing

(01:00:41):
light and it emits low beeping sounds, and Simone says
he doesn't know what it is, but it could be
something military or from outer space. Better be careful.

Speaker 3 (01:00:51):
Then he runs away in fear.

Speaker 4 (01:00:53):
So they I think they like lock up this contraption
in a cabinet under the dog bed, and Glebsky has
the only key, so he's the only person who can
get to this suitcase. Now he goes and tries to
talk to Brune, and the mystery just keeps developing. He
tries to talk to Brune about what happened. She apparently
Sawhnkas walking in the hall after he claimed to have

(01:01:15):
been attacked.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
And then we.

Speaker 4 (01:01:19):
Go and check with Hinkus about this what was going on?
You know, were you lying, and he says that it
was him that he tied himself up. The implication here
is that there is another one of him.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
And this is a great scene. It's especially a great
place for the actor Mick Micavir playing Hankas to really
shine because it's he's not just saying oh, yeah, yeah,
I encountered me and I tied him up, Like no,
this that the character is clearly confronting this moment of horror,
this moment of duplication where he encountered like his own double,

(01:01:53):
his own doppelganger here and had this kind of violent
interaction with them, and is clearly just traumatized and confused
by the whole incident.

Speaker 4 (01:02:03):
Yes, agree that Mickever is great in the scene and
Glebsky is totally disturbed at this point. He wanders through
the hotel by himself, thinking over the case. I like,
here there's a there's a visual motif of flickering lights,
Like often somewhere in the background a light will flutter
on and then flutter off on a loop throughout a scene. Yeah,

(01:02:26):
there's also a moment in here where somebody is watching TV,
or at least there's a TV on somewhere like in
the lobby of the hotel, and it looks like what
it's showing is like news clips of people falling out
of buildings.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
Yeah, this was very disturbing. So this is like in
a I think this kind of like circular room with
one of these neat like central circular stoves warming everything up,
and there's a TV. And Yeah, it was disturbing because
on one hand, I kind of have to assume this
is real footage of people falling to their deaths here.
So it's outside of the context of the film, it's

(01:02:59):
disturbed to see that kind of thing. But even within
the context of the film, why is it playing here
in the lobby of the hotel. Did they just play
Faces of Death on repeat here?

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
Do they tune into the Outlaw Videodrome snuff channel as
in Cronenberg's videodrome film. It's just weird and strange and
just adds to that level of uncertainty about where we're
going in this film.

Speaker 3 (01:03:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:03:25):
Yeah, So there were more interrogation scenes where Glebsky's trying
to figure out what's happening. He interrogates Brune about what
happened earlier when she went to Oloff's room. She said
that they were They're dancing, kissing, having a wild time,
and then suddenly they see the avalanche beginning outside the
window of the room, and Oloff panics and throws Brune
out of the room into the hall, and then later

(01:03:47):
he's found dead.

Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
Glebsky and Alex sort of talk.

Speaker 4 (01:03:51):
Over the mystery together. Snaevar's sort of Glebsky's confidant, he's
playing his doctor Watson, and Alex says that Gleb's he's
rational investigatory tools are useless here. He says, like time
at greater than light speed. That's a strange comparison. But
then he says, there is nothing we can do.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
You are not ripe.

Speaker 4 (01:04:13):
Yet, And this is the moment when Glebsky says, I'm
so ripe I will fall off the trees soon.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
I love this exchange. It's I assume something is lost
in translation here, like it doesn't fully translate into English
from the original Estonian, but I still sort of get it,
like it's still it still feels very true.

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
You know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:04:34):
So in the scene, also they talk about the concept
of zombies, and Snavar wonders if perhaps zombie is the
third state of living organisms, beyond life and death.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
Yeah, very haunting.

Speaker 4 (01:04:48):
So Glebsky falls asleep listening to Snavar talk about zombies,
and then he has dreams of skiing down a vast
snow covered mountain side and he's going so fast. He
seems to be smiling at first, but then maybe it
seems his expression is actually one of fear. There are
weird tones on the soundtrack that sound like animals wheezing.
And then suddenly in the dream, Globski goes off the

(01:05:10):
edge of a cliff and he falls and falls into
the snow down below, and then from up above a
figure looks down at his body. We zoom on the
figure and there are two figures. In fact, it is
the dead mountaineer from the portrait and his dog.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
Yeah, really great moment, you know, haunting and also makes
us think back to that kind of the shrine like
qualities of the dead mountaineer's portrait. You know, is the
dead mountaineer like a even in the context of dream here,
is it like a ghost? Is it a divine force?
And I also have to point out this may be
the only sequence in the film where anybody does any skiing? Yeah,

(01:05:48):
and it is within a dream.

Speaker 4 (01:05:50):
No, there is some skiing later, but it happens without
skis and in the wrong direction.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
Yes, yes, and by by robots. Yes. I guess. Well,
we did see the hand gliding earlier, and I guess
maybe that involves skiing. I don't know how they got
up there, and they skied off of something, and yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:06:04):
I'm not sure. We'll come back to that in a minute. So,
so Glebski is woken up by the Saint Bernard lel
like slobbering on his face, and apparently the dog has
brought him something.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
It is a gun covered in drool.

Speaker 4 (01:06:19):
So Glebsky's like, where did it come from?

Speaker 3 (01:06:21):
Boy?

Speaker 4 (01:06:21):
And Lell leads him outside into the snow and shows
him where the gun was. Glebsky deduces that it must
have been thrown from the roof, So did it belong
to Hinkus? Next, Snaevar brings news, I remember that unconscious
guy we found outside. He's conscious now, so they go
to interrogate him. And now that he's awake, he really
looks like death. There's this dark makeup under his eyes,

(01:06:44):
his skin is pale, even kind of blue in places.
The whites of his eyes are bloodshot and he just
stares ahead in a daze, and Glebsky interrogates him, finds
out that his name is Lurevic, mister Lurevic, Luarvic. He
is looking for Olaf and he won't say a whole lot.
Glebsky's like, who are you? Are you a foreigner and

(01:07:05):
the man says, yes, a foreigner. And also in this scene,
mister moses remember him. He was kind of like a
nondescript earlier on. He tries to sneak in on the interrogation,
but Glebsky chases him away, and Lurevic, on finding out
that Oloff is dead, doesn't seem all that concerned. He says, well,
he still needs to see Oloff anyway, to conduct some

(01:07:26):
business with him. And Glebsky's like, no, he's dead, and
Lurevic is like, yeah, let me talk to him. But
in this whole scene, Lurevic is dreamy, languid, kind of unconcerned,
but does look like he's in a bad state, and
he does identify Oloff's body. He says he recognizes, he
recognizes him, and he knew him from elsewhere and this.

Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
Was one scene.

Speaker 4 (01:07:50):
Yet again, this is all throughout the movie, but I
really noticed the presence of like the modular mirrors in
the sets in the scene.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
Yeah, and it's fitting, especially at this point in the picture,
because we have already come head to head with this
with a theme of duplication here, of doppel gangers and doubles,
and so yeah, I feel like we're constantly seeing characters
in mirrors or multiple mirrors, and the hotel eventually feels
like a place it's not only out in the edge
of the wilderness, but also in the edge of the

(01:08:18):
known universe.

Speaker 3 (01:08:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:08:20):
Yeah, So Lureovic says he's looking for the suitcase that
Olaf had, and Glebsky says, I'm not just going to
give it to you. You got to answer questions first.
But of course Lurevic he doesn't want to answer questions.
He just wants the suitcase instead of answering questions. He
gets very slow and says that he must lie down,
and then he just sort of slumps back and appears
to go to sleep with his eyes open. Somewhere in here,

(01:08:42):
there's a scene with Snavar playing the organ and he's
not good at it, and Glebsky's just kind of lounging stoically,
smoking a cigarette and listening to the bad organ concert
and so, you know, they again have one of their
detective consultation sessions. They talk to each other about what
could be going on, and Glebsky says, you know, he's

(01:09:04):
nearly convinced that lurevic Oloff and mister Moses, or either
mister or missus Moses, maybe both of them.

Speaker 3 (01:09:11):
He doesn't say who.

Speaker 4 (01:09:12):
He says they belong to the same gang, which doesn't
want publicity, and he thinks Hnkas is somehow connected to
them as well because of the gun he found. So
Glebsky comes up with a plan. He says he's gonna
stop detaining Hnkas and set him free, quote like a
fox into a chicken coop to see what happens. Meanwhile,
Glebsky is busy playing with a metal wind up robot toy.

(01:09:35):
I don't know about this plan, Glebsky. Is that a
good police police work plan?

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
Yeah, seems like this is more like rogue cop territory.

Speaker 4 (01:09:42):
Right, Yeah, yeah, So everybody comes down for breakfast the
next morning. I guess when he's gonna set Hankus loose,
and simon A says, I sense the smell of death
in here, and Bruin says, beautiful weather today. Poor Oloft
didn't live to see it. And Lurevic is now at
breakfast with the rect him. He has to be guided
to his breakfast chair and he eats some piece of fruit,

(01:10:04):
like letting this juice run all over his face. I
think Hinkas arrives to breakfast wearing a tuxedo. That's kind
of that's a choice. But Glebsky says, you know, quote,
it appears some crooks selected this hotel as a place
to settle their scores. With the help of mister Snavar,
I sent word to the police by pigeon. The police

(01:10:25):
helicopter will arrive shortly. The criminals will get their just desserts.
I advise that criminal.

Speaker 3 (01:10:31):
Activity be ceased.

Speaker 4 (01:10:34):
Of course, what is missus Moses's reaction to this going
to be? Of course, she's like, oh boy, how exciting
killers among us?

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
Stop doing crimes, everybody, because the helicopter will shoot you.

Speaker 4 (01:10:46):
Yes, I got the pigeon to bring a helicopter that
will stop you from doing crimes. Of course, the pigeon
thing was actually a bluff. Glebsky knows he is on
his own.

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:10:57):
This leads up to the interrogation of Hnkas scene. Hankas
is like the last one eating breakfast, and then Glebsky
watches him and pulls him aside. He's like, okay, I
know about you from the note I received. You're this
criminal called Owl, and Hankas says, no, I'm not Owl.
I don't know what you're talking about. He's asked about
the gun. He denies that it's his, but then suddenly

(01:11:17):
he sort of busts out and unleashes martial arts that
he would not have seemed prepared to deliver, like he's
been playing like he's in poor health, but he easily
beats up Glebsky, knocks him nearly unconscious, takes the gun
with him, and then while the inspector is lying on
the floor, we hear Hankas fighting with someone else off camera,

(01:11:39):
and somehow I guess it is Simone the physicist, Like
Simon a beat bests Hankas and then helps Glebsky up.
That's unexpected.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
Yeah, so now it's time to interrogate Hankas once more.

Speaker 4 (01:11:53):
Yeah, round two here, and Hankas finally spills the beans.
He's like, Okay, here's the deal. Have you heard of
the hit squads? That's what he says. I was a
member of one of them. Something terrible is going on here.
Supernatural forces are at work. He explains that quote. Half
a year ago, some guy approached us. No one knew
his name. They called him Master. They assigned him the

(01:12:15):
hardest jobs, remember the second National Bank job? That was
his doing. But then he quit working for us, left
us high and dry.

Speaker 3 (01:12:23):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (01:12:23):
Yes, he was always a bit eccentric. Wouldn't let us
kill hostages or anyone. He said, we shouldn't. That's why
we had a fight with the boss. And then he disappeared,
along with his assistant and his wife. I was ordered
by the boss to find them, And Glebsky says, and
you found them here?

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
Who are they?

Speaker 4 (01:12:41):
And Hankas says, no, you tell me who they are?
What man could get the better of me as if
I were a kitten. So you think he's talking about
Semina here, because Simine just like beat him up after
the first interrogation, and we look at Semine. But actually
it goes in a different direction. Hankas says, this woman Moses, no,
I would not let him live, so he set his

(01:13:02):
wife against me. She was coming right at me. You
don't believe me, but I was approaching myself. And so
we see in Hankas's flashback missus Moses in her fur
coat seeming to transform into a doppelganger Ofhnkas and then
attack him by pushing him out a glass window. So
what's going on, I don't know, but missus Moses apparently

(01:13:25):
can become can like transform her appearance and become copies
of people and attack them.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
Yeah, we have shape shifters among us.

Speaker 4 (01:13:34):
Now, So Hankas admits he's here to hunt down this guy,
the Master, and his assistant and his wife. Now, Hinkas
says he doesn't actually know what happened to Olaf. He
says he never laid a finger on him. But his
gang boss is coming with three or four guys to
finish the job, to kill mister Moses, who, in fact,

(01:13:56):
the nondescript mister Moses, who seemed so innocent and you know,
not even very remarkable, was in fact this criminal mastermind,
the Master who did the Second National Bank job. And
except he got into some kind of squabble with this
terrorist or criminal gang and now they're they're looking for revenge.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
All right, So we've reached the secret mob members level
of the big reveal here.

Speaker 4 (01:14:33):
But then there's going to be another reveal, which is
so there's a confrontation where Glebsky goes into a room
with Snaevar and Simone. They're all here gathered in the room,
and when Glebsky enters the room, he sees himself what
but then the other hymn transforms back into someone else.
He realizes that here in the room are mister and

(01:14:55):
missus Moses and someone else Luarvic, sitting doubled over in
a chair, and Glebsky tries to say, okay, based on
the testimony of Hincus, mister Moses, you are guilty of
the robbery of the Second National Bank and of the
murder of Olaf and I'm going to have to arrest you.

Speaker 3 (01:15:14):
But Simone is.

Speaker 4 (01:15:15):
There and he explains, no, no, no, you don't get it, Inspector.
These are not humans. They're aliens from another planet. He says,
I don't know where they're from, another dimension or galaxy,
but they're in trouble and we have to help them.

Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
He says.

Speaker 4 (01:15:29):
Mister Moses arrived here as an observer, but he made
a fatal mistake. He should not have contacted humans. And
mister Moses explains that. He says, it's true. I wasn't
supposed to interfere with human life, but when I saw
how you were living, I broke the rule. I wanted
to help you so much, but your life proved to
be too complex for me. So somehow this part is

(01:15:54):
a little murky for me. But somehow mister Moses, being
an alien, an observer of Earth who was supposed to
look at human life but not interfere with it, decided
that he took pity on us because of all the
human suffering and got involved. But the way he got
involved was with some kind of criminal gang. I'm not
quite sure I'm making the connection there.

Speaker 2 (01:16:16):
Yeah, maybe there's some sort of Robin Hood thing going
on there, or maybe he was like, crime is doing
a lot of damage. I'm going to get in there
and do crime really well, but not hurt anybody.

Speaker 3 (01:16:25):
Yeah yeah, and that so.

Speaker 2 (01:16:26):
I don't know, you know, he's going up against very
difficult societal and.

Speaker 3 (01:16:32):
Yeah, yeah, problems and so forth.

Speaker 4 (01:16:34):
So, but given all the backstory we already got from Hinkas,
now we know that the gang bosses are hunting down
these these fugitive aliens, and so mister Moses is here
at the hotel so he could leave the planet. They say,
here in the mountains is our launch pad, but the
avalanche destroyed the generator that powered our robots. So missus

(01:16:57):
Moses and Oloff are the robots helpers of mister Moses
and Luarvik. The man they discovered outside is the pilot
of the alien spaceship and he was severely injured. They say,
his spacesuit is torn. He's becoming weaker every second. So
so what I mean this this reveal is very sudden,
and it's just kind of like poured on Glebsky, and

(01:17:19):
like how is he supposed to react?

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
Yeah, and again it doesn't come with reveals of robotic
interiors to human bodies or anything like that.

Speaker 4 (01:17:27):
Right, But they say that remember that suitcase Olof was
reaching for, It actually has another battery, and if they
return it, if they if Glebsky will return the battery
to them, Oloff can be revived and then he won't
be dead at all. He's just a robot who's on
low power and they'll give him more power and he's fine,
so this won't actually.

Speaker 3 (01:17:46):
Be a murder. But Glebsky thinks this is all madness.

Speaker 4 (01:17:49):
He says that every crime can be explained by appealing
to fantasy, and this leads to arguments between Glebsky and Semone.
Simone is saying like, look, you're being offered per right now,
see for yourself. But Glebsky says, interestingly, quote, I'm not
a scientist, I'm a police officer. I've heard too many
lies about the suitcase. So he's sort of saying that

(01:18:11):
he operates not just on physical evidence, but by primarily
suspicion of motive, which can even override physical evidence.

Speaker 3 (01:18:21):
Hm oh.

Speaker 4 (01:18:23):
We also find out here that mister Moses is the
one that called the police and slipped the note into
Glebsky's pocket, and it's because he wanted to be rid
of Hinkus and he knew Hankus was there. He was
the criminal who was hunting him, and so at one
point in this conversation, mister Moses laments. He's like, it's
it's troubling that you won't be convinced because our robots
are too convincing as humans. You know, if they were

(01:18:46):
just obviously robots, then maybe you'd believe us. He says,
it's a pity I can't show you my real face.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
So yeah, this is kind of getting to my earlier
point about this is not the sort of film that
is that needs to show you the alien face that
the roboticiers. Again, I wouldn't have said no to it,
but you can understand this choice based on this interaction. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:19:05):
Yeah, But here we get this conflict with Glebsky where
he's like, no, I must turn you into the law.
So he's conflicted, and he wanders around the hotel alone.
At one point, he even picks up a phone receiver
and then says in voiceover narration that he wishes the
phone would simply give him orders to follow because he
sort of feels like he can't think for himself, he

(01:19:28):
can't decide what's the right thing to do, so he
like walks out into the snow and he meets Brune
out there. Remember Brune was the one who was in
love with Olaf, and Brune begs him to give the
battery to them so they can revive Oloft. So she's
read into the whole theory now and she believes it.
He's like, Glebsky tries to tell her this is nonsense,

(01:19:48):
it's a fairy tale, but she says, if there's something
that even might help him, you've got to give it
a try. And she says, if Olof is an android,
maybe she's an android too. She says, how could I know?
So this all finally leads to a conclusion where Glebsky
is trying to arrest mister Moses and won't give the

(01:20:08):
battery back. But eventually he is sort of overpowered and
overruled by Simone and by Snaevar, who both they they
are aware of the aliens and robots and they want
to help them, so they sort of restrain Glebsky, and
they get the suitcase and they give it to the
aliens so that Olaft can be powered back up. And

(01:20:30):
there are these moments in here where Semine is reflecting
on the tragedy of the situation. Simone says, here is
the first encounter between two worlds. Think of how amazing
this is, but think that they arrive from god knows where.
First they meet terrorists and then they meet a police
officer like you, Glebsky, sort of saying like you're showing
them the worst side of humanity. But finally, as the

(01:20:53):
Aliens get the battery back and they are allowed to escape,
like the whole building starts shaking and rumbling like something
huge is coming. Glass shatters in the windows and we
hear a voice echoing saying goodbye. Human's real contact is
yet to come. And then we get one of the
most striking shots in the movie, which is the aliens departing.

(01:21:16):
They're like cloaked figures seemingly skiing uphill without skis to
the top of.

Speaker 3 (01:21:22):
The mountain so they can get in their spaceship and leave.

Speaker 2 (01:21:25):
Yeah, just just robots moving swiftly, unnaturally over the surface
of the snow.

Speaker 4 (01:21:31):
Right, so missus Moses is carrying mister Moses, Olaf is
carrying Luarvic, and they're going to escape to the stars. Unfortunately, Oh,
here comes a helicopter. And at first you might think, oh,
the helicopter, that's that's going to be their rescue, right, No,
it's the gang. It's the gang members. It's Hinkas's gang
arriving and the helicopter buzzes over their heads. Finally, after

(01:21:54):
Snavar sees it and says, God, forgive us all, the
helicopter unleashes its guns and it kills the two aliens
and the androids and they lie dead in the snow.

Speaker 2 (01:22:04):
Yeah, blows them right up. Aliens robots completely destroyed.

Speaker 4 (01:22:09):
So the helicopter we see like the Saint Bernard howling
in pity. The helicopter leaves silent mountain peaks with this
with again the creepy squeaking synthesizers playing out the story,
and in the end, the camera zooms in on the
sun and then zooms out from the hotel. There is
a lot of zooming of the camera in this film,

(01:22:30):
and a huge avalanche approaches, billowing over the mountain side,
finally enveloping the camera. This is one of these avalanche
shots we talked about earlier, and the final shot of
the film is actually Glebsky later in black and white,
suddenly staring directly into the camera and he asks why
you're looking at them looking at him. He insists that
he acted correctly. He says, by upholding the law, he

(01:22:52):
performed his duty and the law is sacred, and he's
sort of like he gets defensive and angry and just
repeatedly insists directly into the audience's face that he was right,
he did the right thing, and considerations to the contrary
are just being illogical.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
Now, according to the featurette, this scene this capper at
the end in black and white with him speaking directly
to the camera. This is actually footage from this is
casting footage for the film, and they added it in
post because the studio thought that the ending wasn't clear
enough interesting, which is Yeah, I mean I think it

(01:23:30):
still works. You know, it reminds me a bit of
you know, some of those those fourth wall breaking moments
in Baraka or the ending of the mission. You know,
there's a and it makes sense. It's not completely out
of contact with the film because we get those scenes
where he's narrating, he's speaking to us, and then it
seems kind of fitting that at the end he is

(01:23:52):
looking at us, he is addressing us directly about this
strange encounter that he had and these choices that he
had to make.

Speaker 4 (01:24:00):
Yeah, and I guess that does it for Dead Mountaineers Hotel.
But I found this a really interesting film. It does
actually raise interesting themes in the end, but they kind
of come late in the film, these themes about like
can this bureaucratic functionary, this policeman like make a decision
that makes sense given what he's just encountered, or can

(01:24:20):
he just like not accept what's in front of him
and sort of act as a as almost as a machine,
as a robot himself.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):
Yeah. Yeah, it's a fascinating film. I really enjoy diving
into it, and I enjoyed getting into this realm of
Estonian cinema. So yeah, we'll throw it out to our
listeners there. If you've seen Dead Mountaineer's Hotel, or if
you've read the source material, or are you yourself listening
of from Estonia, do you have an additional insight about

(01:24:49):
Estonian culture and cinema locations, actors and so forth right
in we would love to hear from you. Just a
reminder of the stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a
science and culture podcast with new episod core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episode on Wednesdays, listener mail
on Mondays. But then on Fridays, we just set aside
most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film

(01:25:10):
on Weird House Cinema. If you want a full list
of the movies we've covered over the years, go to
letterbox dot com. That's l E T T E r
box d dot com. Our username is weird House. You'll
find a list there of everything we've covered so far,
and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next.

Speaker 4 (01:25:24):
Our regular audio producer Jjposway is out this week, so
huge thanks to our guest producer Andrew Howard for helping
us out today.

Speaker 3 (01:25:31):
Appreciate it, Andrew.

Speaker 4 (01:25:34):
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 as always at contact at stuff
to Blow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:25:53):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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