Weirdhouse Cinema: Jim Henson’s The Soldier and Death

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss 1989’s “The Soldier and Death,” a short rendition of a classic Slavic folktale for Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. Directed by Henson and written by Anthony Minghella, it features Bob Peck as the titular soldier and John Hurt as the Storyteller.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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

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

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

Speaker 2 (00:17):
And on today's episode Weird House Cinema, we're going to
discuss not a feature TV or direct video film, but
rather a standalone episode of an anthology series. Now, this
is something we did once before when we discussed Panos
Kosmotos's excellent The Viewing, produced and released as part of
Netflix's Giermel del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. This time, we're

(00:41):
going to be discussing nineteen eighty nine's The Soldier and Death,
the fifth episode of Jim Hinson's The Storyteller, and an
episode that Hinson himself also directed. Joe, were you familiar
with this series?

Speaker 3 (00:55):
I had seen I think one episode before, so not
very familiar, and I don't think i'd seen anything from
the season with John Hurt. I'd seen something from the Greek.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Season, Yeah, the Greek Myths. I think it's like four
episode follow up that came afterwards.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Different narrator, same dog, is that right.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Yeah, same dog, but Michael Gambon playing the Greek Storyteller,
and in this case, the storyteller is as we'll discuss,
played by John Hurt. This is such a terrific series,
and the Greek myths also terrific. In my opinion. In
this particular episode, The Soldier in Death, I think it
just nicely represents what the show is all about. It's

(01:36):
probably my favorite episode. It's the one I go to
if I'm like, okay, I want to rewatch an episode
of the Storyteller. Which one should it be? It's going
to be The Soldier in Death. It's just it's wonderful,
it's short, it's a highly economic telling of its tale,
it has multiple great puppets in it, and of course
the central storyteller performance is so well executed as well.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
I don't at all to insult it by this comparison,
because the Storyteller is much more beautiful and old world
and has much more creative effects. But in some ways
it reminded me of what's the story Wishbone in that
it's this.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Did you ever watch Wishbone? Oh? I don't think I did. No? Oh, okay, No.

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Wishbone was a show from the nineteen nineties in which
there was a cute, little dog who would relay literary classics,
would tell the story of Cyrano to Bergerac or something,
and the dog would play the main character in these
reenactments of classic literature. But it had that similar nineties

(02:41):
anthology feeling, that's trying to take something that is old
and dignified and presented in a way that is at
least somewhat accessible to children. In the late eighties or
early nineties, it had those kind of TV production values, except,
of course, the Storyteller is very different in that it
has it's it's a little bit more through the mists

(03:02):
of antiquity, and it has these effects and sets that
are more reflective of Jim Henson's style.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah. Yeah, And also I would say I can't compare
it to Wishbone, obviously since I haven't seen it. But
there is a complexity to the folklore as it's presented
in The Storyteller that I think is one of its
many charms. Like these are stories that are presented in
a way that it seems to capture the ambiguity and

(03:35):
sometimes the challenging aspects of the stories. Like these are
stories that are often funny and maybe a little bit
of tragic at the same time and maybe presents some
of the more troublesome aspects of the world in the
way that they are presented. So obviously, I've always been
a sucker for anthology series, and I remember discovering this

(03:55):
one for myself, not during it's an initial its initial run,
but when it was repackage as part of nineteen eighty
nine to the Jim Henson Hour. Only I think eleven
or twelve episodes of The Jim Henson Hour Hour actually aired,
and I seem to remember it as being like a
Sunday early evening spot. So probably not a great great

(04:16):
spot for successful television, but that is That's another one
of the perplexing things about The Storyteller. Like some of
these other some of the other amazing Jim Hinson projects
from even from this time period, the Storyteller was not
a success. It did not find its audience in its
initial run, at least not in the United States, and

(04:37):
not in this subsequent run packaged as part of the
Jim Henson Hour. It would only really, you know, much
be much later that it kind of builds up this
cult following and this great, the great deal of appreciation
that fans have for it. I've even heard that it had.
It exerted its own influence on subsequent fantasy adaptations for television,

(05:00):
things like Game of Thrones, even in the way that
the way that it presents a fantasy world that feels
grounded and magical at the same time. But thinking back,
I don't remember what episode I saw for the first time,
but when I saw the episode, when I heard the Storyteller,
I knew that I'd found something special. And indeed, it's
been a series that I find myself continually rediscovering over

(05:22):
the years. You know, like several years will pass, my
life will change slightly or a lot, and I'll come
back to the Storyteller and everything that he has to
tell me still resonates, and I find new details that
I wasn't aware of the first time, or the second time,
or perhaps the third. Yeah. So, on one hand, The
Storyteller is a simple concept, right use quality screenwriting, a

(05:46):
talented British stage acting pool, and the effects resources of
Jim Henson's creature shop to retail classic and or maybe
slightly more obscure folk tales, and it succeeds on all
those counts. But it is also truly a show about
the ancient human practice of oral storytelling. It takes time

(06:07):
to deliver key parts of the narrative through storytelling alone.
With John Hurt's a storyteller character, often speaking directly to
us the viewer, or speaking to his dog. In many ways,
everything you see and hear on screen, apart from the
storyteller himself, is just an illustration, if that makes sense.
And the storyteller is also in no ways a mere narrator.

(06:32):
So for for instance, one could just talking about anthologies.
One can easily think of say like the classic Tales
from the crypt framing system. Right, cryptkeeper tells you what
kind of story you're going to watch, and then the
end he sums it up. It's just bookends. But that's
not what you get here. The storyteller is and we'll
discuss the ways that this happens. Like he's integrated in

(06:55):
the delivery of the story in a way that goes
beyond him just narrating the act on the screen.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah, I would also flag that the narration is very
voiced in that it's not just giving you a clean
flat explanation of what happens in the story. It's not
there just to narrate the action, but it has a
lot of flourishes of language and little expressions and things.

(07:21):
The storyteller comes through as a personality, and his personality
is in the phrasing of how the story is told.
So there are a lot of just weird little ticks
and funny phrasings and things like that that seem to
not really be inherent to the tale and its whole
you know, life among the people, but are part of
this storyteller's individual voice.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Yeah, absolutely, and like, yeah, the cripkeeper is just here
to crack jokes about the story. And even you know,
you look to think back to like Night Gallery or
the Twilight Zone, in which the introduction serves to sort
of prepare you for the impact of the story, but
it is otherwise not too integrated in it. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (08:04):
Though this narrator does kind of comment on the story
as he's telling it. There are little expressions almost expressions
of opinion and statements of observation about life that just
sort of bloom out of little corners of the story.
So there's like one part in this story where it's
after death has been captured.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
In the sack.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
We will explain the whole tale as we get into
the plot later, but Death has been captured in the sack,
and so Death stops working in the world. And he
talks about how the news of this happening spreads, you know,
to the ends of the town and however many minutes,
and then to the ends of the kingdom, and however
many more minutes. He says, it spreads as fast as gossip,

(08:48):
and nothing spreads faster.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yes, yes, yeah, oh god, the writing is so good
in this, So we'll get back. We'll get into more
about the writing and more about the nature the Storyteller
as we proceed, but yeah, we're going to be focusing
on the soldier and Death here. All of the episodes
of The Storyteller first season or that four episode Greek
Storyteller series, they're all great. I feel like any you

(09:11):
could throw a dart at a chart of the episodes
and whatever you hit will be the best thing you
watched today. But this one is the one we're going
to focus on here today. If you have not seen
this episode of The Storyteller, and you can watch them
really in any order, don't feel like you need to
start with the beginning. Lucky for you, you can find
it out there. The Storyteller has a long broadcast, home

(09:32):
video and digital history. Episodes at one point were released
in two's I believe, on VHS. I remember they did
the same thing with Tales from the Crypt. I used
to have like a few Tales from the Crypt episodes
on VHS, and it would be like two episodes sort
of cobbled together. So I had the DVD set of
The Storyteller at one point, and then later on I

(09:54):
purchased them digitally, and in fact, I think I ended
up watching this episode three times. For today's episode, one
of them I watched via this digital download from years back.
The quality was not great, but recently, I believe Shout
Factory released remastered digital episodes and this is what I
was able to turn to for one of my subsequent rewatches,

(10:17):
and I can confirm that the recent remasters look much better.
You know, this is there is given the way that
that animation is also a part of the storytelling in
this show, and like so it's puppetry animation and other
kind of like visual effects. Sometimes there is kind of
like a gauzy kind of blurry aspect to the film quality,

(10:40):
So some of that is not something that is going
to be or needs to be you know, remastered or clarified.
But the most recent version of this, the kind that
you you know you're going to get digitally at most places,
it does look pretty great. And I'm also to understand
that there is a recently released Blu ray of everything,
and I assuming that that has the best and most

(11:02):
recently remastered quality as well.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Yeah, I would say some of the cloudiness of it
is not due to the transfer. It is an intentional
cinematography choice, which is actually a you know, it's a
trope used in a lot of filmmaking that signals that
something is ancient and mystical by making the focus a
little bit softer and creating this cloudy, misty look in

(11:25):
the scenes.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Yeah, like Folgi did in Conquest. You know exactly, there
you go, missed up the whole thing because the sale
is it emerges from the mist All right, Well, shall
we get into the folks behind this little episode. Let's

(11:47):
do it all right, We're going to start at the
top with Jim Henson. Of course, he is the director,
he has story credit. He is also credited as one
of the Goblin I'm sorry, one of the devil performers
I call them goblins because as they are goblin esque
or gromlin esque, as we'll discuss.

Speaker 3 (12:03):
They're goblins with some their goblins reskinned as devils.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yes, yes, so. Henson lived nineteen thirty six through nineteen
ninety one of, if not the most important puppeteers of
the twentieth century. We previously covered Hinson in our episode
on his nineteen eighty six film Labyrinth, and most of
you know him well. He was the creative master, mastermind
behind such long lasting puppet franchises as the Muppets in

(12:30):
Sesame Street and the groundbreaking one of a kind nineteen
eighty two fantasy film The Dark Crystal. And I think
mastermind is the right term when talking about Jim Henson,
because he was very much an idea man who also
brought great creative teams together and just about any Jim
Hinson's success story was also the success story of great
partnerships and teams, most obviously in the effects form of

(12:52):
Jim Henson's Creature Shop, but also in pretty much every
other aspect of her production, you know, bringing in great
visual design, great writers, musicians, actors, and so forth. Hinston
was of course known for a fierce work Ethic. At
the time of The Storyteller's production, this would have been
like eighty six through eighty seven. Jim would have been

(13:13):
around fifty and was still very much in his creative prime,
overseeing various TV productions and related projects in the way.
To be clear, though, of the financial and critical failure
of Labyrinth, which would of course go on to be
a huge cult hit and very much a beloved film
to many, but he was also working on some features

(13:34):
such as nineteen nineties The Witches, which he was executive
producer on. There was no way of knowing this, of course,
but he had just a few years left. He passed
suddenly in nineteen ninety, after the completion of The Storyteller
and various other late career projects, but he was daring.
This was also during various stages of production on other projects,
including nineteen ninety Slash ninety ones, The Storyteller Greek Myths.

(14:00):
He was involved in that, and that's those four episodes production,
but I don't think he didn't direct any of the episodes,
and I'm not sure that he had. I'm not sure
what his physical involvement in those episodes were, and they
did come out after his death now. The Storyteller came
together in part because of a recommendation from Jim's daughter Lisa,

(14:21):
who had reportedly taken a class covering folklore, and I
believe in particular she'd been reading some Slavic folklore at Harvard,
and in fact today's story is based, for the most part,
a Slavic story. He kind of brings in elements from
a couple of other stories, and those all may be
of Slavic origin as well. Has covered in the twenty

(14:45):
twenty four documentary Jim Hinson idea Man, which I highly recommend.
Jim was always working and his children learned fairly early
on that the best way to spend time with their
father was by collaborating with him in his work. And
as we'll discuss, his son Brian played an important role
in this series, and I believe his daughter Heather has
a cameo in at least one of the episodes. I'm

(15:05):
not sure how old she would have been at the time.
Though Jim was heavily involved in the Storyteller, but only
personally directed two episodes, The Soldier and Death and The
Heartless Giant. The episode we already mentioned, the Jim Henson
Hour in eighty nine, but these episodes I originally aired
on NBC and on UK's Channel four. Again, this series

(15:28):
didn't really find an audience at the time it came out.
It wasn't a success story in that sense it would
become it would build up this following over time. But
it was also a critical success at the time. It
won a BAFTA as well as a Prime Time Emmy,
both for Best Children's Program. So again it's become a

(15:48):
cult classic. People keep discovering and rediscovering the Storyteller and
the storyteller Greek myths, and there have been talks at
time about sort of relaunching it, giving a new V
I don't think anything has actually come to fruition yet
or reached, you know, an advanced level of production, but
who knows. There are always a lot of irons in

(16:09):
the fire with Hintson properties these days. After all, it
sounds like we're getting a Robert Eggers directed Labyrinth sequel,
so which I'm interested interested to see. I'm still having
a hard time imagining what exactly that could consist of,
but hey, let's do it. Let's see what happens, and
if there are going to be more Storyteller episodes at

(16:30):
some point, you know, huge boots to Phil, but I'd
be interested to see what comes together.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Maybe Willem Dafoe as the Storyteller.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Oh my goodness, Oh yes, yes, I would love to
see it all right. The writer on The Storyteller is
Anthony Mingela, who lived nineteen fifty four through two thousand
and eight. Oscar winning director and screenwriter, best known for
such films as nineteen nineties Truly Madly Deeply ninety six
is The English Patient, which earned him his best director's

(17:00):
Oscar ninety nine's The Talented Mister Ripley in two thousand
and threes Cold Mountain. During the production of The Storyteller,
all of this was for the most part in the future,
as he'd mostly written for TV, radio and the stage,
though he had directed the nineteen seventy eight film A
Little Like Drowning. Truly Madly Deeply starred Juliette Stevenson and

(17:22):
Alan Rickman, and that was kind of his breakout film.
I think it was originally produced for BBC Television but
ended up becoming a theatrical release, and it was an
art house hit, opening the doors to Hollywood. He continued
to work on some TV projects, including the four episode
Greek Myths Storyteller series, and his final credit was directing
an episode of TV's The Number One Ladies Detective Agency. Sadly,

(17:46):
much like with Jim Henson, his life and career was
cut short by illness, but he achieved quite a lot.
I would say that, Yeah, the writing on this series
is absolutely exceptional and definitely a huge part of its
success is something like almost hypnotic about its its rhythmic cadence,
the cyclical plotting, and the and again, the unaltered depth

(18:08):
of folklore and then and then mythology and the Greek myths,
the prose, the storyteller himself. It's it's casting a spell
over us with words. Even in these scenes where there
are no puppets. Uh, you know, there are no effects
other than just having the storyteller on the screen speaking
directly to us using these words, using his voice, and again,

(18:31):
the whole the whole show makes excellent use of symbolic
characters and uh, and and its effects to tell everything
in a very short run time. They really pack a
lot in.

Speaker 3 (18:40):
I would say, in this episode, Uh, the script is
especially strong in its management of tone, the way that
it walks a line between, you know, deals with a
lot of dark and morbid subject matter and gives it
gives that subject matter it's due, while also retaining a
kind of lightness and sense of humor about everything as

(19:01):
it goes along. Very strong control of tone in that
way makes everything feel like you're just rushing along with it,
you know, rushing along like the current in a brook.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah. Yeah, there, absolutely, absolutely is this this feeling of
rushing through. You're being pulled by the storyteller, by the
episode towards some sort of conclusion.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
Yeah, and sorry if I skipped over a connective that
I think that feeling of rushing through is not just
due to like the pacing which you were flagging, but
also to the ability of the story to maintain a
lightness of tone even when it's dealing with all of
the dark things in the story.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
Yeah. Absolutely, All right, let's get into we're getting into
the characters here. Before we get into the characters of
the episode specific well, we're going to talk about the
storyteller and his dog. The storyteller is again played by
John Hurt, who lived nineteen forty through twenty seventeen. Legendary
British actor Best remembered for his various generally supporting roles
in such films as Ridley Scott's Alien and seventeen nine,

(20:00):
he of course played Kine, the human from which the
xenomorph E merges. Yeah, worst dinner Ever. Yeah, Let's see
Midnight Express from the same year that earned him an
Oscar nomination, and then, of course he was also nominated
for an Oscar for his lead performance in nineteen eighties

(20:21):
The Elephant Man. Hurt enjoyed a long career that featured
six decades of cinema. His TV where It Goes Back
to sixty two and his first film role was the
same year in The Wild and the Willing. In nineteen
sixty six, he had a supporting role in A Man
for All Seasons. In sixty nine, he starred in John
Houston's Sinful Davy. In seventy five, he co starred with

(20:43):
Peter Cushing and set Let's See What was this? The Ghoul? Yes,
and then Let's See. In seventy six he was in
I Claudius, the TV series he played Caligula in that, Oh,
Let's see. Seventy eight was a banner year for him,
in which he voiced both Hazel Rabbit and Aragorn in
the animated adaptations of Watership Down and The Lord of

(21:05):
the Rings.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Love John Hurt don't know if I associate his voice
with the presence of Aragorn.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, he's probably, for my money, one
of the more notable vocal performances in that adaptation. But
you know, that's an imperfect film with great things in it,
for sure. Let's see. He also appeared the same year
in a horror film titled The Shout. I have not
seen it, but it's one that's kind of I believe.
I have it on my weird house list of things

(21:34):
I need to check out and see if they fit.
Let's say, in seventy nine, we of course got Alien,
followed by The Elephant Man in nineteen eighty. Subsequent credits
leading up to The Storyteller include nineteen eighty four and
space Balls, which of course he plays. I think he's
credited as playing himself. And this is where we get
the scene where a xenomorph like creature pops out of

(21:56):
his chest and then does a like a like a
frog dance with a with a hat and a cane
across the table sings New York, New York or something, Yeah,
something like that. What's the gag after that? Is it?

Speaker 3 (22:08):
I'll have what he's having? Or oh I don't rememberybe
it's check please.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
I haven't seen Spaceball since I was a kid. I
probably need to rewatch it.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
Same, but I watched it about a hundred times as
a kid. That was one we rented from the video store,
and I think as soon as it was over, I
just rewound the tape and watched it again.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Oh man, having to stop to rewind. I guess that
builds in a bathroom break at least. Yeah, let's see,
you know. Obviously, he did not return to play the
storyteller in Greek myths, and there are a number of
I think for a number of reasons that that makes sense.
It's a different We're going from folklore to mythology, and
it's a different, different sort of storyteller. And I like

(22:50):
gamb On in the Greek myths, but it's a different
sort of storyteller. He continued to act, appearing in such
films as Roger Corman's last directorial Crew at Frankenstein Unbound
in nineteen ninety opposite Rob Julia. Let's See He's a
He was in ninety five's Robber Roy, ninety five's Dead Man,
ninety seven's Contact, two thousand and one's Harry Potter and

(23:11):
the Sorcerer's Stone two thousand and four's hell Boy, two
thousand and five's V for Vendetta hell Boy two. In
two thousand and eight, he's in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,
twenty eleven's Melancholia, twenty thirteen snow Piercer, as well as
Only Lovers Left a Lie. And he also played the
war doctor in TV's Doctor who just you know, worked
a lot, was in so many things of note, and always,

(23:33):
you know, often in the supporting role. Added this this
extra little bit of wisdom, at times menace, other times
dark mystery. You know, anytime you got a John Hurt performance,
it added some interesting spice to the overall soup. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
I always love John Hurt. I feel like I especially
like him as a villain.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Yeah, yeah, he does make a good villain. Absolutely. Now
I want to mention this is probably good time to
mention it as any as we're talking about the storyteller.
I picked a book of mine off the shelf that
I've referred to in the past. This is the Wide
Worlds of Jim Henson. I'll hold it up here for
the video folks out there watching on Netflix. There's a

(24:19):
collection of papers about different things, different projects and different
shows and whatnot that Jim Henson was involved in. And
the particular paper I was looking at is there is
no one story by Nathaniel Long. And the author here
makes some compelling points about hurt storyteller character, including the
focus on not mere narra narration, but this kind of
pure storytelling we've been talking about. He points out that

(24:42):
the audience interaction is really key. So the storyteller is
he is a direct character in one episode of the Storyteller,
like he has to tell stories to save his life
to a king, that sort of thing. And then there's
I believe another episode where he kind of wanders through
the action the series. But beyond that, you know, he

(25:03):
often throws in flourishes of direct connection to the tale
in his telling, such as sharing that the protagonist is
actually a friend of his, or letting you know that
he attended it another character's wedding and so forth. So
so he has like personal knowledge or attests to personal
knowledge of the individuals involved in the stories. Sometimes he

(25:24):
also seems to possess key items from the story that
he will show off. And you can view that in
two ways. Either this is physical evidence of the reality
of the story like he is he does actually know
all these people, or you can think of it in
the storytelling sense of like imagining a storyteller you know,
has come to town. He's going to tell you stories,
and maybe, like you know, a shiny rock factors into it.

(25:47):
And oh, he has that shiny rock and he's going
to pass it around and let you hold it and
feel it, and so this is going to bring you
an intimate connection with the story that he is relating.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
I feel like there's less of this element in the
particular episode we're talking about today, though he does begin
the episode with a sack of biscuits, which are relevant
to the plot.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah. Yeah, There's some other little bits, like he mentions
the regiment that the soldier was a part of, and
lo and behold, he has a part of that. He
has like the insignia of that regiment stitched into his cloak. Yeah,
that's a nice little touch. And the author here, Nathaniel Long,
He even goes so far as to roll out of
fan theory that the storyteller is the soldier, and that's

(26:32):
how he is in possession of it. I don't know
that I ascribed to this myself, but it's an interesting idea,
and the ambiguity of the storyteller kind of, you know,
it allows you to entertain those concepts.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
Yeah, well, the storyteller does work as a kind of
ancient wanderer, and that is what we get at the
end of this story as well, So yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
Long also points out that in the first produced episode
of The Storyteller, Hurts Carearacter had more makeup effects, so
I think they quickly realized that we can scale back
on this little bad way and a little bit less
is more. They also seem to lean more heavily on
his character physically integrating with the story setting in the
first episode that was produced, and it's interesting that they

(27:18):
would step back from this and potentially decide to depend
then more on these scenes where he's telling the story
from his own home beside his hearth with his dog,
and realizing that in a way, it's like realizing the
true power of the storyteller that you don't need to
actually have him integrating with special effects beyond the basic

(27:40):
special effects that are involved in his presentation, but you
don't actually need to have him physically present in the story.
He's more effective just telling tales beside his hearth. Yeah,
I think that's right.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
And by having him in a separate place and time
in the chair by his hearth, it allows you to
dip in and out of the setting of the story
in a way that actually aids in the pace of
the storytelling because you can kind of without calling too
much attention to it, You can cut away and cut back.
So when you cut away to the storyteller, this aids

(28:14):
in transitions, and those transitions are often made even easier
by the fact that the narrator can kind of talk
through them in this very voiced way, so he doesn't
just have to say many years later. He can have
a little monologue here, which eases the transition.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Yeah, yeah, all right, that was the storyteller, and then
moving on to the storyteller's dog. This character is voiced
by Brian Hinson, Jim Hinson's son. Generally, the dog here
is here too to ask direct questions about the story
being told and also give direct interpretations of the story,
like there's another episode where you know there's a witch

(28:53):
in it, and the storyteller's dog is like, I hate
that witch, like, you know, she's so awful, you know,
like he's kind of we the audience cannot directly react
to the storyteller, but the dog can, and the dog
is kind of doing the talk back that we would
be having.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
Internally interesting choice that they make this dog a talking dog,
And I think that makes sense because they need some
talk back in the narrative and there's no human audience,
so the dog is the audience in the in the storytelling.
Like you, I think they would have realized at some
point in the writing that it doesn't quite feel right

(29:30):
for the storyteller just to be telling to the camera
if there's no mind there to react to the story.
He needs an audience, but you know, it's just him
and his dog, so the dog has to be the audience.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
Apparently it was Anthony Mangla who figured this out too,
Like he knew that there was going to be a
storyteller and a puppet dog, and then he set to
the task of writing these and then brought at least
some level of completed scripts back to Jim Henson, and
Jim was like, oh, the dog talks, whereas the screenwriter

(30:04):
had just assumed the dog was going to talk because
the dog is a puppet, is a muppet in a
Jim Henson production, like, surely the dog talks. And Jim
was like, Oh, that's a nice surprise. Yeah, let's do that.
There you go. All right, let's get into the cast
of The Soldier and Death Itself. This actual episode, The
Soldier is played by Bob Peck, who lived nineteen forty

(30:25):
five through nineteen ninety nine, British actor who won a
BASTA for the nineteen eighty six limited series Edge of Darkness,
but is best known to audiences for his role as
the big game hunter Muldoon in nineteen ninety three's Jurassic Park.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
I will always associate him with that role.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Yes, clever girl. He was a Royal Shakespeare Company actor,
extensive stage credits as well as TV credits going back
to seventy two. He played McDuff opposite opposite Ian McKellen
and Judy Dinch in seventy nine's Macbeth. Other credits include
eighty nine extream, nineties Lord of the Flies, and ninety
seven's fairy Tale A True Story that I've seen That

(31:06):
one before I believe Harvey Kaiitel plays Houdini in That
Been a Long Time though, But yeah, solid actor, solid
performance here. Peck also sadly passed away in his early
fifties due to illness.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
I had to look up who he was in Lord
of the Flies because I was like, wait a minute,
are there any adults in Lord.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Of the Flies?

Speaker 3 (31:27):
I thought it was all kids, but then I remembered
when I looked it up. The very ending of the movie,
of course, is that adults arrive on the island, like
a soldier shows up, and this instantly kind of snaps
the kids out of their war trance and they revert
to childhood. But there's also some irony with that character
because he's the soldier who appears on the island while

(31:48):
the you know, the group of boys is trying to
massacre the other group. And then he's like, what are
you kids doing? You know, I can't believe this this fighting,
and then he like looks back at his warship.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
Yeah, yeah, great actor, Andy, He's really good here. We'll
get into some of the nuances of his performance as
we roll through the plot. Let's see, this film has
I think three beggars in it that are important, two
of which are portrayed on screen. The other is kind
of an illustration or animation. But we have the Fiddling
Beggar played by Stuart Richmond born nineteen forty, British character

(32:22):
actor whose credits include eighty one's Reds, ninety two's Chaplain
and various British TV dramas. And then we have the
card trick Beggar played by Walter Sparrow. He lived nineteen
twenty seven through the year two thousand, English stand up
comic of some sort turned stage and film actor. His
credits include sixty five's Doctor Terror's House of Horrors, sixty nine,

(32:42):
Ze to one, eighty five's Young Sherlock Holmes, ninety ones,
Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves ninety three is the Secret
Garden in ninety eight's Ever After, Joe included a photograph
here if you look him up on letterboxed his I
don't know, maybe this is user submitted, or maybe it
just spill from another database, but there is a photograph
of a young Walter Sparrow, and he is just like

(33:05):
this young, dashing, handsome gentleman, and most of it is
certainly in this film. He's a much older individual, very
haggard looking and intentionally so, but with a kind of
youthful spirit and enthusiasm.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
He's got two callers here, Oh yeah, there are two callers.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
Yeah. It was in the style of those days Onion
on the belt as well. All right, other supporting characters,
we have a tzar in this and the tzar is
played by John Franklin Robbins, who lived nineteen twenty four
through two thousand and nine, British character actor who has
an uncredited role as a minister in Dracula eighty nineteen

(33:44):
seventy two, which we've previously discussed on the show, and
his other credits include ninety six is Emma and two
thousand and sevens The Golden Compass. Let's see. The Tsar's
wife is also a minor character, played by is he
A Benson or Benison born eighteen forty nine, British actress
who worked mostly on TV, but she also appeared in
the nineteen eighty Mummy movie The Awakening, starring Chuck Heston

(34:08):
and featuring Ian mcdarmond, and that one was directed by
Mike Newall. And then she's also in nineteen eighty five's
King David. This is the movie that featured both Richard
Gear and I'm sadly to say the recently deceased George Eastman.
I just read last night that the great George Eastman
has left this mortal coil. So rest in peace, George Eastman.

(34:31):
Let's see other characters in this episode. We have Jan
Chappele playing the soldier's wife. Born nineteen forty five, British actress,
best known for playing Calli in the first three series
of the sci fi show Blake's Seven. She also pops
up in two thousand and six's Basic Instinct two, a
film that I had forgotten existed. But yes, they did

(34:53):
do an official sequel to Basic Instinct.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
I grouped that mentally with American Psycho two. Never seen
either one, but something seems similar.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
I know I had that connection too. But when you
look at it, like Basic Instinct too, has Sharon Stone
in it, reprising her character. It's got a pretty good cast.
I have no idea if it's even remotely good, but
there seem to have been some money behind it.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
I'm not a big fan of the original Basic Instinct,
though I do love Paul Verhoven, but it I don't
think it's a great movie, but it is a great
cultural artifact. It's great to just like go back and
watch it and try to understand the time in which
was a good point.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, definitely culturally important. All right, moving behind the scenes,
I'm gonna mention that Rachel Portman was a composer of
the Storyteller series that includes you know music in the
episodes and the theme song. She was born nineteen sixty three.
Time Oscar named a nominated composer for nineteen ninety seven's Emma.

(35:55):
She won the award for Emma. Also, she was nominated
for two thousands cider House Rules in two thousand and
one's Chuck O'lock. She's still active today in her work
in film and TV goes back to nineteen eighty two.
Other scores include The Joy Luck Club in ninety three,
Beloved in ninety eight, and more recently The Return in
twenty twenty four. All Right, and then finally, I'll just

(36:16):
mention again. Obviously, Jim Henson's creature shop is responsible for
all the various effects that we see here. The puppetry
is exceptional, and it is the work of a highly
talented and innovative crew. We can't mention them all in
this episode. Look them up on IMDb or whatever database
you choose to use. I will note though, for this

(36:37):
series and for this particular episode, the Jim Henson Creature
Shop credits include future Blade director Stephen Norrington, so he
was a part of this one.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
Well, are you ready to break down the plot? Let's
do it, okay? So I guess we'll start with some
notes on the general like the opening credits and framing
of the storyteller before we get into the tail. So
it starts with a castle on a craggy mountain. It's
surrounded by swamps and mist very much. Actually reminded me
of the Castle of the Skexies in the Dark Crystal,

(37:21):
you know, rising up out of the landscape, these desolate
places below dark mists. And I believe that in this
opening shot you can correct me if anything I say
here is wrong, Rob, I think the castle is a
live photography model, but the foreground has animation in it.

(37:42):
So there's like an animated raven that flies up to
the castle walls and then darts inside through a hole
in the stones. Did you interpret it the same way?

Speaker 2 (37:51):
Yeah? Yeah, I believe so.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
So the opening narration says when people told themselves their
past with stories. They explained their stories, foretold the future
with stories. The best place by the fire was kept
for the storyteller.

Speaker 2 (38:09):
Such an evocative opening that really captures so much about
what the show is going to be, what storytelling is,
and how important it is to humanity, because of course
the fire is not just the thing that keeps us warm, right.

Speaker 3 (38:23):
Yeah, but I do like that it's establishing at the
very beginning who gets the good chair? Yes, yeah. And
the credits, they have a little montage of clips from
other episodes of the season, so we get some kind
of little goblin without legs hobbling on a dungeon floor,
and some very muppet faced creatures peering over a wall,

(38:43):
red devils and ghoules with beaks, and then of course
this super cute scruffy dog.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
One note about the opening credits here, and this is
something that after all these years, I don't think I'd
really focused in on until like today, but note that
the opening credits are literally coming out of the storyteller's mouth,
like we see his teeth and then we like pan
out and like we're the like the camera point of
view is coming out of the storyteller's mouth, that, of course,

(39:12):
is where the story is coming from as well.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
Yeah, so the storyteller and his dog are part of
the framing narrative of every episode, and Rob, is it
always the case that the episode starts with the storyteller
and the dog acting out a little skit that introduces
one of the themes or images from.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
The folk tale. Yeah, absolutely, with appearances throughout, the exception
being the main exception being the episode a story short,
that one is about the storyteller and features him and
the dogs characters.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
And once again, of course the dog can talk right.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
But so in the episode when the credits end here
we open on John Hurt sitting in a high backed chair,
the good chair, next to the fire, so there's a
roaring fire, and the dog is digging around at something
on the floor. The storyteller is dressed in a way
that is at once ragged and venerable. So his clothes

(40:10):
are this old quilt like patchwork of different colors and patterns,
looking very dusty and frayed, like he's been wearing this
outfit for decades. His hair is gray and messy, and
he's wearing large prosthetic ears and has these big knob
like dimples on his cheeks. So frumpy, but not in

(40:31):
a way that decreases his esteem, frumpy in a way
that enhances wizard like qualities. Yeah, the dog also has
Oh one more question. Are we supposed to understand the
storyteller as some kind of elf like being because of
these prosthetic ears and the bumps on his cheeks, or
is he just a kind of sort of caricature of

(40:55):
an old man.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
That is a great question. I feel like at times
I've had interpret him as being kind of like an elf,
And maybe he is kind of like an elf, a
lowercase elf, but then it is also, at the same
time kind of like an exaggeration of the features of
an old man. So yeah, it's ambiguous. He could go
either way. Is he someone from another world, from the

(41:17):
unseen world? Or is he just someone from our world
who has knowledge of the unseen and tells stories about
it who knows?

Speaker 3 (41:26):
Yeah, he has great wisdom and there is an odor
of pipe leaf about him. Yes, And so the dog
also has this charming scruffiness that very much matches the
scruffy energy of the old man, and in the opening scene,
after sniffing and digging around for a bit. The dog
pipes up and asks what is inside this sack at

(41:47):
the storyteller's feet. He says it smells like biscuits. The
storyteller yanks the sack away from the dog's grip and
denies him access to the biscuits. He says that these
biscuits are needed in order to tell their story. Now,
one thing I was wondering is, because you've seen all
of the episodes of this, is the storyteller ever telling

(42:08):
the story to anyone other than the dog? Or is
the dog always the audience.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Outside of that episode in which he is the storyteller
is also a character. Yeah, he's always telling these stories
to the dog and then of course looking out at us.
To the viewer, he's telling us as well, but in
a less direct fashion.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
So the storyteller introduces a tale. This is an ancient
tale that begins quote one thousand miles from anywhere, after
twenty years of war, with a soldier, an honest soul,
with nothing but a shilling in his pocket and three
dry biscuits for the long trudge home. So we joined
the soldier. This is again played by Bob Peck and

(42:53):
he is in the middle of this long journey, wandering
along the country road, whistling as he goes with what
the storyteller calls a tuneless whistle, so they establish at
the beginning he is not a good whistler, but he
whistles anyway. And then a note on the landscape. The
characters in these scenes on the road are live actors,

(43:15):
but the setting they inhabit is usually not a real
physical setting. It in one case is like an animated
cell that they're walking on. In other cases it's a
painted backdrop set, and it shows these rolling hills and
farmland with wooden fences and mountains in the distance. So
the soldier Bob Peck marches along with good cheer. He's

(43:39):
a cheerful guy. And I want to comment on that
more as we go, because it's an important part of
the story. I think he's got good cheer, and he's
whistling all the while while he's walking, and he eventually
comes across an old beggar playing the fiddle by the roadside.
The soldier stops when he comes to the beggar, and
then he joins in with him. So he lifts up

(43:59):
his cross to his neck, points the bolt at his neck,
he tucks it under his chin and pretends to play
it like a violin while whistling along with the beggar's tune,
and the narrator says, the one couldn't fiddle, the other
couldn't whistle, and quite happy they both were. And I
want to stand with that. That is a sentiment. I

(44:20):
very much endorse the celebration of enjoying playing music music together,
even if you're not very good at it.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
Yeah. Yeah, our soldier here is a man of the moment,
and right now there is song. There is music, and
it's not about what you're being, what you're producing, it's
about the experience of producing it. Likewise, he does he
m like the kind of guy who, yeah, right now,
he has three biscuits in his pocket. What more could
he need right now? So he's content.

Speaker 3 (44:48):
Yeah. So when the song is done, the beggar asks
for a farthing. The soldier says, all he has to
offer him is a dry biscuit. So the soldier gives
the old man one of his three biscuits, and the
beggar is very grateful. He says, you're a good man
who deserves a better whistle. So the soldier goes on
his way, but to his surprise, when he starts whistling

(45:10):
again on the road, he notices that it is no
longer the tuneless whistle that he once had. Now it
is a beautiful instrument within him. The storyteller says, imagine
what Rubies would sound like if they whistled, so whistling
skill massively upgraded.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
You know, I was reading part of an interview with
Rachel Portman about the music for this episode, and she
points out that they had, you know, there's this line
in the script, a whistle that sounds like Rubies. She said,
you know, this is great, but I'm the one who
had to then realize this, and they apparently had put
a lot of work into trying to They're trying different
whistlers out. People on the set, even Jim Hintson himself
were like, well, let me give it a go. And

(45:48):
she said, like everybody thinks they're a great whistle whistler,
or you know, or they don't care, but no, very
few people have a whistle that is like Rubies. They
ended up bringing in a professional singer and then like
speeding up his whistle a bit, like modulating it in
such a way as to create this beautiful whistle that
we hear in the episode.

Speaker 3 (46:08):
So they initially had him sing or whistle this tune
like an octave down and at half speed, and then
they sped it up and play back.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Yeah, yeah, and it's a delightful little tune. If listeners
out there, if you can identify this song that is
being whistled by the soldier once he gets the good
whistle right in and let us know, because we were
chatting about this, something sounds very familiar about it, but
I can't place it. So if you know what it is,
right in and let's talk about it.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
So later in the story, the soldier comes along a
second beggar playing music beside the footpath, this time playing
a drum, and the soldier joins in once again, this
time dancing to the drum beat, and he gives the
old man the second of his three biscuits. And after this,
the soldier finds that now he's got a new talent.
He has an unusual talent for dancing. Then the soldier

(47:00):
comes across a third man on the road. The old
man is doing tricks with a deck of cards. The
soldier is very impressed and gives the man applause once again.
The man asks for a farthing, which the soldier does
not have to give. All he has is the one
dry biscuit left in his bag, So at first he
breaks the biscuit in half, offering to share it with

(47:20):
the old man. But before he gives the old man
his half, he feels guilty because each of the other
two men on the road got a whole biscuit. Doesn't
feel quite right to give this man any less, so
he gives him the whole biscuit, and to repay the
soldier's kindness, the old man gives him not one, but
two magical items. One is his deck of cards, a

(47:43):
deck of cards that can never lose, and the second
is a ratty old sack that looks mundane but is
in fact most marvelous. He says, quote, order a bird in,
or a beast, or anything you like, and it will
be there in a twinkle. So it's a magic get in,
get out sack. If you tell something to get in,

(48:04):
it cannot resist. It will be sucked inside the sack.
And then when you order something to get out out,
it comes.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
I guess there's not even a wisdom saving throw here.
It just absolutely works. This is an overly powered magical item.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Yeah guaranteed hit. Yeah yeah. So the soldier tries this
out on a flock of geese. He pipes up and
he orders them to get in the sack, and they
just all waddle in. So, now that he has this
goose payload, he heads to a nearby inn and he
buys himself supper and lodgings by giving the innkeep the
extra geese. The narrator says, and the landlord roasted him

(48:40):
the goose in clove and honey and brought it back
with a bottle of the best wine. And the soldier
ate it all and sucked the bones and drank the
wine and danced until morning.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
So I like that.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
The soldier here is characterized as a happy, go lucky figure.
He is cheerful, glad of his good fortune, and doesn't
really seem at all surprised by his good fortune. There's
not much commentary on him being like, wow, you know,
I can't believe this is happening to me. He's grateful,
he's kind to people, he's generous, he's friendly, and he

(49:15):
just accepts all of this good fortune just like let it,
you know, let the good times roll.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Yeah, like presumably having you know, just left the war.
He's just happy to be alive and in whatever kind
of joy he can find in the moment, he's happy
to embrace it.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
Yeah, And I like the way Bob Peck plays this
all with this charmed confidence. Yeah. So he has such
a good night with the goose and the wine that
he ends up sleeping for three days. And when he
wakes up on the third day, he looks out the
window of the inn and sees a dark, empty looking
palace on the hillside over the town. The palace appears
to be in ruins, with windows smashed and broken gates,

(49:56):
and the soldier asks the end keep about the palace.
In keep tells him that it is the Czar's old palace,
once a place of great parties and opulence, but quote
now the devils have it for their card games. Every night.
They tumble in and scream and shout and play at cards.
No decent folk go near, they're so devilish. But the

(50:18):
soldier doesn't seem very frightened. He notices that, hey, it's
a nice place. Somebody should go roused out the devils
so it can be fixed up again. Apparently an army
once tried to do this, but they were vanquished by
the devils in the morning. It says, there was nothing
left but shadows. So with a smirk, the soldier says,

(50:39):
think I'll take a closer look. So he heads up
to the palace with all of his magical items packed along,
and then inside the palace set. I like the contrast.
So is there are signs of neglect. Everything is covered
in dust and the air is hazy, and there are
remains of more recent hard partying food and wine bottles

(51:01):
scattered around. This looks like, you know, maybe from the
night before, from these devil parties. So the devils eat
and drink, I guess, while they play cards. But then
also there are the remains of someone's barbarity. There are
these old iron gibbets with skeletons inside, dangling from the ceiling.
I don't know if these are the tsars old gibbets

(51:21):
for his prisoners or if they belong to the devils.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah, that's a good point. Did this Is this a
remnant of something that happened years ago? Or was this
last night? Was this the last person who came up
to check in on the devils?

Speaker 3 (51:34):
Well, they are skeletons without flesh on them, so I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
I think Flash might know a few ways to get
flesh off of a skeleton.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
That's a good point they do. I think they like
to gnaw on some flesh in fact. So the soldier
smacks the dust off of a chair and takes a
seat at this hexagonal game table in the middle of
the hall. He sits and waits until dark, whistling the
whole time, and then finally night falls, and with this
crisp fluttering of wings, the devils appear. So let's talk

(52:04):
about these devils. They are puppets, of course, very Jim
Hensony puppets, in terms of how they look, how they're performed,
and the vocalizations the voicings. They are shiny and red,
like boiled lobsters, kind of the size and proportion roughly
of Joe Dante Grimlins, with also in a grimlin styling,

(52:26):
some like mohawk or three stripe hair patterns at least
for some of them, big dragon wings with clawed hands.
And in terms of their speaking voices, the devils adhere
to the orc and pirate rule of dialect.

Speaker 2 (52:41):
A lot of.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
Rude sounding English accents, anything important I missed here.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
Oh, let's see. I guess I think they're puppets. I
might point that out. I think these are rod puppets.
Could be wrong either way. Exceptionally well built and well executed,
well voiced as well, definite Gromlin vibes like you said,
but in the best way possible. Uh. Yeah, they're nasty
little buggers, but also a little bit cute. And then

(53:08):
this cuteness is also offset by their they're almost kind
of punk. Look, you know, they have the spiky hair
like you said, but also milk multiple piercings, so it
creates this this weird vibe. Yeah, like they're they're nasty
but a little bit alluring as well, and they're gleaning
red like they almost look sweaty. And yeah, this whole

(53:30):
sequence with them is wonderful, And I love how they
kind of boil up out of the darkness around the
soldier and his table of cards.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
They appear quite suddenly when he lights a match in
the dark, which and it reminds me of the first
time we see the the group of goblin faces appearing
very unexpectedly in Labyrinth.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
Yes, when she's reading the book.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
Anyway, So they show up and they're they're gathered around
the soldier in his table of cards, and one of
the devils says that he likes the sound of the
soldier's whistle. I think he says, I'll have it, like
he wants that whistle for himself. I'll be having that.
And the soldier proposes, well, if you want it, let's
gamble for it. So the devils say that if the

(54:18):
soldier wins, he's going to get forty barrels of gold.
A barrel of gold is an odd measure of gold,
but okay. They drag the barrels into the room and
he sees they've got him. That's the collateral there, and
if the devils win, they're going to get the soldier's soul,
his whistle, and his teeth. One of the devils says,

(54:39):
I collect teeth. I like teeth, so maybe kind of
soul and whistle for all of the others, and teeth
for Johnny over here. But these devil gromlins that, yeah,
they bring in the forty barrels of gold and the
game begins. Now you get the idea that normally the
devils always win against whoever they play cards with because

(54:59):
they cheat. They're devils, of course they cheat. But remember
the old man on the road gave the soldier the
deck of cards that wins for him every time. This
is the deck they play with, and the soldier wins
hand after hand until the devils are furious. They complain
that they are cheating as much as they can and
still it's not working.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
I love that detail. I keep coming back to that
because with such a magical item, it would be immoral
if he were to use this against most human gambling.
I mean, you can imagine some situations where he might
win against some human gamblers that are pretty foul characters.
But for the most part, this allows him to cheat.
But here he's cheating against individuals who are already inherently cheating,

(55:41):
so he's just out cheating the cheaters.

Speaker 3 (55:43):
Yeah, it's only okay to cheat against cheaters.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:47):
So the soldier plays all night, he keeps winning until
finally the morning comes, church bells start to ring outside,
and he says, well, I guess we better call it
a day, and the lead devil says, no, we will not.
We will call it breakfast, and you're the meal. So
the devils are sore losers, but the soldier has a
trick up his sleeve. Before they can devour him, the

(56:11):
soldier whips out his magical sack and he orders all
of the devils inside.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Yeah. I love the way he always does this too.
He's like, what is this and it's like and then
whoever he's addressed him, was they well that's a sack.
Well it's a sack, you better get in it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:26):
Yeah, that's a good phrasing. And you wonder why people
play along. Even Death later is like, well that's a sack.
The death answering his questions, but I think I'll be
asking the questions around here. But it plays out very well.
So now he's got all the devils inside the sack.
They're sucked in, and then he proceeds to take the
sack outside and give it a walloping. It's a real

(56:47):
Jason vorhees with the lady in the sleeping bag. Yeah,
and after a few minutes, the devils are begging for mercy.
They're like, you're beating us up, please please stop. So
the soldier does release the devils, but before doing so,
he makes one of them swear to serve him faithfully forevermore,
and he keeps the devil's hoof as a token of

(57:07):
their bargain, so he may call on the devil in
the future, but he releases it for now. And then
the narrator says quote, So the devils rushed to hell
and slammed shut the doors for fear of being followed
by the soldier and his sack. And they trembled and
quivered and fumed, fumed, fumed. But the soldier had no

(57:29):
time for devils. He was the toast of the town
and the star of the czar. But howsoever, life smiles
on us. The last laugh is reserved for death, and
this gets a raised eyebrow from the dog listening to
the story. Here, So the dog out here confronting mortality
by the fire, and this is where the commercial break

(57:49):
comes in the formatting of the TV episode. But when
we come back into the story, the narrator tells us
that many years later, the soldier is now a rich
gentleman with a wife and a child, living in a
castle of his own, respected by everyone, and honored by

(58:12):
the Tsar. An interesting note, I think on the way
the soldier looks now, even though this is supposed to
be many years later. To me, the soldier now looks
younger than he did at the beginning of the story.
So he's got long, black, curly hair and a thick mustache,
and he starts wearing this orange tunic with a leather belt.
It looks like he has been deaged and given, I

(58:35):
don't know, a new virility or something.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
In some respects. Yeah, I agree, but I guess the
other side is like the long hair in the mustache,
he looks maybe more like a nobleman, not only in
his dress but also in the way that he's wearing
his hair.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
Yeah. Yeah, maybe becoming a rich man sort of does
dage you in some way. So anyway, the soldier's son
becomes ill with a terrible fever. You know, the story
takes a dark turn, and the soldier and his wife
try everything. They spend a fortune on doctors and healers,
and they call on all manner of quacks in the

(59:08):
hope that someone can help their son get better, the
storyteller says, And soon the room is full with gray
beards and shaking of heads, and we see these healer
figures only as shadows cast upon the wall, milling about
uselessly and yammering at each other, and the narrator describes
how is The fever draws on, the boy passes into

(59:29):
a swoon, and then the gray bearded healers are replaced
by priests. They come to administer the last rites, and
then finally an undertaker in black who comes to measure
the boy for a coffin. So desperate, the soldier remembers
from long ago his deal with the devils, the devils
who promise to serve him faithfully. And then we see

(59:50):
on the window sill of the room the soldier still
has the devil's cloven hoof as a keepsake. He's got
a potted plant growing out of it.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
Yeah, it's a nice detail, little black flowers.

Speaker 3 (01:00:01):
So the soldier summons the devil the foot belonged to,
and the devil appears at once. The soldier proposes a deal.
He says, cure my son and you can have your
foot back. And the devil takes that deal. So how's
it going to work? Well, the devil holds up a
glass of crystal filled with water. He asks the soldier
to look through the glass and look for the face

(01:00:23):
of death. So he looks inside and there he sees
the grim Reaper. Now I think we could comment a
lot on the design and appearance of death. Do you
want to comment first on this?

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Yeah? Absolutely, and I imagine we have pretty much the
same notes here. This is of course a puppetry effect,
but ambiguity would be the main thing would I would
draw on here to describe death, because is death male
or female? Neither or both? Impossible to say. The face
has skeletal aspects, but it's also clearly a fleshed creature

(01:00:58):
at the same time out but also doesn't look you know,
diseased or particularly gaunt. Looks both gaunt and plump at
the same time. It looks a little bit like an
old man or old woman, but also a bit like
an infant. Yeah it you know, there's no sense that
this is a biological entity of our own world. But yeah,
it doesn't feel completely like a spirit either. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
Pale, fleshed humanoid and these black robes with a black hood,
slightly feline quality to the face, a heavy bony eyebrow region,
dark eyes with almost black irises, thin lips, a high hairline,
and all of this plays together into these ambiguities you
talk about. I totally agree. It looks like the gender

(01:01:46):
is ambiguous. It looks like it could be a man
or a woman. The age is ambiguous. It looks at
the same time like a like an old man or woman,
or like a baby, and has these kind of hybrid
human animal qualities.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
I think with the.

Speaker 3 (01:01:59):
Fear appearance, it's straddling all different types of categories.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
And it doesn't you know, we did a whole series
talking about the different sort of death embodiments that we've
been explored in human cultures, and this one is it
does not feel menacing directly menacing anyway. But one of
the things about it too is by looking through the glass,
the soldier looks at death, and Death looks at him.
And they never didn't really describe this, but there is

(01:02:27):
a sense in the episode in the Soldier and Death
that now something is looking at you that would you
would normally never make eye contact with. You now have
direct visual communication with a potent entity of the unseen world.

Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
It is portrayed not as threatening or violent. It's actually
a very serene, almost reserved kind of presence, but also
is very creepy because I think of the way that
in part is conceptual creepiness, partly is creepy because of
how it looks, but also because of the idea and

(01:03:07):
the story that it was always there before and it
is only holding up this glass that lets you see it.
And now you know that it's been there by the
bed the whole time.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Yeah. Yeah, every sick bed, every death bed, This entity
is there. But the glass allows you to see and
more importantly, to see where it stands. Does death stand
at the head of the bed or at the foot
of the bed?

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
Right, So that's the key part of the folk tale here.
The soldier affirms to the devil that he sees death
in the glass, and the devil asks where death is standing.
The soldier tells him it lingers at the foot of
the bed. The devil says, that's good. That means the
boy will recover. When you see death standing at the
head of the bed, that's when you know that the
sick person will die. The devil tells the soldier to

(01:03:51):
sprinkle water from the glass on to his child and
then he will be cured. So the soldier does. He
sprinkles the water and it works. The boy healed and
the family is overjoyed. But the soldier is not done
making deals with the devil. He tells the devil, give
me the magic glass which reveals death, and I will
release you of your obligation to serve me. And the

(01:04:14):
devil takes the deal with some very characteristic muppet flare.
The devil departs with his hoof, kind of muttering about
how he likes the black flowers growing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
Out of it. Our boy, the soldier is a good,
good deal maker here he displays this power time and
time again. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
So, now with the magical glass, the soldier sets up
a new trade. He is now a miracle man, traveling
the world, we are told, on the back of a camel,
healing the sick, or at least those that are within
his power to heal. He can't heal everyone because when
death is at the head of the bed, there's nothing
he can do. So he goes around and he visits

(01:04:53):
sick people. He holds up the glass, he looks for death.
If death is at the foot of the bed, he
sprinkles the water and they recover it once. If death
is at the head of the bed, he shakes his
head solemnly and says, nothing I can do. But apparently
he gets paid either way, so that's nice. So he
works this trade for many years until one day he
is summoned to the Tsar's palace. The Tsar himself has

(01:05:16):
fallen ill, and as we're told earlier in the story,
the Tsar is now his patron, you know, the source
of many of his great riches. So the soldier goes
to the Tsar's sick bed and he gazes through the
glass to see that Death is leaning almost hungrily, this
time over the Tsar's head, and he explains that he
came too late. There's nothing he can do now. But

(01:05:39):
the Tsar's wife speaks to him harshly about this. She says,
you cure beggars, thieves, and dogs, but you won't cure
your king. She suggests that if death has to have
a life, let it take my life instead. But the
soldier balks at this. He feels, I think somewhat shamed
and humbled. He says, if anyone should be trading their life,

(01:05:59):
it should him, not her quote. The Tsar has been
my friend and father. If anyone should go, it should
be me. So he tells Death, spare the Tzar come
for me instead, and Death takes the deal. The soldier
flicks water on the Tzar and the Tsar immediately sits
up and shouts praise be So now we cut back

(01:06:20):
to the soldier's home, and of course death is about
to come for him. He lies in bed, he's weakened,
in pain. His family has gathered around him. He looks
through the glass from his own sick bed and he
sees Death at the head of his bed, waiting to
claim him. So, is this the end of our crafty protagonist. No,
he's still got tricks up his sleeve. So, looking through

(01:06:42):
the glass, he speaks to Death. He says, what is
this I hold in my hand? And Death says a sack.
The man says, if this is a sack, then get
in it, and then whoosh. Now Death is in the
magic sack.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
All right. And in this part of the of the
episode we get into some There are other folk traditions
that get into this. We talked about some of these
in our episodes on death personifications, like what happens when
death is captured or death takes a holiday, you know,
or death is himself killed? What does it mean for

(01:07:18):
the rest of the world, And we get to reveal
some of the complex nature of humanity's relationship with death.

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
This is also part of the premise of a modern
novel that we talked about on the show, a bit
of the Jose Saramago novel Death with interruptions. So anyway,
here Bob Peck runs around shouting, I've got Death in
my sack. So John Hurt narrates how the news spreads quickly.
This is the part where he talks about it spreads
as fast as gossip, and nothing spreads faster. So Death

(01:07:48):
itself has been captured, and the soldier decides to hide
Death away. So he takes the sack to the thickest
forest he can find, and he climbs up the tallest
tree in the forest. He hangs sack on the end
of the longest branch in the tree, and for good measure,
he accidentally falls out of the tree, a fall which
should kill him, but it doesn't because Death is not

(01:08:10):
around to come claim him. And then the storyteller explains
this weird world that has been created by the capture
of Death. He says that battles will rage for hours,
but no one dies. Armies eventually just collapse from exhaustion,
but there are no fatalities on the battlefield. He says
that duels go on until midnight, with no winner, and

(01:08:32):
the old and the gravely ill wander around in a confusion,
waiting for death that will not come. So one day
the soldier looks out the window of his castle and
he sees the old people stumbling about, baffled and in pain,
and he realizes, oh no, this is actually not good.
He takes pity on these people because he realizes the

(01:08:54):
world needs death. These people eventually must have rest. You know,
if they can't be be young and strong forever, they
at least need death to give them relief.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
The world is kind of ground to a halt, and
there are all these people in pain, and so we
know death is also a reliever, and Death needs to
get back in the game and do its job right.

Speaker 3 (01:09:17):
So he goes back to the forest, climbs the tree,
gets the sack down, he opens it, and he says, Death,
I've led you a merry dance, but now you must
have me and set the world to rights. But Death,
having been tricked by him once, is now afraid of
the soldier and runs away from him, never to come
near him again. So now Death is back in the world,

(01:09:39):
but will not claim our protagonist because he's afraid of him.
So the soldier himself alone becomes deathless and eternal, watching
everyone grow old and die around him while he lives
on and on. So then after this, there's a very
funny scene I thought, where the soldier goes to Hell

(01:09:59):
and he tries to turn himself in. He's trying to surrender.
He's like, I'm a sinful old soul. I'm ready for
you to take me inside. And the devil who greets
him at the gate is like, wait a second, what's
that in your hand? Is that a sack? Get out
of here, Get away from us. So the devils are
still terrified of the sack and it's bearer, but the

(01:10:19):
soul makes another deal. He says, I will go away
and take my sack with me if you give me
a map to heaven and away in. They as soon
as he says that, they immediately just chuck this map
out of the window of the gate, like no go.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
He has all the bargaining power.

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
Yeah, And then the soldier also bargains for two hundred
souls from Hell, which he can take with him to Heaven.
Why didn't he ask for more? It seems like he
can get whatever he wants, you know, he just.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
Has an innate sense the two hundred is the right number,
Like if he'd ask for two fifty, then the devils
have to go to their manager, and then then you've
got Satan involved in all this, and it just could
be get a harder negotiation. So he knows in his
gut two hundred that's what you asked for.

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
So the devils tell him to follow the map and
keep going up quote until you have the sensation that
you're standing on your head. That's the edge of heaven.
After that, follow the church music. Wow, this reminds us,
reminds me at least of that thing we talked about
in Dante exactly. Yeah. So the soldier, now old and gray,
leads these two hundred souls up into the clouds where

(01:11:24):
he arrives at the gates of Heaven, a misty white
place with this massive backlit cross and then a kind
of freaky robotic sounding sentinel says who approaches the gates
of Heaven. The soldier announces himself. He says, he's like, yeah,
I know I'm not getting into Heaven on my own merits,
but I brought you two hundred souls from hell. I

(01:11:47):
figure that's enough of a good deed to get me
into heaven, right, But the guardian says, no, nothing doing.
The two hundred souls can come in, but you cannot.
I guess the soldier is just that sinful he can't
get it, or.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
It's just you know, it's the spirit of the thing,
like he's he bargained his way with the devils. But
it takes more than bargaining power to actually pass the
pearly gates.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
And we'll get to another thing about that in just
a moment. So once more, the soldier has a plan
that he is denied entry, but the two hundred souls
can go in. He gives his magical sack to one
of the two hundred souls and he tells the soul, now, remember,
once you're inside Heaven, call me into the sack. And
he he's like, remember I delivered you from the furnace line. Clever,

(01:12:34):
clever plan. This is a good plan. But finally, for
the first time, the soldier's scheme does not work because
there's something he didn't realize. As the narrator tells us,
souls have no memory in heaven, so as soon as
the soul crosses the threshold, it forgets the plan to
call the soldier in. So the soldier is left stuck outside.

(01:12:57):
And I think there is a moral to this story here.
It's that you can outsmart the devil, you can outsmart death,
but you can't outsmart.

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
God, so it would see.

Speaker 3 (01:13:07):
Yeah, So the soldier wanders back down to earth, and
as far as we know, he is wandering still. And
then there's a little you know, there's some back and
forth between the storyteller and the dog about the meaning
of the story. The dog thinks that the end of
the story is sad. The storyteller thinks maybe not. He says,

(01:13:27):
the soldier is a rare one. He always finds something
new to get up to. And I can see how
people might interpret this as meaning that the storyteller himself
is the soldier.

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):
Yeah, And you know, I think that's fine if you
want to interpret it that way. But I don't know.
I like that, like the idea that it is either
just a story or again, maybe he has met the
soldier at one point. But then again, with the nature
of storytelling, like all of these things are kind of
true at the same time. The character and a storyteller,

(01:14:00):
tale is the storyteller, and they are also someone he
has met and it is also someone that has never existed. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:07):
So John Hurt finally gives the dog a biscuit and
then there's a final gag. The dog tries to order
John Hurt to get into the sack the biscuits came
out of, but there's no magic doesn't work, so he
tosses the sack across the room and then we get
We do get to see a crabby little red devil
crawl out and wander around.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Yeah, nice little finish, nice little stinger. And then we
roll credits and that is the Soldier and Death.

Speaker 3 (01:14:31):
Good selections. As I said, this was my first ever
episode of the John Hurt series of the Storyteller. I
liked it very much. I want to see the other
ones now.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
Yeah, I highly recommend them to folks out there. You know,
they're you know again there's they're short. They're so well done,
you know, just about every front, and they tell these
stories in a way that retain all of their you know,
some of their darker aspects, but also like making you laugh,
you know, inspiring, you know, creating a world of fantasy

(01:15:02):
and magic. They're just so well done and they absolutely
hold up all right, Well, We're going to go ahead
and close out this episode of Weird House Cinema, but
would love to hear from everyone out there if you
have thoughts about the Storyteller series or I guess both
Storyteller series. I want to know what your favorite episodes are.
Is it The Soldier in Death or is it another one?

(01:15:24):
Do you have particular personal accounts about when you discovered
the show for yourself and when it sucked you into
its world. Write in We would love to hear from you.
Just a reminder to everyone out there that's Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture episode
on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but we do a short form
episode on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set aside most

(01:15:44):
serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on
Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (01:15:49):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
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.