Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Dr. Cyclops

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
We have another older episode of the show for you
here today. This is going to be one that published
three twelve, twenty twenty one. It is the nineteen forty
special effects showcase Doctor Cyclops, from the director of King Kong.
This is a lot of fun. It is a miniaturized

(00:25):
people film. Let's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Hey, welcome to Weird How Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
And I'm Joe McCormack, and today we're going to be
talking about the nineteen forty size related thriller Doctor Cyclops.
You know that line, that classic Hollywood line about how
I stayed big it's the pictures that got small. Well,
you can't say that about this movie, because this movie
is really truly about actors getting small.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
That's right. This is our first nineteen forties film. I
mean barely since it's a nineteen forty release. But yeah,
this is one I was not familiar with. I've never
heard of it, despite the fact that it has a
pretty famous director who we'll get into more about in
a second. But it's Ernest B. Showedsack, who if that
name doesn't ring a bell, I think his most famous

(01:27):
film will for you. It was, of course King Kong.

Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah, this movie I thought was a real firecracker, Like
it looks great, it has amazing special effects. The story
isn't as complex as you might hope. But then again,
I mean this was a I don't know, a horror
thriller of the nineteen thirties and forties, of the Hayes
Code era, so you can only expect so much moral

(01:53):
and intellectual complexity. But just as a big special effects thriller,
the kind of Transformers or Independence Day of nineteen forty,
it's it's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Yeah, And I think that's also only the way you
have to approach it. It is a it is a
nineteen forty special effects fiasco, and the special effects very
much come first. And you know, by today's standards they
might not look as you know, as amazing. But if
you but that's again only if you're looking at it
as a modern viewer and not thinking about the history

(02:26):
of filmmaking. Because I think if you, if you sit
there and watch the film in its entirety and keep
reminding yourself like this is nineteen forty you know, this
is what had been done before with similar effects, and
it will impress you.

Speaker 3 (02:38):
Oh, I think the special effects in this movie do
look fantastic. I mean, I think they look so much
better than the quote realistic CGI that floods the films
of today.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Well that's true, Yeah, I mean it. You know, it's
it's very polished, you know, using the tools of the day.
It creates I think, some high quality visuals.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
So this is We've talked about a number of mad
scientist movies, and I'm sure we will talk about many
more mad scientist movies in the future. Mad Scientists are
kind of the hub of the wheel of weird house cinema,
and this particular mad scientist is a mad scientist who
likes to shrink people with radiation.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yes, the villainous doctor Thorkle. And yeah, he's pretty great
because he's you know, I guess his real defining characteristic
is he's a complete megalomaniac. You know, he already feels
himself to be a giant among tiny people, and his
super science just enables him to make that, you know,

(03:39):
an objective reality.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Now, I think doctor Thorkel would probably shrink you to
death for the way he pronounced his name. Because of
the one of the funny things in this movie. So
his name is spelled t h o r k e L.
So I read that in like any other normal American
English speaker, I would think Thorkele.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah. If I had to go to an appointment with
doctor Thorkell, I would call and be like, yeah, I'm
a patient of doctor Thorkle's.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
But the characters in this movie make a really special
effort to always emphasize the second letter. So it's like
sar Dough, no, mister, accent on the doe. Here we
get thor Kel. No mister, it's doctor accent on the kel.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
Doctor thor Kel. Yeah. And in this picture, you can,
I mean you can basically, well, here's the Elevator Pitch,
a mad scientist working in the South American jungle, miniaturizes
his colleagues when he feels his megalomania is threatened. So
it's basically it's apocalypse now, but with doctor thor Kel
instead of Colonel Kurtz. Science instead of war, and miniaturization

(04:41):
instead of the horror.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
I'd say that's about accurate. Yeah, and well, and instead
of Martin Sheen. It's a ragtag team of the world's
greatest scientists and a mule guy.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Yeah. And instead of spending like a large portion of
the film about the journey, that journey is really quick
in this movie. They just skippy right through it.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
Should we hit that trailer audio?

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah, let's hear it.

Speaker 4 (05:05):
Then a crocodile becomes as huge as a prehistoric monster,
a rifle as unwieldy.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
As a siege gun.

Speaker 4 (05:13):
A terrifying black cat whose jaws me death. A dog
looms larger than an elephant, dead in the hands of
a ruthless monster.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
All right, So let's talk about the people involved here. Really,
the one we're going to spend the most time on is,
of course, the director Ernest B. Shudsack.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
I know almost nothing about the life of shod Sack
except that he is involved with one of the great
early special effects and I don't know what you might
call it science fiction horror films of the big studio era,
which is King Kong.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, I mean really, King Kong. Despite being very much
a genre film, it transcends genre like it is it is.
That film is an icon of cinematic history itself. You know,
it's kind of it's kind of difficult to overstate its
importance in the history of film. But he and certainly
I think you, mister you Science Theater three thousand fans

(06:13):
would agree it is a great eight movie. But Shodzak
also directed another great Epe movie, and that would be
Mighty Joe Young. So if you're not familiar with King
Kong for reasons unimaginable, then perhaps you've heard of Mighty
Joe Young.

Speaker 3 (06:28):
Did that get some kind of remake in the nineteen nineties.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yes, it did. Goodness, I forget who was in it,
but they had. Mighty Joe Young is a and is
an enlarged ape as well, but not nearly as enlarged
as King Kong.

Speaker 3 (06:41):
It's a medium enlarged ape.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, and I think I've seen some account some comparisons.
Just in the same way that Godzilla gets keeps getting
bigger and bigger in films, King Kong also inevitably just
gets bigger and bigger. But Mighty Joe Young was always
a smaller giant ape.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
So some of this guy's big movies seem all focused
on changes in size perspective, either really big creatures or
really little creatures. Smaller than they're supposed to be. And
this is funny because I think there were This is
sort of the A list version of that kind of director,
but there were also B list versions of that kind

(07:21):
of director, because you get people like bert I Gordon,
who made B movies, almost all of which are about
creatures of unusual size, either like a person or a
creature that gets shrunken down or creatures that get blown
up real big.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, and you know, I think ultimately bird Eye Gordon
was able to make some really interesting films, but they're
generally not put on the same pedestal as King Kong.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
None of them look as beautiful as Doctor Cyclops does.
Another thing that Doctor Cyclops really has going for it
with the modern release, especially or at least the blu
ray of it that we watched, it has three color
Technicolor and the tech color is gorgeous. The colors are
just dripping off the screen.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, in a similar way to Doctor X, though that
was not technicolor. That was what two tone technicolor.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Two color technicolor. Yeah, this is three colors. So this
is like the color you know, color films that would
come later.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah, So there's a certain unreality to it. But it's
beautiful and it certainly I mean, I find it more
engaging than a lot of black and light films of
the period. Just you know, I guess it depends, like
you wouldn't want to see mad Love and color. Mad
Love belongs in black and white, like that is the
world of that film, but this one really benefits from the.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Color well and taking place in the jungle. I feel
like there are a lot of shots in it that
I wonder if they were only included to take advantage
of that beautiful three color technicolor, Like like there are
parts where it will just cut away to some kind
of tropical bird that is squawking in a tree, and
you know, we see all of its beautiful feathers.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Yeah, so you know before three D there was there
was technicolor.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Again, it's quite quite a beautiful looking film. So let's
let's talk about the director behind it again. Ernest b.
Showed Zach who lived eighteen ninety three through nineteen seventy nine.
We're not going to really be able to touch on
his entire biography here, but if you want a good one,
you know, you can go to the usual places. I
found Britannica had a nice one online. But here's some

(09:22):
of the interesting points, sort of the bullet points of
his life that I think are with driving home here. So,
first of all, he ran away from home as a
teenager and worked as a surveyor in San Francisco. He
got a job as a cameraman from help with help
from his brother in nineteen fourteen, and then during the
First World War he served as a cameraman in the

(09:42):
Signal Corps in France. He stayed in Europe after that
he got involved in adventure filmmaking. So this is this
is interesting because it makes sense given the nature of
films like King Kong. But it also, you know, it
seems to run, you know, against the grain if you
think about his success in fiction, because earlier on it's
less purely fictional. There's a certain documentary aspect to it,

(10:05):
like fictionalized documentary work. So he served with the Red
Cross in nineteen nineteen, helped refugees from the Russo Polish War,
and he also filmed this conflict as well as the
Greco Turkish War of nineteen twenty one through twenty two,
and in this he essentially wound up working as a
conflict journalist and was then sponsored by the New York

(10:25):
Times as a cameraman on an around the world expedition. Wow,
so he worked on this. He worked with a pilot
by the name of Marion C. Cooper, and then began
producing what they called natural dramas, which were a kind
of combination of travelog and drama. This is super fascinating
given what we've covered. Stuff to blow your mind before.

(10:47):
In nineteen twenty five, he joined William Beebe's expedition to
the Galapagos Islands as a cameraman. Ah.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
Now William Biebe was if you'll called the was he
a marine biologist. He was a researcher who who got
down into a basically a gigantic metal ball that just
was dangled down deep into the ocean to see what
kind of life could be observed through a tiny window
in this ball at depths that had never before been

(11:15):
documented firsthand. Yeah, the bathosphere horrifying because this ball had
no means of self propulsion. It was not a submersible,
It was not a submarine. It was just a hollow
metal sphere and dangling by a chain. So if the
chain breaks, you just sink to the bottom. Of the Ocean.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
Yes, but he was as we discussed in past episodes
of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. He was also notable
because he tended to surround himself not only with technicians
on these expeditions, but also artists like people who could
write about it, people who could illustrate what was going on.
And it turns out Showed Sac was one of the

(11:54):
creatives that he brought a board to document the work
at least on one of the expeditions.

Speaker 3 (11:59):
Now, I think the bath fear of observations were not
in the Galapago, so that was somewhere in the Atlantic
of itself, what Bermuda, or somewhere in the Bahamas.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
Yeah, I believe, So this would have been a yeah,
this would have been a different journey. But still it's
wonderful how these two came together. I wasn't expecting him
to come up in this so anyway, from here Showed
Sac and Cooper, they go on to produce a natural
drama titled Chang, a Drama of the Wilderness from twenty
set in nineteen twenty seven. This earned a nomination for
Best Picture at the very first Academy Awards. He then

(12:29):
directed The Four Feathers in nineteen twenty nine, based on
the nineteen oh two novel, shot in California and the Sudan.
And then he shot Rango in Sumatra, which was a
film about and this just sounds like super ambitious for
any filmmaker because it's about a boy and a rangutang
and a tiger, filmed in thirty one. Again, then he

(12:50):
shot The Most Dangerous Game in thirty two.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
Oh okay, wait, didn't we just talk about No, we
talked about Ernest Dickerson's Survivor Is it Surviving the Game?

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Surviving the Game? Yep?

Speaker 3 (13:01):
The Iced Tea movie, which which is sort of a
based on the similar concept the novella or novel The
Most Dangerous Game, which is about a human who hunts men.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Yes, and so it's been popular for a while. It's
one of those those stories that's going to keep getting
adapted in one form or the other. Now. From here,
Showtech and Cooper moved on to what would be the
most famous motion picture that they worked on, and that
was King Kong of nineteen thirty three, and then they
followed this up with the Sun of Kong, which also
came out in nineteen thirty three, and then they did.

(13:34):
They also did a movie titled Blind Adventure, which also
came out in nineteen thirty three. So it was quite
for these.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
Two regular Roger Corman over here. This is like Roger
Corman's in nineteen fifty seven or whatever your year it
was that he made like fourteen movies.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, an impressive year. They were really
just firing on all cylinders. Now, in nineteen thirty five
they made a film titled The Last Days of POMPEII,
and this was an ultimately, at least commercially, a failed
attempt at an historical epic. So after this, you know,
they were kind of, I guess in some version of
director's jail. He ended up doing smaller pictures. But then

(14:11):
he got another shot at a big genre film, a
special effects feature, and that is nineteen forty's Doctor Cyclops.
And Cooper was an uncredited producer on this film. Now,
of course we'll get back to selector Cyclops in depth here.
But World War II broke out and should Zach was
like a lot of people sucked into the war machine.

(14:31):
A knew, and while testing photographic equipment at high altitude
for the US Army Air Corps, he suffered a severe
eye injury. I was trying to get like a firm
account of it. If there's a good biography about showed Zach.
I wasn't able to find one, like a you know,
like a book length biography. I believe what happened is
he accidentally dropped his face mask. I'm and I'm a

(14:54):
little foggy on the exact nature of what the injury was,
if we're talking about like some sort of a light
blast based injury or of its pressure based, but the
end result was severely damaged his eyesight. And he only
directed a couple of additional films, really only one notable
film after that, and this was Mighty Joe Young in
nineteen forty nine, which featured Oscar winning special effects by

(15:18):
O'Brien and Ray Harry Housen. Oh god, yeah, yeah, so
another big name. And then he finally directed a portion
of This Is Cinerama in nineteen fifty two, uncredited to
promote the Cinerama widescreen projection process. But that was pretty
much yet, like after this eye injury, you know, he
just wasn't able and or you know, or didn't want

(15:40):
to direct. I think it was, you know, more about
ability and then he died in nineteen seventy nine. Cooper
died in nineteen seventy three. He did a bit more
work after Mighty Joe Young came out, including serving as
executive producer on nineteen fifty six as The Searchers, directed
by John Ford and starring, of course John Wayne.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
This is a fantastic coincidence how this story about his
damaged eyesight connects to the plot of Doctor Cyclops. It
almost makes me wonder, do you know what exactly the
time of his injury was. Could it have been before
Doctor Cyclops or was it after?

Speaker 1 (16:15):
I believe that's that's the weird thing about this. I've
not been able to find like a firm date for
this injury, you know, like a statement, you know, in
this year or in this month this is when showed
Sack suffered the eye injury. But it's it's my understanding
that that the the eye injury occurred after Doctor Cyclops. Wow.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
Because so we'll get into this a little bit more
when we discuss the plot. But one of the main
uh situation points of Doctor Cyclops is that the the
titular doctor uh doctor Thorkel is a is a brilliant
scientist but he's limited by damage to his eyes. He
has got poor eyesight already and relies on these really

(16:54):
thick glasses.

Speaker 1 (16:56):
Yeah, so this is this is just mysterious to me,
Like it's either an amazing coincidence or I have it
wrong and there is more connective tissue here, like you know,
maybe he had you know, previously damaged his eyes in
some fashion, or his eyesight was already fading. I'm not
sure you know what the answer is here. But as
it turns out, like his actual biography and in some

(17:18):
of the plot elements in Doctor Cyclops do line up.

Speaker 3 (17:22):
Now. He did not write Doctor Cyclops though correct right.

Speaker 1 (17:26):
Doctor Cyclops was written by a writer by the name
of Tom Kilpatrick who lived eighteen ninety eight through nineteen
sixty two, and you can look him up on IMDb.
But basically he wrote various crime in Western screenplays and teleplays,
but nothing that really jumped out to me personally.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
I mean, the script here is not really anything to
write home about, except in the skillful way that it
string that it efficiently strings together excellent special effects set pieces.
But you're not going to like run into interesting character
development or like super witty dialogue in this movie. This
is very much a sets and special effects driven film,

(18:04):
but I will give the script credit for connecting each
one of those things to the next in a very
fast paced and enjoyable way.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah. All right, well let's talk about doctor Thorkel. In
this film, he is played by an actor by the
name of Albert Decker who lived nineteen oh five through
nineteen sixty eight. He was a Broadway star turn film actor,
and later in his life he served on the California
State Legislature and largely transitioned back to stage. In his

(18:32):
later career. He often played aggressive characters, and this is
probably due to his great size. So he was six two,
which granted isn't like super tall, but it's I mean,
it's reasonably tall. I'm six two or so, and I
bought my head way too often.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
It's big in this movie.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, And I think part of that too, is that
not only is he six two, but he's he's got
kind of a thick physique, like not you know, not
obese or anything, but he has this kind of he
looks kind of beefy, especially for a mad scientist in
a movie. Usually they're a bit scrawnier and like doctor
Thorkel looks like he could really throw down.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
You would not want to tangle with Thorkel, right.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
So, yeah, this guy Albert Decker played him. Notable roles
for him include roles in Kiss Me Deadly and East
of Eden, which was fifty five I believe, as well
as his last film role, which was in nineteen sixty
nine's The Wild Bunch.

Speaker 4 (19:30):
Ah.

Speaker 3 (19:31):
Yeah, the hyper violent Sam Peckinpah movie in which I
think he plays. He plays some kind of like railroad
policeman or like a railway detective. He's hunting the outlaws
in the movie. If I recall, Ah, that's one that
I have.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
Somehow I managed to get through my twenties and thirties
without seeing The Wild Bunch.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
It is a dusty, dirty, nasty, violent movie. It makes
you need a bath. In fact, I would say the
full vibe of that movie is some up. In one exchange,
the outlaws arrive at the at the compound of this
powerful guy, and the guy says to them like, you're filthy,
you need baths. And one of the outlaws says, we

(20:11):
don't want baths, we want women.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
It sounds delightful.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
One sentence that communicates a lot.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
All right, Well in this film, yeah, like like we've said,
he's he's delightful. He's got this wonderful, imposing physical presence.
He's got these you know, these scheming eyes that are
accentuated by his his his glasses, bald head in evil mustache.
And I have to say he was reminding me of
somebody as I was watching this, and I figured out

(20:43):
who it is. It's British actor Julian Barrett, who mighty
boosche fans out there. You might recognize him as the
actor who played Howard Moon, but he also showed up
on Dark Place with Darth Morangi as a priest, okay,
and he also was in something recently he was. He
was the titular character in Mindhorn, which I've heard good

(21:04):
things about.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
I never caught him in Dark Place, but I should
go back and watch that whole series again in one sitting.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
It's ironically it is the ape heavy episode I believe.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
Oh interesting.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
So anyway, Howard Moon or Julian Barrett same height as
as Albert Decker, and I feel like Doctor Thorkel could
have easily been a Julian Barrett character. I included a
photos here if you can compare the two like they
just they have very similar physicality facial features. Both are
prone to wearing a mustache, So I include that for

(21:40):
what it's worth.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
Yes, I can see and like Doctor Thorkel, he's gonna
hurt you real bad.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
All right. So there are other humans in this film,
and we'll touch on them with in less detail because
there's not much else for non Doctor Thorkel characters to
do in this film.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
I mean, I would say they execute their functions correctly,
which is to move the plot from one fantastic set
and prop sort of extravaganza to another.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
Yes, and do so, you know, with a serious look
on their face. So the first one to mention here
is Thomas Coley, who plays Bill Stockton. He lived nineteen
thirteen through nineteen eighty nine. This was his very first
film role, followed by mostly a lot of TV work.
His partner was actor and writer William Rock and Roorick

(22:33):
was a theater actor on Broadway who is also in
Not of This Earth.

Speaker 3 (22:38):
Oh wow, So that was the nineteen fifty seven Roger
Korman movie that we have covered on a previous episode
of Weird House Cinema. It was I believe the b
side to Attack of the Crab Monsters. So if in
fifty seven you went out to a drive in theater
to watch a sci fi double feature, you may well
have seen Attack of the Crab Monsters and then Not

(22:59):
of This Earth with this guy. What was his name again,
William Rorick?

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Yeah, William Rourick.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
He was the doctor in the movie. I think, not
to be mean, I think we did not draw a
lot of attention to his performance in the movie because
there's not much to say about it except his character.
If you recall, he played doctor Rochelle, who was the
blood clinic doctor who gets hypnotized by the aliens so
that he's unable to talk about the alien's blood condition.

(23:26):
So so other characters would you know. They'd be sitting
at a table in a restaurant and the other characters
would be like, don't you think it's strange that that
man had alien blood? And Doctor Rochelle would be like,
you guys want to get some appetizers.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah. Yes, I wasn't the most memorable of roles, but
Rock was in a number of interesting films, though several
of which I've seen. He was in God told me
to This was the with the Larry Cohen film about
alien Messiah's. He was in Day of the Dolphin, he
was in The Wasp Woman, and he was a friend.

(24:01):
This is interesting biographically. He was a friend of author
Iam Forrester and Coley and Rorick. Apparently they would like,
you know, entertain him when he was in town, that
sort of thing. They'd go out and see shows and stuff.
But yeah, that's the connect They're all connected here to Koley.
Coley is the one in this film, not Rorick, but
the two of them apparently collaborated on various projects over

(24:23):
the course of their careers and lives together.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
Coley plays the like sort of lead love interest in
the movie. He's the only character who's hunky enough to
potentially end up falling in love with the one female character,
so you kind of know what's gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (24:38):
Yeah, it's a very g golly role. And again this
was his first screen role to boot, so the results
are very wooden. There's just not much to this part here,
but that still it seems like he had an interesting
life and career. All right, let's talk about the what
the sole female character in this film. The character is
doctor Mary Robinson. The actor is Janice Logan was born

(25:00):
in nineteen fifteen died in nineteen sixty five. She only
appeared in six films, and this was her third. But
here here's again a nice connection to the previous episode
of Weird House Cinema. Her last two film roles were
both Mexican films directed by Renee Cardona.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
The director of Santo in the Treasure of Dracula.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
Exactly, yes, a major name in Mexican cinema, so both
were of these films were from nineteen forty four. One
the translated name is The Black Ace and the other
is Summer Hotel. And I was looking this up. The
Black Ace also featured a Dutch occultist and magician named
David Tobias Bamberg who built himself as Fu Manchu and

(25:44):
Bamberg also co wrote it. But yeah, which I don't know.
It sounds like he was sort of an occult star
or would be star of the day, and so he
just I guess he wound up in Mexico City and
was like, Hey, let's do a movie anyway. Logan is
also rather wooden in this role, but it's not like
the film gives her much to do other than scurry

(26:05):
around and try not to be grabbed by giant hands
or eaten by giant cats. Then we have the character
of doctor Bullfinch played by Charles Halton who lived eighteen
seventy six through nineteen fifty nine. Actor of stage and film.
I would say he has a little more to do
in this. He's actually pretty funny because he's this stuck
up professor through and through, even after he's been reduced

(26:25):
to a tiny human wearing a handkerchief toga.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
Yeah. He refuses a lot of things in the movie,
like he's constantly being told to do things and saying like.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
I refuse yes on scientific grounds, doctor Thorkel. I absolutely, yeah,
that kind of thing. Yea, let's see. Then we have
the character of Steve Baker played by Victor Chillian who
lived eighteen ninety one through nineteen seventy nine. He was
in films like Only Angels Have Wings and the ox
Bow Incident. He wound up blacklisted from Hollywood, presumably for

(26:57):
political beliefs, but he ended up doing a lot of
TV and stage work instead after that. And I mean
he's all right in this. He's also it's a very
typical type of performance and role for this time period.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
He's the mule guy. He's all about the mules.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, all right. Next, we have an actor by the
name of Frank Jacanelli who plays the character Pedro. So
this guy lived eighteen ninety eight through nineteen sixty five.
He was an Italian born World War One vet who
became a natralized US citizen, and he was a vaudeville
performer later a USO tour manager. He played a lot

(27:34):
of Italian characters, as one might admit, but he also
expect rather but he also seemed to have a lot
of roles in films playing stereotypical Mexican characters. And in
this film he plays Pedro, which is very much a
goofy stereotype character.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, they don't say what nationality Pedro is supposed to be,
but he is playing a Latin American character. Pedro who
at least definitely in the first half of the movie
movie as the butt some jokes yeah about like trying
to find his lost horse, which has actually been shrunken
with a shrink ray.

Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah. So you know, this was a you know, a
casting situation that definitely made me sigh a bit. But
if you want to know more about the Yack and Ellie.
I did find a page on Bewesterns dot com like
bee Hyphenwesterns dot com that that has like seems to
be the only place I could find online, Like you

(28:27):
can only find much of a biography of him on IMDb,
but this site gets a little more into like his
what kind of audeville acts he was involved in, and
he did seem to kind of make a career in
places out of playing a Mexican stereotype, and certainly that's
what more or less he's doing in this film. Now,
another interesting character that is involved in this film ultimately uncredited,

(28:50):
but there's a guy by the name of Charles Gemora
who lived nineteen oh three through nineteen sixty one, and
he's an uncredited makeup artist on this film. You familiar
with this guy before Joe Well.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
I guess by his work, but not by name.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Okay, So he was born in the Philippines. He was
a Hollywood makeup artist who became known as the King
of the Gorilla Men. And it's interesting how this came to be, Like,
apparently he's a guy who would he would hang around
outside the studio and he would he would offer to
paint for you or draw for you, like he had
sort of an innate and I'm guessing kind of like
self taught artistic ability. And of course people eventually notice

(29:29):
this and they're like, Oh, bring this guy in, we
got some stuff to paint. Let's get him going. And
and I guess he was up for anything. And at
one point in one of these films, they busted out
a gorilla suit and he's like, Hey, that should be me.
I'm the right just the right height. I've got the
physicality to carry this heavy suit. Let me get in there.
And so that's what he did. And aside to doing

(29:51):
a lot of he did a lot of monster makeup
in other films. But he had and he has sixty
makeup credits on IMDb, but he also has sixty acting credits,
most of which are playing gorillas wearing gorilla costumes. And
so if I do recommend looking him up because it's
kind of amazing, Like if there was a gorilla costume
in a film, this was often the guy that was

(30:11):
wearing it. In addition to some you know, aliens here
and there, he definitely did some alien costumes and other
kind of like humanoid monster costumes. But his specialty was
the gorilla costume.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
Oh and I see what do you know? He's in
at least one adaptation of The Murders in the Room Morgue.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Yeah. In addition to being an actor and an artist,
he was also an inventor and he held, actually held
a couple of patents, including a I would look these
up on Google scholar, a sanitary pad holder, and a
tissue dispenser. Wow. Yeah, so interesting fella. Now again, he
was just a you know, makeup guy in this The
two main special effects names were of Farcio Edward and

(30:51):
Gordon Jennings. These were the two that were nominated for
an OSCAR for the special effects in this film for
the thirteenth Academy Awards. They ultimately lost to the Thief
of Bagdad. But these are some impressive special effects. Like
we said, they're impressive for their time. It's not the
first time that we see miniaturized humans or giant animals

(31:13):
in a film. Certainly Todd Browning's nineteen thirty six film
The Devil Doll predates it, but this film makes some
impressive use of supersized sets, giant hands, creative combinations of footage.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
Yeah, the special effects in this film are really top notch.
I was trying to think of earlier examples of really
good looking special effects for miniaturized humans, and I recall
the main example I could think of there are the
excellent shrunken human effects in Bride of Frankenstein. Oh Yes,
by James Whale, which was released in nineteen thirty five.
Now you might remember in that movie when we first meet,

(31:49):
you could argue the villain of the film, Doctor Septimus Pretorius,
also just one of my favorite mad scientists in movies,
Doctor Thorkel and doctor Septimus Pretorious. They're really up there
in the canons of mad science in the first few
decades of studio motion pictures.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
I love doctor Pretorius because in the Frankenstein film, Brider
Frankenstein's he's such a mad science enabler, you know. Yes,
Frankenstein is like, I can't do it anymore. I'm emotionally
rotted from that last film, and he's like, no, no,
we've got to get you back in there. We've got
to get you back in there. You can do it.
Let's do some evil.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
There's also a great part in Right at Frankenstein where
we see doctor Pretorius just going down into a crypt
just to have like a midnight snack. Like he goes
down into a crypt at night for a picnic. He
lays out a spread with like food and wine and
stuff on a big tombstone. It's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
Oh man, I forgot about that part.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
Yeah, but I think it's like, right when we first
meet doctor Pretorius in the movie, I think, what is it.
Who is it who's playing doctor Frankenstein in the movie.
Is it Colin Clive.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
Yes, that's Colin Clive.

Speaker 4 (32:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
So he's meeting with Colin Clive and he's like showing
off his latest work, which are these jars of homemade homunculi.
So he's got like tiny humans in jars, and I
think he has like a tiny king in one glass vial,
and a tiny queen and another. I don't really recall
this special effect relating to the plot much. Maybe I'm

(33:17):
forgetting how it connects, But no.

Speaker 1 (33:19):
It doesn't really. It's just like, look at what I
can do. Yeah, I'm pretty great. You're great. Let's work
together and you will do great mad sciencey things.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Well.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yeah, it seems like one of those things that I
suspect often happened in early Special effects driven movies like this,
which is that somebody had figured out how to do
a certain kind of effect in a way that looked good,
so you just find a way to work it into
the movie. It's like, well, we can do it, why
not do it? So let's get a homunculus in this movie. Yeah,

(33:51):
and I didn't look deep into it. But as a
side note, I think those homunculous effects in Bride of
Frankenstein were done by John Fulton and David Horseley. Uh,
and that was but it was done by like combining
different different shots, so you'd have a you know, a
shot of people inside full sized glass jars with a
certain kind of background, and then that was matted over

(34:11):
the full shot, you know, at normal distance, with with
the actors looking huge in comparison.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
All right, well let's let's get into the plot of
Doctor Cyclops.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
Okay, here's the full plot breakdown.

Speaker 4 (34:31):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
You know, we always have to comment on the opening credits,
and this movie also has excellent opening credits. Like a
lot of the weird older movies we have watched. I
feel like opening credits used to be really cool for
for weird sci fi movies, and then they they got
kind of whatever. You know, it'd just be some like

(34:52):
words on a starfield background for a few decades, and
then they just started doing away with opening credits altogether.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah, but for for while, certainly in this age, it
feels like the opening credits were treated like the poster,
you know, as if you might be walking by the
projection screen and deciding whether you're going to stop and
finish watching. I mean, that's the ultimate weird. I guess
you get in the audience revved up, but it's like
they've already paid their money, they're already in the seat.
They're clearly they're not going to walk out yet, but

(35:21):
I guess it's about just preparing them for what's to come.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
Well, there's actually a kind of visual continuity from the
opening credits to the opening scene in this movie, because
you've got While the credits are rolling, there is this
flickering light effect that creates a kind of auroral unease
that is then replicated again once you get to the
opening scene. It's like the same shimmering, flickering light effect

(35:44):
carries over into the scene of a bal deman in
welding goggles who is leaning over a table examining a
fluorescent green tube in a room lit by the shimmering
green light. And of course this is doctor Thorkel, and
the movie gets right to it because his colleague Mendoza
enters the room, and of course, I my brain every

(36:06):
time somebody said Mendoza, my brain kept going to the Simpsons.
But his colleague Mendoza enters the room and he says
to doctor Thorkel, how much longer will you struggle before
you realize you can't do it? And thor Kel says,
no longer, my dear Mendoza, because I have done it.
Look for yourself. So, you know, they examine what it

(36:27):
is that Thorkel has been looking at, and Mendoza is aghast.
He has shaken. Thorkel says, there should be sufficient radium
to tear it to shreds, and yet it's still alive.
And we don't know what they're talking about, but Mendoza
is horrified. He's terrified of the power of whatever they've discovered,
and he says he starts saying like you must destroy

(36:47):
your slides, you must burn your notes, and then we
get some classic backstory through utterly implausible dialogue. You know,
when somebody says something to another character that that person
would have no occasion to say to them, just obviously
for the benefit of the audience. So Mendoza says, when
I discovered this gigantic radium deposit, I first thought of you,

(37:10):
doctor Thorkel, my teacher of Doctor Thorkel, the great biologist.
I sent for you to counsel me. I began to
imagine here in the jungle, the Thorkell Institute, a palace
of healing to which all might come. And it was
very much like Grandpa Seth has been dead for three
weeks now, and it's been hard on all of us,
including me his daughter.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
That is correct Joe, my podcast partner who has podcasted
with me for many years.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
At this point, but Thorkel is immediately dismissive of Mendoza's concerns.
He's like, you know, bah, we now have the very
cosmic force of creation itself. We can shape life like clay.
And then Mendoza again with the classic sci fi movie line.
He says, you are tampering with powers reserve to God,

(37:56):
which is almost verbatim the last line of Bride to
the Monster by ed Wood.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
You remember that part, Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
The movie with Bella Legosi and Tor Johnson. And at
the end of the movie, Bella's mansion explodes. I don't
remember why. There's a giant octopus attack and the mansion explodes,
and then a guy just kind of soberly looks at
the camera and says he tampered in God's domain.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
So Mendoza is like, we shouldn't tamper in God's domain.
But doctor Thorkel was like, yeah, that's what we're doing,
and we're gonna do it.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
He literally says, he says, like, you're tampering with powers
were served to God. And Thorkel says, that is good.
That is just what I am doing. And so Mendoza
tries to forbid it, but Thorkel he's tasted the God
power now and there's no going back, so it is
time to murder. And the Mendoza murder is a very
cool scene. I thought. Thorkel shoves Mendoza's head through this

(38:54):
radioactive green tube he's been looking at, and then there's
a photographic effect where Mendoza's face is just gradually layered
over by skull paint.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
I liked that. It's a weird scene. Apparently this one
was removed from some TV airings of the film, so
I don't know if they found it like maybe it
was for time or it was just considered too graphic.
There is a like a severity to it, like it
firmly establishes doctor Thorkel as a guy who will murder,

(39:25):
you know, for for his science. And we'll really not
think twice about It's not like there was a struggle
or some sort of accidents. It wasn't one of those
situations where oh, I've stumbled into murder and now this
is who I am. He's like, got to kill you now,
and he does it right.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
So next we cut to some guys in a fancy
study and it's it's a room that sort of reminds
me of M's office in the Sean Connery James Bond movies.
But weirdly, despite what you might assume about the sort
of pipe tobacco drabness of such an environment, the first
thing I couldn't ignore was how much the colors drip
just in this scene in a study, because the opening

(40:00):
scene is very much shimmering green and black. It's actually
sort of closer to the look of the two color
technicolor range in Doctor X, which we watched for a
previous episode. Remember how that whole movie was very had
a kind of diseased green and orange palette without the
full range of full color Technicolor. This has all the colors.

(40:20):
Now now that we're in the office and the greens,
the reds, blue, and orange, the color is almost violent
and it is really beautiful. It pops. But anyway, so
we're in the study now and these two stuffy old
guys are discussing attempts by Thorkel to recruit them by
mail for research at his remote institute and the Amazon

(40:42):
I think it's supposed to be in Peru. And this
is doctor Bullfinch we're meeting. He's one of these two
guys here, and they're discussing the pros and cons of
joining doctor Thorkel's jungle institute. Pros are that he is
the greatest living biologist, so be good to work with him.
Cons are at he's a strange man, secretive about his experiments.

(41:02):
You already get the impression that these guys suspect he
may kill them. Uh, And I love the strong vibe
from the very beginning that this is going to be
like the fire Festival of scientific research. It's just like
lure everybody to a remote location and then just watch
it all go to hell.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yeah. Yeah, Like it's it's pretty obvious where this is,
at least in general, where this is going, Like mad
scientist is up to bad stuff in the middle of nowhere,
where where there is no law but his own. Let's go,
let's go hang out with him and see what happens.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
Yeah, and then there's a sort of recruiting montage.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
These scenes are they're brief, there's not much to them. Yeah,
it's kind of like, hey, if you paid your hotel bill, no,
well better join up with us then, right.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
So we get doctor Bullfinch and then we get doctor
Mary Robinson who's writing a letter saying she's joining the team.
I think letter, Yeah, I think the letter says something
like should should be no problem or something. And then
we see the recruitment of a good for nothing, deadbeat
geologist named doctor Bill Stockton. This is the guy played

(42:07):
by Thomas Coley, and he has pulled in on the
promise of having his mini IOUs remitted. So when we
meet him, he's lounging in a patio recliner and I
don't know if you noticed this did you notice that
there are just in at least one of these shots,
there are bugs crawling all over his lap.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
No, I did not notice that.

Speaker 3 (42:28):
I mean, it's easy to miss. It goes by pretty quick,
and I don't think it's supposed to be like that.
I think it's just something that happened to get caught
by the camera. But in one of the shots there
are at least three flies simultaneously. A couple are on
his belt buckle, ones kind of to the side of
his crotch. And it makes me wonder, like, what did
he spill sugar water and his lap or something in
an earlier take.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
I don't know. I mean, is he suretless in the scene?

Speaker 3 (42:52):
No? No, no, no, he's got a shirt on.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, okay. I was thinking maybe they oiled him up
a bit, you know. Okay, but who knows.

Speaker 3 (42:59):
But yeah, they're recruiting him because I think there was
supposed to be another mineralogist or geologist and that person
fell through, So now they're trying to get the deadbeat guy.
But he's a handsome dead beat. And then finally they're
out in the field in Peru and Bullfinch, Robinson and
Stockton recruit a minor slash mule wrangler named Steve who

(43:20):
has a lot of mule thoughts and he wants to
get rich. And there's a mule haglin scene between Bullfinch
and Steve, which is pretty funny. Steve's like, you can't
have the mules. I need him for something, and then
all these eggheads are like, but doctor Thorkel is the
greatest living authority on organic molecular structure, and the muleman
is not very impressed. But eventually they get him to

(43:40):
go along by promising him riches and saying that he
can come with them to I guess make sure the
mules are okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
It's it didn't make tremendous amount of sense, but okay,
he's coming.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
Along, right, So they journey through the jungle. They arrive
at doctor Thorkell's compound Thorkel's assistant Pedro to inform him
that they've arrived, and when Thorkel is interrupted, I just
want to say he's wearing an awesome helmet slash suit.
Rabbi attached a picture I found of the helmet for
you to look at.

Speaker 4 (44:12):
Here.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
It is it's just like it's just like a can,
just like a straight up thick can with two eye
holes surrounded by glass and then a kind of rounded top.
It's not very elaborate, but it looks great.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Yeah, it looks kind of I mean, it reminds me
a lot of some of the stock rocketmen and robot
costumes of the of the day. You know. It looks
a little bit like a medieval night as well.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
Oh, it's kind of the night guarding the bridge and
Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (44:41):
And so they get there and they all meet doctor Thorkel,
and Doctor Thorkel is a creep from the first minute.
They do not like ease into it. He's got the
unholy combo of a huge head with tiny glasses, and
he's he's huge in general. But it's just this like large,
bulky bald man grabbing people by the arm and moving
them around and saying like, I'm so glad you've come.

(45:04):
He might as well be saying, you know what lovely
cells you're made out of. And so we find out
that doctor Thorkel sent for the assistance of the other
scientists because of damage to his eyes. The damage to
his eyes no longer allows him to use the microscope,
but I was wondering, Wait a minute, then, if that's
the only problem, why did he send for three different scientists?

(45:26):
Then it almost seems like the implication is that doctor
Thorkel thinks that if he had fully functioning eyes, he
would be worth four scientists put together.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
Yeah, that makes sense, or you know, or maybe it's
it's he doesn't expect all of them to live that long.
You know, it needs multiple sets of spare eyes.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
Well, this is weird because so here's a question I have.
He is a creep from the beginning, but the movie
does not suggest that he planned to kill them all along.
Like the fact that he kills them does genuinely seem
to be an unexpect to development for him. He kills
them because they discover his secrets.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
Basically, yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess he what he
I think, has revealed that he he sort of needed
a mineralist, a mineral specialist, uh to uh, to weigh
in on some of his work. He needed somebody with
a bio biology background. But I don't know about the professor,
did he I mean just sort of brought him into
to boast to him about like maybe part of it

(46:27):
is like ultimately he needs an audience, like he's he's
doing amazing thing. So yes, I need I need a
basically a team of judges to come here and tell
me how great I am.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
I think we're sort of rewriting the script as we go.
But that's I think you're onto something there that that
is part of it. Like he as a megalomaniac, he
needs people to witness his greatness.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
Yeah, so that that's one of the downsides to working
out in the jungle, is that in the jungie is
you occasionally have to bring people in to recognize your greatness.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Right, And so they're there and they recognize his greatness,
but he wants them to get right to work. So
he has them look at some stuff in a microscope
and Stockton, the deadbeat hunk, he sees some iron crystals
under the microscope. This is like minutes after they've arrived,
and he says, yes, it's iron crystals in the microscope.
And doctor Thorkel is like, ah, eureka, Okay, that's it.

(47:18):
Well I'm done with you guys now. But Bullfinch, which
is funny, I mean very funny, Bullfinch is mad. He
immediately gets super indignant and starts yelling and he's like,
you can't do this to us. At one point, Bullfinch
is like, are you are you intimating that you brought
us here just for five minutes of work? And Thorkel

(47:39):
is like, I am not intimating. I am merely stating
a fact. Which that's man. That's one of my favorite
types of statements in English, the like I'm merely stating
a fact like that wasn't a threat, it was a promise.
I'm not suggesting anything. I'm merely stating a fact. I
wonder when was the first instance of that.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
I don't know, but yeah, this seems like at least
an early variation on the theme.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
But anyway, Bullfinch and Robinson they are mad and they
want to know what it is that that Thorp is
working on before they leave. Steve the mule guy, he
thinks he knows. He thinks the answer is that there
is a mind full of precious ore somewhere around here.
Stockton doesn't seem to care much. It seems like he's
fine to just like get his bill settled and then leave.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
You know.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
All he wants to do is lay around in a
chair basically.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yeah, but the other two It is kind of like
they thought they thought this was going to be Thorkel
at all. Yes, you know, they thought they were.

Speaker 3 (48:35):
Going to go author credit, Yes exactly.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
But no, there's only one author on Thorkel research, and
that's doctor Thorkel.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Now you might know more about this than me. I
was kind of curious about this movie's abundance of unflattering pants.
There are multiple characters wearing pants that have like big
saggy butt and thigh areas that sometimes make it look
like they're wearing like a weird sort of diaper or
just sort of just have a saggy butt in the pants.
Are these some specific kind of rugged outdoor pants of

(49:06):
the era, like the go into the Jungle pants. I
didn't know what the deal with this was.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
I don't know. I just I just thought maybe that
was the style of the day. You know, he just
wore big balloony pants. But I could be wrong. Maybe
the pants experts out there can weigh in.

Speaker 4 (49:22):
Well.

Speaker 3 (49:22):
Anyway, Steve the mule guy goes out snooping at night
the day before Thorkell has told them they're supposed to leave.
Thorkell says you need to leave tomorrow, and so is
that night, and Steve goes out snooping around. I think
he wants to track down the mine. So while Thorkel
is inside wearing his crazy helmet and doing science works,
Steve is snooping around this big hole in the ground

(49:44):
that has a giant like rigging over it and with
some kind of rope dangling something down in the hole.
And then he's almost caught by Thorkell. Thorkell comes out
and Baker hides, and it is revealed that Thorkell is
operating some kind of awesome giant copper ill in the
Thorkel Super Deep borehole. He's like drilling down into the
earth and getting something out of the earth. I don't know.

(50:07):
I think maybe it's the radium samples.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
Yeah, there's this. They don't talk about it that much,
but there's this sense that he's somehow absorbing radiation out
of the ground itself, you know, by lowering this probe
down into it. That's kind of the sense I was
getting from it.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
Yeah, and then we see at some point Thorkel is
alone in his lab later and it reveals that he
has created a tiny pony. This is very much like
the Septimus Pretorious images so there is somehow they've superimposed
footage of a full sized pony kind of neighing and
clumping around, but they have matted that onto the shot

(50:51):
of Thorkel sitting at a table, and so it looks
like the pony is on the table and it looks great. Yeah,
but then later we check in. I guess this is
The next morning, Bullfinch is examining some pig remains that
he came across, and it claims he claims that he's
discovered a new species of pig that is only four
inches long at maturity. And Bullfinch tries to name the

(51:12):
species after himself, like you do, and then Thorkell rolls
up on them and he's immediately like, haha, you weak
minded fool, you think you've discovered a new pig. And
he said, I wrote down this quote. Strange how absorbed
man has always been in the size of things.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
Because of course he knows what this is. This is
not a new species of pig. This is just a
normal pig that he shrank down.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
He's been shrinking pigs for months. And they're all here amazed,
thinking they've discovered new species of pigs, and he's like, ah,
you idiots. You don't understand pig shrinking. I'll tell you
about pig shrinking. But Bullfinch retorts, he says that size
is the chief difference between mammals. I wrote down this
quote as well. He says, in all essentials, a mouse

(52:02):
and a whale are identical. Yeah, so Bullfinch, I guess
he's supposed to be like the second best biologist in
the world. But I'm not sure about that one.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
There was a big gap between first and second greatest
biologists of the time. I guess, yeah, No, I don't
think there were. I think Gray Bao just in real
life before these guys would have argued, no, a mouse
isn't in a whale or not essentially the same creature.
There are some major differences.

Speaker 3 (52:30):
But after this, I like this. Thorkel, like we said,
even though he is very much a creep from the beginning,
he does seem to give them another chance. He tries
to send them away again. He's like, be on your way,
but Bullfinch is just so mad. He refuses to leave
until he finds out what's going on, and then Thorkel
begins to threaten them. He's like, if you do not
leave within the hour, you will remain at your own peril.

(52:55):
So there's some snooping around After this, Thorkell goes back.
I guess, assuming that there's they're gonna leave, but they
end up investigating. They're too curious for their own good.
They hear some horse sounds and they end up spying
on Thorkel, appearing to like search around for a horse
in tall grass. So they all start to think, Okay,
Thorkell has gone mad, but Pedro explains that actually he

(53:18):
has delivered a bunch of animals to Thorkel, and he
doesn't know where they are now. He's delivered rats and
chickens and dogs and cats, and he doesn't know where
they are now except for there's this cat, Satanas, and
oh my god, Satanas is a good cat.

Speaker 1 (53:37):
Yeah. Upon just mere introduction of Satanas by doctor Thorkel,
I instantly laugh, in part because just seeing a cat
just sitting there looking slightly bored in a film is
always it a light but also because it doesn't take
much to realize where this is going. You know that
cat is going to try and eat a tiny person

(53:58):
at some point in this film, oh yeah, which.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
Is a brilliant idea for for a horror movie. By
the way, I mean, a cat of sufficient size to
attack you is a terrifying proposition.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
Oh yeah, Like anybody who owns a cat can can
attest to this because you know, sometimes they will they
will hunt the feet of full sized adults like me. Uh,
and their their speed, the reflexes are terrifying despite how
much time they spend, you know, laying around doing nothing
and sleeping. When they want to move, they can do

(54:29):
so with just incredible speed. So it's easy to imagine
yourself as a small creature and having to face you know,
the ferocity of a domestic cat. You know, you wouldn't
you wouldn't stand a chance your your only chance really
would be that it would grow bored and torturing you
to death.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
Yeah, I mean, I would say seek out water because
you know, a lot of a lot of domestic cats
don't don't really like getting too wet. I guess there's
some exceptions, but you know they can be scared about
getting too close to water. But then again, if you're
very small, I guess water would probably like a shrunken
human might very well be in extreme danger from water.
We can talk about this more as we go on.

(55:07):
But I recall again the JBS Halliday and Essay, you know,
on being the right size, where he talks about how
getting wet is an entirely different proposition for a small
animal than it is for a larger animal, because like
if if a rat gets wet, like a huge percent
of its body weight is now clinging to the outside
of it.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
But anyway, so there's this question like where did all
the animals go, you know, all the animals that Pedro delivered,
and where are they now? Pedro says, I don't know.
But Satanas every day she gets more fat.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
She is really living her best life here. She's getting
to kill, to hunt, and kill so many animals that
she wouldn't get to otherwise.

Speaker 3 (55:47):
Shrunken pigs, shrunken horses. It's all gravy for Satanas.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
But anyway, so they're packing up to actually leave this time,
I think, But then they discovered that they keep finding
re to stay. They discovered that the ore that they've
been finding around this place contains radium, which at this
time they're like, WHOA, that's worth a lot of money
and it's very important for scientific research. I guess this
would have been on the cusp of the era of

(56:14):
the discovery of nuclear power.

Speaker 1 (56:17):
Yeah, so certainly you know that. The scientists are like,
this is great for science. And then mule guy is like, like,
there's there's that's some expensive radium. I want a piece
of it.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
Yes, get me the money. And so they start snooping
around in Thorkel's stuff and then there's a big confrontation.
They find records of him saying that he has shrunk things,
and they're like, well, he's obviously lost his mind, and
they and then he comes in and discovers them going
through his stuff that they have a confrontation and he's like, here,

(56:47):
well let me explain everything to you. Come into this
room and look at my condenser. And so they all
go in there, Robinson, Bullfinch, Steve Stockton, and Pedro.

Speaker 1 (56:58):
Yeah. At last he's like, Heyedro, get in here this room.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
Yeah sure, yeah, everybody cram into this into this room.
Don't be suspicious. Just look at the condenser. And then
he slams the door on them and shrinks them. And
now we've reached the situation of the film. Everybody except
Thorkel has been shrunk to about thirteen inches tall, and

(57:25):
so After this, you know, they're trapped in a room
having been shrunk, and Thorkel is like doing some playful diagnostics,
saying like, wow, you know, oh your your vocal cords
still work, and oh you're you're of this size, and
he's crowing over his victory over them, while the rest
of the main characters scamper around on the floor trying
to hide and escape. And here's where the special effects

(57:47):
just get wonderful, because a lot of what you have
here are fully built sets to make actors that normal
size appear to be like, you know, somewhere between like
six and thirteen inches according to perspectives. So there were
like giant chairs and they'll go up to one of
the legs of the chair and crouch behind it, and
giant books and things like that.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
Yeah, I love it when films would do this, and
I guess they still do variations on this. But I
talked to a guy once in real life who had
previously worked in special effects, and he had worked on
the film Stephen King's Cat's Eye, which you might remember
doesn't have any miniaturization occurring, but it does have a

(58:30):
troll creature, which was of course played by like an
adult in a full size costume. In order to make
him seem like a tiny creature, they had to build
like an enormous child's bed for this actor to prance
around on. So I got to see some behind the
scenes photos of that. He had an album and it
was super cool.

Speaker 3 (58:49):
I love it. I love it. I really really missed
the era of special effects through built sets and built environments.
I do feel like something really is lost, no matter
how good an animated environment can look. I mean, the
green screen world, I do feel like has lost something beautiful.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Yeah, there's a craftsmanship to it. I mean not to
say there's not a craftsmanship in creating virtual environments, but
there's a physical craft to it that perhaps is kind
of lost. You know.

Speaker 3 (59:19):
One thing I noticed at the very beginning is that
as soon as we come on the new characters, I
guess they are too small for their original clothes now.
So instead the characters have all replaced their original clothes
with like togas. They're like little torn pieces of cloth
that they're wearing like togas and stuff. And this really
I think heightens the connection to the odyssey.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
That's right, And of course this the film will continue
to it will let you know that it is referencing
the Odyssey. It's going to be very direct about it.
But yeah, this may be the first sign that they're
going in that direction. So I love this because they
their clothes were not shrunk. Doctor Thorkel is picking up
their clothes and putting them in a bag later. But
I guess he left either are pristine handkerchiefs in there

(01:00:02):
and some sewing equipment at scale for them, or he
had pre arranged clothing made from handkerchiefs for them, one
or the other, because they seem to fit rather well.

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
Yeah, and so Thorkel says that, you know, he's like, well,
I've been working for days without rest, and now I'm
going to fall asleep. So he falls asleep, and while
he's asleep, they escaped the room by building a tower
out of books and using a match stick to draw
back the bolt on the door. And then there's a
there's a great moment I loved where they're trying to
sneak around outside once they've gotten out, and there are

(01:00:34):
some chickens just like ye, giant chickens and giant chickens
that would be really scary. I mean, that's like a dinosaur.

Speaker 1 (01:00:41):
Yeah, I would be terrified, Yes, like a big feathered
t rex. And you know, I guess with any of
these animals, you have to ask yourself, what is the
threshold of miniaturization at which I am identified as potential
prey by this animal?

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
Right, And the chickens never try to eat them, but
the implication is there, I mean I really do. Yeah.
So if you were thirteen inches tall and you were
walking past a chicken, I mean, that'd probably be like
a a human walking past a dynonicus or something like
therapod dinosaur, the predatory one.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
Yeah, if it decided you were worth a pack, I
mean that could that would be death.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
But they do a thing that really did make me laugh.
They do the justac natural walk while they walk past
the chickens, like pretend like we're supposed to be here,
and then they get attacked by Satanas the cat, and
they have to hide among a bunch of cactus, which
I thought was a cool idea.

Speaker 4 (01:01:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
Yeah, And Pedro's dog Tipo eventually comes to the rescue,
chases off Satanas, and here we get we here we
get the movie. I guess offering thoughts about how you
would be treated differently if you were miniaturized by a
cat versus by a dog.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
Yeah, this was fun because I've heard this this many
times before, people commenting that, Okay, if you were to
suddenly be you know, an inch tall or whatever, you
your dog would'll be your friend, but your cat would
just eat you immediately. And I don't disagree with that principle,
though I do. If I'm gonna seriously consider the question,

(01:02:10):
I'm gonna wonder if a dog would be able to
recognize you by side or by smell in a miniaturized form,
like if you start asking hard scientific questions about all
of this.

Speaker 3 (01:02:21):
I don't know. I am a dog lover, but I
kind of think the dog would eat you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's we're more inclined to believe
and want to believe. The dog would be like, oh, master,
why are you so small? Let me help you, whereas
there's no doubt with the cat, like the cat would
be like, sorry, the table has turned, and you know
what I have to do.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
The cat would one hundred percent each you. I feel
like I'm at about eighty percent, and the dog would
eat you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Yeah. In a way, it's like that slight level of
uncertainty that makes it more terrifying. Like if you were
suddenly miniaturized in your home, you'd be like, oh crap,
I got to avoid the cat at all costs because
that is death. But then you're like, I don't know
about the dog. The dog could be my savior, but
the dog might just eat me anyway, or at least
put me in his mouth for a while.

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

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:04):
So after this we get a little interlude where we
see the humans sort of adapting to their new scale,
and it sort of turns into one of those recapitulation
of the discovery of technology narratives like you get in
stories like the Swiss Family Robinson. I think that's really
part of the pleasure people get in a lot of
castaway stories. Is they really like that, like watching people

(01:03:27):
rebuild technological capability out of the materials available to them.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
Yeah, like a Robinson Crusoe or to a certain extent,
Flight of the Phoenix was like that. I think they
remade it at some point, but the original was like
a god, was it a be not to be twenty four?
It was a b oh, it was a B twenty nine.
Of course, B twenty nine crashes in the desert and
then they have to take it apart and try and

(01:03:53):
build a new airplane out of this four prop engine
airplane and then fly out of the desert in it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):
Yeah, obviously, the fact that this type of narrative recurs
so much, I mean, I do think it's clear that, like,
some people really enjoy watching this sort of thing happen.
It's some kind of fantasy fulfillment. And this movie has
stuff kind of like this, except instead of a desert
island where you're trying to recreate known technology and solutions
and stuff out of I don't know, coconuts or whatever.

(01:04:21):
Instead it's on a tiny scale, so you see them
figuring out how to use a needle as a giant drill,
or a scissor handle as a sword and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
Oh man, you know, I have to jump back in
and say, I'm mistaken. It was not a B twenty
nine and Flight of the Phoenix. It was a C
eighty two. But I think I'm confusing it with some
Disney film that came out where they the characters did
a similar thing and turned a B twenty nine into
a sailing vessel of some sort. But at any rate,
it's a it's a trope. It's a fun thing that

(01:04:50):
you see in a lot of films.

Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
Is that water World.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
They might have had one of these in water World,
but it was a different film that I don't think
I ever saw, but I vaguely remember the VHS box
for it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
Wait, it's the version of Noah's Arc made made with
John Voight. I'm pretty sure that had some aircraft in it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
Actually, I've looked it up, Joe, and it is the
Last Flight of Noah's Arc from nineteen eighty. He had
starred Elliott Gould and a B twenty nine.

Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
The Last Flight of Noah's Ark. You're not kidding.

Speaker 1 (01:05:21):
I'm not kidding. That was the name. It was a
Disney film. I don't think this one has been added
to Disney Plus yet.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
I was joking the John Voight Noah's Ark does have
pirates in it, but I don't recall aircraft.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
Yeah, all right, anyway back to miniaturize people. They're making tools,
they're rediscovering what they can use for a weapon, et cetera.
They're making new clothes all while Doctor Thorkel is snoozing
off his latest science bender.

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):
Yeah, and when he does wake up from the science bender.
He has got a bit of a science hangovers. He's
kinda he's kind of frisky, but he's also kind of mad,
and he's like, what is he going to do with
these these with these shrunken people, And doctor Bilfinch starts
he's still just like mouth and off to Thorpell, he's like,
he's like, we are prisoners in cyclops cave, again recalling

(01:06:08):
the story from the Odyssey where Ulysses or he calls
him Ulysses in the movie Ulysses may be better known
today as Odysseus and his crew are captured within the
cave of Polyphemus the Cyclops I don't remember on some
island and they have to find a way to escape,
and they end up blinding the Cyclops by stabbing in

(01:06:30):
the him in the eye. But Odysseus has said that
his name is no One, So when somebody comes to
ask if the Cyclops needs help, the Cyclops says, no
one is hurting me. Very clever, yes. But doctor Thorkel
ends up catching Bullfinch in a net oh after a
part where Bullfinch tells off a chicken, He's like, go away,

(01:06:51):
you ridiculous vowl and Bullfinch, as always, is extremely uncooperative.
Thorkel is like, he brings him inside to measure him
in various ways, and then Thorkel expresses disappointment. This is
privately just between him and Bullfinch. All the other people
are still outside. He says, you know what, Your bodies
are growing. Your bodies are reacting as if you have

(01:07:12):
reverted to childhood, and you will eventually grow back to
regular size. And Thorkel, of course can't allow this because
then they would interfere with his work again. So Thorkel
turns to murder once again. We've seen him. We've seen
him murder to solve a problem at the beginning of
the movie. And his eyes, his eyes become cold, and

(01:07:32):
he's like, I'm gonna do it again. And he gets
a cotton swab and puts it in some kind of
chemical and smothers doctor Bullfinch with it and kills him.
And there's like a giant fake hand for Bullfinch to
be held in. It's pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
It's a great scene and again very brutal. You know,
despite the sanitized nature of this film as a whole,
it's just a cold murder of the of this professor,
you know. But also during this scene, I was thinking
about what the doctor Thorkel said about how you're gonna
grow as if you were children into adult form again,

(01:08:06):
which in this movie all it means is you're gonna
get big again by the end of the film and
the and it's saying like, if you had hidden, you
would have just returned to normal anyway, but instead you
came back to me and now it will kill you.
But I had a moment there where I was imagining,
like what does this mean? Because a baby is not
like a miniature adult, you know, it changes a lot

(01:08:26):
as it becomes a grown person. So I was trying
to just contemplate, like what would that mean if you
were a miniaturized person and then you grew, like what
monstrous full sized forms would they grow into.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
You're gonna have skull plates fusing together again, Like what's
going like?

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
So I that was kind of a nightmare scenario that
this film does not explore. But I had a moment
there I was like, oh my.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
God, doctor Bullfinch say hello to a second round of
baby teeth. Yeah, And then so we mentioned that scene
is kind of brutal. There's another there's a lot of imployed,
Like this is not a bloody film, but there's a
lot of implied violence in it that is very brutal

(01:09:07):
in its suggestions. So you see that the other humans
after Bullfinch is murdered, they're hiding in this big thicket
of cactus and then Thorkel comes out and I guess
he's trying to kill them, and he starts chopping up
the cactus with a shovel. It's messed up, but uh,
we find when he chops it all up, and then
finds they've escaped through a hole in the wall out
into the jungle, and Thorkel taunts them over the wall,

(01:09:30):
saying that they will never live half an hour out
in the jungle, and sure enough there comes along a storm,
which again to think about how terrifying of a threat
a storm would be if you were tiny, if you
were like, you know, six inches tall or a foot
tall or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
This is, Yeah, I mean just on top of the
jungle itself. Like when Thorkel said that, I was like, no,
he's absolutely right, Like to go into the jungle at
this size is just death, Like everything is going to
potentially eat you.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
But and then on top of that the storm right.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
And again this comes back to the hall day and
essay I mentioned earlier on being the right size. The
thing about how when you have a much larger surface
area to mass ratio as smaller creatures do. There are
advantages to that, Like you can fall off of a
roof and probably not be hurt because you know the
amount of air resistance provided by the surface of your

(01:10:21):
body will be enough to keep you going pretty slow
actually as you fall compared to the mass in your body.
But the downsides are like getting wet is a terrifying
proposition when you are tiny, Like the surface tension of
water clings to you like a kind of slime. And
so imagine, yeah, you're out in the jungle and the
rain is coming down and there's rivulets everywhere. Very scary.

(01:10:45):
So they end up coming across a boat in a
river later on, and they try to use technology to
free it, and they get attacked by a crocodilian. I
think it's a crocodile, might have been an alligator. I
didn't check the nose shaped too well, but the crocodile
attack sequence is great. Trying to fend it off with fire,
but they've got these like little tiny sticks that are
on fire that are just not enough fire.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
Yeah, they're just kind of dropping it on the creature
and doesn't seem to particularly care.

Speaker 3 (01:11:10):
Yeah, and then eventually, after they chase it off by
throwing a bunch of flaming sticks on it, Thorkel returns.
He comes and finds them, and again it's brutal. Pedro
heroically leads his dog away from them, drawing off the smell,
and so he saves the rest of the people, but
Thorkel sees him and shoots him, and so Pedro has

(01:11:33):
been murdered. And then after that, the rest of the
people are hiding in some grass and Thorkel starts stomping
through the grass, and then when he can't find them,
he burns the grass.

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
Yeah, so there's this inferno that he starts here, just
trying to flush them out. Yeah, but he doesn't quite work,
because they find another place that they can hide themselves, right.

Speaker 3 (01:11:55):
They stow away in his specimen box, the box that
he was going to put them in when he found them.
And so Robinson, Stockton and Steve the mule Guy are
the three people left alive, and they ride back in
this box to Thorkell's hut, and once they get there,
they get out and Stockton decides, no, I'm gonna stand
my ground this time. I'm not gonna try to escape.

(01:12:17):
We've got to kill Thorkel and the other to agree.
So first they try to aim a shotgun like a
cannon at his pillow in his bed, but then Thorkel
doesn't go to bed. Instead he falls asleep in his chair.
And then it really gets into the blinding of Polyphemus
in the Odyssey because they steal his glasses. Remember it
said at the beginning that he called them there because

(01:12:38):
his eyes were so damaged he really couldn't see without
his glasses. And they they know where he keeps his
extra pairs of glasses because they find them when they're
going through his stuff earlier, and they hide those.

Speaker 1 (01:12:49):
Yeah, they stick them through like a hole on the
floor of the wall. So now he has the only,
only the one pair, and they remove those as well.
So yeah, suddenly you have this this blinded polythemous trope
going on here.

Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
Yeah, and so Thorkel is enraged. He's smashing, you know,
he's running around trying to destroy them. He does recover
one pair of glasses, but one of the lenses is smashed,
and he says, now you can call me Cyclops because
I have one good eye.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
Thank you for being clear about the title the film,
Doctor thorp Kel.

Speaker 3 (01:13:22):
I think they could have done without that. Yeah, But
so there's a final confrontation in the end. I won't
spoil exactly how it happens, but they are victorious. They
end up they end up defeating doctor Cyclops here and
in the end, the three remaining characters they regrow to
full size and they travel back to civilization. And the

(01:13:45):
main things now we find are that Stockton and Robinson
are now in love because of course, and we find
that Steve the mule guy does not like cats. Like
he sees a cat back in the town they go
to and he's like, scram.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
Well, maybe you remember this. I watched it last week,
and I think you watched it this morning. Did we
ever get any real payoff with Satanas? Like, like, it's
not like they had a big throwdown with the Like
they didn't have a big fight with the cat. They
didn't have to like slay the cat or I think
the dog just chased Satanas off and that was it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:14):
Yeah, I'm glad they didn't have to kill the cat
because I mean, the cat's just being a cat.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
It's true, yeah, I mean, but but I also wonder
like was that like maybe something they wanted to do
but they just didn't have the effects, Like maybe that
was just too much of an effects asked to have,
like a big fight with a giant cat. I don't know, Yeah,
I don't know. Because of you know, there there were
films that you know, they would later go more in
that direction of having you know, the cat to aggressively

(01:14:39):
go after tiny humans.

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
Well like Cat's Eide the one you mentioned.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
Well not a tiny human, an evil troll and the
cat there is the hero going that's right, the evil
tiny monster.

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
So yeah, this is this is absolutely a fun film.
You know, there's not not a you know, tremendous amount
of depth to it. There's not a huge amount of
monster science to discuss about it. I mean, you can
take various saying. You can certainly get really pedantic on
the idea of miniaturizing organisms and then how does that
miniaturize organism react and fit in with an immediate environment

(01:15:15):
that it was not miniaturized, And depending on how small
you go, those problems can be you can be quite extreme.
But then there are other directions as well. You know,
we found this interesting paper that we were both looking
at titled Human Engineering and Climate Change by LALs Sendberg
and Roche. This was from twenty twelve published in Ethics,

(01:15:37):
Policy and Environment, and it's pretty wild read. You can
find it for free online. I think we found it
at BLC dot Arizona dot edu. And one of the
things they get into is like, if you were to
shrink humans down, they would have less of an environmental footprint,
so it would ultimately be better for the environment.

Speaker 3 (01:15:56):
This paper is this is something doctor Thorkel would write.
I started reading it and I was just like, what
it is interesting, but it is nuts and I don't know.
I mean, it seems like there may be more direct
things that could be done about climate change than saying,
like what if we were to shrink humans so that
they consume fewer resources.

Speaker 1 (01:16:17):
Yeah, there are other levers we should pull first. Certainly
we shouldn't take the thor kelp that path, the thor
Kel way on that particular problem.

Speaker 3 (01:16:27):
I mean, it's at least got to go like solar
panels before shrinking.

Speaker 1 (01:16:31):
People absolutely all right, Well you might be wondering where
can I watch Doctor Cyclops. Well, these things are always
subject to change. But we actually had a hard time
tracking this one down. We couldn't find it streaming anywhere,
or for digital purchaser rental. We couldn't even find a
We couldn't find a physical rental either. So we actually
bought it on special edition blu ray from KL Studio

(01:16:54):
Classics aka Keno Lorber. It's a brand new four K Master.
It also has an audio commentary by film historian Richard
Harlan Smith. I didn't I didn't have a chance to
listen to it, but it sounds like it would be
pretty cool. The box art on this one is great,
Unlike some of the other previous releases that have come
out that had kind of like cheesy box art, like

(01:17:14):
this one has that that weird probe mechanism in the
center that is lowered into the earth. You have a
picture of doctor Thorkel there with it looks like lasers
coming out of his eyes. It's pretty good.

Speaker 3 (01:17:26):
Yeah, it's really good art.

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
But then again, this is also a classic film by
a notable director, so it's it's it's entirely possible. You
might be able to catch this one on you know,
one of like I don't know Turner Classic Movies or
something to that effect. I know we've we heard from
some people after we did our episode on Mad Love,
chiming in and saying, oh, they're showing Mad Love tonight,
so who knows. Maybe check your local listings. This is
what I'm saying, Well, let's do it. Then let's go

(01:17:51):
ahead and call it done. We're done with Doctor Cyclops here.
But this was a This was a fun one to watch,
a fun one to discuss, and if if you would
like to listen to us discuss other films. You can
catch other episodes of Weird House Cinema every Friday in
the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. So our
core episodes are about science and culture and those published

(01:18:12):
on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We do an artifact episode on
Wednesdays listener mail on Mondays. But Friday that's when we
get to cut loose and discuss some sort of weird
cinematic gem, generally from Yesterdayear.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
That's right, so keep tuning in. Huge thanks as always
to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
would like to get in touch with us to let
us know 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 that's Stuff to Blow
Your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):
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.

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