Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Empire of the Dark

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, you welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is
Rob Lamb, and today we are going to venture into
Empire of the Dark. This is a nineteen ninety one
horror odyssey that originally published eight twenty nine, twenty twenty five.
This one's a lot of fun. We really enjoyed this one.
So let's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
As we've discussed before on the show, a great B movie,
or even a bad movie so bad it's a good
movie has to believe in itself. Absolutely. It has to
feature some mix of genuine talent, effort and enthusiasm. It
has to leave you saying, man, look at what they
attempted or or look at what, at least in places

(01:02):
they actually pulled off. You know, there's always an audacity
to film. That a movie reaches any state of completion
and finds even a modicum of an audience is an
amazing accomplishment. And today's selection, I think is a testament
to all of this, because we're going to talk about
a film that is an amazing achievement Steve Barquette's nineteen

(01:22):
ninety one Northern Californian odyssey Empire of the Dark.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
I mean, I want to burst into a round of
applause just hearing you say those words. This movie is
an amazing achievement. I absolutely loved it.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Yeah, yeah, I feel like this one exists excitingly somewhere
between nineteen nineties The Final Sacrifice and nineteen seventy nine's Phantasm.
It's much better in many ways than The Final Sacrifice,
and not on the same level as Fantasm as well.
But to me at least, it feels like a cinematic

(01:58):
world akin to those films, a low budget of cold
adventure set in rural or small town North America, in
this case northern California. I believe film near Redding, California,
and it centers around a non traditional action oriented leading man. So,
in the grand tradition of Reggie Banister and zap Rawsdauer,

(02:18):
here we have Richard Flynn.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
I was thinking of Richard Flynn our protagonist here, as
a cross between Rousedauer and Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Don't you see that yeah, Yeah, I know exactly what
you're talking about. There were numerous times watching the film,
or even before we watch the Looking at Steel, where
I was like, this actor feels like a character from
Mister Show.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yes, Yes, and we get to see him in this
movie with and without a mustache. I don't know which
way Steve Barquette goes in real life, but in the
movie he looks so disturbing without the mustache. It's like
his soul is disfigured by not having the mustache on
his face.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Oh, I wouldn't say that, but he wears a mustache.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Well, yes, that's what I mean. I don't mean to
insult the not I'm just saying like he was born
for this mustache. The character was I can't speak because
he disappears into the role. Who knows what the real
Steve Barquette is like.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, and as we'll get to like he's I think
he's really fun in this, Like his passion is evident.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
But again, at the same time, you know, not your
traditional leading man, and that's part of the charm of it.
I found at least one review on letterbox where someone
was like, I love this film because the hero reminds
me of my dad. You know, there's like action dad
energy here. Oh yeah. And it makes sense as well
because it is a father and son effort as full discuss.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
One might speculate. And I don't want to try to
psychoanalyze Steve Barquette because again I don't know what was
going through his mind. But you could read this movie
as someone trying to grapple with feelings of both love
and ambivalence about fatherhood.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Yeah, yeah, the deep, the read on Empire of the Dark. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
But also a lot of sword fighting in there. That's
a major theme as well.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yes, yeah, and really fun sword fighting. Again. I want
to stress you know, this film we're you know, we're
gonna have some fun with some aspects of it. And
it is a film that definitely has a cult following.
Is often described as so bad it's good, but a
lot of stuff in this film is just good. It's
just very entertaining, like a lot of passion went into
making it, and you can in that passion just shines

(04:27):
off the film.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
It has the the zesty flavor of a small town
film production, like a labor of love. Again, I don't
know if how accurately that would really describe it. But
this is not one of those B movies that is
made by like, disinterested, workaday professionals from the LA film industry,
you know, sort of the second or third tier down there. Instead,

(04:51):
it is a B movie made by passionate and exceptional amateurs. Yes,
the cast feels like it's full of those people who
are like beloved small town characters people friends would describe
by saying, oh, she should be in the movies. Yeah,
you know, you can just imagine like people saying that
about all the people in this film.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, yeah, with a few people here and there that
have different Hollywood backgrounds, but yeah, a lot of locals,
a lot of local energy here.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
But yeah, there are so many ways this fun amateur
film energy manifests. One is, if this makes any sense,
the in multiple scenes, the implausible sexual tension between characters.
This just like doesn't really make sense, but it's there.
Another one is the way almost all the characters in

(05:44):
the movie are presented as legendary in some way. It's like, oh,
Steve Flynn, there was never a better detective than him,
except Eddie Green there is never a better detective than
him either, and they're best of friends. And oh and
Zoup and he's just like the greatest psychic there ever was, Like,
you know, it's like everybody's the greatest.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
Well, you know, it's late. It's like dungeons and dragons.
You know, your your adventuring party should be made out
of be composed of exceptional individuals. And thus we have
exceptional characters in Empire of the Dark that are wrapped
up in this occult plot.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Like I'm thinking about the scene where we first see
Steve Barquette practicing sword fighting with his sword fighting instructor,
which itself is it's a great scene, but they just
kind of throw in there. It's like, oh, by the way,
my friend, the character you haven't met yet, he's also
gotten really good at sword fighting. They just like and
throw that in there so that like later when he's
also gonna sword fight, it'll make sense.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Yeah. I think one of the great things about this
film is that, you know, there are a lot of
films with similar production values that are they're very much
in the exploitation domain. You know that they're on some
level that they are going after what can what are
people going to pay for? You know, what's what's what's hot?
You know, what's or sexy enough to sell. And you know,

(07:02):
this film has some gore in it, and it has
a little bit of a little bit of sexual tension,
as he already referenced, But on the whole, it's the
passion that shines through. Like yeah, like like Barquettes set
out to make a film with a lot of sword
fighting in it, with a King Kong style monster in it,
like all the things that he loves, Like it's a
pyramid of his interests.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
The King Kong style monster. He is so excited to
show you this monster. Halfway through the movie, I think
he forgets the rules he established in the beginning, like
that it can't escape into the world yet. Yeah, because
we have a scene where it comes out into the
world and then they just go back to the cave
and it's like, I don't know, will the monster be
set free? Absolutely no shade. But it reminds me of

(07:45):
like playing action figures with my daughter, you know, like
when you get really excited about what this one's going
to do. Oh what wolf can do is you know,
you set out some rules in the beginning, but then
you just get so carried away you can't really follow them.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
Yeah, an almost childlike enthusiasm for sure, all right. I
do not have an elevator pitch for Empire of the Dark.
It's really hard to nail it down and condense it
in a way that refers to other films.

Speaker 4 (08:11):
In a world where Hell is real and that people
have secret sons, one cop will go to Hell to
solve some problems.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
It works for me, It works for me, all right. Likewise,
I don't know that this film ever had a traditional
trailer of any sort. But let's let's go ahead and
play just a little bit of audio to give you
just a taste here.

Speaker 5 (08:39):
Wow, Angela, Angela.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
All right. If you would like to see Empire of
the Dark before proceeding with the rest of the episode,
or you want to check it out later or or
rewatch it, maybe you saw it in the past. Well,
it's available for streaming in various locations Legit streaming locations,
and you can also pick it up on Blu Ray

(09:32):
from VCI Entertainment. This is the disc you have, right, Joe.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
It's a three disc collection, so it's a It comes
with a Blu Ray disc, a DVD, and a bonus
disc that has got I think like commentary and extra features.
And stuff. I haven't gotten into all of the bonus
features yet, but it's loaded up nice and the four
K transfer looks great. I mean, this is I don't

(09:57):
want to oversell it. You know. This is not like
a Terrence Malick film or something. It's not like gorgeous,
but it is not ugly. It is not it is
not drab and boring to look at. Like. They keep
the frames mostly colorful, the shots are I mean, there
are some shots that are composed in funny ways, but

(10:17):
they generally keep it visually varied and interesting. Like I
was noticing how many of the sets have just like
random color variations in them. It's like they're trying to
give you something for your eyes to enjoy.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Yeah, I can't wait to discuss so some of the
more breathtaking sights in this particular movie. Yeah all right, Well,
let's get into the cast and the crew here, starting
at the top with Steve Barquette. He plays Richard Flynn,

(10:54):
but he is also the director, the rider, the producer,
or one of the producers. He's the editor. He is
a fight and sword choreographer, and he is a stuntman.
I just expecting it.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
All expecting in the credits to see Steve Barquette catering.
Come on, yeah, it's almost like Neil Breen levels of
all over the credits.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
So who was this guy? Well, he lived nineteen fifty
through twenty twenty three, born Stephen Fayad Barquette in Oklahoma
City and was a film fan from an early age,
collecting and obsessing over classic Hollywood cinema. Clearly he was
a fan of King Kong. Again, this film features a
King Kong style monster, and I assume the kitchen scene,

(11:41):
or the kitchen factors into a couple of different scenes
in the movie had to have been his kitchen because
you also see I think a King Kong poster of
some sort of King Kong merch that is proudly displayed
again in the kitchen.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Speaking of his merch, did I tell you that when
I was watching part of a video interview with him,
he has the exact same attack of the Crab Monster's
poster in his office that I have in mind. I
felt a real soul connection there.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Yeah, yeah, get I get that he was a big fan.
I saw. I found a nineteen seventy film interview he
conducted in Tulsa with the actor Buster Krabby, This would
have this is a guy that played like Flash Gordon
and some of the old serials, and they were talking
about the old serials, but this is like nineteen seventies,
like black and white TV, and he's the guy doing

(12:25):
the interview.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
And of course it's clear that he was also a
big fan of swashbuckling pictures, because a lot of swashes
buckled in this film, especially in the last quarter of
the picture. So his first film credit was a nineteen
seventy three short film written by Ray Bradbury called Night Collar.
Not sure if this ever saw the light of day,
but it's listed in the well, it's listed on the databases,

(12:51):
and it's also referenced in his obituary. He apparently learned
more about film when he was able to visit sets
and post production activities at family friend Danny Thomas's studio,
so he got a little behind the scenes action, got
to see how the sausage was made. And then beginning
in nineteen seventy eight, he started working on this movie

(13:12):
that would become The Aftermath. He wrote it, directed it,
starred in it, produced it. It's a post apocalyptic adventure
which also featured Sid Hague and Lynn Margulis. This was
Andy Kaufman's partner late in his life, and then came
today's picture, nineteen ninety one's Empire of the Dark fantasy
Horris swashbuckling adventure Yarn. And after this, according to his

(13:36):
obituary that I read on Gold Country Media, he left Hollywood.
Not sure if this means he left the actual geographical
Hollywood or if he left Hollywood in a spiritual sense,
but he apparently kept touch and kept in touch with
his various Hollywood friends and acquaintances, and so he continued
to help out with smaller acting and behind the scenes roles,

(13:57):
particularly on the films of friend Olin Ray, who is
also one of the producers of this film. Fred Olin Ray.
I think he's come up in passing before in the show.
We've never talked about a fred Olin Ray picture, but
he was a boot. He's a B movie director who
directed such films as nineteen eighties The Alien Dead, nineteen
eighty three Scalps, and nineteen eighty eight is Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.

(14:22):
I apologize I'm gonna end up mentioning Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers
a few different times as it connects to other actors.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
In this film. That is the kind of movie I
associate mainly with fred Olinray, kind of like a sexy
lady robot that kills you movies.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Yes, yeah, that's that's the sort of picture that I
knew him mostly from making. But it was weird. I
was catching up on, well, what's what's fred Olin Ray
been up to? And he's still making movies and it's
a weird mix of mostly feel good Christmas romances like
legit like not like, oh, it looks like a Christmas romance,
but then the ladies come out with chainsaws. No, Like.

(14:58):
He seems to be making just a of just straight
up feel good Christmas movies with only the occasional horror
movie thrown in the mix.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
Oh there's another guy. I forget the guy's name, but
I discovered him by accident a few years ago. There's
a guy who makes like feel good Canadian Christmas movies
and just like like disturbing horror films.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
It's kind of I mean, it's coming back to exploitation
cinema to a certain extent, Like what do the people want?
What will they go for? We will get their juices running,
you know. Sometimes the answer is you know, it's bikinis
and splashes of blood. Other times it is romance during
the holidays involving a prince. So that exploitation energy, that

(15:42):
that sort of Carnie vibe can take you just about anywhere.
So Barquette worked on the following Fred Olnray films. Eighty
nine's Beverly Hills Vamp, ninety one's Wizards of the Demon's Sword,
ninety three is Dark Universe, ninety four is Dinosaur Island,
ninety five's Bikini Drive in Hard Bounty and Attack of
the sixty Foot Centerfolds and and also Droid Gunner. And

(16:06):
also nineteen ninety six is Star Hunter, which is a
Predator knockoff I think an Invisible Mom from the same year,
Massuse from the same year, and finally wrap it Assault
in ninety seven. So again, when you're really busting out
these b movies, it's you know, it's multiple per year,
like this is you know, Roger Korman energy, where at
least as much Roger Corman energy as a normal human conmuster.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Sounds like a lot of posters with machine guns on them.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
Yes, yeah, though I do want to stress that like
Fred Olin Ray movies, they're not all the same. Some
of them. Actually, some of them have pretty good casts.
Some of them are a little more clearly in the
exploitation bucket than others. There's a lot out there, and
I certainly haven't seen them all. One more note about
fred Olin Ray. I only learned today that he was

(16:51):
also an indie pro wrestler in the late nineteen nineties.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
I had absolutely no idea until you shared this with
me and you linked a clip show in which she's
in the It doesn't look like top level wrestling, so
you said, indie pro wrestler. This seems like more small
events and local kind of things.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, this would be like gymnasiums and National Guard armories
that sort of thing. But in this clip, fred ol
and Ray wrestling as Freddie Valentine. He gets in there
occasionally with the likes of Terry Funk and Saboo. So
guys were very much indie legends of the day.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
There's a lot of special effects involved. There's like people
they slam their head on a table and sparks shoot
off of it. I don't know what that's about. And
then he's in the ring with an alligator.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know about the alligator. There's something
on his Instagram about it was like an alligator death
match or something. I don't know. I can't even imagine
how the rules for that work.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
If you lose, do they make the alligator the champion
of the circuit.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
I don't know. The alligator's wearing the belt in some
of those shots, so maybe the alligator was the champion
going in. I'm not sure at any rate. Yeah, this
is a fact. I feel like I should have known
given some of my interests, but this one was a
new one for me. All Right, let's move on through
the rest of the cast here. Okay, so we've covered
our hero, our hero, Richard Flynn, played by Steve Barquette.

(18:13):
Then we have a character named Terry Nash. We'll learn
this is possibly Richard Flynn's son, and fittingly, he is
played by Christopher Barquette, who is Steve Barquette's actual son.
It's a beautiful moment of father and son bonding on screen.

(18:34):
And Christopher had also acted as a child in the Aftermath,
the previous, the post apocalyptic film that his dad did,
on which he is also credited as a model builder.
And in fact, I found an image here and I
believe this was shared by Christopher himself, where you see
him as a child hanging out with the various sets

(18:56):
and some toy dinosaurs from the aftermath.

Speaker 3 (18:59):
In Empire of the Dark, much like his father, he
wears a notable mustache and they almost like use the
mustache to make it clear that, oh, this is your son.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
I love Christopher barquead in this because while his father,
Steve has has an undeniable charisma about him and is
like clearly putting a lot of passion, sometimes almost too
much passion into a given scene, Christopher is clearly like
not a born actor, and I think he knows it,
you know, he went under work mostly I think in

(19:31):
production design and as far as films go. So he
has a very green energy on screen, which can be
a wonderful thing in a movie like this.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
He is reserved, but it comes across as a kind
of nerdy little dignity. Yeah, yeah, it's nice.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
All right. And then playing Terry's mother and Steve's long
lost love, we have Tara Hendrickson. She plays a character
Angela Nash. Dates not public record for her, were they
available for Christopher Barquette, but Tera Hendrickson is a musician
and an actress who's appeared in a lot of TV
shows and in small supporting roles over the years.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
All right, let's talk about some of the antagonists. Get
we got a cult in this movie.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yes, And this is the character Arkham, you know, like
Arkham Asylum. And he is played by Richard Harrison born
nineteen thirty five, a veteran international action star. I just
I wasn't that familiar with this guy, and I started
digging into his filmography and it's so incredible. It just

(20:35):
takes you everywhere.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
I really got it in my head that this guy
had been in one of the Ninja movies we watched
last year when I watched Ninja three The Domination, but
he was not in it. I checked. He just seems
like he would have been in it.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
It would be a bet because he was in a
lot of Ninja movies. So he started out in the
nineteen fifties in the US. It's a kind of a handsome,
muscular bit actor, appearing I think more or less in
the background in films like nineteen fifty eight South Pacific.
He pops up in the nineteen sixty one Vincent Price
film Master of the World, but he was quickly lured

(21:11):
overseas to the wild world of Italian cinema, where he
started appearing in various peplam, spy and spaghetti westerns, including
four different Berto Lindsay films, including nineteen sixty four's Messalina
Versus The Son of Hercules. He stars as what is
it Glaucus in this, who I think was actually either

(21:33):
like a minor sea god god or the son of
Minos and not an actual son of Hercules. But you know,
when you're doing a nineteen sixties Italian film, you know
it's all right to ben the mythology a little bit.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
I just had to look up to see if Richard
Harrison was in the last Mberto Lindsay movie I saw,
which was a House of Lost Souls. It's sort of
Umberto Lindsay's take on the Shining, but I think pssibly
scaled down ambitions that one I remember being kind of

(22:05):
a good laugh. But no, he's not in that one, unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
I think he's mostly known for at least a couple
of different cannibal movies, not ones that we've covered on
the show before. But anyway, back to Richard Harrison. Here
he ends up branching out during the nineteen seventies to
become a truly international exploitation film star, appearing in European,

(22:29):
Hong Kong, Turkish, Filipino, and Egyptian films. These included the
nineteen seventy one western His Name Was King opposite Klaus Kinski,
as well as the nineteen eighty Joe Domato film or
Gasmo Nero, along with so many ninja movies, Like I
can't even begin to describe how many ninja movies are
in this guy's filmography, including nineteen eighty Five's Ninja Terminator

(22:53):
and nineteen eighty six is the Ninja Squad, both directed
by Godfrey Hoe and featuring Harrison in a red and
yng Wholka Mania style ninja outfit outfit with a headband
that says ninja just so there's no confusion about how
he's coming to kill.

Speaker 3 (23:08):
You, uh pre labeled.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yeah, there's just so much wild stuff in this guy's filmography,
Like there's a nineteen eighty three Iranian comedy filmed in
Italy in which he plays President Grover Cleveland.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
Oh, you can't make a comedy without Grover Cleveland.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
It's just wild. Like I saw part of an interview
with him where he was like, you know, I probably
probably did too many cheap films. I don't know if
that's possible. You know, working professionals, you got to be
in you got to be in films, and they can't
all be top notch productions. Was he in too many
CD and Ean F grade films? Maybe? I don't know.

(23:46):
But he also directed four films, including nineteen eighty six's
Terra Force Commando, and has various writing credits as well,
I think on six different films, including Fred Olin Ray's
nineteen eighty seven film Scalps.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
In this he plays the cult big bad who most
of the cult activity is like his minions, going out
and doing stuff in the world. I think I noticed
that most or maybe all of Richard Harrison's scenes are
all in the same set. They're all in that cave
with the altar, making it seem like maybe they shot
him all around the same time.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
But I just had the one day and then they
have one photograph of the mountain a parking lot.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
God, that's right, Yes, the photo which might have been
at the studio parking lot. Yeah. Yeah, but he's but
you know, he kind of he gives it as all.
He's not holding back. There's like a scene where he
sort of makes out with a bloody knife and he
goes for it.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah. He's probably the most seasoned actor in
the cast, and I think it shows. And he was
clearly no stranger to films that might ask him to
sacrifice a victim or lick a bloody blade. He's like, yeah,
I'm down, let's do it, all right. Moving on into
some more of the supporting staff here, and this is
where some of the fred Olin Ray connections are going

(25:00):
to really begin to surface. So we have a character
by the name of Madame Oleska, and she is she
has like a seer, she is aware of movements in
the supernatural realm.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
She has knowledge of the dark arts.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah. And she is played by Don Wildsmith born nineteen
sixty three. She is a fred Olinray B movie repeat player.
Her credits include nineteen eighty six's Armed Response. That's an
example of one of the fred Olinray movies that has
a pretty strong cast. I haven't seen it. I can't
speak to its quality, but it's got a lot of
good actors in it. She's also in nineteen nineties Alienator

(25:37):
and she's in Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers. So she also pops
up in a non Fred Olin Ray film nineteen eighty
six is Surf Nazis Must Die.

Speaker 3 (25:45):
I don't know how many different movies she gets decapitated,
but I feel like that's got to be like a
checklist thing for an actor. At some point you're like,
I gotta be in a film where my head gets
cut off and she gets it. Here, she gets her check.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
I do not remember if she is decapitated Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers.
It is spent over two decades since I saw that one,
and I'm probably not going to rewatch it anytime soon.
But it's very likely it is a film about about chainsaws.
But I should also point out it's not particularly accurate
when it comes to Hollywood chainsaw or presumably hookers either,

(26:20):
So there you go. But we also have the male
lead from Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers in this film, John Henry
Richardson playing Sheriff Eddie Green.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
This is Flynn's dependable cop friend. You know, when we
first meet him, he's acting kind of agro on a
phone call, and I just assumed this guy, oh, this
guy's going to be a jerk, that we're gonna have
to deal with through the movie. But then no, no,
it's like a total reversal where he's just like you
can always count on Eddie.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
There's no real ambiguity in this picture. If we know
exactly who the good guys are and exactly who the
bad guys are. The only bit of ambiguity is is
that a real woman's face or does she secretly have
a monster face? But you know she's going to have
a monster face, so anyway, John Henry Richardson, another Fred olinray,
regularly pops up. He's also an alienator in various other films.

(27:12):
He's also in Jim Winnarski's Munchie, which is some sort
of a Gromlin film that I have not seen. Okay,
all right. Another interesting character that we have in this
film is Guy Zupan, played by Joseph Pilato, who lived
done nineteen forty nine through twenty nineteen.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
He has one of the funniest and most unexpected character
reappearances in this movie that I can recall in a
film in quite some time.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yes, yeah, I can't wait to get to that. But
Joseph Pilato is an American actor best known to many
of you I imagine for his role as the villainous
captain Henry Rhodes, this is the guy who gets his
torso torn open by zombies, and George Romero's nineteen eighty
five film Day of the Dead.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
I would not have made this connection at all. I
totally remember this character in Day of the Dead, but
he's like, yeah, he's the villain in Day of the Dead,
the human villain. He's like, you know, because a big
theme of that movie is it takes place in a
bunker along after the zombies have taken over, and it's
this sort of like last bastion of humanity. They're trying

(28:18):
to figure out how many other humans are left out
there and where they are, and you've got the camp
of the scientists versus the military guys, and the military
guys are led by this kind of unstable captain who's like,
you never know if he's just going to be done
with it, and you know, he's like, okay, yeah, I'm
done with you scientists anyway. So he's a very compelling

(28:39):
villain in that. But I did not realize this was
the same guy at all.

Speaker 5 (28:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Yeah. He also he was also in nineteen seventy eight's
Dawn of the Dead in a small role, and he
also pops up in Romero's and Night Writers from eighty one.
That's a weird one. That's a picture that we've had
listeners write in and say, hey, you should cover Night Writers.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
Oh in.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
His other credits include Pulp Fiction from ninety four. I
believe he has just a very small role in that.
And he's also in nineteen ninety seven's Wish Master Choke
on him. Indeed, all right, you mentioned the sword training scene,
and the sword trainer is played by Jan Bryant. She
also has has credit for stunts in this and yeah,

(29:18):
she plays our sword trainer. And she is an actual
sword master, choreographer, performer and instructor. She's done stunts and
fight choreography work, you know, sword fight choreography work in
such projects as two thousand and threes, Mastering Commander, the
Far Side of the World, nineteen ninety eight's The Mask
of Zorro, ninety one's Hook, and ninety two's Army of Darkness.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
So in the movie, she plays the main character's sword
training instructor. But the sword training scene, it looks like
they're supposed to be just actually swinging like fully sharpened
broad swords at each other, and I was like, what
is that how sword training actually works? But then they
anticipate it or not anticipate they address it in the scene.

(30:03):
Flynn is like, Wow, I'm really thanks so much for
agreeing to just go like full sword, full swords in
practice with me. You know, this really boosts my confidence.
And I was wondering, like does that come from her,
like as a real sword instructor, is she like this
would never happen. We need to address like why they
would be like.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yes, I am the writer, I shall write around it.
So that's Jan Bryant. And then her husband, Dan Speaker
is also in the film, and he's also a world
renowned sword master and stuntman. He plays the character Brian.
Brian is like the second in command cultist.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, yeah, Brian Devray. They say his last name every
time another performer.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
I have to say, Jan Bryant. She has a certain
amount of like natural charisma there. Dan in this role anyway,
doesn't come off as natural of a pure actor, you know,
so I think maybe his expertise is more behind the
sword as opposed to up there spouting dialogue.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
I agree, he has a certain twinkle in his eye
when he's standing there grinning like a chipmunk in the
Jawa hood while he's holding a knife over a baby.

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Yes. Yes, In general, though, I want to say big
hats off to Bryant and Speaker here and Steve Barquette,
because all of the sword play in this film is
genuinely a great deal of fun, especially the last quarter
of the picture. It just buckles so much swash and
it's delightful. Yeah, all right. Two more behind the scenes

(31:34):
credits just to reference here. Jim Davidson is credited for
visual effects. Also dates unknown on him as a visual
effects artist. He's worked on everything from the first two
Reanimator films to Terminator two and Batman Returns and much more.
And then the composer here is John W. Morgan, who
lived nineteen forty six through twenty twenty five. Composed the

(31:56):
score for a nineteen seventy short adaptation of Ray Bradberry's
A Sound of Thunder, also The Aftermath, and also two
thousand and four Starship Troopers two Hero of the Federation.
That's the one directed by Phil tippittt H.

Speaker 3 (32:11):
I don't know if I can bring myself to watch
a Starship Troopers sequel directed by Phil Tippett, though I mean, yeah,
I don't like I like Phil Tippet's effects. I don't know.
I love the original Starship Troopers.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
I think I mentioned this Obviously, we're big Phil Tippet fans,
and if we were to watch something he directed, it
would probably be his passion project, Matt God. But I
mentioned this off to you off Mike before. But there
was a season two episode of TV's poker Face in
which we have a character based on Phil tippittt surrounded

(32:44):
by Phil Tippett's actual models and sculptures and so forth.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
I'll have to watch that sometime.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
It's pretty fun. It's pretty fun anyway. John W. Morgan
here seems to have been something of a specialist in
the re recording of existing scores from old movies, particularly
movies from the nineteen thirties, and I saw that he
has a credit for doing some score reconstruction work on
Peter Jackson's King Kong from two thousand and five.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
Already you ready to get into the plot.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
Let's do it. Let's jump in.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
So the movie begins by showing us an object of
implied significance and power and At first, I was not sure,
like whether this object the movie is showing is supposed
to be understood as within the narrative or outside the narrative.
It is a physical artifact filmed in real space, shaped
kind of like a cross between a fish and a sword,

(33:46):
and it's like mounted up on a rack and illuminated
with these rainbow lights. But then we see a title.
It says the Nautilus Film Companies. I was like, oh, okay,
so this is supposed to be a submarine.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Like Disney's Nautilus.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, And this is supposed to be the
production company logos like the Toho logo.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
I love this though, when you get to see a
film company logo that you've never seen before and you
know you're not going to see more than a couple
of other times.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
Yeah, yeah, what was this actual artifact? Where did this
come from?

Speaker 1 (34:18):
It looks like somebody's do it yourself model the Nautilus. Yeah,
and they're like, that's the logo, that's the studio.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
So after that we pull up on another image with
moody lighting. But this one, I guess is actually supposed
to be in the story. It is stone hinge or
at least a look alike. It's kind of a clone Hinge.
In silhouette, we see the big stones with a jack
O'Lantern orange sky in the background, and then the clouds
move across the moon and we can hear the wind howling.

(34:46):
And the next we're somewhere else underground in a vast cavern,
fuming with vapor. Among the crags of a cliff wall,
we see a monstrous face made out of stone. I
would describe it as a cross between a goat and
a terrain saurus rex.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
Yeah, there's a little bit of rain corps energy to
this guy as well.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
Yeah, a little bit of that absolutely Now. Next, somewhere
else in this foggy cavern, we hear voices echoing, echoing
so much that it's kind of hard to understand what
they're saying. But I had to. I did some rewinding
here to make sure I was catching it all. So
here's what's up. You got two dudes in your standard
brown I worship the devil robes. One guy is younger

(35:26):
with dark hair and a beard, and the other guy
is older, looking a bit like a cross between Charlton
Heston and Ted Turner. He's got a robust mustache. This
movie is full of robust mustaches. And this guy is,
of course Arkham. This is Richard Harrison.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
One point about mustaches. I think it's worth noting that
this again is a film from nineteen ninety one, and
so much about it feels nineteen seventies, early nineteen eighties. Yeah,
I like to the point I was watching it. My
wife came in. I was like, check it out. This
is how I'm spending several hours of my week this week.
And she was like this. She just couldn't believe that

(36:05):
this was a movie that came out in nineteen ninety one.
She's like, no, this this has to be eighties or
even seventies.

Speaker 3 (36:10):
I agree, it feels older.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Yeah, and you see, and part of it is this
is a film with old, old, an old soul in
many respects, but also it has like facial hair from
a different era.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah. So the characters are standing around in this dusty cave.
It's got torches and altar and a bunch of thick
nautical style chains. Gotta have some really big chains. And
then the altar, actually, I would say, appears to be
a wooden console table covered with a green tablecloth on
top of the table. You got four little votive candles,

(36:44):
and then something that may be a fruit bowl, but
which they are actually using to be like the sacred
chalice of the devil, you know, the chalice of the
bloody throat. And then they've also you gotta have a
mystical dagger, so they got a mystical dagger. Off to
the side, there is also a lady in bright red
lingerie with a sheer red nightgown. She's wandering around like

(37:07):
she's hypnotized.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
This is the most lingerie ever, Like this is Yeah,
this is like Victoria's Secrets nineteen ninety one to the max. Yeah,
if you were a thirteen year old in nineteen ninety one,
you just might assume that this is what ladies wear
underneath the clothing.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
So the younger cult fellow says, this is the twentieth girl.
All the preparations have been completed, Master Arkham. And then
the older guy with the mustache says, does your young
bride suspect anything? And the younger guy says nothing. So
is this lady in red here the bride? I was
confused the first time, but no, she is not the

(37:42):
bride they're talking about somebody else. This lady is a
random different person who's gonna be the lucky twentieth victim
of human sacrifice. Your young bride is his young bride
somewhere else not shown here.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Yeah, the demon that we're gon we're gonna eventually learn
that the demon's name is Mallius, but apparently it requires
twenty victims, which feels like a lot. It really feels
to me like Mallius has just kind of softly retired
from attempted world domination and has just set his sacrifice
rate really high. So it's like nobody's going to actually
summon me twenty victims. Okay, if you do twenty victims,

(38:19):
I'll show up. And he's like, they're not going to
do it.

Speaker 3 (38:21):
Oh, It's like somebody wants to leave their item for
sale on marketplace, but they don't really want to sell it,
so they set the price too high.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
Yeah, yes, yeah, set it at twenty victims. Nobody's going
to do that.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
So after this, Master Arkham says another line that's hard
to hear. I think he says the dark of the
moon is nearly upon us. Though here's one where the
time that I watched this on the YouTube rip. The
YouTube subtitles translated it as an art of the moon
is merely a box, okay. Master Arkham tells the younger guy,

(38:51):
and his name is Brian Devray, that he will soon
become one of us. And it was only after he
said that that I noticed there were actually some other
little dudes in the foreground here, Robbi attached to the screenshot.
I didn't notice them the first like two times I
watched the scene, these other little guys in the foreground
watching the action right in the position of Joel in

(39:12):
the bots, except they're like dressed in the little brown
culthoods like Jawa's.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Oh well, I didn't notice the seating.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
They ought to be pointing and making little riffs.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
I have to point out this cave set that we're
on here pretty darn good. You know. It's definitely a
Star Trek level good cave set here.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
I'd say my opinion is this part of the cave
set is in the medium quality zone. We'll get some
sets that look significantly worse and some that look significantly better.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
I think, yeah, there's a lot of sway on the
quality in this picture.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
Yeah, So anyway, Master Arkham here tells Brian devray that
he has to bring his wife again, remember the different
person bring his wife and his infant son to this
place tonight so they can perform the ritual. And Brian
does not need any convincing wife infant son. Got it now,
Master Arkham? He starts. After this, he starts a sidebar

(40:06):
with his boss. He like wanders off to the side
and he lifts his arms up in the air and
starts shouting hear me Meleias. He promises Meleas that in
a few hours the ceremony will be completed and then
Meleas will be free for all times. Remember that whatever
they're doing the ceremonies, that's gonna set Melias free. Then

(40:27):
there's this little moment where there's like a lull, like
Arkham kind of calms down and wanders back to the
other people after yelling at Meleeas. But then he starts
up again with yes, Meleas, I will do your bidding,
which is funny in the same way as in like
Manos the Hands of Fate, when Torgo will stop talking
and you think the scene's over, and then there's a

(40:47):
long pote pause and he starts talking again.

Speaker 1 (40:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
Yeah, Also, Master Arkham well, while not having any red
fingers on his robe, is giving a little bit of
the Master from Manos, and Brian is slightly torgo, though
a bit more suave.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
Anyway, so Master Arkham stabs the poor lady who's standing here.
He stabs her with the mystical dagger. She instantly falls
down dead.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
And right in the belly. Instant.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
Yeah, and then he kind of makes out with the knife.
As I mentioned earlier, he's got a real good like
ooh the knife on his mouth. And as I was saying,
you know, most of the production values we've seen up
to this point, costumes, sets, et cetera, you could say,
I would argue, are like mid level or below. You know,

(41:36):
they're very much in the B movie range. But then
suddenly we are presented with what I really think is
actually a very admirable creature effect that is photographed beautifully.
So this human sacrifice wakes up some kind of monster.
I guess this is Melias, the dinosaur goat face that
we saw on the rock earlier. We hear it gurgling

(41:58):
in the cave, and then we see the shadow first
of a giant three fingered et hand reach up into
a shaft of yellow orange light surrounded by smoke, and
then the beast rears up and we see the dark
outline of its head against the glow as it roars. Now,
the creature will not look quite as good when we
see it in direct lighting later, but in this scene,

(42:20):
I think it looks fantastic. Rachel watched this part of
the movie with me too, and she was impressed.

Speaker 1 (42:26):
Yeah, and again, it's kind of surprising because this film
will be, you know, very much in that sort of
ND BE movie range. Sometimes it'll dip down into C
movie range, but then other times it'll really suddenly fire
up like this to the point where you're like, did
I take something? Is something kicking in? Why is this
film suddenly so effective?

Speaker 3 (42:45):
Yeah? And then here's a great thing after this. For
a second time, we get the production company credit. Remember,
like it already told you this was from the Nautilus
Film Company when it showed us the submarine sword. Now
it shows us the clone h scenery again and hits
us with the Nautilus title card again. So after this,
the music turns from ominous to kind of sad as

(43:07):
the cast credits start rolling, just in time for us
to see the man of the ninety minute, Steve Barquette,
like his name comes up on the screen and it
shows you a little shot of his face, except he
looks so sad in the shot they selected. He's just
staring off into the distance as if he's thinking, like,
how am I going to pay for all these rented swords. Also,

(43:30):
during the rest of the credits, we are treated to
Gustav d'orre's illustrations from Dante's Inferno.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yes, yes, these will keep popping up these. This is
clear like basically storyboarding for the picture.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
Yeah. So, then after the credits, somehow we're still not
in the present action of the movie. We pick up
later in the prologue, which is twenty years before the
rest of the.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Movie, which I guess would put us in the nineteen seventies,
where again, so much of the film feels like it
is at home, and also all of these exterior location
establishment shots that we get also feel very nineteen seventies.

Speaker 3 (44:03):
That's right. So we come up on a police station
at night with this a frame sign out front that
says police. I only mention this because we will get
some hilarious establishing shots of that sign many more times
than the movie, sometimes zooming in on the sign after
showing it to you, like to really emphasize the point
this is where the police are, Rob, Do you get it?

(44:25):
And then we get our first look at Steve Barquette
as our hero Richard Flynn. Later in the movie he
will have a mustache, but in this prologue we're supposed
to really get the full force of his youth and
innocence and vitality, so it's clean shaven Flynn. Again. He
really reminds me of Bob Odenkirk. Here he is in
a dingy police office with no visible windows, maps pinned

(44:47):
up on the wall, in full police uniform, with a
black tie, a badge, and a revolver on his hip,
and Rob in this scene just look at the Something
about the lighting I think is making it look really squalid,
like he's got beams hitting him from two different angles,
so he's casting a double shadow on the wall.

Speaker 5 (45:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
Anyway, the phone rings and Flynn answers seems to be
a collect call. He accepts the charges, and then we
get an establishing shot of what looks like a train
depot in Siberia. But I think this is supposed to
be the Maple Street Warehouse, which we're about to hear
much made about. So this call is from Angela, Richard

(45:26):
Flynn's former lover. She says she has to see him
right away, and he's very confused because apparently she just
broke up with him, like the day before, and she
said she could never see him again. They could never
see each other again. The problem is Angela is married
to somebody else and that caused a problem, as you could,
as I guess it often does. But after she implores

(45:50):
him please meet up with me, he agrees he's going
to come meet her at the Maple Street Warehouse as
soon as he gets off work. And then suddenly the
call is cut short because somebody in a cult row
comes up behind Angela and snatches her away. The line
goes dead. It's hard to hear, but right at the
end of this phone call, I believe Richard Flynn says,
women it's like, well, yeah, women always like that. They

(46:12):
call you for help and they get abducted by the
minions of Malius.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Richard Flynn is just he's a very charismatic character, and
he has he has some some comedy that he injects
here and there, and then of course constant sex appeal.
But yeah, there are a few. There are a few
moments that are supposed to be funny, and in some
cases legitimately are to some degree.

Speaker 3 (46:35):
So Flynn heads over to the Maple Street warehouse in
full copy uniform with the hat, and he heads inside
for a look around. He's whistling, tossing his night stick
into the air for fun.

Speaker 1 (46:45):
Yeah, really feels like a Mister Show sketch at this point,
it does.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
Yeah, he like he's walking around in the warehouse. He
at one point knocks on some interior door and then
here's a distant scream. It's Angela. She calls for her.
She calls out Richard, help me. So this he goes
into action mode. Flynn pulls out his revolver, shoots the
lock on the door. But then we see the door
when it's open. It looks like something he could have

(47:11):
just pushed through. It's like thick cardboard. Basically. On the
other side, he is attacked by monsters in cult robes.
These are not just dudes in cult robes. They are
full on reptilian demonoids with rows of razor teeth, and
the demons also have swords.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
Yeah, these guys are great. I love them. They're they're
kind of a combination of like ring rates but also
full sized phantasm dwarves. You know. Yeah, they've got the
monster faces that at times, you know, at times the
monster faces maybe come off a little bit Halloween mask,
but on closer inspection you can tell that a lot
of a lot of care went into their design and
then later and they also suffer a great deal of damage.

(47:50):
There are lots of shots of these guys getting shot, stabbed, decapitated,
and so forth.

Speaker 3 (47:55):
Flynn messes them up. He fights them off with a
combination of revolver gun play and hand to hand combat.
Flynn is very rambo. He's like a you know, he
can do it all. Though in one scuffle he does
get stabbed in the shoulder, so's he's wounded, but he's
forced to press on. And as Flynn plunges deeper into
the labyrinth of the Cursed Warehouse, he keeps hearing Angela

(48:18):
call out to him. We see somewhere in the stone
cavern that both Angela and a baby, presumably this is
her infant son referenced earlier, are being held captive, and
Master Arkham and Brian Devray are standing over them with daggers,
grinning satanically, holding the daggers up like this dagger is
going to come down any moment, but not yet, not yet.

(48:39):
And so I guess this is the final human sacrifice,
the final sacrifice, if you will, that is going to
set Melias free. So Angela, we keep cutting to her,
and she keeps screaming, Richard, help me save my baby
a lot many many times, and we will. It will
feel like it goes on a good bit here. Eventually

(49:01):
Richard finds a wall in the warehouse where a portal
opens to Hell. And yeah, it's just like the warehouse,
like you can see the electrical panels next to it,
but just one wall of the warehouse got a portal
to Hell.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
Yeah, it's a big one to You could drive a
truck through this thing.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
Maybe that's it's kind of tattered. It's got like flat
fluttering kind of like tattered bits. I don't know, but
it's like spilling over with pulsing light. And they've got
the fog machine working hard. But he's like, well, I
guess no other choice. I got to run into Hell.
So he runs into Hell. All the time, we keep
cutting back to Angela calling out for help and seeing

(49:37):
the guys in the cult robes with the daggers. You know,
she is imperiled by the slowest descending knife in movie history.
And we see Master Arkham really concentrating. He's like, the
knife is going down, and it made me realize, like,
why is the knife going so slow? Maybe it is
a case of the slow blade penetrating the shield. Right

(49:58):
is this? Is this a christineknife kind of thing?

Speaker 1 (50:01):
Hmmm, yeah, I mean that's one read on it. I
will say that sacrificial stabbings do take place at a
just glacial pace in this film. Like the knife's coming
down here, it comes here, it comes any second now,
right through your heart.

Speaker 3 (50:19):
Sometimes they recock the knife like they're almost down, they
lift it way back up again.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
Well you know, it's like they say, measure twice, stab once,
right exactly.

Speaker 3 (50:28):
Yes. So Flynn is running around trying to find Angela
and the baby to save them. As he's going, he
keeps stopping at these little vistas throughout Hell, and we're
treated to a very interesting milange of cheap looking sets again,
but also some pretty good looking sets or models, and
then some fantastic looking painted backgrounds.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
Yeah, some of these matte paintings remind me a bit
of those fantastic in Tears and Indiana Jones and the
Temple Temple of Doom, which I guess that was the
Temple of tim the titular Temple of Doom.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
Yeah, in this.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Case though it is Hell or the Empire of the Dark.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
Some of the best looking stuff is like the painted
backgrounds here. But there's one set that looks pretty good.
Isn't more in the mid level, but it's pretty good
where there's like a rickety wooden bridge spanning over a
chasm filled with hot lava, and they've really wanted to
get their money's worth with this one because it's built out,
and he runs across it so that it gets a
lot of screen time.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Yeah, I think it looks great. I buy. And eventually
lots of people and things are going to be falling
into that lava, and it's convincing. Thisbelief completely suspended anyway.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Eventually Flynn stumbles across the ceremony where the two Meleias
devil guys are. They're slowly lowering their knives and then
Flynn pauses to aim his service revolver, then dramatically calls out, I.

Speaker 4 (51:45):
Only have one more bullet.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
And he's going to have to shoot it across what
seems like a chasm eight miles away. Yeah, and the
matte painting slash set here that we have it does
look incredible. Like just seeing this one still, you would
have to see this movie like it. It feels like
it has great doom vibes to it.

Speaker 3 (52:08):
Absolutely. But the knives, of course are coming down. They're
coming down slowly, still, very slowly, and the camera keeps
cutting different thing cult guys knives, Angela, the baby, Flynn
say my baby and help me, over and over. Finally
Flynn makes his choice. He shoots Brian Devray to save
the baby, and the wicked Master Arkham stabs Angela, and

(52:30):
Flynn gives a real revenge of the sith no and
then goes and once after this cut, it seems like
actually maybe he wasn't that far away because he just
runs right up after this. And he runs up and
he beats Master Arkham on the head with the butt
of his revolver, and.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
I think it seems to seed him to death.

Speaker 3 (52:48):
It kills him. Yeah, And so after a quick tearful
goodbye to Angela's body, he grabs the baby and he
runs back out of hell, stopping for a long time
at the rickety lava bridge so you can get a
look at it. And then finally, as sort of the
cavern is collapsing, he dives back through the portal in
the wall with the baby, and the wall magically seals

(53:09):
itself back up, so now he's just a cop holding
the baby. So after the prologue we fade out and
then we come back in with some Bambi springtime music.
It's a beautiful morning. We're somewhere in the woods in
the mountains of northern California. There's a rushing brook and

(53:32):
a waterfall, tall trees all around. It's beautiful, just a
little slab of heaven. And here we also see the
Maison de Flynn, our Flynn household here, a recurring setting
for much of the rest of the film. It's a big,
rustic wooden cabin with yellow and green accents, and some
text on the screen tells us it is twenty years later.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
I have a strong suspicion that we get both the
indi ears and exteriors of this house, and that this
is in fact Steve Barquette's.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
House that is also what I believe. I don't have
any way to confirm that, but it I think this
is Steve Barkette's house. Yes, he just looks really cozy
in it, like this is where he belongs.

Speaker 1 (54:16):
It's very lived in. You see movie memorabilia in places
like the kitchen, So I think this is his house.

Speaker 3 (54:23):
And I like the colors inside. This is like a
good location to shoot, as I mentioned earlier, Like it's
not just boring drab colors and all the like his
kitchen is like green and yellow. It's weird colors that
are nice to look at. For for example, in the
scene later where Terry gets seduced by a succubus in
the kitchen.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
Yes, yeah, and everything is fitningly feels very late seventies
early eighties, even though it is technically the early nineties
at this point.

Speaker 3 (54:51):
Yeah. So again, it's twenty years later. Our hero now
has a mustache it didn't before. He's sleeping on his
side in bed, Harry chest bared to screen and his
alarm goes off and he groans with displeasure. He's roused
by his girlfriend Stacy. She is a ray of sunshine
and she's giving him a little sing song voice sayings

(55:11):
about how it's time to get up, and he is
just in Garfield mode, Garfield and his soul. He does
not like mondays, he doesn't want to get out of bed.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
Yeah. He declares that her love of mornings is frankly disgusting,
which is kind of legitimately funny.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
Yeah, it's hard to explain this. The movie from this
point on has a humorous tone that does not match
the prologue at all. Like the prologue is totally dark,
but starting here we get these things where Flynn will
basically look into the camera and like shrug and be like,
what do you what are you gonna do?

Speaker 5 (55:46):
Yeah? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
In the prologue he's a heartbroken cop who's just had
a traumatic experience with Coultist in another dimension. But this
Rick we see now he's a happy, go lucky ladies
man with a as we're about to see a driven
interest in sword.

Speaker 3 (56:00):
That's right, So we go straight after the wake up
to the sword training scene. We're cutting in in the
middle of a duel with Flynn dressed in sweatpants wildly
swinging a broad sword at a woman dressed in athletic
gear with the sword of her own she's got fencing
gloves on, and the woman yells at him, Rick, you're
a little rough today. So they stop the duel and

(56:21):
she asks him why he decided to learn sword fighting techniques.
He says he doesn't know, just got an urge a
couple of years ago. And this is the part where
I mentioned this earlier, where she says, you know, there
aren't many instructors who would let you freestyle with live
steel like this, and then Rick is just I'm in
love with you. Just wild sexual harassment in this scene,

(56:43):
but the instructor laughs it off. It's like, nice try, mister.
Here's another moment where Rick basically like she's like, nice try, mister,
and Rick looks into the camera and he says, must
be my breath.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
Yeah. Yeah, they're begin to ham it up quite a bit.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
Yeah. So next we're going to meet some other characters.
We meet Terry Nash. This is the character played by
Steve Barquette's son in real life. This is the young mustache.
And then we meet Eddie Green, the sheriff of Lava
Springs I guess wherever this is, or a detective in
Lava Springs. At least it wasn't exactly clear on his rank.

(57:22):
So Terry shows up at the police station to speak
with Eddie. We get again the establishing shots outside, where
it's like police, police, police, and Eddie is in the
middle of a vulgar phone call with Milligan. You know Milligan.
He's sawing a Milligan And every time Milligan talks, Eddie
finds a way to repeat for the audience what Milligan said.

(57:43):
The gist of the phone call is that there is
a new demon slasher case in which young women are
being murdered. Seems like, yeah, probably by a demonic cult.
His men don't know what's going on, and he suggests
they should bring in outside help. Who should they bring in, Well,
of course Richard Flynn not be a police officer anymore.
He's no longer a brother officer. But he's the best

(58:05):
there ever was.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Yeah, this small town, rural area is like the epicenter
for cult related homicides in the nation, perhaps in the world.
Should we turn to the federal agency for help here? No, no, no,
I know a retired guy in the area. He's perfect
for this.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
The amount of cult murders here reminds me of I
think we've talked about this on the show before. But
you watched some of Sons of Anarchy at Real at least, right,
it's supposed to be a small town in northern California
that has like ten thousand murders a year.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe it's a similar area. Maybe it's
around around reading. It's just all sorts of cult activity
and outlaw MC he's just tearing it up.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
Yeah, So Milligan does not whoever Milligan is, does not
want to bring Richard Flynn onto the case. So they
have a disagreement about this, and the call ends when
young Terry wanders into Eddie's office. Harry explains his business here.
He's trying to get in contact with Eddie's friend, Richard Flynn.
What do you know what a coinky dink. Flynn is
a private detective now and he's working down the road

(59:11):
in Lava Springs. Terry has tried writing to him and
calling him, but he gets no response. It's like Flynn
just doesn't want to talk to Terry, and Eddie says,
it's not like Richard Flynn to do that. He doesn't
cold shoulder people for no reason. Well, Terry says he
thinks there might be a reason in his case. He
explains that his mother was Angela Nash. That's the Angela

(59:34):
from the prologue. So Eddie lean he knows some of
the story. Eddie leans forward and he says, so you're
the baby. Terry presumably wants to meet the man who
saved his life from Melias when he was a baby.
I'm not sure exactly how much of the story he knows,
does he? They don't make this clear, like, does he

(59:55):
know that he was saved from hell? He's been to hell?
He was too young to remember it? Unclear again, But
beyond that, he also has an important lead that he
wants to share with the police. It is a polaroid
of who is that why? It's Brian Devray and master
Leo Arkham. Arkham is in what looks like a tracksuit

(01:00:16):
or at least kind of a sports windbreaker. They're standing
in the parking lot outside of what looks like a bank,
and Eddie recognizes them instantly, but they're like, wait, look
at the modern cars in fashion in this picture. This
couldn't have been taken twenty years ago. This was taken
two weeks ago. And those two were supposed to be dead.

(01:00:36):
So that's all the convincing Eddie needs. He's like, okay,
I'm on board. I'm going to help you. Terry get
some FaceTime with the great Richard Flynn.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
Yeah, the actor playing Arkham here, Richard Harris, and he's
like wagging a finger at him in this picture, almost
like saying, they're not going to trick me into film
in any additional scenes.

Speaker 4 (01:00:54):
Brother.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
So meanwhile, another subplot kicks off at at Rick and
Stacy's house. Stacy is some kind of newspaper reporter and
the paper is sending her to interview a psychic investigator
named guy Zupan. Rick says, kind of an odd assignment
for you, isn't it, And she says not really, it's

(01:01:17):
related to the demon Slasher case. Oh, that explains it anyway.
She heads out for the interview and Flynn accidentally so yeah,
so she leaves. He's left alone at the kitchen table
in the house and he accidentally drops his Velcrow wallet
on the floor, which falls open to some goth glamour

(01:01:38):
shots of Angela from twenty years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:01:41):
Yeah. Yeah, really ridiculous looking headshot, you know, very very stylish,
not the kind of thing you normally would see in
a wallet, but hey, what do I like? I don't
even have photos of my wallet anymore, so I guess
I'm out of touch with this practice.

Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
She looks like a cross between a shampoo commercial and
a lou Reed album cover. Yeah yeah, but he sees
the photos in his velcrow wallet and this sends Rick
spiraling into a soft focus memory, which consists of a
frankly hilarious erotic scene between Flynn and Angela where he's

(01:02:18):
his outfit in the scene is very good choices.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
Yes, this is a full undershirt on love scene Blue
Tank Tom yea. Yeah brings to mind Toast of London
if anyone watched that show.

Speaker 3 (01:02:34):
But also in this erotic scene, there's a bunch of
exposition as they have. Actually it's not in scene, it's
like within the flashback. There is a further secondary flashback
to breathy conversations they have had at other times about
why she won't leave her satanic husband Brian Devray and
run away with the Rickster. So Rick says, please don't

(01:02:57):
marry Brian Devray. He says that religious group he hangs
out with, there's something very wrong about that whole setup.
But she has made up her mind. Basically, I like
how this suggests that it's not fully secret that he's
in this satanic cult that's just like part of his
you know, in the social scene, everybody knows. Oh yeah, Brian,

(01:03:17):
he's part of the Melias Cult.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Yeah. It kind of a complex romance triangle that is
being portrayed here for a movie that's not particularly invested
in how human beings work. So we don't really fully
understand all the ins and outs here.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
But she's got her mind made up. Basically, she says
she loves Rick more than anything, but quote, our needs
are different, and for that reason, and presumably other reasons,
they cannot they cannot be together. She's going to marry
into the cult of Melias, and they needs that Melius.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
That's what the needs are exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Rick pledges that, however far away, he will always love her.
And anyway, we go on to the next thing in
the present action movie, and this is a great sequence,
the supermarket creep hunt. Yeah, so here we're going to
get to see the Rickster in action doing what he
does best. He is no longer a cop. He's a
bounty hunter now chasing down America's most wanted out of

(01:04:16):
a three ring binder of mugshots and wrap sheets that
he keeps in his Toyota pickup truck. So Rick pulls
into a grocery store parking lot. He parks diagonally so
that he's taken up at least three spaces, and then
he gets out to scope out the scene. Sure enough,
the creep that he is hunting is walking into the
store right now. Now. At first, I assumed what was

(01:04:39):
going on here is like, Okay, this criminal is hiding
from the law. He's sneaking out of his hideout to
get some groceries. But I think, no, it seems like
maybe this guy has come to the grocery store intending
to commit crimes here at the store, or at least
for some unspecified reason, he came heavily armed. By the way,

(01:05:00):
the grocery store is called Holiday Market, I just thought, well,
I'll look that up. It seems this is a chain
that still exists in California. Some really good early nineties
grocery store nostalgia. Just looking at the shelves full of
items here.

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
Yeah, I found myself becoming lost in the location here
because the great late eighties early nineties small town supermarket
vibe here. It feels very much like the one that
I grew up with in my hometown. In fact, the
one in my hometown still basically looks like this. It's
still wow going back in time.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
There's an end cap on one of the aisles that
has a header on. I can't even tell what's on
the shelves there, but the header says incredible edibles. And
I was like, wow, that's just a phrase that's from
my childhood. I don't even remember what that refers to.
But maybe my store had one of those two.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Yeah, now probably not. Probably not calling things incredible edibles.

Speaker 3 (01:05:56):
Probably means something else. Now, Yeah, anyway, this it goes
on for a while. This is like a long scene,
but the long story short. The follows the creep into
the store. He pretends to be browsing the baloney whenever
the guy looks his way. And meanwhile, Eddie and Terry
are driving around and they see Rick's truck parked outside

(01:06:17):
the grocery store, so they pull up. They also park obliquely,
so the two cars together look like they're taking up
like eight spaces and they go inside, and then right
when Rick is about to grab the creep, Eddie sees
him and he yells like, hello, fellow police officer.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
And that sets the creep off. He's like, it's blasting time.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
That's right. The blooney cover is blown and the creep
whips out his shotgun and goes berserk. This leads to
a shootout and a hostage situation in the grocery store. Eventually,
Terry the young stash. He comes through in a pinch
and he distracts the creep by throwing a bag of
bread at him, which, like, that's the ef. He didn't

(01:07:00):
throw like a can at him. It's a bag of bread.
But this gives Flynn a chance to draw a bead
on him and gun the creep down. Any more details
you want to mention from the supermarket sequence, I.

Speaker 1 (01:07:13):
Would just say this is I think one of the
first scenes where we realized that even the good guys
are pretty cavalier about homicide. It's kind of like, you know,
we had to shoot a guy, but hey, the sheriff
was physically present, no paperwork required, everything square.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
Yeah, they're the good guys. They saved the day. But
after they shoot the guy, they like walk up to
his body on the grocery aisle floor and Eddie's like,
he looks good down there. Flynn's like, that's where he belongs.

Speaker 1 (01:07:40):
On the floor next to the what site was this
the bread section?

Speaker 3 (01:07:43):
I think it's the bread Eyele.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
Does he really belong in the bread aisle? I don't know.
I don't think that's the case.

Speaker 3 (01:07:48):
Look at all the canned chili brands on the I
was just I can't even like Flynn is blocking some
of them. Looks like they had like fourteen different kinds
of canned chili back then.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
It looks like the little microwaveable chili cups or next
to it. I feel like I look at those and
I feel burns in my mouth.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
So Rick also has a flashback in this scene because
there's one point where a lady is screaming like, save
my baby this, you know, he's got to save the hostage,
and she screams at the same way Angela did in
the cave all those years ago. So we since that
Flynn cannot get Arkham and Brian Devray out of his
head anyway. After the dust settles, it's clear Eddie expects

(01:08:28):
Flynn to appreciate how Terry Nash saved the day with
that bread pitch, But when Flynn realizes who the kid is.
He clams up and he abruptly walks away. It seems
like he just can't deal with facing the child of
Angela and Brian Defray. It's too painful for him. Next

(01:08:53):
scene is the meeting between Stacy and the great psychic
guy Zupan. What do you think rob is is Zupin's
hair a wig? He has some voluminous frosty hair, and
he's wearing a three piece suit, so his look is
quite distinctive.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
Yeah, I think so. I think this is one of
the reasons we didn't recognize this actor glass his suit.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
The hair. The hair, at least at the very least,
it's done up in a very big way that I'm
not used to seeing.

Speaker 3 (01:09:21):
His hair looks like one of those artificial Christmas trees
that has the snow on the branches.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Yes, some frosting.

Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
Yeah. So the gist of this conversation is that Zupan
does not normally speak to the press. He doesn't want
publicity for his great psychic powers.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
The great psychics are like that exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:09:39):
The reason he contacted her is that he knows who
the demon Slasher is, but he doesn't know where he is.
Zupan says he has been searching for the demon Slasher
for many years, and he's follow followed this cult all
around the world. Finally they have come back home, back
to Lava Springs. He says, quote, ten girls have died,
ten more will die before the next full moon. And

(01:10:01):
he explains the cult did the same thing here twenty
years ago, and one of the girls they murdered was
Zupin's daughter. And we get a flashback to the hypnotized
lady from the prologue. Here he's got a photo of
her on the mantle and it's not but I almost
expected it to be a frame from her death scene.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
The Red Lingerie.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
Yeah. So later the Rickster has a nightmare in which
he's like back in the hell cave and he sees
Angela surrounded by white light and fog. His bed, by
the way, is also in the hell cave, with like
the you know, the bannis, the headboard and everything, which
looks funny.

Speaker 1 (01:10:40):
But five machine full blast here, Yes, it looks pretty
great for this sort of scene.

Speaker 3 (01:10:44):
Powerful fog storm billowing in. But then also I want
to note in the stream, rick is wearing the same
blue undershirt he was wearing in the erotic flashback scene
from earlier, which presumably took place more than twenty years before.
So at this point, like that tank top has some
serious mileage. I know this is a dream, but he's

(01:11:05):
dreaming of a tank top that he wore twenty years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
I mean, sleep shirts can last a long time. They
start falling apart, they become basically transparent. But it doesn't matter.
It's your sleep shirt.

Speaker 3 (01:11:17):
That's true. Anyway. In the stream, Angela tells Rick that
she's not really dead. She is still alive somewhere and
he has to come find her. Then, somewhere else we
see that demon, the Meleias demon, roaring in the glow
of hell, and Rick is startled awake in his bed.
And then he immediately gets a phone call from Eddie
once again pleading with him to make some time for

(01:11:39):
the kid for Terry Nash. So they're going to meet
at nine o'clock in the morning at the Church of
the Blessed Saint. He says, meet in Sister Mary's office,
and Rick's like, oh, yeah, I know where that is.
I was like, I bet he does. Okay, after this
there is oh, this is one of the scenes that
I'm not sure it makes sense get in the logic

(01:12:00):
of the rest of the movie. So there is a
lover's lane demon attack. It seems like the movie needs
a monster attack, doesn't it where like the demon meleeas goes,
except the demon is kind of too big to attack
human size. It's like God zillicized, but they make it
work anyway. So we head out to the woods in
the middle of the night to a parked sports car

(01:12:22):
with a couple making out inside. By the way, we
cut to exterior shots of it, and it's a hot
Wheels car, but there is a full moon. The owls
are hooting and you know, they're kissing, and suddenly the
woman inside the car, she stops kissing, and she says,
did you hear that? What was that sound? And the
guy says, the first time I watched it, I think
it sounded to me like he said, that's just my

(01:12:43):
pants exploding. But I think I think he the second time,
it sounded like he said, that's just my shorts expanding.
I don't know either way, beautiful riding. But he later
suggests that the sound was probably just a rabbit, And
then of course it's not the shorts expanding or the
rabbit it's of course Melias. So from above here comes

(01:13:05):
the giant. Demon attacks the car, scratches up the guy
and kills him. I guess. Then the lady runs off
into the woods. Demon follows her. I guess eats her too.
I don't know. I guess it doesn't eat them, because
the police find the bodies later.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
Yeah, it just kills them.

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
Now they are victims, and there are a lot of
victims credited in the credits for this picture. Most of
them are women, but we have at least one male
victim who is credited, and none of them, for the
most part, have any other acting credits. But there's one
victim who's credited only as Dealer Dan. So we were
talking about this off Mike, Is this Dealer Dan? Is

(01:13:44):
this Dealer Dan's big scene?

Speaker 3 (01:13:46):
This is Dealer Dan's big scene. Yeah, this is when
I mean the world knows him as the man whose
pants were exploding, but also the scene where Dealer Dan
eats it here in the woods. I'd like, how how
does that interact with what we later learn about the
fact that Meleus is supposed to be imprisoned under the
earth and cannot roam free.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
Hmmm. I guess Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Yeah, he's
not fully free, but he does get to come out
and terrorize the neighborhood. Maybe he is permitted only to
come out and kill within a very tight area surrounding
lava springs.

Speaker 3 (01:14:23):
Maybe he's got like a time limit or a distance
of proximity. Yeah. Anyway, after this attack, Terry Nash sits
up in bed. He's somewhere else where, he's in his bed.
He wakes up and he has had a vision of
these events in his mind. So I guess Terry is
psychic too. I don't think this has already come up
in the movie, but he just knows, and he at

(01:14:44):
least has cult of Melias related remote viewing powers. So
as soon as he wakes up, he calls Eddie on
the phone and he's like, there's been another murder.

Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
Yeah, this area is a hotbed of psychics.

Speaker 3 (01:14:54):
Yeah. From here, we go on to another interview scene.
So after meeting with guy Zoop and Stacy goes to
chat with somebody that Zupan referred her to, somebody named
Madame Oleska. This is another psychic and she's this lady
is a fan of sequins. She's wearing a very shiny,
sparkly dress. She's got interesting hair, and she is going

(01:15:18):
to tell Stacy about the dark of the Moon ceremony.
Any other details you want to mention about Madame Aleska.

Speaker 1 (01:15:25):
Oh, I'll just say that this is this again. Is
Don Wildsmith's playing Aleska, and you know, clearly graduated from
the fred Olin Ray school of acting. Yes, I love
everything about the performance. I love the ridiculously fake accent
she's employing here, Just tremendous.

Speaker 3 (01:15:44):
Yeah, so we sort of already know the gist at
this point, but she's going to explain that the Satanic
cult here is called They're called the Perennials. She says,
it is a terribly sadistic and savage religion, almost as
old as man itself. They're called the Perennials be because
they never die. They have mastered a means of cloning,
though not in a scientific sense, is what she says.

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
Okay, magic cloning, gotcha?

Speaker 3 (01:16:08):
But how does what does the cloning have to do
with anything? Or are they making copies of people? I
don't remember that?

Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
Well, it's just it's how these villains are still alive
after being murdered twenty years ago. Yir hero.

Speaker 3 (01:16:20):
Yeah, I guess. So. So she says they can only
be killed with sacred steel, and that's a knife or
a sword that has been blessed I guess by cleric.
So Madame Molesca explains that while most Satanic cults are
only inspired by Satan, the perennials are quote actually linked
to him, so they are soldiers of Satan. But also

(01:16:44):
I thought their master was Melias, not Satan. That's a
little confusing. Also, anyway, don't get don't get caught on
details like that, because it's time for an action seating.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
There's Satan approved.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
Satan. Yeah, a kid tested Satan approved, and we're going
to move on to a tremendous sword fighting scene from here.
So the cult is laying a trap for Richard Flynn.
We come up in the middle of the woods somewhere
where a lady is appearing to have car trouble again.
She's having car trouble, just like surrounded by trees, and

(01:17:16):
the rickster pulls up in his truck. He offers to
take a look at the engine for her, and while
he's looking down under the hood, she pulls a dagger
on him like she's going to stab him. But he
catches it just in time and slugs her and then
all of these all these cultists run out of the tree.
Is like Rick is attacked by the guys in the
robes again picture like tall jahwas, or kind of lower

(01:17:39):
budget ring raths. They are armed with swords and then
there is a massive roving sword fight through the woods
over bridges that ends with Rick finally jumping off into
the river to escape. And I love this fight scene.

Speaker 1 (01:17:54):
Yeah, yeah, a lot of passion went into this. There's
a lot of fun, fun swordplay, exhausting looking sword play. Yeah,
and it ends with with our hero taking a quick
jump into the end of the river.

Speaker 3 (01:18:07):
You get the feeling the Rickster he cannot be stopped
and like the sword fade, the sword fighting lessons really
paid off. There's also I was thinking, what kind of
action hero is he? He's kind of presented the way
Indiana Jones is in that, like, in one sense he's
really tough and a good fighter and all that, but
there's also a comedic exasperatedness to him, like, oh not

(01:18:31):
this again. Yes, anyway, the next scene is oh well,
in the next scene, he makes his appointment, so the
Rickster is now dry even though he jumped in the
river and he's made it in time for the meeting
in Sister Mary's office at the church with Terry Nash
and Eddie. Here we find out that these cultists keep
trying to kidnap Terry. I don't think we've ever seen

(01:18:52):
this happen. We're just told they tried to kidnap him,
and Terry claims that Arkham and Brian Devray are still alive.
The Rick Stirr says he does not buy it. There
is a rob I don't know if you caught the
same thing. Very weird detail from the scene. Sister Mary
says that not only did she raise Terry Nash, she
quote raised his mother as well. Like, wait a minute,

(01:19:15):
it's nineteen nine. She looks about thirty maybes, so Terry
is twenty years old. Angela seems like she was at
least in her early to mid twenties in nineteen seventy one.
So Sister Mary does not look anywhere near old enough
to have raised Angela. She doesn't even really look old
enough to have raised Terry.

Speaker 1 (01:19:35):
Yeah, no, no, not at all. Yeah, she looks very young.

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
Really.

Speaker 1 (01:19:39):
When they introduced this nun, I was like, oh no,
this is going to be another romantic interest for Rick.
Here it doesn't go that direction, but yeah, there's no
way this lady is old enough to have raised both
of these people.

Speaker 3 (01:19:53):
There's some almost flirting between them, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:55):
Because I mean, you can't help it, Rick, Rick's charisma
is undeniable. Yeah, you know, vows aside, she can't help
with flirtaling.

Speaker 3 (01:20:03):
So somewhere in here, there's also a little peek inside
life in the cult where the you know, Arkham and
Devray are in. They're whipping a guy because he failed
to kill Richard Flynn earlier, and they give him the dagger.
There's there's a scene after this where Flynn is sleeping
outside next to a campfire with a bottle of whiskey
in his hand, and he has more dreams about Angela.

(01:20:24):
She appears and warns him of danger, and then Eddie
comes up on the campfire to share the bottle of
whiskey and they have a Manda man talk. It seems
Flynn actually does believe the cult is back. He just
doesn't know if he can trust that kid because he
is the son of Brian Devray after all, or so
he thinks. I don't know if folks out there have

(01:20:44):
really caught on to where this is headed end. It's
a little obvious, but anyway, he's convinced that something is
up because he talks about how he randomly got an
urge to learn sword fighting two years ago and now
suddenly he's being attacked by men with swords. Doesn't that
mean something?

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):
I mean, it would seem like he's the chosen one.
But if he's truly the chosen one, it seems like
maybe he would have been inspired to take up a
ranged weapon. They could take out people with long swords
before they close distance on him.

Speaker 3 (01:21:17):
It shouldn't it be like super soaker full of holy water.
That's got to be the better.

Speaker 1 (01:21:20):
Option, right, Yeah, yeah, and yeah, you don't have to
worry about accidentally hitting a bystander.

Speaker 3 (01:21:25):
Yeah. Anyway, there's also a scene here where we go
back to Sister Mary's office and she lets him in
on the secrets. She implies to him that Terry is
not Brian Devray's son, he's Rickster junior. And she does
this by like showing him a picture of Terry Rick
has seen. But he shows him a picture He's like,
it's funny. He doesn't resemble Brian Devray at all, but

(01:21:46):
he does resemble someone else, and then Flynn stares wide
eyed at the camera like, oh brother.

Speaker 1 (01:21:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:21:57):
So after this, Flynn finally hangs out with Terry and
that they bond over the fact that they are both
receiving psychic dream messages from Angela. I wonder if she's
dressed in the dream messages to Terry the way she
is in Flynn's dreams anyway, but she's saying in these dreams,
she's like, I'm still alive. You've got to come save me.

(01:22:18):
After this, Flynn, Eddie, and Terry have a meeting with
Madame Alesca Glad to get another scene with her, and
she fills them in on the cult, the fact that
Angela is still alive and that if the cult succeeds
in their ritual, which is going to be, they're going
to try to sacrifice Angela and Terry together. If they
knew that, the demon will be set loose from his

(01:22:39):
underground prison and he will be free to take over
the world. So they need Angela for the sacrifice because
she is like the most perfect human who ever lived.
She is an angel of light. It's almost there right
in her name and once the cult finishes their standard
twenty murders, which they're already close to completing, they're going
to move on to the final ceremony with Angela and Terry.

Speaker 1 (01:23:01):
I was wondering about how this is supposed to work.
Does Terry become like the body of Malius unclear or something.

Speaker 3 (01:23:08):
I think they're supposed to just sacrifice the both of
them together and then Meleas can just come out of
his cave. It seems like that's what they're saying.

Speaker 1 (01:23:15):
Okay, all right, fair enough.

Speaker 3 (01:23:17):
So anyway, they've got to stop the ceremony from happening, obviously,
or it will be the end of the world. So
after this scene, I was like, oh, well, then it's clear.
You got to just put Terry on a plane at once,
fly him off to Guam where the cult can't get him.

Speaker 1 (01:23:30):
Right, Yeah, you'd think at least get him out of
the county.

Speaker 3 (01:23:33):
But no, that's not how it works. And then there's
some funny if almost feels like a scene is missing
from the editor or something, because immediately after their scene
with Madame Molesca, we go to a scene where Stacey
walks into Madame Molesca's house. Sometime later, and it's all
dark inside, and Madame Molesca is sitting in a chair

(01:23:54):
and she's not responding to Stacy's greetings. And then Stacey
walks up and her head falls off animal Esca. Her
head just rolls off onto the floor.

Speaker 1 (01:24:02):
Yeah, there's like a rope around her neck. And at
first you're like, oh, she's been strangling. It's like, oh, no,
she's been decapitated.

Speaker 3 (01:24:07):
Yeah, so the cult got her sometime in between these
two back to back scenes with her. But Rick, Eddie
and Terry arrive on the scene and now they form
a plan. They're going to hold up at Flynn's house
and wait for the cult to come to them. But
first Flynn says, sacred steel. We'll give them all the
sacred steel they can eat. So here we get a

(01:24:28):
sweet sword training montage. If only it could play Eye
of the Tiger, but this is an all time power
up montage. All of the guys train with the sword
instructor from earlier. We see Sister Mary blessing their blades
with holy water. They like pose for the camera making
crosses with their swords. She's putting these cross shaped daggers

(01:24:50):
around their necks. It's awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:24:53):
Yeah, they're getting decked out.

Speaker 3 (01:24:54):
This crew is ready, so it's basically it's time for
the final showdown. They're all at Rick's house. Rick falls
asleep in a chair outside by the water. They've got
some guards around the house or I think they're cops,
but I don't know. They're playing clothes officers. Those guys
are quickly killed by cult monsters and the car trouble
lady from earlier. The car trouble Lady then wanders into

(01:25:16):
Rick's house and starts to do a demonic temptress thing
on Terry, the staging of which is really hilarious. She
like is wearing a trench coat and then she like
wanders into the kitchen, which is now filled with fog,
and like takes the trench coat off, and she's in
her underwear and she's like, Hi, Terry.

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
Yeah, more lingerie, Yeah, Victoria's secrets.

Speaker 3 (01:25:37):
Yeah, and she sort of sex hypnotizes Terry and they
start to kiss, but then whoops, she's actually a hell monster.
She's got a demon face.

Speaker 1 (01:25:45):
Yeah, but still has the same body as before. So
and I guess, you know, Terry could have been forgiven
if be just stuck with it. But yeah, this whole
scene is amazing, Like, I love how she you know,
she wanders into the house out of a night that
is dark with intensely illuminated smoke, and we're gonna keep
cutting back to Rick outside where it is broad daylight,

(01:26:11):
like not day for night, just broad daylight, and in
a way that like you couldn't have possibly missed this
in the edit, it's just more of like, well, I
really want to get this movie finished.

Speaker 3 (01:26:25):
Here's what we have.

Speaker 1 (01:26:26):
What we have?

Speaker 3 (01:26:27):
Yeah, yeah, so he's in the chair, Yeah, broad daylight.
But he wakes up and he like sneaks around and
he sees what's happening, and in the end, Rick and
Eddie fight off the cult attack. They survived the attack,
but Terry is taken away to the underworld.

Speaker 1 (01:26:41):
Yeah by Melias shows.

Speaker 3 (01:26:43):
Up right, Oh I forgot about that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:45):
Yeah yeah, like the big guns move.

Speaker 3 (01:26:47):
They thought he couldn't come out, but okay.

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
Limited excursions, I guess. So really on the cultest side,
we have the leader like and then the vice president,
and then we have it seems like miscellaneous human cultists,
and then we have full on demon faced cultists, and
then we have Melias who can also show up at
least for short bursts of energy and assault.

Speaker 3 (01:27:12):
Yeah, a lot of different kinds of enemy classes. Some
of the Cultists in robes are humans and some are
demons with monster masks. Yeah, uh so, now of course
we got to go to the final showdown. The cult
has Terry and Angela for the Dark of the Moon ceremony.
Seems human kind is doomed unless one man can go

(01:27:33):
in there with a machine gun and a sword and
defeat all of Hell. So most of the rest of
the movie is just one long, massive overkill action scene
of the Rickster versus Hell.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
Yes, and it's amazing. There's just loving so much swashbuckling.
They're running around through Hell. We'll get to go over
that bridge a whole bunch of times. Lots of quality
kills on the demon then Coultist, bodies of demon Coultist
and humanoid Coltist could just plummeting into lava lakes. Oh yeah,
that sort of thing. It's just non stop, so many

(01:28:11):
legitimately cool moments, so many humorous moments. It's it's tremendous. There.

Speaker 3 (01:28:16):
Let's see to mention a few highlights from the final
action you know, the final third of the movie. All
this action, the part where Rick is just being whipped
by demons with whips and he's like, oh no, I can't,
I can't. You know, they've got him cornered and they're
just whipping him over to.

Speaker 1 (01:28:33):
D four damage to me, over and over again.

Speaker 3 (01:28:37):
Yeah, and then he's saved by Terry's Terry like wakes
up from the sacrifice slab and he runs in with
the sword and he gets the demons. So he comes
to the rescue Terry like proves his metal. You know.
Then we we get a great fight that is Flynn
versus Arkham, where you know Leo Arkham, the big bad
guy again was Richard Harrison, and they're they're gonna fight,

(01:28:59):
but uh oh, Flynn has been caught without his sacred
steel sword.

Speaker 1 (01:29:03):
Yeah, he has one of the cultest swords that's not
going to work against the Master.

Speaker 3 (01:29:06):
And Arkham points out the rules. He's like, that sword
won't work against me. Your sword's over there, and he
uses force lightning on Flynn and.

Speaker 1 (01:29:16):
It looks pretty good. It looks pretty good for a
B movie.

Speaker 3 (01:29:18):
Yeah, and so he like force lightnings Flynn and then
Flynn's on the ground and Arkham comes up to him
and he raises the cult dagger and he's like, looks
like we will have our sacrifice after all. But then
I was like, wait, so it could have been Flynn
instead of these I thought it had to be Terry
and Angela.

Speaker 1 (01:29:38):
Yeah. I love it when a movie suddenly gets really
vague with what kind of sacrifices require. Reminds me a
Monster Squad a bit, where it's like, so, white lady,
who could have been sacrificed? And why it seems like
you're being particular for no reason.

Speaker 3 (01:29:49):
Yeah, but of course, how does Flynn how is he
going to get out of this? Remember earlier sister Mary
gave him that little metal crucifix around his neck. Well,
it turns out that can be also sacred. Deal, so
he stabs Leo with the with the crucifix, got him,
But then we haven't defeated all the bad guys because
we get a Melius attack. And here this is the

(01:30:10):
stop motion we were alluding to earlier. It's not the
best ever, but it's not bad. It's pretty cool monster
stop motion.

Speaker 1 (01:30:17):
Yeah, I mean you can the stop motion movies that
we watch in Weird House tend to be of a
very high or approaching high caliber. So you know, it's
unfair to compare something like this to the works of
the great Ray Harry Housen, or to Phil Tippett, for example.
But that being said, it's totally fun. It's it's it's

(01:30:38):
JANKI and cool and and he tears a guy in half.
Who does he tear in half? Joe?

Speaker 3 (01:30:43):
Oh boy? We get the return of when this guy
showed back up, I was aghast. It is the return
of guy Zupan, remember.

Speaker 1 (01:30:53):
A character I'd completely forgotten.

Speaker 3 (01:30:55):
Yeah, with the frosty hair, and he's I think when
he shows up again in Hell, he's still wearing his
three piece suit and the.

Speaker 1 (01:31:02):
Overcoats for success. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:31:05):
Yeah, So he's wearing the suit and he's got a
shotgun and he's like, I'm here, I'm fighting now. It
starts shooting the monster and I didn't remember what happened
to him. But he gets torn in half, you say.

Speaker 1 (01:31:16):
I think, so, yeah, yeah, there is some sort of
where he gets bitten in half something. We get some
nice stop motion monster mayhem here, but.

Speaker 3 (01:31:24):
We get so. Of course, this buys Flynn time to
escape from Hell, so he runs out of the cave.
But uh oh, now Meleias is coming Meleeas is coming
to the mouth of the cave, and the whole time
Eddie's been waiting outside with like a bomb rig to
explode to close the mouth of Hell.

Speaker 1 (01:31:40):
Police issue hell Mouth closer.

Speaker 3 (01:31:42):
Yeah, So they close the mouth of it, they blow
up the bomb, the hell Mouth closes, and seems like
the evil is defeated. So Flynn and Angela are of course,
Angela is rescued. She's alive again, what do you know?
And it seems like they're about to kiss, but then
there is a last scare because oh, here's Brian Devray
and he's running up and he's gonna he's gonna attack them,

(01:32:02):
but Terry comes through and guns down Brian Devray and
then Brian Devray somehow like falls on a sacred blessed
steel sword. Yeah yeah, and they're like, uh, They're like,
what did you say to him? Flynn whispers something to
Brian Devray and they're like, what did you say to him?
And he says I told him to go to hell.

(01:32:23):
And then that, of course, Flynn and Angela kiss, and
it cuts to Terry and Eddie who are looking on
happily and framed by a rainbow.

Speaker 1 (01:32:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:32:34):
Yeah, the rainbow in the skies.

Speaker 1 (01:32:39):
Like, yeah, within this context, the rainbow is supposed to
mean God's promised to never allow Alias to climb out
of the hellm mouth. Again, I guess that's what it means.

Speaker 3 (01:32:49):
Well, Rob, I think Empire of the Dark was such
a wonderful find. This movie was not on my radar
at all until you suggested it for the show, and
it's it's a new fave for me.

Speaker 1 (01:33:01):
I forget who recommended it to me or what list
I saw it on, but I came back around to
it in a few days before our selection for this episode.
And yeah, like I said, has its own following their
showings of this movie. So if you're if you, if
you look out in the right places, you may get
a chance to see this one on the big screen
as intended. But one one question we didn't address, Joe,

(01:33:24):
what is the Empire of the Dark? Is? Is should
we take this literally? Is hell then the hell dimension
that Dark characters go into repeatedly? Is this the Empire
of the Dark? Is our world the Empire of the Dark?
Or is the Empire of the Dark a matter of
the heart.

Speaker 3 (01:33:42):
These are all very good questions, though you know it
the cult in the movie never feels all that much
like an empire. It feels like very uh like they
have not assumed power yet.

Speaker 5 (01:33:52):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:33:52):
The cult is the our heroes are not the plucky
rebels rising up against the imperial authority. The cult in
the movie is very like not yet ascendant.

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):
Yeah, I don't think they have the infrastructure to really
become a global empire. Regional. Maybe maybe they can tackle
reading and that's about it.

Speaker 3 (01:34:12):
I think maybe the idea is actually, this is probably
what it means. The heroes are preventing the Empire of
the Dark from being created. There, cutting it off at
the roots.

Speaker 1 (01:34:23):
There you go. That's the I think that's the correct interpretation.

Speaker 3 (01:34:26):
And there's a rainbow there to let you know that
it worked.

Speaker 1 (01:34:29):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (01:34:30):
I can't get over that rainbow.

Speaker 1 (01:34:31):
It's so beautiful, so beautiful frame this one. Put it
on the wall, all right, Well that was Empire of
the Dark. Guess we know we have to have some
fans of this picture out there. There's so much in
this picture to discuss that we didn't even get to
really everything. There's so many nice little details that are
you know, either snapshots of the passion that went into it,

(01:34:54):
or the or the budgetary constraints on this particular dream.
But you know, all of it is just so authentic
and wonderful, so tremendous fun. If you haven't seen it,
definitely check it out. Yes, all right, In the meantime,
we'll just remind you once more that Stuff to Blow
Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we

(01:35:16):
set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a
weird movie here on Weird House Cinema. You can follow
Stuff to Blow your Mind on various social media platforms,
but if you want to follow Weird House Cinema in particular,
well you can go to letterboxed dot com. We are
weird House there, and that's a great way to look
back on all the films we've covered over the years
and sometimes get a peek ahead at what comes next.

(01:35:38):
And also wherever you get your podcasts, you can also
subscribe to Weird House Cinema exclusively as a playlist. That's
another option out there if that suits your listening preferences.

Speaker 3 (01:35:49):
Huge things as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
Email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:36:10):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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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: Empire of the Dark